While most of the articles here pertain to dating, I thought I would post this tale about my experiences with Comcast, which is by far the worst company I've ever dealt with.

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I ordered Comcast High Speed Internet in December 2007, taking advantage of their 16/2Mbps offer, the highest tier of speed. I paid significantly more for this high-speed upgrade. I play a lot of games online through XBox Live, and my brother plays games on the PC. I download all sorts of content to the XBox, and my brother buys all his games online. The games can be as large as 10 gigabytes for a single installation, and that isn't counting the bandwidth necessary for voice chat. I also have a paid subscription to the music service Napster, which I always have running while I'm making dinner and cleaning and working.

Comcast called on June 3 with a "high priority message," instructing me to call back ASAP. When I did so, a technician told me that I was using too much bandwidth and that I had to reduce bandwidth usage in order to remain being serviced by Comcast. I pointed out that they never pointed out limitations in their usage in their advertisements and that I had paid a significant amount for a higher-bandwidth connection. When the technician refused to back down, I thought I would find out what the bandwidth limit was so that I could see if the policy was reasonable. I asked for a definite figure as to how much usage I was permitted. The technician, rather rudely, wouldn't say, stating that I only had to "significantly reduce" my usage to remain in compliance with this under-the-radar policy. If I didn't, I would be disconnected.

I sent a letter to Comcast's CEO, and got a call from someone who told me that "excessive use" was defined as "13 million E-Mails per month." They forgot to mention that an E-Mail could be as small as one character, or could contain attachments of hundreds of megabytes each. They completely refused to tell me what the limit is.

In response, I reduced my service level to the lowest possible amount of bandwidth (6/384 in this case). What's the point of having a higher bandwidth rate if you will go over their invisible cap by using it? Comcast engages in deceptive advertising by touting their no-frills Internet service, and then buries in their terms of service somewhere a clause that allows them to harass their customers over bandwidth usage. I can understand that Comcast needs to keep its network operating at full capacity, but what I cannot understand is why I could not obtain from a technician the exact limit that I should abide by. How am I supposed to adhere to a policy when I don't know what it is?

Because I don't know what the limit is, it's only a matter of time until Comcast disconnects my service. Until Comcast decides to end its unethical business practices, I suggest you avoid their game-playing as much as possible. If you have Internet service through them and have a reasonable alternative, switch providers. For TV, almost everyone can switch to satellite TV, even if you live in an apartment (the landlord is required to allow you to install the dish, but (s)he can dictate where it is placed). I sold my stock in Comcast and hope that it continues its current slide.

It will be interesting to see how Comcast does in light of the complaints that continue to mount against it for this policy. Game-playing like this generally goes unpunished in the social world, but my prediction is that someone will soon sue Comcast and Comcast will publicize its limits. Now, if only one had an outlet to get that kind of action in the social world.

This post has been moved to AWTeen Reborn at http://shoemakervillage.org/awteenreborn/index.php?/archives/4-A-workable-system-of-government-for-AWTeen.html#extended, where it is more relevant. Look back in the archives on October 26, 2007.

The seduction community frequently simplifies the concepts taught by many of its members into one- or two-word slang terms. There's a lot of this slang floating around in books and Internet forums; the Fast Seduction site lists a dictionary of hundreds of such terms. Since most of the discussion on the forums frequently refers to the same concepts, it's helpful to have a sort of dictionary to reduce the number of words in posts.

However, there's a funny thing about slang: it becomes so commonplace that it loses its meaning and, for lack of a better word, intensity. For example, the word "kino" is thrown around the forums as if it's just another step in a process. But when you look at how people are acutally using the term, we find that "kino" can mean anything from holding hands to foreplay. Certainly, the term fails to accurately convey the emotion behind the latter. One could argue that it fails to convey even the former.

So it is with another term, "social proof." Social proof is basically a synonym for being "popular;" if a lot of other people like me, you will probably like me too. It's a concept that I believe is a poor judge of character, because there are a lot of jerks who make more and more friends simply because they already have a lot of friends. Regardless of my opinion, however, the concept does exist, and I encountered a powerful demonstration on Friday, June 16.

Continue reading "Social Proof"

Karen, recently, has been posting about how her love life is going nowhere. The string of rejections has been stretching on since February or even earlier. She's tried speed dating, but nobody indicated they were interested. She responded to a guy on the radio, but he eventually ditched her for someone else. And she's even walked her dog to meet men, but saying hi and talking about dogs is as far as it goes. It looks like, unless we provide some "expert" assistance here, Karen might meet someone when she turns 70, and even then the odds won't be good.

Therefore, I suggest that we take matters into our own hands and hook Karen up ourselves. I'm going to create a new category, "Karen's Endless Search," where we can post all about Karen and her myriad faults. Hopefully, a guy will be lovestruck by Karen's warm personality and caring heart, and will decide to arrange a date with her. Everyone wins: I'll have something to write about once again, the blog will get more page impressions, and we can talk about how women attract men (most of the discussion here seems to be the other way around). But I think the end goal is much more important: Karen will actually be able to enter a relationship that lasts longer than five minutes.

Continue reading "Let's hook Karen up!"