Every time I have to deal with Comcast on any issue, it always sucks. This brings me to an example from today. I recently ordered a TiVo Series3 and I need some cable cards to put in the TiVo so it can access the HD channels on Comcast. The TiVo is scheduled to arrive tomorrow, so I planned for my ideal situation which would be to go to the Comcast office, tell them I need two cable cards, have them hand the cards to me, and I leave. Of course, it was nothing like that (except the going to the office, but that wasn't even that nice).

I get to the office, and first they tell me it'll be about a week since they have to order them from the warehouse. I thought that'd be somewhat ok, but they usually have equipment on hand so that was disappointing. Then they tell me that a technician has to come install the cable cards!! From what I've read, it's simply sliding a card into a slot. And it's always such a pain having a technician come by because I have to totally clear out about 4-5 hours of my day to sit and wait for a technician to come. Those hours are always between about 8 and 5, the time I am the most incredibly busy. So I have to cancel plans, lose money by not working, so I can sit and wait for a guy who usually comes AFTER the time window is up, making the last few hours a waste of my time. PLUS I have to pay a $25 installation fee! For sliding cards into a slot!!

There was another time in which they insisted on installing my cable box for me. This consists of plugging in cables to labeled ports. I THINK I CAN HANDLE IT! No, apparently I can't, because TWO (smelly) people had to come do it for me. Stop messing with my equipment, Comcast. Just give me TV and Internet, let me install equipment, and if it is absolutely necessary, I will request that a technician help me. I understand cable cards might have problems from time to time, but just let me try it first, and if there's a problem, I will ask for help.

As you can see, the blog has slowed down since class has started back up. School, my two jobs and other responsibilities and obligations leave me so exhausted that when I have a bit of free time, I just don't feel like doing a thing. But Comcast enraged me so much this morning that I had I get it out there.

It's Comcastic!

Recently I've been playing with the idea of bringing a new show to PBTV about technology, and very recently, I finally got around to it. I like the idea of short, helpful video explanations about any topic; technology happens to be what I like talking about most and is probably the most helpful in this day and age. This short format makes it easy to quickly take in the important information, which is what I like.

I know there's plenty of technology podcasts and online shows out there, so I'm not really trying enter the market. I've just always wanted to do something like this, plus I need content to show employers. Any feedback from you all would be good. If it sucks, just tell me. I'm feeling a little weird about it, probably since I'm not used to seeing video of myself, I'm more of an audio guy (HokieCast). I'll get to putting it on PBTV once Andy sets up the special Tech Tip email address for me.

And I blame the CMOS sensor on the Canon HV20 for making me look blue.

I never have an answer to this question, until now. I was browsing some Twitter friends' blogs and found this video on Jason Emerick's blog:


The video does a pretty good job explaining what I usually cannot explain, which is the interestingness of keeping up with other people's lives. I wish more of my friends would join Twitter, but when they ask me what it is, I never know what to say. I usually just say, "you have to just try it" to really understand it, because to me, you can't really explain the Twitter experience to someone. But this video does a pretty good job, and you could probably refer people to it when they start to question it.

I remember first hearing about Twitter over a year ago, and thought, "Why would I want to do that? Who cares what I'm doing?" Then @mager talked me into it one day, as anyone who knows him knows he often does for many web services. As you can see, I ended up really liking it, and it's become as much part of my life as big communication mediums such as email and AIM, and that's a big deal. People often compare email and AIM to Twtter, saying they're the same. They're not at all. Twitter isn't even in the same class, it's a totally separate medium, and it's great.

Since I've been on spring break, I've had a lot more time to relax and let my creative juices flow. There's been so many things I've been meaning to do but school and work leave me too exhausted. Especially web design. I can't sit down and create something when the day has left me so tired, so I jump at the chance to get things done. In fact, I think I'm trying to get too many things done...

The first thing I started working on was the new design of the Virginia Chapter of NAPUS's website, which my mom is a member of. As you can see, the design is horrible as I made it when I was like 12. That thumbnail to the left is actually a sneak peak of the new layout. The whole site is almost done, I just need a better, easier way to manage photo albums; and for that, I think I'm going to use Flickr and phpFlickr to manage and display albums. Creating albums will take 5 minutes or less, not more than an hour like before. Plus maintainability will be much easier with better implementation of a CMS.

I'm starting to think Planet Blacksburg needs a makeover as well. I did the current redesign last year around May or June, so it hasn't been too long. But since then, we've implemented the Photostream, PBTV, and better photo management, making the homepage look cluttery and disorganized. So I'm currently playing around with some ideas to make the interface a lot cleaner and organized, including finally extending the width of the site to 950 pixels. I've been against such large sizes for a while for a variety of reasons, but with more and more content coming in and more people stretching their browser windows, I think it's time. This design will take a bit longer unless I really get on a roll one night, so stay tuned.

I'm also trying to come up with a new design for this blog. As you can see, it looks terrible. It's been really difficult for some reason, I guess because I can go so many different ways with it, and I don't want it to look like utter crap. My great uncle also asked me about redesigning his website. If I really wanted to, I could get all of this done in a week's time, but I think it's just too many projects to do at once and it's inevitably going to spill into the coming weeks when school and work pick back up again.

I'd like to applaud Andy and the rest of the design/production team for creating the new layout for ZDNet which launched on Sunday. What a beautiful site. It truly gives some inspiring ideas as to how to go about redesigning PB. Revision3 also launched a new design recently which is also fabulous. I thought their site looked horrible with the old layout, but they've really stepped it up and brought better attention to their content in different ways, including the carousel at the top. Brilliant work by these two sites.

This is a video of me playing the theme to the movie, "The Notebook." Some clever editing was used to hide my mistakes. Other than that, it was an ok performance. I just cannot play when I know I'm being recorded. Or listened to.

Also, I used iMovie '08 to do some quick editing and processing, and coming from a person who uses such pro tools as Avid and Final Cut, iMovie '08 is really awesome! There's even a "Publish to YouTube" option, so I simply chose that when I was doing editing, it rendered the file and uploaded it, and I was done! Nice job, iMovie team.

Yeah, it's spring break for us Tech students, and I had to go to the dentist right in the middle of it. Blame my grandma for that one.

I haven't been to the dentist in about two years; ever since I turned 18, the kiddie dentist wouldn't take me anymore, and going to the dentist sucks, so I decided not to go anymore. Then my grandma made me. I was a little nervous going to a new dentist. It's one of those small, family dentist type places. The equipment and everything looked really old, so I thought it was kind of sketchy. But then I got to talking to the hygienist, she was a big fan of some work that I did and was really nice.

Since I haven't been in a while, and I drink a lot of soda, I wasn't expecting good news. I was expecting to have to come back very soon to get fillings. But actually, the dentist said everything looked really good, which was shocking and relieving. My gums bled some, which happed a lot at my old dentist, and they would just simply say I needed to brush my gums, which didn't seem to help much. These new people said I needed to take up flossing, and that would be the key to healthy gums. Makes sense, so I bought some floss and hope to get better reviews next time.

So going to my new dentist was an overall pretty good experience. They're really nice people and seem to know what they're talking about.

But it still sucks.