Archive for the ‘Rants’ Category
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Major League Baseball and The Onion of Evil
I made fairly sizable purchase last Friday. I called up Comcast, my cable operator and said, “Yes, I’d like to sign up for the MLB Extra Innings package.” My wife and I will pay $160 to watch the next six month of our favorite team, the Boston Red Sox from our San Francisco area home. It hurts me to spend money like this. It seems like living in a different location shouldn’t prevent you from seeing your favorite team. Alas, that’s the way things work today and I have to live with it. I […]
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Does Anything Come With Electronics Nowadays?
A couple of weeks ago, I got a HP OfficeJet from Costco (similar to this model). I was a little surprised that an item that costs hundreds of dollars made a big point (a full one-foot sq sticker) that it included it’s own USB cable. I was pretty shocked by this, especially since the cost of such a cable is under three dollars on some Internet sites. The cost to the manufacturer is probably under a dollar. I realize that margins are tight on electronics, but are they so tight that they have to highlight a […]
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Major League Baseball Stole My Money…
As some of my regular readers know, I’m a huge Red Sox fan (which hasn’t been easy this past week), living in Northern California. If I want to see Red Sox games, I have three choices… a $160 (or so) cable subscription, a Slingbox, or MLB.TV’s service to watch the games over the Internet. I’ve tried to get the Slingbox to work, but the cable wiring at my brother’s place currently allows me to nearly every channel except for the high numbered ones that the Red Sox are on. I didn’t want to invest heavily in the […]
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Why I May Never Buy a Toyota
I went to see the new Harry Potter this weekend. My wife (a huge Harry Potter fan) and I caught an 8PM showing (an important fact) on a Saturday night. There were some decent previews, but the one thing that stuck in my mind was one commercial. It was a black and white cartoon where these “Deviants” murdered “Sheeples” in brutal ways. There were a couple of beheadings. At one point a Deviant skinned a Sheeple and wore his skin like a costume and did a little victory dance. At the end it turned […]
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How Much is Customer Service Costing You? (Part 2)
(If you haven’t already, reading part one first will be helpful. A quick summary is that I’ve run into a couple of customer support problems this week.)
The other problem that I’ve had is with my cell phone, the Palm Treo 700P. I’ve had Palm Treo’s from when the Sprint Treo 300 came out. We are probably talking close to 6 years now. In general they are great devices. They get me out of jams whenever I’m on the road and need a little information from the Internet. They allow me to text message a lot quicker than most. They […]
