Comcast Still Sucks Ass

As long as I'm living in Mount Dora, we're subscribing to Comcast cable instead of BrightHouse/Road Runner (which I never had problems with), because it's the only cable company available in our area. You may remember (but probably won't) my angry tirade a couple years ago over Comcast's acquisition and subsequent total destruction of my favorite television network, TechTV. Well, with the many quality podcasts that have since been published regularly by former TechTV personalities (most notably This Week in Tech and Diggnation), those wounds have slowly healed, though a subtly-toned scar has remaned.

However, since moving to Lake County and using Comcast's cable TV and internet service, I've seen a whole new side of Comcast's utter craptasticness that I hadn't been privy to before. For your edification (but mostly to quench my urge to rant), I thought I might enlighten you all as well.

It started when I first tried to get my internet connection setup. Comcast has this asinine system where, before you can actually use your internet connection which you've paid for, you need to install some software on your computer and fill in your information to verify and activate your account. Before you do that, any web address you type in will reroute to the Comcast page where you can download said software. First of all, how annoying is that? I don't want your stupid software taking up precious space on my hard drive. I'm paying you for internet access, that doesn't mean you own my computer, what the hell gives you the right to force me to install your crap on my machine before I can use the service I paid you for? But whatever, that's a negligible complaint. Moving on....

The first person to try to use the connection was my dad, who tried to connect with his work laptop. He would plug it in, get to the Comcast download page, and then for whatever reason, the "Download" button did not work. He would click it, and it would simply refresh the page. Over and over again. Being the fairly sophisticated geek I am, I took a look at it when I got home and I couldn't figure it the hell out either. It was bizarre. So due to Comcast's asinine requirement of installing software onto your computer before you can use their internet service, and due to their crappy web design and inability to make a freaking download link work on all computer systems, my dad was unable to use the internet at all until I got home months later and installed the crappy software on MY machine. Awesome.

So I got home and I connected my PC. I downloaded the stupid software. I entered in our account information and clicked the submit button, waited, and... adl;fkhnaeklrhnikanhkdfnh. Now it's giving me a fucking error message and won't let me finish the activation process. Son of a fucking.... Okay, no problem. I call customer support, tell them the issue I'm having, and they "fix" it from their end and tell me to restart my modem and my computer. I do, and no more Comcast download page. Everything works fine. I say thank you and hang up, and a few hours later I'm getting the stupid download page again, with the same error when I try to fill in the required information. I call Comcast again and they fix it again, and this time, for whatever reason, it sticks and I don't get the download page anymore. Okay. At least that's over with. Now we move on to the issues with their television service.

To summarize in a few words: Their DVR is a total piece of flaming shit. And I don't just mean, "It's the free cable company DVR" piece of shit, I mean to say that I might have an easier time trying to get a TV signal out of an actual lump of canine feces, lit aflame, setting on my entertainment center. It started with fairly simply complaints. The navigation is a pain in the ass and I still have no idea how to get to most of the options and settings. There's actually a certain set of options that can only be accessed by pressing the menu button while the box is turned off. Guess how long it took me to figure that one out? It's also missing a lot of the nifty features that I liked a lot with BrightHouse's DVR, like the thing where when you fast-forward and then hit play, it automatically jumps back a few seconds, anticipating that you probably went a little bit farther than you intended to go.

And then there's the more screwy issues I've had with it, like the way it sometimes fails to record certain programs, or sometimes the data will be corrupted in recorded programs so that halfway through watching, the video sputters and blurps random artifacts and the audio goes out of sync, and it continues to do that every few seconds throughout the rest of the recording. One time I had a recording that was corrupted so badly that it crashed the DVR when I tried to watch it. I would hit play, the screen would go blank for a while, and then the cable box would make funny clicking noises and the display would turn to all '8's. Who the hell wrote the software for this thing, Microsoft? No, it couldn't be; from what I've heard, Windows Media Center is actually pretty decent.

But nothing beats the crap I've been putting up with lately. Every show that's been recorded on an analog cable channel the past few weeks has looked like the screen shot above. (And trust me, it doesn't look any better in person. If anything, my camera phone gave it sort of the "squinting effect" and made it look a little better than it actually is.) Not the channels themselves—when I tune into them "live" they look fine—but only when I actually try to record from them. Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert have still been sort of watchable, merely because most of the enjoyment comes from the dialogue anyway, so you're not missing much with blurred visuals, but basically everything else I usually like to watch—Mythbusters, South Park, Iron Chef America, Law and Order: SVU (hey, it's a guilty pleasure)—have been totally destroyed. I also recorded "Koppel on Discovery: Iran" a while ago and was indescribably pissed off when it came out the same way, because I didn't know when or if it would be rerun and I was really looking forward to watching it. (I ended up finding an XviD encode on a BitTorrent tracker, though, so all is well with that. Thanks for compelling me to internet piracy, Comcast!) Since I haven't watched TV shows at their scheduled time in I-don't-know-how-many years, it's made my TV basically useless except for the four hours a week I'm watching The Daily Show and the Colbert Report.

I became so frustrated with it tonight that I decided to take a picture of the screen with my camera phone, and then decided to post about it in case some poor fellow who's considering switching to Comcast for whatever reason happens to stumble across it during his research or general Blogger browsing. And simply because I need to rant. It's been a while since I've posted a decent rant.

Anyway, the moral of the story: Avoid Comcast at all costs. Their service is not worth the cost of subscription, and the TV service is so shitty it's probably not even worth suffering through it for the 7 megabit internet connection that you probably wouldn't be able to get with DSL. Most casual users don't need a connection that fast, anyway. Choose DirectTV or Dish Network, or BrightHouse if you have the luxury of choosing between two different cable companies. Comcast is simply not worth your time, your money, or the hair you will yank out of your own head in frustration.

Patience

A groan of tedium escapes me, startling the fearful.
Is this a test?
It has to be.
Otherwise I can't go on.
Draining patience. Drain vitality.
This paranoid, paralyzed vampire act's a little old.

But I'm still right here.
Giving blood, keeping faith.
I'm still right here.

Wait it out...
Gonna wait it out...
Be patient...

If there were no rewards to reap,
No loving embrace to see me through,
This tedious path I've chosen here,
I certainly would have walked away by now.

-Tool, "The Patient"

Fuck Spam

I've been posting here again for three days, and have already had the pleasure of deleting two spam comments. Because of this, I've decided to enable Word Verification on all new comments. You know, the whole thing where it shows you a GIF image of some mildly disorted letters and numbers and you have to type them into the box to verify that you're a human being? I know, it's annoying, but it's the only thing I thought would be effective without being restrictive on what words you can use or making it so that only Blogger members could post. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Haircut!

Danielle says it looks like I just walked off the front cover of a romance novel because of the way it's curling at the moment. What do you think? I'm pretty happy with it.

I told you I'd deuglify it. Yes, I know, I took the easy route and just picked a different template instead of performing my HTML/CSS wizardry to truly customize it. What can I say? I'm lazy. And my CSS is a little rusty; I actually had to Google how to change font face with CSS to make the one modification I did make: To anyone who has the Windows Vista fonts installed, you will be reading this in Candara. For the rest of you (i.e., most or all of you), it shall be Verdana. Undoubtedly the best pre-Vista web font ever invented.

I am not headed for Alaska so fast after all. Danielle wants some time to gain a sense of independence and self-sufficiency before we go back to living with each other again, and while it doesn't make me particularly giddy, I'm respecting her wishes and staying here for a little while longer. I'm going to get a job here and save up enough money to move into my own apartment in Anchorage so that we can still see each other, but we won't be living together again until she decides she's ready to make that leap.

Meanwhile, Florida fucking sucks. I hate this stupid town, I hate this stupid county, and I hate this stupid state. Knowing that I'm now legally free to leave whenever I wish, but am now, by a twist of events, financially stuck here for at least another month just makes living here all the more intolerable. I have plenty of cash in the bottom drawer of my dresser right now to buy a plane ticket out of here tomorrow, but I can't use it yet. I'm going to miss Thanksgiving with Danielle and will instead have to spend it with my shitty family, which saddens me to an extent that I cannot possibly describe to you. I will be up there before Christmas, though, even if it means having to borrow money from my dad to make it happen.

Anyway, that's pretty much all I have to say. Allen finally conceded defeat in Virginia, the Senate officially is in control of the Democrats, woohoo. Fuck I hate Florida.

EDIT: Oh yeah! And I added an email subscription feature, so now you have no excuse for not reading and commenting on every single post I make. Forever.

Enjoy!

A Return to Blogging

And what better a day than today?

My beloved Democrats have taken decisive control over the House of Representatives.

By all accounts, they will also take control of the Senate by a very slim margin, as soon as the dust settles in Virginia and Montana (which could potentially be a while).

Arizona became the first state to defeat the ever-popular ballot initiative to enact a state-level ban on same-sex marriage. South Dakota rejected a ballot initiative to ban nearly all abortions with little exception, a measure clearly designed to put Roe v. Wade back before the eyes of our (now much more conservative) U.S. Supreme Court. Missouri passed a measure to allow embryonic stem cell research to occur in the state. California and Oregon defeated measures that would require minors to receive parental consent before getting an abortion.

Oh yeah, and the State's Attorney's office called this morning to inform me that the charges against me have been dropped, and I won't need to appear in court.

Now that one needs some explaining, as I'm sure virtually all of you who may read this are out of the loop.

On October 18th, after a heated parental argument that got out of hand, I landed myself in jail and stayed there for fifteen days on a Domestic Violence: Aggravated Assault charge. That's a felony, folks.

It's not as big a deal as it sounds like (though I'm not attempting to excuse my actions; I was wrong); no one was hurt and there was really very little potential for anyone to have been hurt, but, to make a long story short, while my dad and I were arguing over him essentially forcing my girlfriend and I out of the house (and out of the state) over an argument that had occured a week previously and which I had presumed to be resolved, he said something that I interpreted as being a sort of insult to my girlfriend, at which point I stood up, picked up the chair I had been sitting in and threw it at him before leaving the room yelling obsceneties. I didn't intend to hurt him. I don't know what I was thinking, really. I was just more angry with him at that moment than I think I've ever been with anyone in my entire life. Anyway, in fear for his safety and what I might do if and when I came out of my room, he and my mom drove to the local police station, thinking that an officer could simply remove me from the home momentarily and have a talk with me to help me cool down and that be the end of it. Nuh-uh. In Florida (and in most other states, I imagine), any time domestic violence is reported, an arrest of the accused party must be made, and if the victim doesn't press charges, the state will. My dad didn't want me arrested, let alone did he want me charged with a felony, but the moment he took the issue to the police it was out of his hands.

Well, fifteen days later, on November 1st, I was released on bond (I'd had the 10% fee for the bondsman sitting in my account the entire time, but needed someone on the outside to sign for responsibility for the full amount should I fail to appear in court) and immediately began contacting attorneys to see what my options were. In fact, I had a free consultation scheduled for this morning. I was expecting to spend a month and a half sitting here just waiting on court dates (the Lake County court system is obscenely slow), and now it's all over. I can go back to Alaska to continue my life with Danielle. (Oh that's right, I didn't mention: After I was arrested my parents kicked her out of the house whether or not she had a place to go [nice, huh?], and my friends John and Rakel let her stay at their place for a week [I can't express how grateful I am for that] before her mom's boyfriend bought her a ticket back home.) No more waiting. No probation. No court fees. No attorney's fees. I will probably enroll in an anger management program when I get to Alaska, though. But the bottom line is that all this stupid crap is over.

Today is a very happy day for one mister Danny McGee.

P.S. This blog is ugly. If I'm going to be writing in this thing again (and I want to start writing in here again), I'm going to have to deuglify it. There are other, more pressing concerns right now, but that will occur sometime in the near future.

EDIT: And I've just heard that Donald Rumsfeld has also stepped down as Defense Secretary. Unbelievable. We have turned this country around and dramatically changed the direction of our government for at least the next four years, all in the course of less than 48 hours. I'm just a little bit more proud of my country today.

A Crisis of Faith: Vol. IV?

"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use."
-Galileo Galilei

Never before has a quote rung so true for me. If there is a God (which is a subject of much inner debate at this point in my life), first and foremost, I cannot believe that he would endow mankind with the sole ability among all of the animal kingdom to reason outside of emotions and instinct, and then require us to forsake that ability to know him. I've heard plenty of times that God transcends "human logic," and thus, certain aspects of his being (such as the concept of the trinity, the paradoxical three omni's, the idea of a six-day creation that--whoops--rendered the universe to look like it's billions of years old, etc.) must be taken on faith despite the fact that they contradict our understanding and reason. Bullshit. This is the way I see it:

If humans evolved without a personal creator, it's a lot easier to buy that our ability to reason isn't whole, or is untrustworthy. To oversimplify things, our brains are basically made up of two parts. An inner section, which is where our emotions and instincts reside, and the outer, more complex cortexes of the brain, where our ability to reason comes from. The inner section evolved much earlier than the outer sections. Darwin teaches us that each evolutionary development is a mechanism of individual and collective survival. Millions of years ago (and still today, to a large degree), that meant being emotionally (read: morally) opposed to the idea of killing and eating our fellow man. Thousands of years ago (and still today, to a large degree), it meant belief in an afterlife to ease our anxiousness over death. The sect of thought that trusts so strongly in reason and logic (skepticism) is the same sect which believes that objective morality does not exist and the afterlife is a grand myth. Why do we, then, trust so strongly in our ability to reason? After all, it is a product of the same force (evolution by natural selection) which caused us to develop a sense of morality and believe in the supernatural in the first place.

On the other hand, there is the possibility that we are, indeed, the product of a personal creator, who has "endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect." This God is the creator of everything and is sovereign over the universe. And yet, it is this group of thinkers, not the former group, which believes that we must cast aside reason and logic to accept the truth of a God who is so powerful that he transcends logic. So, what, he intentionally made is with fucked up brains that don't reason correctly? Why? For kicks and giggles?

Neither of these ideas satisfy me fully. If there is no God and we evolved over millions of years by means of good ol' natural selection, I see very little reason to trust in my own ability to reason. If God does, indeed, exist, and is the creator of me and my brain, I see very little reason not to trust in my own ability to reason. Ahh, the irony.

If I'm going to continue being an atheist, I'm going to need a reason to trust in my concept of logic. If I'm going to believe in God, I'm going to need a logical reason to do so, and furthermore, a concept of God which does not contradict logic.