Tralfaz

Blog

  • Comcast Suckage

    A week or so ago, I raved about the in store experience with Comcast cable, our tv and internet provider here (yes, I know their reputation, but what I am going to use instead, fucking AT&T U-Verse?!?) I connected immediately with a great customer service rep in their store, who set me up proper.

    One of the issues was that they needed to visit sometime the day after to hook up cable, as it had been a long time since this apartment had cable. The day they mentioned was Friday, and that was cool as we were moving on Friday.

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  • Apartment Living – A series

    My wife and I have embarked on a new journey. As we wait for our house to sell in Arizona, with the fear of destroying our down payment for a house in temporary housing, we have punted and signed a lease on an apartment. Fortunately, we found a place that was happy to have us with our greyhounds. Yay.

    This series of posts will chronicle our time here, and the fun that it will surely entail.

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  • Cable Awesomeness

    I know recently I ragged on the Comcast service in our temporary house for slow internet and the shitty DVR they provide.

    So, I feel that I must mention my awesome experience today.

    We signed our lease on an apartment. We are going to live there for a year, and thus I need cable and internet. The only option was Comcast Cable or AT&T UVerse service. No choice really.

    A week ago, I tried to navigate the maze to order online, even using the damn chat service that wasn’t helpful. I gave it up, and gritted my teeth to go into their local store.

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  • Realtor Insanity

    We are relocating, and consequently our house is in the market in Chandler. No surprises there. Back in April we signed a 3 month (90 day) contract, as dictated by our relocation company.

    Fast forward to late June. 90 days is up, and we re-sign with the agent we selected to continue the contract. Unfortunately a snafu happened, and the update didn’t get reflected that evening, and our listing “expired” for about 8 hours.

    Ho-lee shit Batman, what a zoo ensued.  First I got an email from my agent letting me know that we might get some calls, and to not be worried. No big deal.

    Except that whole day I had other real estate agents contact me about picking up my listing. I stopped counting after the 6th distinct agent called.

    It was madness. There is a glut of houses on the market in the Phoenix metro area, and while I used to get fliers hung on my door to see if I was interested in selling, I had no idea that real estate agents were vultures.

    Just yesterday, I got two formal mailed inquiries, dutifully redirected to my new mail address.

    I guess I am glad to not be an agent.

  • The Drive

    Over the 4th weekend, I took a couple of days off (Thursday and Monday) to drive my dogs from Tucson, where they were staying at a pet lounge, to our new home in San Jose, California.

    The drive was fine, we rented a big Dodge Grand Caravan, as we wanted there to be enough room for the boys, and all the crap they need (beds, food, water, our bags, etc). Although Barbara was worried that it would not have enough room, it was surprisingly cozy in the back, with well partitioned areas for the boys.

    Chillin' in their rented van. This is the life
    Chillin’ in their rented van. This is the life

    We settled in to an easy lope across Arizona. Starting later than I had hoped (surprised? Ha, you don’t know Barbara very well, do ya?) we made pretty good time. A stop at the junction of Gila Bend to top up the tank (we had been driving the van around all week) and to potty the boys, grab some Subway sandwiches, and off we went.

    Smooth sailing until we hit Quartzite. One of those famous Arizona monsoon pattern dumps, we ended up parking in a Chevron lot for 20 minutes until the deluge passed. I will miss that.

    Barb takes over driving, and we head to California. As we were approaching Palm Springs, and it was already 6:30 PM, it seemed like a good time to find a place to stay. So I pulled up my trusty iPhone, searched for dog friendly hotels, and the top recommendation was the Best Western Date Tree Inn. Setup the navigation, and we are 20 minutes out. Cool.

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  • Airport blues – 27th edition

    I travel a lot for my job, so I try to NOT fly when I don’t need to for personal things.  However, sometimes it is essential. Alas, as it is often around holidays or other “busy” times, I often get to see some insanity. Today is one of those days.

    First, with the merger between US Airways and American Airlines, my Star Alliance gold lever no longer gets me perks on US Airways.  Suckage. It is nice to not be relegated to the last boarding group, and to have my bag checked for free. I would have carried on, but I know that as being in boarding group 5, I am screwed, and will end up checking it. Additionally, I no longer get to pick an aisle or window seat without an extra charge. Fuck that, it is an hour and thirty minute flight, I will take a damn middle seat.

    All that is expected and grudgingly tolerated as part of the air travel theater. But invariably there is some insanity in the checkin process.  To wit:

    In front of me at the bag drop was a “loosely knit” family. 6 people with 3 last names traveling with about 15 bags, and two cat carriers. All kinds of dickering was going on to allocate the baggage fees to minimize cost (saving maybe $15).  I sat there for over 20 minutes before the agent just checked my prepaid bag.  As I was walking away, I was still listening to this “family” try to arrange the baggage allocation to minimize the cost.  Sheesh.

    However, there is a bright light, being TSA PreCheck makes the security process awesome. No mm wave back scatter, no removing computer/shoes/belt.  Security like it used to be. Bliss

  • Nightmare: Computer edition

    At work, we are being split into two companies. A week ago, my computer was supposed to be migrated to the new domain. So I followed the directions to the letter, and naturally it failed.

    That night, I had a nightmare. That instead of just switching domains, that my laptop automagagically upgraded to Windows 8. Metro interface and all.

    <shudder>

    Fortunately, when I woke up, I found that I was still running Win 7 Pro. Phew.

  • The Day of Reckoning: Apple abandons Aperture

    Not quite yet, but the winds are blowing that Apple will end support and sales of Aperture, their “pro” photo application. A recent story on Wired gives a brief outline. “Photos” will take the lead, and it will be all about getting all your images into iCloud, and managing them there.

    I had smelled this stink coming for a while. The updates to Aperture have slowed down, and the last major one definitely turned into the wrong direction, more integration with iOS, and iCloud, your photostream, and all that. Sigh.

    About 6 months ago, I started migrating to Adobe Lightroom. I looked at it way back when I moved from iPhoto to Aperture, and at that time it was almost 2x the cost, and it pretty much lacked capability.

    But in version 5, Lightroom has become a lot better, and it comes free with my CC subscription to Photoshop. I have installed it on my Mac’s and on my work PC, and am getting the feel for using it. In many ways it is similar to Aperture in capability, but it also has some significant differences, particularly around storage and file handling. Where Aperture created large libraries and buried the images and version inside them, LR seems to use the native file system. A bit confusing, but in the long term it will be better I am sure.

    I can understand Apple’s strategy shift, and their migration away from the pro applications that really brought the power to their system. The all unified, iOS/MacOS world is a good goal, but I will be taking a pass at the upcoming Photos application.

  • Relocation Saga, Part 97

    Our timing was impeccable. All through the last year, the housing market in Phoenix was literally on fire. Values were rising, houses were flying off the shelf, and we saw that our home had some serious appreciation.

    Then we put it on the market. SLAM that door shut. Suddenly inventory went from less than 4 weeks to more than 6 months, and it turned from a seller’s market to a buyer’s market. Almost over night.

    So, even though we priced it to sell, and we were aggressive up front, and being in a good neighborhood with great schools, and desirable location, our house has languished for almost 3 months now.

    We took the plunge and moved, hoping that being unoccupied and clean would help traction, but alas, no, so we are in temporary housing, and have a little more than 3 months until our company will buy our house for market value.

    A bad place to be.

    Options are bleak:

    1. Stay in temporary housing and keep our household goods in storage. It is tight, being in a 1 bedroom apartment, and it is in a good location, about 4 miles from the office, and a counter commute, so that is a positive. But the bad news is that after July 15th, I have to start paying out of pocket. At $159 a day (minus fees and taxes). Gulp. That is nearly $5500 a month for “rent”. Add in the almost $1,000 a month to store my household goods, we are quickly approaching $7K a month in out of pocket expenses (not counting our mortgage, and utilities we need to keep up on the house in Phoenix). Groan.
    2. Rent a temporary place. Find a pet friendly place, and rent. Seems easy, but we do have two greyhounds, large (yet calm) dogs makes this difficult. Rent will be much less than the cost of the temporary housing, and we can get our “stuff” back. So that is cool. But we have to sign a lease for a year.

    Not really a choice. Burning through our savings at $7K a month will wipe out our down payment before my company “buys” my house in October. Then we won’t be able to afford a down payment. So we rent.

    Found a complex that is “pet friendly” and a reasonable price. We will sign the lease shortly, and hope to move in in the next couple of weeks.

    The irony: the management company asked if we had a rental history. Uh, no, we have owned for almost 16 years in total…

  • Comcast Sucks

    When we first moved to Arizona, I splurged and bought a Tivo. It was an old one, and it was wonderful. Worked great, super intuitive interface, great integration. Back then it had to call Tivo every day to get the latest listings.

    In 2006 or so, we went HD, and upgraded to a Series 2 HD, with the cable cards. With the exception of a failed HD in 2012, replaced via Weaknees, it has been wonderful.

    At both our places in Arizona, we had Cox cable. It was reliable, reasonable, and it gave us absolutely awesome internet speeds.

    Fast forward. We have moved to the San Jose area. Our stuff is still in storage, and we are in temporary housing. The apartment we are in has Comcast Xfinity service. Internet, TV, and telephone.

    I guess I should be happy that it has a DVR, but the UI is so fucking primitive, it is painful to use. It is slow, non responsive, and the search function truly sucks ass. Yes, there are lots of channels, but unless you search precisely right, it will not return anything, and then you get to go back to square one.

    I can only hope that we have a choice wherever we end up, but I suspect that we will have the choice between Comcast and AT&T U-Verse.

    I guess I will once again go back to Tivo.