Category Rant

It’s hard to even figure out where to start with a company as truly awful as New Wave Communications is, but I’ll do my best to start where my problems with them started, which is as soon as the took over my local cable network from Charter Cable in Spring of 2008.

Since the very first day New Wave took over and my IP address switched to their network I have had atrocious service, and no one from New Wave cares about it.  By fall 2008 I had called them no less then 10 times over a network congestion issue. I honestly lost count of how many calls I made and every single time I reached a “tech support” person, they were 100% incapable of understanding my problem and 100% unwilling to even do anything to attempt to solve it.  The exact problem I was having was network congestion.  During peak internet usage hours (evenings after work and weekends… basically any time I wanted to actually USE my internet), the service was unusable.  My ping times would often shoot from 30ms ping times to over 500ms ping times during peak hours.  Trying to use my “broadband” service for any “broadband” activities like streaming video, playing games online, was 100% out of the question.  Pages would often take minutes to load, streaming even music was not even possible.

At the time I didn’t know exactly what was happening, so I took it upon myself to write a script that sent out 1 ping per minute and log the response time.  After running the script for a few days I quickly realized that my problem was because of network congestion.  The sad thing is, I diagnosed in a few days, what New Wave had been unable to tell me for months.

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Apparently HP does.  In their mice.

Come on people.  It’s 2010.  Optical mice can be had from Newegg for $4.  I can’t believe ball-mice are still being packaged with new machines.  And this wasn’t even a cheap piece of crap Acer, this came with a brand new HP Proliant server!  Sheesh.  Spare no expense with that fancy fuckin technology why don’t yah?

I guess since it’s a server it’ll be remoted in to 99% of the time anyway, but still.  Like it would’ve broken HP’s bank to throw an optical mouse in there?

I had forgotten how absolutely frustrating ball mice are with out a perfectly flat surface until now.  Thanks HP.

For the most part Windows 7 is great.  There are a few – things – about it that annoy me, and I have found another.  This “feature” has popped up a couple times and is very frustrating when it does.

For files created/modified in the last 24 hours, Windows 7 does not display the file time in the File Properties dialog.  It just gives a very unspecific “X hours ago”.  What the fuck is this shit?

So if I wanted to know the EXACT time this file was created, I can’t see that.  Fan-fucking-tastic idea Microsoft.  Where do you idiots come up with this shit?  Seriously, who ever thought this was a good idea should be punched square in the balls.  What good does “5 hours ago” do.  Ok, so it was created some time 5 hours ago, giving an hour of buffer time in there.  That really doesn’t help me.

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Yup, that’s right.  She is a talentless hack, and every time I hear her obnoxious voice on tv, it makes me want to change the channel.  Seriously… she is not funny, she is annoying, and usually offensive.

I can’t wait for Fox to cancel what will surely be one of the worst shows to ever air on Fox.

I don’t have much else to say about this other then most people across the country seem to feel the same way

Apparently Hulu will begin charging for it’s content in 2010
Hulu has done all it can to push away viewers of it’s service and it looks like it is going to deliver the final blow.
Why does Hulu think they can charge for their mediocre-quality streaming service that locks people in to their site and their ads… when anyone can download high quality HD rips of the shows WITH OUT ads for free?
I just can’t grasp where they are getting the idea that this will actually be a successful pay-for service.
News Corp (who owns Hulu) issued a statement saying “It’s time to start getting paid for broadcast content online.”

Hahaha, wow… what a bunch of pompous pricks. Good luck with that News Corp.  You make it sound like you deserve money for streaming media online.  Sorry, that is not how the internet works.

As I stated in my other article, I think you’ll find that people will do 1 of 2 things when you start charging for service. 1) They will simply go with out. People use it because it is free. Charging for that isn’t going to instantly create a group of people willing to pay for it. Or 2) People will use alternative methods to download shows and watch them.

So lately I have been bombarded with these “Wirelessly Charge Your Shit!” ads from Best Buy for a product called “Powermat”.  So I did some looking in to it and decided it is one big ass bucket of fail.  They claim it to be convenient, an energy-saving, and neater.

First off, lets take a look at convenience.  They say this because you won’t have to plug in your devices.  You just set them on the mat, and it charges via electromagnetic induction.  Well, that may be true, except they leave out this fact in the commercial… there are only Powermat cases that attach to devices for 8 devices.  Yup… unless you own 1 of those 8 devices, you get to use the Powermat “Tip”.  The “tip” is a white hunk of plastic that you plug in to your device’s USB port when you want to charge it.  Wait… what?   So you still have to plug in your phone to charge it?!  Oh, and it must remain perfectly seated ON the powermat, WHILE it is plugged in?  SERIOUSLY?!?!  What kind of fail is this?  So let me make sure I have this right.  To use the powermat with my HTC Fuze, I would have to plug in the “tip” and set my phone on the mat, and leave it there.  That means I can’t pick my phone up and use it while it is charging.  How the fuck is that convenient?  That sounds like a pain in my ass to me!  I frequently use my phone while it is plugged in and charging, whether it is playing games, watching videos, surfing the web, or talking on it.  The powermat would prevent me from doing any of those things.

Next, they claimed it saves energy by shutting off when you’re not using it.

I quote from this YouTube video:

“…you’re also using a lot of power especially when the products are not being charged, you know, nobody really unplugs their stuff “

Ole Ron claim that leaving your chargers plugged in is using energy.  Well, this claim sounded like pure bullshit to me, so I tested it.  Here is a picture of my HTC Fuze charger plugged in to a Kill-a-Watt power meter, showing how much energy is being used when my phone is not plugged in to it.  Get ready for this… it may surprise you:

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Well, it’s a mystery as to what the hell happened to my parcel, but it looks like it has been to hell and back…

When I received it it was folded in half and covered in packing tape.  Upon closer inspection, it looked like someone has cut it in half and taped it back up.

Why do I have a sneaking suspicion that my goods were rifled through to see if there was anything worth stealing in it (there wasn’t to the average joe)?  Maybe I am just being paranoid?

So I cut the tape and dumped out everything in the envelope.  My paypal receipt and the plastic baggie my product came in were completely mutilated.  Corners cut off and missing, pieces sliced away…  I know UPS opened it because I couldn’t find all of the pieces cut out of the plastic baggie… and my item was not in the plastic baggie, it was just sitting in the envelope.  Luckily my item was not damaged durring whatever destruction happened to my envelope on its journey from California to here.

This folks, is why UPS should go out of business:

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When you’re a company who has ONE job… delivering packages reliably and on time… and that is the ONE thing that is impossible for you to do, you should probably just fucking close up shop.

Every damn time I am shipped something UPS it is a fucking disaster.  Today was no different.  I had been waiting for this package all week, and it was finally scheduled for delivery for today.  I was excited to receive my precious goods I had purchased from the magical world of the internets.

When it became late afternoon and I still hadn’t seen a UPS truck, I decided to check their tracking site… my heart sank

SPRINGFIELD , IL , US 08/07/2009 9:35 A.M. MULTIPLE ERRORS EXIST IN THE ADDRESS LABEL. UPS IS ATTEMPTING TO DETERMINE THE CORRECT INFORMATION TO COMPLETE DELIVERY / THE ADDRESS HAS BEEN CORRECTED. THE DELIVERY HAS BEEN RESCHEDULED

Fantastic.  Now instead of having my goods on Friday as I should have, it will be Monday at the EARLIEST.

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