Tag: complaint

Miro needs your help to not suck

Miro needs your donations to build the future of Internet video – Boing Boing

Miro needs your donations — the project is trying to raise $50,000 to pay programmers and designers to make its player even better

I’m all about a nice, free video player that tries to get us to the next step in how we consume television and movies and whatnot.  I hate that I have to pay for hundreds of stupid channels just so I can get “The Office” and Redskins games in HD.  It’s terrible.  Why should I subsidize some niche channels that no one would pay for on their own?

But the Miro player is a piece of crap.  I’ve tried it twice, and it broke a Windows XP laptop and an Ubuntu 6.04 desktop.

And Cory Doctorow begging for money for the project is just a little bit hypocritical.  He seems to think that everything on the internet should be free, except the stuff he cares about, which should be fully financed by anyone with some spare cash.  If this project really needs $50,000 to be viable, then maybe it’s not such a friggin’ good idea, Mr. “I am a board member for the Participatory Culture Foundation, the 501(c)3 charitable nonprofit that oversees production of Miro“.

I really do hope the Miro project succeeds and gives us another model for distributing quality video content.  But I’m not giving them money when they beg.  Provide me with a service that I want, that works the way it should, and I’ll pay for it.  But try to get me to donate money to a bloated piece of software that I’m not entirely sure fulfills the needs of anyone, and I’m just not interested.

I wish I could fire Pepco

I just got off the phone with Pepco customer service.  They told me they don’t guarantee they’ll actually arrive in the four hour window.  They have lots of meters to read, and sometimes they don’t arrive on time.  I finally hung up on the CSR I was talking to because I was so furious.  I have no idea what I can do.  I can’t take my business elsewhere.

Anyone have any suggestions?

Waiting for Pepco

I’m working from home this morning, waiting for Pepco to come and read our meter.  I’m not sure why I have to be here, since the meter is outside, but I do.  They promise to be here between 8am and noon.

Why am I waiting for Pepco, you might ask?  Isn’t it their job to read my meter and charge me for electricity used?

Well, sort of.  You see, apparently Pepco can estimate my meter readings.  Based on what I don’t know, because this condo has only existed as a condo since some time last year, and has only been inhabited since February.  I suppose they’re basing the estimates on similar places in the area.

Or maybe they’re pulling numbers out of the air.  As of last week, when we got our latest bill, it looked to me like we’d used about 4200 kilowatt hours since moving in.  Our bill claims we’ve used 7900.  That means they’ve overcharged us by something in the neighborhood of $300.

I’m sure they’ll adjust the bill once they read the meter, and we won’t pay anything for a few months, but it’s absolutely infuriating that I have to make a special request and work from home for half a day (Okay, I’m not really complaining about that) just to get Pepco to charge us for the power we actually used.

Is it possible to have competition in power companies?  I know that, at least to some extent, it’s probably not possible to share the infrastructure necessary to deliver power to my house.  It might not be possible at all.  I guess we’re just going to have to put windmills and solar panels on the roof and go off the grid.

Justifiable homicide

You know that sound they play in every Western ever made, when the bad guy is staring down the good guy?  I can’t describe the noise, but you know what I’m talking about.

Anyway, some clown down the hall from me at work has that as his cell phone ringtone.

I’m not going to do it, but let’s just say, hypothetically, that the phone rang for a third time in the last half hour, and I hypothetically removed one or both of his arms and beat him with it/them.  Hypothetically.

Do you think I would do any jail time?

My Discover card sucks

Here’s another thing to add to the list of reasons I won’t get another Discover card.  At least, not until I exhaust all the credit card companies and have to start over.  My problems with Chase are well-documented here, and I’m not too fond of Citicards these days, either.

Anyway, Discover.  It’s not enough that they charge sellers such a high percentage, causing many places to not accept them.  But recently, they changed my card number.  They did it under the auspices of rolling out a new card, but what they’ve really done is change the card design, and probably renegotiated my terms of service. 

It’s not a huge deal – I just have to tell a few places that I have a new card number for my monthly debits and whatnot. But what really bugs me is that they’ve revoked my access to my old billing statements.  They’re treating this as a new card, and they’ve transferred the balance I had on my old card last month onto the new card.  And I don’t mean a revolving balance – I don’t ever revolve a balance anymore.  I mean just last month’s charges.  Now I have a bill that just says, you owe $X.  It doesn’t give me a breakdown of the charges.  I’ve requested a paper bill, but I really shouldn’t have to.  What if I want to go back and check a charge from two months ago?  I have to call and get another paper bill shipped.  I stopped getting paper bills a while ago because they’re dumb.  I have enough paper in my life already.

Anyway, this is very annoying. As soon as I spend my accumulated miles, this card is getting canceled.

Edit to add – Comments have been disabled. Perhaps instead of complaining about your Discover card on a three year old blog post, you all should work towards getting yourselves out of debt.

Edit again to add – Comments are back on because I’ve moved blogging platforms and don’t currently have a way to disable them. If it becomes a problem, I’ll make a way to turn them off.

All you need to know about DC parking tickets

To the person who found me by searching for “can you get a parking ticket in dc for having va tag where there are no sign”:

Yes.  If it involves a non-moving car, you can get a ticket for it in DC.

If you remember that rule, you may save yourself a few parking tickets.  I won’t say that you will save yourself from getting any parking tickets, because that’s impossible.  But you can perhaps minimize them by assuming that you will always be ticketed.  You will usually be right.

Anyway, I suggest you contest any ticket you might receive.  It makes you feel better, and you can do it by mail, so it hardly costs anything.

First impression of Vista, heading for Ubuntu

Ugh. It’s pretty unappealing visually. It’s like they took all the things that were good about any other operating system, ever, and threw them away. To be fair, I was expecting to hate Vista, and I suspect it is not possible that I could have liked it at this point. But still.

So, I’m downloading the Ubuntu Feisty alternate install disk image. That was my plan all along when I got the new computer, a Thinkpad T61. It’s almost done, so I’m going to go burn it and try the install. Should be loads of fun.

Update:  I’m on the old computer now, as Ubuntu is “Installing the base system”.  Not sure how long this is going to take.  I should probably get to bed soon.  The wife isn’t feeling well, and she’s already in bed.  We rarely go to bed separately, and on her way to bed, she said something to the effect of, “Don’t stay up too late playing with Ubuntu”.  She’s probably asleep now, so she won’t know how late I stay up.  But she’ll probably read this tomorrow, so, whatever.

It’s selecting and installing software now.

FYI – trying to install Ubuntu on a Thinkpad T61 requires the alternate, text-based install.  For whatever reason, the gui-based install just doesn’t work at all.

Worst street in Columbia Heights?

Two more shot on Girard Street last night.  One died, one in the hospital.  I park on that street occasionally when our block is full, and it really doesn’t seem that bad.  And there are frequently police cars around.

It kind of puts parking tickets in perspective, I guess.  I get pretty worked up over the city’s campaign to make me sell my car, but at the same time, there are a lot more important things going on.

Lets get the Councilmember involved

I wrote to Jim Graham today.  I’m looking for a little help on my parking ticket problems.  I figure that taking up Graham’s time is more efficient than taking up the time of a clerk in the DC traffic courts – Graham’s time is billed at a much higher rate, and it will take less time to reach the $60 they’re trying to take from me.

When I hear back, I’ll let you all know.  And then I’ll contest my tickets.

Spying on ourselves is bad

Boing Boing: Police camera spying on the rise in California

Backed by millions in Homeland Security dollars, California law enforcement authorities are quickly expanding video surveillance camera spying in public rights of way, a move the American Civil Liberties Union says is stripping away privacy rights while failing to dent the intended purpose: crime.

We were just talking about this last night, in the context of the hit-and-run accident early Sunday morning. The wife and I saw the victim lying in the middle of 16th Street, face down. The driver has not been caught.

We were talking about the trade-offs: privacy vs. safety. Would you be okay with more cameras in public spaces? When something like this happens, and we want to catch the driver, and more cameras would certainly help.

But, on the other hand, do you really want to be on camera all the time?  It’s not that I want to be able to break the law and not get caught.  It’s just that I don’t want to be watched all the time.  I don’t mind if there’s a camera at the ATM, or if I walk past a monument and I’m in some tourist’s vacation photo.  What I have a problem with is being watched all the time.  While cameras on 16th Street probably could have gotten the license plate of the speeding white SUV that hit this guy, they’d also catch all sorts of other things.  I know you don’t have any reasonable expectation of privacy in the middle of the city, but you have a reasonable expectation of not being filmed every moment you’re out of your house.

So, what’s the proper balance between safety and privacy?  Well, the current administration hasn’t found it yet, although by all indications they aren’t actually looking for balance.  Ideally, there would be a camera on everyone committing a serious crime, and no cameras anywhere else.  I don’t suppose that’s really feasible, though.

And, as you can see above, the ACLU doesn’t think that it’s helping to stop crime.  I don’t know what the ACLU knows about crime rates.  They certainly know a lot about protecting civil liberties, like the freedom to not be on camera all the time.