Category: Personal

So I get this great new job two weeks ago and–boom–Saturday afternoon I start getting sick. Yesterday I was feeling better, went over for a long meeting with the boss, but after dinner things went down hill fast. Coughing, fever, bad sore throat, even chills. Seriously, couldn’t the bugs have waited until next month or something?

Don’t want to say too much about the new gig yet. We’re a very early stage startup, working each on our own, with a really exciting consumer product coming out in the very near future. The co-founders both have impressive track records with previous entrepreneurial ventures and one was an angel investor in RawSugar, which is where the connection came from. My responsibilities are customer support and right now that means helping to build the infrastructure and pumping up the help content. And eating our dog food, as the saying goes, working with our core product every day–it’s tasty.

Sure hope the doc’s prescription kicks in fast, there aren’t enough hours in the day anyway.

We were very fortunate to have David Akov, the Israeli Consul General for the Pacific Northwest, as our guest. Mr. Akov gave us his perspective on what’s been happening with Israel and its neighbors over the last two and a half years and how the region has changed, particularly since 9/11, from Arabs versus Jews to religious moderates versus religious extremists.

Akov presented his thesis as a series of benchmarks (or milestones, I don’t recall the exactw wording) beginning with the decision by then-Prime Minister Sharon and his government to change Israel’s process to one of unilateral disengagement, starting by a complete withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.

The leadership had hoped after the death of Yasir Arafat that the Palestineans would realize it was in their own best interest to turn away from terrorism but sadly that didn’t happen; seeing no partner on the other side with whom they could deal, the decision was made to move ahead anyway.

Sharon found that he had lost a big chunk of his Likud Party membership over this and so he split off and formed Kadima–the first time a nation’s governing leader bolted his own party midterm! Only a few weeks later Sharon had a massive stroke and he remains to this day comatose but his new party won the largest number of seats in the subsequent elections and formed a government with left-leaning Labor.

Jump ahead to last summer when Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon each kidnapped Israeli soldiers and in response the Israeli Defense Force invaded both territories. Akov said that, despite some perception that it was otherwise, he felt Israel achieved its most important goal in Lebanon.

Hezbollah (and other groups) now understand that if they cross a certain line there will be a major price to pay. Hezbollah had nearly its entire infrastructure expended or destroyed and a joint United Nations-Lebanese Army peacekeeping force is in place in southern Lebanon, providing a substantial buffer that has blocked the terrorists from launching rockets and other attacks into northern Israel.

The Palestineans, meanwhile, have seen their cause slip from the major casus belli to secondary due to the war in Iraq. The sectarian conflict there is starting to show moderates in the Arab world, from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and even, to a lesser extent, Syria, that Israel isn’t their biggest problem. The real danger is from the radical Islamic groups, who, as John Robb has pointed out time and again, are just as opposed to the House of Saud as to the State of Israel.

The only way out, Akov told us, is a combination of carrot and stick. That is, enable and encourage the moderates to step up to the plate against the suicide bombers. Which ought to, closing the circle to my opening ‘graphs, develop a partner with whom Israel and the West can negotiate peace. Real peace.

I don’t necessarily agree with everything he said but certainly he’s more in touch and involved with these events than me, plus there had to be some element of his being constrained by his position as an official of the government of Israel.

Once again, thanks to Fenwick & West, especially Barry Kramer, Steve Levine, Randall Farmer and Kathy Dore, for sponsoring our use of their terrific meeting facilities.

Next meeting is set for May 8 when I hope to have an event focused on Nanotechnology. Please try and join us if you can, our events are free and open to the general public.

Neil Gaiman is extremely popular among a large subset of science fiction fandom but an author I’d never really gotten into before. Another one of TS1’s holiday presents to me was his 2001 novel American Gods and, I have to say, I was quite enjoyed his quasi-realistic take on what would happen to our ancestor’s deities as they too emigrated to this hard cold land. Don’t take my word for it, though, since the book won several major awards:

• Hugo Award for Best SF/Fantasy Novel
• Bram Stoker Award for Best Horror Novel
• Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel
• Nebula Award for Best Novel

That’s pretty much a grand slam, eh? So of course there’s a sequel I need to find now.

What we have here is a story about a man named Shadow, his real name never really given, who meet on the day he’s released from prison. Which is actually two days ahead of schedule, because the love of his life, his wife Laura, has died in a car crash and the powers that be had some compassion. Or, more likely, other motives.

Shadow hooks up with Mr. Wednesday, a very strange man, to work as his driver, errand boy and muscle if needed. Mr. Wednesday, which both is and isn’t really his name, needs to be driven all over the United States for meetings with people as strange as he. People, like Wednesday, who are what’s left of the gods of our old countries after the folk who brought them to life with the power of their belief no longer really believe.

Gaiman put a lot of thought into who these gods would be in our day and age (con men, hookers, morticians) as well as what gods would arise from our modern beliefs (bankers, geeks, sui generis TV stars) and tells the tale of what would happen if the two groups felt the need to fight a winner take all battle.

Unpredictable, enjoyable, highly readable.

recommended

I had a very interesting lunch today, and was sitting about 20-25 from a Valley billionaire. Though I didn’t have the chance to speak with him.

Arsenal goes down again! Came home from that to watch the Blackburn-Arsenal fourth round FA up replay and saw Benny McCarthy’s brilliant late goal to give Wenger’s Wangers their third straight defeat. Now, Mark Hughes, please take your South African striker out of the doghouse and put him back in the starting side.

BBC America had another great political thriller last week, a 7.7 hour/three parter called The State Within. Jason Isaacs is the big name in the cast but there are plenty of good performances, including Ben Daniels, Lennie James, Eva Birthistle and Sharon Gless as the US Secretary of Defense with two foot thick armor. The show was written by Lizzie Mickery and Daniel Percival, who penned 2004’s also very good and disturbing Dirty War. If you get the chance, definitely watch.

The BeebAmerica premieres a new Robin Hood series Saturday night, looks like it could be decent though I do wonder how it will differ from the gazillion previous filmed versions of the tale.

Star Trek XI will be out for Christmas next year, directed by JJ Abrams and co-written by two of his crew (who also did Mission: Impossible III with him last year). The story will feature Kirk, Spock and Bones during their Starfleet Academy years, possibly a reboot of the mythology as Abrams has said he will honor but not be held hostage to the past.

I have both Akismet and Bad Behavior installed on a couple of WordPress blogs here and the spammers are getting the upper hand lately, if my experience is common, with several recent fake trackbacks evading both plugins. Five new messages have been posted to your blog emails have come in while I wrote this brief post, all spam, all from the same IP address.

I was at last Wednesday’s Lunch 2.0 at Yahoo! Santa Clara, heard the brief remarks about YPN, MyBlogLog and Yahoo! Pipes (here is a simple Pipe I made). There is photographic evidence I was paying attention:

• Surprises: Pan’s Labyrinth losing Foreign Picture, Melissa Etheridge beating the Dreamgirls trio, Alan Arkin’s dignified acceptance speech
• Fine choices: Martin Scorsese finally getting the little golden man, Happy Feet and An Inconvenient Truth
• Weird: William Monahan clearly used too much Valium, Ellen Degeneres as usual

Overall this was definitely one of the better Oscar shows I can recall. The historical montages for Best Foreign Films, America and Errico Morricone were excellent, though I could have lived many more years without hearing Celine Dion singing any song.

We didn’t see too many of the major nominees, hence the lack of predictions this year. With the sweet new hi-def screen that trend is likely to continue.

If you think I’ve got a typo in the post title, if you’re seeing “Barcelona 1-2 Liverpool” then there is no typo. Just 90 minutes of atypically poor defense and confusion in the final third from the reigning European and Spanish champions who did indeed lose at home to my wonderful Reds today in the first leg of their Round of 16 Champions League match.

Though the home side scored first with a good header from Deco off a cross by Gianlucca Zambrotta in the 14th minute and my guys looked to be mired in a swamp for the next 15-20 minutes, we persevered and took over the run of play for the least third of the half, with the payoff coming on a beautifully weighted cross from Zabi Alonso to Craig Bellamy left in space at the far post. Victor Valdes tried vainly to keep the ball from crossing completely over the line as he slid backwards into his own goal but only pushed it weakly to the feet of Dirk Kuyt, who tapped in for insurance, though the officials credited the equalizer to Bellamy’s effort.

In the second half Frank Rijkaard tried to use his world class firepower to get the winner, bringing on Iniesta (who after all got the winner in the recent Spain-England friendly) and then Giuly in place of his two central midfielders and, towards the end, swapping a tired, frustrated Saviola for Eider Gudjonson, but this just put too many cooks on the field and did nothing to strengthen the questionable back line.

Of course my favorite Merseysider, John Arne Riise, pushed up as a fifth midfielder, was the one who blasted home the winning goal in the 74th. Dirk Kuyt got in alone at the center of Valdes’ 18 yard box, neither centerback taking him on, and though the Barca keeper stopped our Dutchman, Rafa Marquez’s header dropped right at the feet of Bellamy 16 yards out. Bellamy one touched to Riise, all alone at the other side of the box, and the Norwegian spun his powerful right leg to slam the ball in.

Even with four minutes of injury time and screams of the Nou Camp faithful the Spainards barely caused any work for Pepe Reina. I have to say, I was screaming at the end, in joy.

Bonus glee: I watched PSV Eindhoven defeat Arsenal 1-0 yesterday. There was no magic in Henry’s boots and, as with Ronaldinho today, the world class star never really got into the game.

Second leg of this round is in two weeks. On March 6, if Liverpool get a win or draw, no matter the number of goals, or even lose 1-0 or 2-1, they will go through and Barcelona is done. GO REDS!!!

This is a huge anthology, a not quite academic attempt to document just what people mean when they call a work of science fiction “space opera” and how that’s changed over the last 80 years. By document, I mean the husband and wife team of David G. Hartwell and Katherine Kramer have assembled 32 short stories and novellas that are among the best examples of the subgenre (or represent key authors) and added an introductory essay along with brief introductions for each piece.

The Space Opera Renaissance is massive, nearly a 1,000 pages, and I was fortunate to have TS1 buy it for me as a holiday present; okay, I put it on my gift list, she wouldn’t have known about it otherwise, but it was a great gift. The stories reach back to the late 1920s, before the name science fiction even came into use, and early ’30s with Edmond Hamilton’s “The Star Stealers” and “The Prince of Space” by Jack Williamson, both excellent examples of spacelanes shoot-em ups and the clear progenitors of Star Trek and Star Wars.

Up until about the end of World War II–and the dropping of atomic bombs on Japan–this type of story was the stock in trade of the low end pulp magazines, but would rarely be found in ‘prestige’ publications like Astounding Scienc Fiction (later renamed Analog Science Fiction and Fact, under which it still publishes today). Plays to the masses, rather than quality. Williamson, amazingly, remained an active, respected sf writer well into his 90s, almost to the day he died last November, winning the Hugo for Best Novella in 2001 at age 94!

Space opera, tales of more than human heros saving the day/planet/humanity/galaxy from destruction by a combination of intelligence, wit and military might, fell into even greater disrepute over the next decades, becoming almost an epithet and reaching its nadir at the hands of the British New Wave authors of the 1960s such as Michael Moorcock and J.G. Ballard. These writers, along with Americans like Damon Knight, urged their peers to turn away from fleets of spaceships and evil aliens and towards an examination of the near future and how we might face the dangers dangling over us. The anthology, with sparse pickings, has only three stories from that time; I particularly enjoyed the highly influential Samuel R. Delany offering, “Empire Star”.

In the wake of Star Trek and Star Wars writers began returning to galactic-level action until today space opera, having subsumed the criticisms, has become perhaps the dominant subgenre of science fiction. Not only in sales, which I’ve little doubt that all the books set in the two Star universes prove, but in quality of authors and work. Almost all of my current favorite writers, like Stross, Hamilton, Macleod, Banks, Bujold, work largely in this form; heck, for many years I read pretty much every Star Trek novel Pocket Books put out.

So the bulk of The Space Opera Renaissance is pieces from the last 30 years, reasonable as the author’s stated aim is to show the breadth of this rebirth. Hartwell and Kramer include lots of the big names: David Brin, David Drake, Dan Simmons, David Webber, Catherine Asaro, Allen Steele, Gregory Benford, Don Kingsley, Sarah Zettel, Robert Reed, Paul McAuley, Stephen Baxter, Alastair Reynolds, and each of my fave five.

Most of these stories are excellent and the styles range over a broad territory, providing coverage of just how much diversity exists in today’s space opera tent. The Webber, for instance, gives the origin of his hugely popular Honor Harrington character (I suppose, I haven’t read any of the books, though I have read his Dahak trilogy) and the Bujold does similar for Miles Vorkosigian, and I have read all of that series. Simmons, Steele, Reed and McAuley are all new reads for me, mostly excellent.

Also included are Michael Moorcock, who falls on the Leigh Brackett fantasy side of the ledger, and hence doesn’t appeal to me and even Ursula K. Leguin who, I think, really does not belong here. “The Shobies’ Story” is a good one, but isn’t space opera unless the definition is stretched so thin that it has little meaning; I very much enjoyed Ansaro’s quite alien, award-winning novella but will say the same about its inclusion.

For my money this is an excellent book. If you aren’t familiar with all of the authors then this will introduce you to them painlessly and other stories, some you’ve surely read before, will bring back pleasant memories. I plan on reading more works of several.

highly recommended

Nancy Kress came into her own with this novel (which is the first of a trilogy, something I didn’t know until checking up for this post), winning the Hugo and Nebula awards in 1993 for the novella in which it originated. The book is more of a quartet of novellas than a single novel-length story, though this made no difference to my enjoyment of it.

Beggars in Spain, which begins in 2008, takes two ingredients from the science fiction counter: human genetic engineering is widely available and here we’re specifically concerned with a genemod that removes the need–and ability–to sleep, and a cheap, apparently unlimited source of energy has become available. The so-called Sleepless, partially due to other genemods and partially due to the other effects of removing the need to sleep, are smarter and healthier than Sleepers, plus they have that extra eight hours a day to get things done.

In the increasingly economically stratified American society, the Sleepers increasingly dislike these new folk, and dislike turns to hate and then to persecution and outright discrimination. Because the genemod is expensive and early experience shows that the Sleepless are hated even by their own parents, only a few thousand are ever engineered though, not surprisingly, the trait is a dominant one and generally inherited by offspring.

Kress also throws in the highly individualistic, even Randian, philosophy of Kenzo Yagai, the man who developed that cheap source of energy, which appeals greatly to the Sleepers. This is where the title comes from: if you’re walking down a street in Spain and one beggar asks you for money, do you give it to him? What about the second beggar? What if there are 100 beggars? In other words, what claim do the weak (i.e., unproductive) have on the strong?

Kress heightens the conflict by extrapolating the bread and circuses trend of mindless living, exacerbated by the massive loss of jobs to automation (and presumably cheaper labor elsewhere, though the story itself barely mentions the world outside of America) which is counterbalanced by the patent royalties on Yagai’s inventions, which he has given to the American government. Most people, by the end of the story, do little but party, watch sports, eat and sleep; a small percentage, the donkeys, run the corporations and government.

The Sleepers, with a handful of exceptions, despise and fear the Sleepers and physically isolate themselves, first in an enclave in upstate New York and later in an orbital habitat. Their intelligence and sense of purpose, plus having started out generally well off anyway, lead them to become an immensely wealthy clan, financially equal to any nation, but their small numbers and cultural position mean their political power is nowhere near commensurate with their economic status.

Beggars is clearly an attempt by Kress to debate the meaning of community and the best balance of group and individual. She closes by having her main character summarizing it to a young woman who is Sleepless and something more: “[We] saw that it’s not possible to have both equality, which is just another name for community sollidarity, and individual excellence.“

recommended

I’ve been working on two projects the last couple of weeks, plus of course job hunting, and that’s kept me from blogging. But the Grammys are on the tube and boring the heck out of me–why did everyone make such a big deal about the Police reuniting to open the show and then the group only plays Roxanne? The band slowed down the tempo, robbing it of its urgency, and lowered the key, I guess Sting, for all his pumped muscles, can’t quite reach the high notes of 30 years ago. Ugh.

One project I’ve got in the pipeline is for a volunteer group newly-elected Mountain View City Council member Jac Siegel has organized called Community Helping Community. I’m developing a small application to handle volunteer signups and event postings using Ruby on Rails and MySQL. Hopefully you’ll be able to see it soon, if I figure out a few tricky-ish things.

The other project is (yay!) a small consulting job for a venture funded Israeli startup. First task is setting up a WordPress blog for the company, which is mostly done, and then on an ongoing basis write the blog as well as help the company participate in the web conversations surrounding them and their areas of expertise.

I was hoping to get an offer from a very exciting startup company based on a strong open source project but it didn’t happen, some of the managers felt the position required a level of technical (Java programming) competence which I don’t have. Though my own opinion is different and so this outcome was disappointing.

I did have a good morning of interviews for another position two days later and this too seems interesting, a good match for my skills and experience while offering the opportunity to exercise my leadership, creativity and imagination. I’m an optimist and always expect the good outcome.

So, life is good, eh? Still, if you know of a good position or need some consulting help don’t hesitate to reach out.

[previous entries]

Fry’s did deliver the new TV as scheduled and of course it made absolutely no difference in the problem (of having to power cycle the Comcast box or unplug/plug the HDMI cable). What a fracking waste of their money and time, and a bit of my time, but that’s the stupid low level thinking Fry’s always seems to show. No doubt they are a very profitable business, so it must work for them, but I’ve yet to meet a customer or floor worker who likes it.

In fact now that the 30 day wait period is expired I may call again and this time they will have to send a repair person out. Doubtful that this will have any chance of a real solution, but not my problem.

Comcast gave me a new HD DVR and, with help from an online support rep, I got the two missing channels. Actually the Universal HD channel turns out to be quite useful since I’m catching up on the two Law & Order spinoffs, Special Victims Unit and Criminal Intent, which I’d never watched before, plus it has a bunch of SciFi channel shows that are cool to watch in high def.

There was a bit of panty twisting with the cable company before this pleasant resolution. In order to try and force the set top box to show UHD and MTVhd the rep sent it a reset signal but afterwards I no longer got FoxSoccer Channel or Starz. The rep claimed these were simply not part of my package, despite having received them for years and through any number of reset signals, and restoring them would cost an additional $15 a month.

Ha! You readers surely now by now my sense of entitlement would not let that stand and I pushed back. The rep went off to confer with the supervisor, for more than ten minutes, long enough that I thought he just blew me off, but the rep (whose name I wasn’t really given) turned out to be a good advocate for my request and a very good public face for Comcast.

He said that the Starz would just be turned back on, which I could see had already happened, though to get FSC I’d need the sports add-on at $4.95 a month. However, Comcast would waive the $6.95 a month box rental fee! Very nice, eh? I get a few additional channels–GolTV being by far the most interesting, with lots of Spanish, German and other international league football coverage, albeit in Spanish–and save $2 a month.

The new report card:

• Fry’s: F, no change, though I’d make it lower if the American school system had it
• Olevia: B-, up from C, because I’m really loving the HD
• Comcast: A-, up from C+, thanks to some great customer service–and will go higher if the promised TiVo service is $5 a month or less

As part of straightening out my issues with Comcast and HD, I ended up getting the Spanish language channel football network GolTV and watched an entire match today, with La Liga leading (and reigning Europe champion) Barcelona FC visiting bottom dwelling Real Betis.

Barca is missing a bunch of players through injury, including strikers Samuel Eto’o and Lionel Messi, but given their lineup I still expected them to dominate the game. Real Betis was the bright team this day, scoring first and holding on for the 1-1 draw. The hosts were much more aggressive and their midfielder Assuncao took some blistering wicked free kicks that came very close to sneaking just inside Victor Valdes’ post.

Frankly, if this is the team that shows up against Liverpool in four weeks for the Champions League round then I think our club has a much better chance to go through than before I watched the game. Ronaldinho still has not regained his rampant form of the last two seasons and Deco was rarely able to connect with Saviola and Giuly upfront; however Eto’o and Messi may both be back by then so I doubt the Reds will have an easy time as Real Betis did today.

I’ve been remiss the last few weeks in putting down my writeups in Bill’s Movie Reviews so I added seven new entries this weekend, the last twice due to a server-side hiccup:

• Firewall – moderately watchable
• Deep Impact – very good
• Havoc – bad, really bad
• Last Action Hero – funny and watchable
• Four Brothers – very good
• Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – twisted good, better than the Gene Wilder version by far
• Everything is Illuminated – spike in forehead bad

Yes, I watch a lot of movies. I also watched and was disappointed by Arsenal’s win at the death over Manchester United this morning and the Bears’ easy win over the Saints in the NFC championship this afternoon. Glad to see the Patriots score first, at least, and while I don’t wish injuries to any athlete, the timing of in-form Gunners striker Robin van Persie’s broken metatarsal is a bit of good news for my Reds.

Related: My five year old blog post Rex Grossman is not Jewish is apparently a destination of choice for web surfers wondering if the Bears’ quarterback is, in fact, Jewish bringing in 77 of the last 100 page views recorded by SiteMeter.

In a crucial Barclays English Premier League home match today the Reds took cruel advantage of Chelsea’s injury troubles and squad disarray to score twice in the opening 18 minutes. The first goal came from Dirk Kuyt, off Peter Crouch’s foot, and soon after Jermaine Pennant got his first goal for the club with a dipping blast from the right side of the penalty area.

Peter Cech made an early return from his fractured skull, wearing an ungainly head protector, but Jose Mourinho had to start Michael Essien and Paulo Ferreira in central defense as Khalid Boulahrouz has a knee injury, Ricardo Carvalho took ill over night and John Terry’s back has still not recovered while left back Wayne Bridge also has a knee problem and Claude Makele was suspended from cards, and the Reds came out blasting against the improvised defensive core. Winger Arjen Robben had to leave after 20 minutes after twisting an ankle.

Today was Rafa Benitez’s 100th EPL game so he knew the opening minutes were critical and had the team prepared. The precious three points pulls the ‘Pool within five points of the Blues in the standings, only one behind in the goal difference tiebreaker, and leave a visit from hated Gunners at the end of March and a trip to Old Trafford two weeks later as the only remaining Big Four matchups.

The next three games, before the boys travel to Spain for the first leg of their Champions League tussle with Ronaldinho’s Barcelona, are West Ham, a derby with Everton and Newcastle could yield 7-9 points if current form holds. Defeating the Spanish champions could give the team a real boost towards a second European trophy in three seasons!

After reading the excerpt Karl posted from Dr. King’s speech Remaining Awake Through A Great Revolution and Dan’s brief rumination I feel very sad. To go back 40 years and see that so little has changed, in fact the change there’s been has gone in the wrong direction, is truly disheartening.

I can only imagine that the cost per dead terrorist is far higher, even adjusted for inflation, than the $500k King cites from the Vietnam era though I suppose the political achievements are and will be similar. That is, nothing good will come of this adventure, not security nor better lives for the vast majority of Iraqis, Afghanis or Americans.

A friend emailed this link to Dr. King’s I Have a Dream speech, if you want to feel the passion and promise he offered in depth.

To promote top-rated CSI: Crime Scene Investigation for the month that Gil Grissom (William Peterson) is off doing a play in Chicago, the show is bringing in a mysterious cop character and to go along with the storyline CBS has put together a nice website called Who is Keppler? The site has user-contributed video mashups, tagging, rating, friend lists, Google Map of registered user locations and mobile content and is built with Palo Alto-based Ning.

We’ve had the Olevia 37″ LCD TV and Comcast HD DVR settop box for nearly three weeks now and I think its time to put down my thoughts. Short story: Love the sharper HD channels (plus the bigger picture on the rest) and the settop box’s dual tuners, hate with a passion the Comcast onscreen guide and am fairly unhappy with the pair losing the HDCP authorization handshake.

Once again I find myself quite unhappy at purchasing a big ticket item from Fry’s due to their completely crappy customer service. On January 2 I had another reason to stop by the store so I also tried to get an answer on whether this HDCP issue is just “the way it is” or if there’s something incorrectly setup or configured. No one in the TV or service departments had a clue and said my only option was a service call, which I did; their ancient software required that I fill out a form with information they already have in the computer and then wait 15 minutes for it to be input.

The service counter rep said I would get a call by the next day to schedule the visit since Fry’s uses a third party provider but when no call came by Thursday I called back and was told no, the scheduling call isn’t due for three days and, in fact, the ticket hadn’t even been assigned to a service company yet. Monday lunchtime arrived with no call so I called Fry’s again and was told that the ticket still wasn’t assigned.

The service counter rep, same one who took my report six days before, called me back after speaking with the central office to investigate. Fry’s, he said, does not actually have a company in this area to service this TV but since less than 30 days have passed from my purchase my only options are to return the set or live with the problem.

The $50 two year extended warranty I purchase includes in-home service so I asked that someone bring the new set here and retrieve the old one. Not surprisingly the rep claimed that product exchanges within the 30 days do not qualify for in-home service and the charge for home delivery is $40.

After I pointed out several times that Fry’s had sold me a service contract the company could not honor (smells illegal to me, which I explained would have me calling the Better Business Bureau and the Santa Clara County Consumer Protection Unit, eh?) he conferred with his manager and they agreed to make the delivery the next morning at no cost. Of course the new set has exactly the same issue. What a huge pain when all I wanted was to speak with a qualified tech to see if I could make a change to correct this or not. But that’s Fry’s for you and something I really need to keep in mind for future non-trivial purchases.

There’s also a problem on the Comcast side: two HD channels, Universal HD and MTV HD, won’t show because the box thinks I’m not authorized. Phone support couldn’t fix it and a visit from a service tech was no better; I don’t quite understand how this can be a box-level issue but that’s the explanation. I have to bring the box in for an exchange since the tech didn’t have the right one in his truck–the second gen DVRs only have DVI and component output but I need to use HDMI since the DVD player occupies the TV’s component jacks.

Replacing the box would cost me the already-recorded shows so I still haven’t turned it in. It will also mean all my series subscriptions and other scheduled recordings, plus my channel favorites list got blown away when phone support tried to fix the problem. Another pain in the backside.

Given that the settop box, like my beloved old TiVo, is a computer I have to wonder why neither Comcast nor TiVo offers a backup feature. Not for recorded shows but just for all the settings. How much space and bandwidth could it use? After all, we’re just talking about a few K of highly compressible text per box and the customer convenience factor would be huge. Even better would be to send a delta update after each change or newly scheduled recording.

On the bright side, at the Consumer Electronics Show this week Comcast and TiVo demonstrated the fruits of the partership they touted last year to bring TiVo’s software to Comcast DVR boxes. This will go a long way to making me happy because the current Comcast onscreen guide/DVR software really bites. Neither the phone support rep, the tech who visited me nor the press releases from either company offer any date when I can get this, and I hope the fee won’t be more than $4-5/month since the DVR already costs $10/month, but you can be sure I’m chomping at the bit.

Also good was the FCC’s decision turning down a request by Comcast to continue to require its subscribers use its own television set-top boxes rather than meet a July 1 deadline for cable operators and consumer electronics companies to use compatible technology for television delivery when building such boxes. This means that when a customer subscribes to a particular service, they may request an external cable card which can be inserted into the box to receive service. For once some support for consumers.

Scorecard

• Fry’s: F
• Comcast: C+, possibly moving up to a B+/A- if the TiVo service comes soon
• Olevia: C

• FA Cup: Liverpool 1-3 Arsenal, the title defense ends on the first outing.
• Carling Cup: Liverpool 1-3 Arsenal, third worst home defeat ever, though I will note that the starting squad only included three of our first choice XI, Hyypia, Gerrard and Bellamy, while Arsenal used four or five of theirs
• Injuries: Luis Garcia and his magic lost for the season (torn ACL) after coming on in the 11th minute for Mark Gonzalez (often on the field when Luis Garcia is not), out for three weeks, who left with a shin injury.

Silver linings

• Better rested players for Premiership (next up, at Watford on Saturday and home to Chelsea–NOT on FSC, dammit–a week later) and Champions League matches (Next up, home and away with Barcelona in late February and early March).
• Injuries: We ought to get Zenden back at the weekend and Sissoko for the first match in February, a derby with Everton. While StevieG may not like it I expect he will be moved back to the right so Sissoko can play hard man in the center.
• Transfers: First deal in the window nets a young Italian keeper called Daniele Padelli on loan from Serie A Sampdoria, though I’m not clear why since he hasn’t pushed his way into the starting lineup while on loan at Serie B club Crotone. Rumors are rampant that serious bids have been made to buy Blackburn/Australia defender Lucas Neill and Hamilton Academical teenage midfielder Jamie Macarthy, the Reds are targeting young Watford star striker Ashley Young and that Argentine star (but so far no big deal at West Ham) midfielder Javier Mascherano has rejected the renewed interest of Juventus to hold out for a move to Anfield. Meanwhile, Aston Villa want to steal Craig Bellamy, who only arrived in the summer, and Newcastle think Peter Crouch can be the solution to their striker woes. Only 20 trading days left!

Let’s not forget that the team is still third in the Premier League and Manchester United and (especially) Chelsea have faltered just a wee bit in recent weeks, with the Reds just eight points back of the Blues and a crucial three points that can be made up on January 20.