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.
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.
"David's Response: If you don't want women, or you want women that control you and make you do everything that they want, be yourself. And that yourself that you are talking about is probably a wussie that is trying to control a woman in a wrong way. If you approach her being a nice guy you are doing it because you want her to like you. And I don't really car [sic] what you say about me because you are going to keep doing the same things until you open for some other possibilities."
The above paragraph was posted at 7PM Monday evening on
Wikipedia, an encyclopedia written by everyone that's now the 18th most popular website in the world. The premise of the site is that anyone can edit any article. One result of this philosophy is that many articles have become extremely well-written and a comprehensive source on their subjects. Other articles, such as
George W. Bush, have become the target of so-called "edit wars" where people continually change the article to support their own views or to prevent others' views from being distributed. But thousands of paragraphs like this are posted every day, and most aren't noticed, so why is this one even worth mentioning?
This comment is interesting because it's posted in direct criticism of this site, probably at me in particular. Could it be possible that David DeAngelo himself not only read his own Wikipedia article, but also visited this site in passing?
Continue reading "An article about David DeAngelo"
Every once in a while, useless junk starts to accumulate around here. There comes a point when the accumulating depreciation of the items makes laziness seem less attractive. Yesterday was one of those days, and therefore I spent a good portion of the day listing
items for sale on eBay.
I don't recall how getting rid of this stuff would have been done before eBay existed (the trashcan, probably), and I don't care to remember. It's amazing how people will buy anything, and usually at prices far higher than you thought possible. Two years ago, I sold a box of old 386 and 486-era computer parts, which even then were horribly obsolete. My brother had salvaged them from a school that was throwing them away. One should note that I explicitly stated that I didn't know whether or not the parts actually worked and that there wasn't even enough variety there to build one whole computer.
They sold for $42.00.
Continue reading "The anonymous world"
I regularly visit a number of sites with the purpose of drawing more visitors to this blog. Besides reading and leaving comments on other blogs, one the best ways I've found to increase traffic is by submitting articles to "article emporiums." These sites link to your site in exchange for content on your topic of expertise. An example of such an article is the
"Likability Quotient". While anyone can contributes articles to these sites without justifying whether they are actually knowledable in the subject area, this one in particular seemed like it had some merit.
The article describes a concept the author calls the "likability quotient," which is a measure of how much someone is liked or disliked in general by the people he or she meets. The quotient is based upon attributes such as how often a person complains, for example.
Continue reading ""Likability Quotient""
Since I seem to be on a roll of introducing new "theories," I thought I'd write today about another observation I've made recently, this one concerning tradeoffs. For those who might not be aware, I now work as a software engineer for
traffic.com, a company headquartered in Wayne, PA. The company configures and installs traffic sensors on major highways in about 40 cities. Most of the company's bottom line is earned through trading that data to radio and television stations, which then use an application to visually display the data on the air. In return, the company gets 10-second advertising spots from the stations, which they resell to other companies.
Even though I've only been there for a short time, I suspect that working in the field of broadcasting will give me the opportunity to see the nitty-gritty that goes on behind the scenes. In particular, the company has moved into the business of building and leasing space for studios for a few television crews. I visited two of the studios in the building earlier this week and took a look around, and met DJs for some morning radio shows broadcast to cities like New York.
Continue reading "The paradox of fame and fortune"
Isn't it funny how things always seem to change at the last minute despite all efforts at planning? On November 13, I posted about the two job offers between which I was struggling to decide. In the end, I had to ask each of the companies for an extra week, because the offers were so close. Before that week could play out, however, I received a third offer from a company which I thought had been disinterested in me.
The third offer convinced me that deciding between the first two was difficult because neither one had exactly what I was looking for. That's not to say that any of the offers was lacking - at one point, I considered simply flipping a coin, because either of the decisions would have been equally good.
Lockheed Martin offered a chance to go to a new location - and was the kind of place where one could spend his or her entire career, if that was the intent. Taking the position at
UGS would have meant the ability to remain where I was without needing to move and a boss who seems to be an incredible person.
Continue reading "A sea change"
Yesterday, I posted about my experiences as leader of one of the communities of the online virtual environment
Activeworlds. Two years after the final events in that recollection took place, I logged onto the system again after having not visited in some months.
Though everyone had been young teenagers when they first visiting the world, "age" had caught up and now everyone was 19 or 20. It seems as if a lot of monumental things in which I've participated have begun in late October, and the idea of the "reunion" was no idea. One late October day, a few people were chatting and discussed how it would be a great idea to host a real-life gathering. With five years having passed since we had first discovered the software, people had become self-sufficient and mature enough for something like that to work - or at least so I thought.
Continue reading "The "Reunion""
Some would break age down into two components - physical age and mental age. While searching for jobs lately, however, I've found that these descriptions of the concept are far too simplistic for the way things are. In reality, age is a combination of how old people are physically, how old they look, the choice of words they use, how intelligent they are, and so on. To make things more complicated, people's perceptions of age are vastly different - someone one person might call old could be the proverbial "spring chicken" to another.
Part of the reason why I encountered difficulty in the past in associating with people of the same physical age, I've come to believe, is because of age misperceptions and stereotypes. I've already discussed what these stereotypes are in prior posts, but I didn't discuss exactly how or why they are applied.
Continue reading "Perception of age"
Over the next few days, I plan to make a few posts about the differences between college and the true working world. I use the word "true" in a sense that while I've had many jobs so far, many of them (but not all) were what might be considered "student employment." I'm inspired to write about the topic now because I'm becoming more and more convinced of the enormous variation between these two worlds.
Interestingly, everyone to whom I've talked feels that college is or was "the best time of their lives." While I respect their opinions, I believe that my life hasn't even started yet. Over the past few weeks, I've developed a sense of hope about the future that wasn't there before when I was drudging through meaningless assignments seven days a week, ten hours a day, and struggling to satisfy the whims of professors.
Continue reading "The "best time of life""
As I stated yesterday, I've been spending a great deal of time over the past two weeks looking for a job. I've used several avenues: first reading through a list of opportunities that gets sent out to all students in the department, then visiting a career fair, and now searching help wanted ads. Before starting, however, I decided to spent a few hours thinking in order to make all the important decisions up front, to make things easier later in the search.
For example, I decided I would not apply to jobs where 75% or more of the work involved sitting at a computer doing nothing but coding or developing algorithms. I also decided I am be willing to work in the north or the south, but not between (if there's going to be a winter, I want snow). I decided I'd like to eventually start a business in the 2010-2015 timeframe, but if I find a great job, I won't force myself to leave the company to do so. Finally, I stated up front that I am not willing to work more than 40 hours a week more often than a few weeks a year for a few years - I worked 100-hour weeks for the last four years doing things I didn't like and I'm sick of them.
Continue reading "Honesty really works - everywhere except one place"
Shortly before almost every single one of the job interviews in which I have been asked to participate, I receive a federal law-mandated form in the mail. The form asks applicants to specify their ethnicities for affirmative action purposes. There are seven checkboxes listed:
American Indian
Asian or Pacific Islander
African American
Hispanic
Caucasian
Other
Continue reading "Reverse discrimination?"
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