Fuck it, I give up.

26 June 2009 : rambling

I’ve ordered DSL from AT&T. Four months of fighting with Cablevision to get things working has gotten me nothing except wasted time and frustration. The Internet service they provide is amazing when it works, but I’d rather have decent all the time than great when I don’t need it. Here’s hoping the DSL works out.

Update: I have no convictions. I’m still getting DSL as a backup, but talking to the line office got my hopes up again. The guy there is nice, and he really is trying. Apparently the issues that caused my line to drop out all weekend were unrelated, but had a similar set of symptoms (“the signature of this one is totally different”). It’s apparently hitting the whole neighborhood now too. Squee!

Review: The Sopranos

21 June 2009 : reviews

It was tough watching The Sopranos, knowing from the start that the series would end with the death of the protagonist, but I persevered. Funny thing is, I don’t have any idea how I got the idea in my head that Tony dies in the final episode of the series. It’s left ambiguous. And I like ambiguous.

Anyhow, as a series, it’s not The Wire, but The Sopranos was decent. Worth watching, well done, but nothing particularly amazing about it in the end. 7/10.

Tortilla

20 June 2009 : gastronomy

Oh, the miracles of olive oil.

Tonight I made a Spanish tortilla with chorizo and chives, and quickly realized that I still hate my only nonstick pan (it gets used about once every quarter for an especially pernicious egg dish of some sort). After reading Harold McGee’s (old) report on Teflon alternatives, I’m considering giving the Le Creuset enamled pans a shot, but they’re not nearly light enough for delicate agitation, being, you know, a block of cast iron.

Also made some fresh garlic mayonnaise. I don’t know why I hadn’t made mayo from scratch before; it’s not difficult, and it definitely tastes better than the stuff from a jar. That it only keeps for a few days is a bit of a bummer, but you can’t have everything.

Anyhow, the two went nicely together,

Both recipes were from Cook’s Illustrated.

Review: Spin

19 June 2009 : reviews

Robert Charles Wilson’s Spin was interesting. It’s singularity science fiction, to be sure (my weakness). I admired that it was clever, and especially appreciated that the author didn’t attempt to tie everything up nice and tidy. We’ll see where the trilogy goes, but the opening salvo was fun. 8/10.

Cooking Misadventures

14 June 2009 : gastronomy

Did some cooking experiments this weekend. Was too lazy to take pictures of any of it, sadly.

I stir fried some sweet potatoes with fresh sage, butter, and olive oil, and was pretty pleased with the taste. The browned end product produced some amazing flavors, though the propensity for the sweet potatoes to sponge up as many sources of fat as you can throw at them makes this one a bit tough. Haven’t quite got the knack for it. My sous chef attempted playing with the recipe on a nonstick surface (I refuse to cook on such things), and experienced less grease soaking, but less delicious browning as well.

Also tried the same, but compressing into self-forming pancakes, as suggested by the author. This seemed to work at first, but the little bastards really didn’t want to hold together, and stuck like glue to a stainless pan, no matter the quantity of oil. Delicious, but not very pancake like. Need to figure out how to get this one working.

The final experiment in this vein was inspired by the same series of articles, using chili powder, tomato paste, onions, and grated sweet potato to make a topping (post-saute) for a pizza crust. This was pretty interesting, and to some degree a far healthier approach than the typical pizza.

So, this gets to the second round of experiments. Last week I did a no-knead sicilian style pizza crust that was delicious, though incredibly greasy (7T of olive oil in a jelly roll pan has to go somewhere).

This weekend I tried a different No-Knead pizza dough, cooking on my pizza stone after having the oven on broil for an hour.

The dough was nearly impossible to work with due to its high moisture content (no surprise there), but the final product had a crust as nuanced and tasty as any I’ve had from the professionals, though my stone/oven couldn’t deliver on the perfect texture and flavor of a well-seasoned coal/wood-fired oven. Naturally, this sort of cooking produced copious amounts of smoke from burned flour and corn meal, and I was reminded again of the inadequacy of the recirculating vent on my microwave pretending as some sort of actual evacuation hood. Oh, for a proper kitchen… Anyhow, if you want a low-effort crust that’s really hard to work with, I can’t argue with the results. Just make sure you have somebody talented to produce the crusts (that is, not me).

In addition to the sweet potato-topped variety, I spread fig preserves (jam type, not dry deli type), pancetta, and Parmigiano-Reggiano on one of the crusts and baked it until the jam started carmelizing (which was great on the pizza, not so great for the dollop that ended up on the pizza stone). The end product was amazing. Go, now, make one. Trust me.

The other big adventure was my first experience with the slow cooker. I made a Texas Chili (subscription required, sorry) from Cook’s Illustrated. It sucked. The flavors didn’t develop particularly well, and the meat was extremely dry and tough (though I may have procured the wrong cut of meat, to their credit). Simmering on the stove, browning the meat, and roasting your own chili peppers is too critical to developing good chili flavor, screw this slow cooker stuff. Based on using a slow cooker exactly once now, I pronounce them useless and stupid.

But I’ll probably try making some pulled pork in one at some point, anyway. Because pulled pork is delicious.

Tonight I think a Bolognese sauce is in order. We’ll see how that goes.

The Hired Help

12 June 2009 : whining

Now that I’m no longer dealing with customer service at Cablevision, my experience is rapidly improving. Don’t get me wrong, my line is still completely useless at times; I have zero upstream bandwidth and exceptional amounts of packet loss. But, I’m discovering that the line office supervisor is actually human, and actually wants to get the issue fixed.

Even better, I don’t need to keep explaining myself and proving that the issue isn’t in my apartment. They know who I am, and they believe that there’s an issue. I’m even thanked for contacting them with information when there’s a problem. The supervisor said I can just call him straight if the issue persists after they work on it today, or if anything weird happens ever in the future. Neat. It’s a new experience, believe me.

It took five visits (missing work four times and blowing an entire holiday weekend) and two months to get to this point. By any reasonable metric, this continues to be an absurd experience. I would not be a Cablevision customer were there any other viable Internet option in my complex (the best option I can find for DSL is 6M/768K with a 1-year contract and a $200 install fee; after that it’s $380/month for a T1). But it’s nice to finally be connecting with somebody competent, rather than the hired help.

On The Upside, I'm A Cube

9 June 2009 : rambling

While my Internet has been completely useless for playing games and doing work, it still does okay for web browsing where waiting 60 seconds for a request to get through doesn’t really matter. The end state is that I’ve finished 50 problems Project Euler, so now I’m a cube.

Scams

9 June 2009 : whining

Been selling some stuff on eBay to make space and get rid of things that I don’t use that often. I’m astounded by how much of a cut eBay takes. I’m astounded by how much of a cut PayPal takes.

No, I’m not actually astounded. I expect it. But it seems silly.

And I’m really fed up with the fact that my payment stays in escrow for three weeks with PayPal before I can have it, unless I coerce the buyer into giving me positive feedback. It’s definitely much better to be the buyer than the seller on eBay.

I suppose this is all the price I pay to not have to meet somebody crazy, in the craigslist fashion. It’s the price I have to pay to not have to haggle with somebody over the price when I try to sell it at work. But it still bothers me.

Unrelated to the scam that is eBay, I’m also confused by the whole experience. I sold a 70-200/4L in immaculate condition at nearly retail. I sold an unused 50/1.8 II new in box with an expensive B+W filter for 70% of what it was worth by itself. I sold a used Roku Netflix set-top box for $4 less than it costs new, and it was missing cables (noted in the auction, mind you).

Fourth onsite visit from Cablevision to deal with my Internet tomorrow; this time they’re sending a regional supervisor and he will apparently look over every inch of my signal and fix it. He’s coming somewhere between 8 and 8. Seriously. Apparently supervisors don’t do specific (“SPECIFIC” I now say in quotes as the three-hour windows they give are often missed, and I’ve never had anybody show up in the first 2.5 hours of a 3 hour window) windows. Or some such. This customer service rep just wanted to get me off the phone, and actually forced me to the voice recording and survey at the end of the call.

Every time you call Cablevision you have to answer a survey at the end. Every time I hang up. I will happily pay $5 to just be allowed to hang up at this point. And I would pay real money right now for working Internet. We’ll see how this regional supervisor dude works out, because I’m ordering DSL this weekend if the issue isn’t fixed.

Review: The Name of the Wind

7 June 2009 : reviews

The Name of the Wind is one of the best new Fantasy books I’ve read in a long time. Magic is downplayed, mythical creatures exist, but are muted (dragons are pleasantly detuned; after GRRM and Robert Jordan, I was about to give up on any book referring to a dragon).

The story at the University is mimeographed from the world of Harry Potter, complete with a Malfoy, Hagrid, Snape, Hermione, and so forth. If you can’t beat it, though, one might as well steal it, and the Potter books are good, so why not? So, my first take on the book is that it’s Harry Potter for grown-ups. Without quidditch.

The next book in the trilogy (presumption here, obviously, since there are three days to the story; there’s nothing that could prevent Rothfuss from going Robert Jordan and adding more days thereafter, by discarding the frame that’s been built so far, but I hope he has the fortitude to not make that mistake) will make or break things; it’s been delayed a couple of years, seemingly due in large part to how popular the first book was, but hopefully we’ll see it this year.

Worth a read. 8/10.

Review: The Kingdom

7 June 2009 : reviews

The Kingdom starts with an awesome title sequence, detailing Saudi contemporary history, and then transitioning to the geopolitical tensions caused by its relationship with America. It features perhaps the most subtle 9/11 lead-in in a movie that I’ve seen, which doesn’t make it subtle by any sense of the imagination, but I still admired it. This movie is worth watching for the title sequence, but return it without continuing.

After that comes an incoherent, predictable, improbable, impractical and overly tidy action film staffed by four supporting actors, one supporting actress, and no lead roles. It’s full of clumsy repetitive foreshadowing that beats you in your skull juice; you would need to be blind and deaf to not know how things are going to play out with painful accuracy.

In a hail-Mary ending, the director tries to suggest some sort of parallel between the extremism in the middle east and the vengeance desired by the west. It feels artificial and falls over as a last-ditch tactic to ascribe meaning to a meaningless film. This is as bad as action films get. 3/10.

Not That Anybody Cares, but I'll Whine Some More

6 June 2009 : whining

Somebody apparently came out to the premises yesterday and the “work was finished.” That’s all Cablevision customer service could tell me. Of course, I’m still losing 78% of my packets. They wanted to send a technician out again. I went ballistic. Amazingly, didn’t get reprimanded by the person on the phone when I responded with unpleasantries about running speedtest, unplugging my router, and when I indicated that “if you think I will actually believe your bullshit about sending out a senior technician, I have some more choice words for you.”

Kudos to them for dealing with a now very irate customer. Not so many kudos for their inability to actually resolve issues.

Anyhow, spent nearly the entire afternoon on the phone with them. I can’t even do the work I needed to do over the weekend at the moment, let alone anything fun like play games. Supposedly I’m going to get a call from a supervisor in the field technician office now, sometime in the next 24-48 hours. Because those departments are distinct, they can’t actually call each other, or transfer me. In fact, part of the reason for the inexplicably long time on the phone was that I had to wait while my technician had to wait on hold for their customer service department to take his call. Astonishing stuff. This is almost as bad as Hewlett-Packard technical support. Almost.

Cracked Go Board

5 June 2009 : rambling

My Go board is a little sad; it’s cracking or buckling in about 11 places, and the board itself is now warped. Playing on an edge like this isn’t particularly fun:

I contacted Yellow Mountain Imports and without asking for any proof or return of the product, they offered to send a replacement board the next day. This continues my experiences of their service and communication being top-notch; I’d definitely recommend them if you’re in the market for Go equipemtn.

Oh, Internets Just Refuse To Work

4 June 2009 : whining

Fourth Cablevision visit in two weeks. Despite the assurances from the chuckle heads on the phone, this was neither a senior technician nor an elite team of crack Cablevision operatives, but I guess the lies were a fun fantasy for their duration. At least they gave me hope. No, this was a junior technician, and I know that because he complained that only senior technicians get “c-pods,” and everybody else has to deal with manual paperwork, phone calls, and work orders. Also, junior technicians get shitty hours, which is why he’s working till 8.

He took readings at my HVAC room, at my cable modem’s jack, at the tap in the garbage room, and verified what two out of the last three technicians were able to verify (the other just wanted to go home, and seemed to think (no joke) that as long as the packet loss was under 20%, it was probably okay) — there’s something fucked up that’s not in my apartment, and that the construction team needs to come out and fix it at the tap (or further upstream) level.

I’d like to say I’m hopeful, but I’m not. I’ve heard about the work orders for the construction team to come out two times previously, I see no real reason why it’s going to work this time.

But, he did mention that after four repeat visits in 14 days, the managers were going to start getting involved. Apparently they don’t like having to send people out constantly and waste money without (successfully) shutting me up. Since my Internet only works in one direction.

That seems only fair, since I’ve had to miss work three times and stay home all Memorial Day weekend in order to wait for technicians to show up. In fact, I’m still bitter, and figure I should probably cost them more money.

He confirmed (like many of the other technicians) that Ultimate is going to be even more sensitive to signal quality, and there’s a good chance that just about nobody will actually be able to get it. Apparently they’re already way oversold on it too, they were planning 2-3 installs per month, and they’re already starting waiting lists with 50+ people per technician. Yikes. If it would solve my problems, I’d gladly pay for 100mbit/15mbit Internet service at ~$100. I just want a functioning Internet connection that just works.

At this point, my only real alternative is something like speakeasy. My building is rated for 8mbit down and 1 mbit up theoretically, which would run something like $175/month. That’s not a particularly good deal by comparison, though it comes with an SLA. But, like most DSL, I’m sure we’d discover the lines are noisy, and I’d get far less than that. And that’s at least three times as much as I’m paying for my (nonfunctional) 30/5 cable Internet now. DSL is a joke.

So, I don’t have high hopes, and I’m sure I’ll have to explain on the phone again that my router isn’t the problem, I don’t need to plug my computer directly into the modem, my modem doesn’t need replacing, my modem does’t need restarting, I have showered this week, I know what the Internet is, and that, yes, if you look at your BISC tools page, you’ll see everything I’m about to tell you. But maybe things will get escalated, and this will get fixed before I get fed up and move again, just so I can get a working net connection.

Games

4 June 2009 : rambling

Gran Turismo 5, Forza 3, and Starcraft II are all coming out this year? I may have to start giving up my incredibly busy social calendar.

Bing

3 June 2009 : rambling

Microsoft still doesn’t get it.

Bing delivers shitty results. Shitty results with more context, maybe, but shitty results nonetheless. And tons of shitty slow-loading images. It looks like shit. It’s visually confusing. Space is wasted everywhere in the results.

You can’t beat Google with a $100mm advertising campaign, pretending that you’re Apple and have a luxury product. Your product sucks. For the Apple approach to work, you have to actually have an Apple product.

Wake me up when it can find me something on the Internet.