So I’m trying to watch the North Carolina - Kansas game and everything keeps freezing up. My internet connection is bogging down every time the broadcast freezes up so I’m guessing something whacky is afoot locally. There’s something about Saturdays that just seems to give Comcast problems though… the OnDemand movie service frequently bugs out on Saturday evenings as well. I hate them, I hate them so much!
Comcast is have problems. The DNS servers have been upand down all day.
In other nws, ROCK CHALK JAYHAWK! KU!
Eat a dick, Roy Williams! Eat a big ol’ dick, you bastard!
I called Comcast six months ago and told them I wanted to cancel my cable because all of the good series on HBO were ending and I was trying to read more books. They reduced my rate by $50/month.
I don’t understand the Roy hate, but that cracked me up.
If it makes you feel any better, be glad you don’t have this cable company called Suddenlink, or as we like to say, suddenly unlinked.
Their answer to my recent cable modem connection flakiness is “yeah, people have been reporting that for the last couple of weeks. We don’t know what the problem is, but it looks like it is something in our network. Even though everything is fine on your end, we are going to tear up your yard and splinker system to lay down new cable. And since the box is two houses over from you, we are going to tear up your neighbor’s yard, and your neighbor’s neighbor’s yard too to run the cable. They should love you for that.”
I told them to go fuck themselves. I am switching to DSL and get DirectTV.
The cutest part about the last tech call was the cable guy was using SpeedTest.net to run tests, and after each test he would click “5-stars” in the “Rate My ISP” box, even though througput was 1/8th of what it was supposed to be. I told him “I think 1 is the lowest, not 5. It’s not like Golf.”.
Jesus Christ, what were you paying before that?
Even without ever getting a championship, Roy had the love of the entirety of Jayhawker nation. When the dude who took over for Dean Smith (I’m thinking Guthridge? I could wiki it, but oh well) at North Carolina (Roy’s alma mater) retired there was a big to-do about whether or not Roy would go. After a week of nail biting he held a press conference at Memorial Stadium where I, along with several hundred other KU fans and students, saw him say that he would not leave KU, that the kids he coached mattered to him, that he would retire in Lawrence. Three years later Matt Doherty, who had gotten the UNC coaching job, was pretty much forced out when UNC decided there was a chance of getting Roy. Shockingly enough, they were right and Roy ditched KU, where he promised he’d retire, to go to UNC.
I’m a little bitter. If only cos I was out there that night when he made his ‘promise’. Though I know through some friends that there are members of Roy’s '03 KU team who just basically hate the man. He’d said that his 00 team was important to him, but it seemed to his 03 kids that clearly it didn’t extend to the kids who were only a year or two in to college at that point. Wayne Simien was pretty outspoken during the rest of his time at KU about his opinions of Roy. 'Course, I doubt he cares much now since his lack of a championship at KU is sort of outshined by his NBA championship with the Heat.
And that’s why some KU fans consider the defeat of North Carolina to be as important as the final defeat over Memphis. It’s kind of like in '04 when the Sox defeated the Yankees and a lot of Bostonians considered that a more important victory than their eventual World Series win. 'Cept, you know, without the eighty-some years of history.
…not that this is really the thread for this.
Edit: Dean Smith, not Dean Thomas. Dean Thomas is a Harry Potter character.
I have to hand it to Comcast. They proved to me – and keep on proving – that, yes, there could be a worse cable company than Adelphia.
Obscene rates, annoying channel layout that forces you into upgrading several tiers just to get one or two channels you really want, frequent outages… I can’t use the OnDemand channels for more than two minutes, usually, before the box freaks out and crashes.
Plus, they don’t have a programming agreement with HDNet, which actually had a few interesting films and documentary series once in a while.
And they refuse to repair my neighbors lines, which were damaged during a municipal infrastructure upgrade, choosing instead to blame her for the underperformance of their service.
If only the lines in this neighborhood weren’t too old for Verizon. A little competition in the television and broadband market may be just what we need. Alas, the phone lines date back to the 1960s, and the trees are too tall for satellite service, so Comcast is the only game in town.
The thing about Comcast is that they grew so fast by absorbing a bunch of local cable companies. That being the case you’re really often at the mercy of the quality of the network and service those companies had. As such there are some pretty wide variations based on where you are. That’s not to say this isn’t something that needs addressing. They should strive to make sure the customer experience is as good as their best regions everywhere they operate. But It should also be known that some places their service is top notch. I consider that to be the case where I am. The installers I’ve had are always awesome, the prices are stable, they’ve upgraded the speed of my cable modem 4 times since I’ve been a customer without raising the price and the customer service reps are always really helpful.
Adelphia had a great deal toward the end, where for only $5 a month over the cost of basic cable (not even Sci-Fi or C-SPAN) you could add all of their high-definition channels except for the subscription-based ones like HBO and Starz. That was a nice deal.
One thing that I hate is that my high def DVR always turns on to CN8, Comcast’s own channel, regardless of any settings I put in the DVR setup.
Worse yet, now when I turn it on, I can’t do anything for a good 10 seconds after the picture is up- it won’t let me change the channel, call up the TV guide, etc. Perhaps it is the tuner, but I wouldn’t put it past Comcast to force you to watch a few seconds of their station, in the hopes that some people will get hooked onto whatever is on, thus improving their ratings.
I’ve never watched anything on CN8 except for the occasional college hockey game.
On another note, I just walked my neighbor’s dog back home – it had escaped and was loose in my yard – and noticed, now that the snow has receded somewhat, that Comcast still hasn’t repaired the shattered outdoor cable box/junction thingy down the road apiece. They’ve been promising for years, but it’s still just a mass of plastic shards and loose wires.
Which is what the others are like around here, too. The one in our yard has a nice, big hole in the top, and the one next door fills up with water and freezes. Maybe that has something to do with the flaky service…
You turn your DVR on and off?
Yea. Doesn’t it constantly record while its on, to support the pause feature? Granted I know squat about hard drives, but I always assumed that can’t help its longevity. Am I wrong (because I’d love to keep it on)? A coworker of mine who is a heavy TV watcher has already had 2 DVRs crap out on him, due to hard drives going.
I’ve got two dvrs that I’ve had for over two years, almost always on, and I watch a lot of TV. I’ve never worried about it
I always turned mine off for the same reason.
How about this… when I’m watching Headline News, usually around the time Glenn Beck’s show comes on, the airing switches from HNN to some shitty Comcast local news network.
WTF? And why did they have to pick one of the better channels like HNN to shit on?
They’re designed as always on devices. They’re not meant to be turned on and off. That’s why it takes so long for them to boot up completely and become usable. Since you’re probably renting them from your cable company anyway you don’t really need to worry about them dying on you. The cable company will just replace them if they fail. I have more to worry about with my TiVo since I bought it outright, but it doesn’t even have a power button. You’re just supposed to leave it on around the clock.