Busy Few Weeks With Technology!

What have I been up to?  I've not been idle, that's for sure.

A few weeks ago, my work Blackberry started acting up.  I was happy enough with it, as I don't really need smartphone tech to answer calls, run conference bridges, and send e-mails or reply to them.  I actually had a phone upgrade awaiting me the last 8 months, so I decided to use it.  What'd I get to replace the BB?  I got an HTC One M8.  I already had a taste of the M8, as my daughter has one.

How's the M8?  It's a great phone!  It's overkill for what I need, though, but I'm not going to complain.  I love the included headphones and they work far better when I'm on conference calls.  I have to use the Good Enterprise client on it, though.  I didn't have to do that with the BB.  The Good Enterprise client isn't bad, but I'm surprised there's no native Enterprise tools for HTC phones (in fact, it's like this for all Android phone if you're working for my company).  iPhones aren't using the Good client.  It's kinda strange.

Anyways, I wanted to be able to play with the M8 when I'm not working, and since the Good client segregates the phone into business and personal sections, I can probably get away with taking personal photos with the phone.  I bought two 64-GB Sandisk Ultra Plus Micro SDXC cards, one for the M8 and one for my Samsung Note 3.  Both phone accept this card without issue, although my laptop didn't like the card at all (due to old drivers, which I updated).  This card uses exFAT (be aware of that, especially if you're using it with devices that may not support exFAT, such as some action cameras).

Speaking of action cameras, I bought a Mobuis action camera.  I wanted something smaller than the GoPro series of cameras that also had good features.  This camera takes good footage...just as good as the GoPro Hero 2 I currently have.  I also got a ton of accessories with the Mobius.  The Mobius doesn't have a view screen, so you have to be sure you've framed it properly.  It also doesn't have wireless capability, so you can't use it like you can the GoPro wifi backpack.  Sound is great with this camera, but the reason I noticed that is because the Mobius doesn't come with a waterproof case (hence the sound isn't muffled and is quite clear).  The kit comes with a small suction cup mount that I attached to my car's dome light...the vantage point was great...I was not able to do this with my GoPro and Gecko suction cup mounts because the suction cup is too large for the dome light.  A con of the Mobius is, while it doesn't have a non-removable battery, it is not designed to quickly swap out.  You can open the Mobius case to remove the battery, but there's no battery port to swap out batteries like the GoPro and Astak.

On the PC front, I went through my house and removed all the RAM and hard drives from the old laptops and gaming systems I no longer plan to use.  I came up with two wifi cards, 2 sets of RAM (2.5GB worth) and 5-6 2.5" hard disks, the largest being 250GB and the smallest being 20GB.  I installed three of the larger 2.5" disks into a Linux system to see if they would work (they are SATA drives)...they did, although one had partition table issues that I'm trying to sort out (been repairing the table the last 3 days).  I suppose I can revisit those laptops I scavenged and also remove their CPUs as well.  At least one of them has a removable CPU.  I might be able to determine if they're desktop CPUs, and if so, I might be able to use them to upgrade my older servers.

Unhappy Customer: Comcast Told My Employer About Complaint, Got Me Fired

http://consumerist.com/2014/10/06/unhappy-customer-comcast-told-my-employer-about-complaint-got-me-fired/

Ugh...this story is tragic.

I hate Comcast.

We used Comcast a few times before FIOS became dominant, at different locations within Virginia.  The service was good enough (this was between 2004 and 2010).  There were no service interruptions and the bandwidth was adequate.  There was no equipment or billing issues.

So, why do I hate them?  It seems that they receive far more negative news coverage than even Verizon.  Verizon definitely has customer service issues...I'm not going to even argue that they don't, but Verizon doesn't have the level of negative press coverage that Comcast does.  The problem is, the Comcast leadership seems to welcome strong-arming their customers and then dragging them through the mud afterward with such press coverage.  If the Comcast leadership want to get in front of the negativity, they need to retrain their staff and fire anyone that is involved with such activity.  Some of these stories can be refuted, but there have been several stories where the complainers actually recorded their interactions with Comcast, and it's difficult to argue against such evidence.

I've a problem with this story in particular.  Several commenters state that this was the customer's fault.  No.  It was both the employer's fault for taking Comcast's word as gospel AND Comcast's fault for calling the employer.  What's funny is that, when asked if it is standard practice for Comcast to contact customer employers, Comcast didn't provide a straight answer.  And while most states are "at-will", where companies can fire their employers without reason at any time, there should generally be a reason offered when terminated in the fashion that this Comcast employer was let go.  If I were this guy, I'd lawyer up and go after both Comcast and his employer.  Apparently, he was let go due to ethical reasons.  For such accusations (that can damage a person's reputation and hinder future job searches), a reason is definitely needed, and all evidence should be offered.  The employer never provided a copy of what was sent to them by Comcast.  Comcast didn't specify what was discussed.

Now, every company has its bad elements, but the Comcast leadership appears to be playing games with people and when journalists ask the right questions, Comcast offers blunt but insufficient answers.  At some point, they're going to get seriously burned.  I seriously hope this customer legally hunts them down (he still has to deal with those billing and service issues, too).

The next time I see a Comcast sales rep on my door step asking me to switch to Comcast, I'm going to try to discuss this article with him...maybe it'll make him leave my door step quicker.