1. I don’t know why our government feels the need to waste the money, but it seems we’ve exhausted our 1+ billion dollar budget for DTV coupons already. I ask myself: why is the government funding people getting digital television converters in the first place?
2. If you are getting your television from the cable company (like most people I know), then you DO NOT NEED A DTV CONVERTER.
3. If you have a box from your cable company, you DO NOT NEED A DTV CONVERTER.
4. If you have a newer TV capable of receiving OTA (over the air) digital channels, you DO NOT NEED A DTV CONVERTER.

However…

If you are using rabbit ears, or an antenna on your roof or something, you WILL need a DTV converter.

However…

There’s no guarantees you’ll be able to get much of anything. Some stations are broadcasting digital signals from different towers than the analog signals, so your antenna may need to be pointed in an entirely different direction, or it simply may not work any longer. Your mileage may vary.

Uhm, what? Do you really want your kids seeing these kinds of advertisements?

I purchased a 2007 Nissan Altima in January of last year, and it's been great. Even though I've driven over a 5-inch high piece of wood and bombed it off of a foot high drop on a dirt road. I felt it was worth paying the "extra" for the technology package. Bluetooth? Check. Navigation? Check. Traffic information? Check.

The Bluetooth works like it's supposed to, although it is hard to hear sometimes. I can't fault the car, because the inside of a car isn't dead quiet like the commercials would lead you to believe. The navigation works well, with some flaws. I've found some aftermarket devices that allow you to override the buttons while driving, but haven't implemented them in my own car yet. Kinda scared to do that, lest I turn my car's wiring into a rat's nest.

But that isn't what this entry is about. I'm talking specifically about the XM NavTraffic feature linked with my navigation system that is supposed to allow for real-time traffic information to be overlaid on your map. It works as advertised, and indeed does show green/orange/red lines next to the road if there is traffic, and little icons if there is an accident or construction.

The problem is, most of the time the data was completely worthless. I don't know if it's on a delayed update or what, but driving up to Riverside, the roads would be all green. I can tell you from personal experience that the I-15 to I-215 to I-60 route is not "all green", especially during morning or afternoon traffic. It got so bad that I eventually started manually setting avoidance areas in my navigation system.

The accident information was also delayed. If I was sitting in traffic caused by an accident, rarely would I see it on my screen. For the times it actually did show on my screen, it leads me to make my second point-- Nissan's navigation system doesn't re-route around bad traffic or accidents!

Sure, there is an option to enable the feature, but it does nothing as far as I can tell. At least on my old Magellan GPS unit, it would announce "re-calculating route due to traffic conditions." Heck, the Magellan unit would sense that I was on a freeway and doing stop-n-go traffic, then automatically route me 5, 10, 15 or 20 miles around the block of freeway. Unacceptable that this feature is not found in a much larger (and more expensive) unit.

So eventually, it just didn't make sense anymore to have XM NavTraffic in my car. Maybe your car interprets XM's data differently (and actually avoids problems), but definitely not in a Nissan Altima.

While I'm complaining, I think I'll point out that it seems the XM audio decoder in my vehicle is not the most current decoder chip utilized by XM (even though it's a 2007 vehicle) -- this leads to lower sound quality. It reminds me of the old Delphi SkyFi XM radio I had my previous cars. I wasn't very happy with the quality at all, until someone over at XM411.com revealed to me that the newer SkyFi2 had an upgraded decoder chip. Sure enough, I bought a SkyFi2 and had a much better sound quality experience. Again, it's a shame that a "new" car doesn't have this upgraded chip.

Anyways, I just thought I'd give everyone a post-mortem on my car. Enjoy.

Since getting my console back after having it repaired, due to the red ring of death problem, I haven't played it much. I decided today to sit down and play Assassin's Creed, and about five minutes into it, my screen starts to look posterized. Basically, it looks like the colors are reduced. Think cheesy 80's music video special effects. Here's some shots:

Of course, if I go to XBox.com and look up my repair information, it says I'm out of warranty. Fantastic. A console I hardly play is broken yet again. I'm going to try to call and deal with their customer service people (in India.. ugh.) But I doubt I will be able to get them to fix this for free.

I haven't found any other information online about this problem. I can't be the only one, though.

Stuff I've tried:

- Changing from 1080p to 1080i, 720p, etc. -- no change.

- Jiggling the entire cable, in case there's a short.

- Unplugging/re-plugging in the video cable.

- Performing the "Reset Video Settings" trick per Microsoft's KB article.

How *$()@% frustrating is this? Microsoft really doesn't get it sometimes.

Update: According to users who replied to my XBox.com forum post, the problem appears to be that the GPU is either overheating, or beginning to break away from the motherboard. This is similar to what causes the "Red Ring of Death" errors, but not the same. I think I'm going to just have to bite the bullet and pay for repairs, even though this is clearly a design flaw, and not a problem I caused.

I admit, the last two Verizon “rants” were problems that I could have prevented if I had been more aware and responsible of the matters at hand.

But this time, this isn’t really a rant. It’s more of a statement of just how little Verizon cares about you as a customer.

Back in October, I incurred $97 in data charges checking my e-mail during my honeymoon. It’s my fault, I admit it, whatever. In early November, I went to a Verizon store, while at DevConnections in Las Vegas, and spoke to a manager there about the situation. He agreed to give me a credit of half the $97 (approximately $48.50) if I agreed to add a data plan onto my phone right then and there. I told him yes, and then asked if I could just cancel the data plan in a week or so. He reluctantly said yes, and wrote down on a piece of paper the details of the credit. He added the data plan and that was that. No receipt or anything, and I didn’t catch this manager’s name.

It’s been two bills since then, and I still haven’t seen the credit. A few weeks ago I went into a local (San Diego) Verizon store, and the person there explained that there’s nothing noted on my account regarding a credit. I explained the entire situation and he agreed that I should be getting the credit. He said he was going to put a note on there, and if I still don’t see a credit next month (maybe the manager in Las Vegas just didn’t post it yet?) then I should call Verizon or visit a store again to make sure I get the credit.

Today I called customer service (via *611) and had the customer service rep explain that since I don’t know the name of the manager in Las Vegas, and because they didn’t put any notes on my account, she basically can’t do anything. I would have to find exactly who I spoke to and bring it up with them. I ask if she can tell me what store this happened at, since I don’t live in Las Vegas and was just visiting. It takes her at least three minutes to just tell me the name of the plaza the store is in. What, your database doesn’t show things like store numbers?! I also ask her about dropped calls and poor reception, since Heather and I can’t get reception worth a darn in our house. She said we need to call #832 immediately after a dropped call, and they will credit me automatically. Why Verizon can’t credit me automatically anyway (without calling a number), I’ll never know.

I’m starting to think at this point that the manager pulled a fast one on me. I decide to try and find the store. I end up locating the exact one I went into, via the plaza name the CSR gave me before. It’s on Tropicana Ave in Las Vegas. I call, and explain the situation to the first CSR, and say that I may need to speak to the manager to get this resolved. He explains that since I don’t know who I talked to, he can’t just ask everyone about my situation. He puts me on hold repeatedly, and in between holds, asks for my phone number. I finally give up after being on hold for five minutes and hearing ringing that entire time.

I’m probably going to call Verizon’s corporate line (thanks Consumerist!) and leave a message, see what happens. I’m just over Verizon in general now. The concept that the customer is right is totally lost on them. Who knows what other wireless companies are like. I want to just bail on cell phones entirely, but obviously can’t do that. Maybe Cricket wireless would work for Heather and I. I dunno.

P.S. — Read this awesome tale of woe from another person dealing with Verizon.

Verizon once again screws Heather and I over. We went 90 minutes over our “family share” plan, and will have to pay 45 cents for each of those minutes. $40 extra dollars this month.

Verizon can send you free texts to tell you your bill is ready, how many minutes are left, what your current bill is, etc… but they can’t send you an automatic “heads up” warning when your minutes are almost gone? Of course they can’t. It would kill their profits from these sort of scenarios. And do you really think those extra minutes are worth 45 cents a pop to them? No way.

I’d say we’re switching to another company when our plan is up, but they all suck. Some major reform needs to happen in that industry and fast. Bah.

I was using my favorite audio player/manager, MediaMonkey, this afternoon and ran into a really annoying bug. All of the songs in a particular album would play except for one. MediaMonkey would just skip the file, no error or anything.

At first I thought the file was “corrupt”, but it couldn’t be. It had only been ripped a few weeks ago, and plays fine in other players, such as Winamp, VLC and Foobar2000. I started to think logically about the problem, and noticed that particular track had parenthesis in it’s filename. I removed the parathesis, and replaced them with another character. Nope, still skipping.

So I thought more, and concluded that the filename was the longest filename on the album. I removed a few characters and tried again. Voila, now it works!

I do some research and find that MediaMonkey (at least the new beta for Vista) uses the Quicktime API to playback AAC files. I decided to try an experiment, and attempted to load the troublesome file (with it’s long filename) into Quicktime via Quicktime’s own “open file” menu. It’s leads me to a wonderfully unhelpful error message of “Error -37: a bad filename or volume name was encountered”. Oh, really?

Doing even further research, it seems that Quicktime can’t handle a file with a name longer than 60 characters. What the crap?

Searching around the web, I find a handful of people who have run into this same problem. Why hasn’t this been fixed yet? Is this why iTunes automatically stores most songs in a “cut off filename” state when “Keep my iTunes Folder Organized” is checked?

Ugh. Will someone at Apple get their head outta their butt, fire the entire Quicktime/iTunes for Windows development staff, and start over? I’m tired of it crashing, having exploits, making my computer slow to a crawl, and not playing back “HD” content on even screaming-fast PCs. All major reasons I switched to MediaMonkey. But alas, since MediaMonkey relies on Quicktime for it’s AAC playback, I’m going to have to truncate all my AAC filenames until a fix comes out.

Okay, I messed up. This past month, especially during the honeymoon, I was using my cell phone’s internet client to check my e-mail, etc… I didn’t think it’d be that big of a deal. Maybe $10–$15 worth of charges, right? I get my latest Verizon cell phone bill and it’s almost $100 more than usual. Apparently I used 6 megabytes of data, and Verizon wants $97 for it. What.. the.. f—k?

To rub salt in the wound, Verizon offers a pre-paid “data block” of 10 megabytes for $25. Or unlimited data usage for $40. But of course, they can’t retroactively add these plans to your phone if the bill has been generated, according to them. Which is total baloney. According to the woman I spoke to, if I had changed my plan last week (to have the data block), I wouldn’t have had to pay this charge. Glorious!

I know the error is clearly on my side, but don’t you think they could have a little compassion for someone? The $95 for 6 megabytes is clearly raping the customer for no good reason, when compared to their other plans— that’s $15 per megabyte, compared to the pre-paid 10 megabyte block coming out to $4 a megabyte. Blah.

Also, looking at my phone bill, I noticed minutes deducted for calling voicemail. I was under the impression that calling your voicemail was always free with Verizon. Bzzzt. Wrong. According to Wikipedia (and other sources):

Verizon Wireless charges customers peak minutes if a user dials his/her voicemail during peak hours which is in contrast to its competitors. A customer may have mobile to mobile but will still be charged peak minutes for dialing his/her voicemail. Many customers are used to having free minutes when checking voicemail and are unaware that Verizon Wireless is deducting peak minutes.

Awesome!

Anyways, when our contract is up, Heather and I will most likely be finding another wireless provider.

Yes, when you think PETA, think naked girls:

You guys are real winners! You sure convinced me to join your group after that video…

Oh wait, you didn’t. This hamburger is tasty. Mmm mmm good.

I’m sorry I rant so much, but these things are really upsetting me lately. Maybe you can relate to some of the topics?

Dell – A friend of mine, Nicole, brought me her Dell laptop to take a look at, since it will no longer boot. I figure it’s a bad hard drive.. the signs point to that, so I order a drive and stick it in, preparing to reinstall Windows. System can’t find the drive.. or wait, it can, oh wait.. it can’t. It randomly just doesn’t see the hard drive. I check online, and find that the world pretty much agrees that the Dell Inspiron 5150 is the crappiest model of laptop to ever roam this earth, plagued with engineering flaws that cause chips to crack, the CPU to overheat (2), and power plugs to short out. This led to Dell getting a class-action lawsuit brought against them, and them losing. As part of the settlement, they must pay for repairs up until Sept. 30th, 2007.

Now, Nicole’s already had the motherboard replaced by a tech once before, sent the laptop in for repair, had yet another motherboard replacement, a power adapter replacement, etc… and it’s still not working right. I had her speak to Dell again and get another motherboard. They say they can’t send one at first, citing some policy that once a motherboard’s been sent out, they can’t send out another (what?!) but the tech eventually agrees to send one out. They receive it the next day, and I examine it. The “new” board is actually refurbished from 2005 and looks terrible. I decide to swap it out anyway, and what do you know? It doesn’t work.

I’ve heard that some people have had luck e-mailing the “Customer Advocate” team at Dell (Customer_Advocate@Dell.com) and I did e-mail them six days ago, but haven’t heard a peep. I’m e-mailing them back tonight and asking for them to at least respond. I’m seriously doubting they’ll bother responding back.

Microsoft/Windows Vista – I had to completely re-install Vista two days ago, because SQL Management Studio stopped connecting to servers. Just straight up would not connect to any server anymore. Just gave me a generic fatal network error message. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling, cleaning out the registry, deleting files, etc… just couldn’t get it to work. And seeing as SQL Management Studio is pretty much a requirement to do my job, I had to reinstall everything to get it working again. Ugh.

Then, I decided to upgrade my laptop’s hard drive and memory, since I had skimped on it before, but now that I use it for work, I need it to be much faster. Bought a 100 gig 7200 RPM laptop hard drive and two gigabytes of RAM. Put the new hard drive in, and Vista says it’s now deactivated. What?!

Maybe you know that I’ve had problems with Vista’s lame activation in the past. How about the time I put in a soundcard? Or the time I reinstalled Vista (after having it installed for months beforehand?) Now I get it for installing a hard drive. Of course I have to call, read off a number to a guy in India, and then he reads me back another code, and I’m activated again. What a waste of my time.. and there was really no reason to get “deactivated” in the first place.

Microsoft/XBox 360 – My XBox 360 recently started getting the red rings of death. It wasn’t so bad at first, but then it got ridiculous, locking up like 20 minutes into a DVD, etc… so I decided to send it in. The first call, I spent about an hour waiting and talking to a tech, leading me through troubleshooting steps (which obviously aren’t going to fix the red rings problem.) Of course I get disconnected in the middle of this, so I give up for that night and try again a short while later. This time, the tech tells me that their computer systems are down, and I need to call back in 30 minutes. Ok.. so I do call back, and the automated voice prompts tell me that I can just do a service request online. Well why didn’t you say so in the first place?

So I file a request, they send me a little box to package up my XBox 360, and I send it back (to somewhere in Texas.) You can check the status of your repair via their http://service.xbox.com/ site.. at first it said my unit had not yet been received, then it changed to received.. and now it says “No Repair”, and that my warranty is invalid. Obviously I freaked a little, and snooped around online for “no pending repair”. Looks like this means they swapped it out for a refurbished console. Okay, that makes sense, but why should the service status be so misleading? Why can’t it say “swapped out” or “replaced” or “replacement shipped”? Instead, I have no way of even knowing if the accepted my repair, shipped it, etc.. talk about lame.

I guess I’ll wait a few more days and see if an XBox 360 comes to my door via UPS. If not, I’ll have to call and deal with a guy in India.. (gee doesn’t that sound familiar?)

Nissan – I love my car. No really, I do. The navigation system needs work, but other than that, gravy. Except I keep having a problem where my driver’s seat has it’s leather “unhooked” from the seat itself, near where the seat touches the center console. I attribute it to me being a bigger guy, but still, it shouldn’t be coming undone. I’ve had Nissan fix this twice now, and it still keeps popping off. So I e-mailed corporate and they e-mailed me back days later, asking for my mileage and where I last had it serviced. I send them back the information, and they say a “specialist” will be in touch with me by the following business day. It’s been two days, and nothing. I’m not that upset yet, but when you say following business day, you probably should mean it.

But even if they do contact me.. say, tomorrow.. what is this “specialist” going to do for me? Just tell me to bring it in to get fixed? It obviously keeps happening.. it seems like an engineering problem to me. I don’t sit in my car funny, aka slamming your butt onto the seat as you jump in. And I always try to be “centered” in my seat, so I just don’t get it.

Anyways, I’m sorry for such a long rant. But maybe you can relate to some of these. I don’t think I’m expecting too much from these companies, and it just goes to show how little they care for their customers in general.