I ordered new cable service from my cable provider a few weeks ago. We haven't had a landline phone in years and I worked it out and from what we could save by lowering our cell phone minutes we could pay for a VOIP phone that has unlimited anytime minutes.

So the cable company was offering the best deal I could find, it was expensive but not when bundled with TV, Internet, Phone, and their new DVR offering. The lady on the phone quoted me a quite attractive price so we went ahead and signed up. We were told to wait 3 weeks so they could make sure to secure a number in our area. Ok, no big deal.

Weeks pass.

So they come to deliver the equpiment last tuesday. Things seem to be going smooth until they hand us the bill, it is $40 more per month than we were quoted. So we call the cable company and they admit that they quoted us the wrong price but this is the price for the package that we're recieving. My wife yells at them for bait and switch for a while, and finally they say they'll have a manager call us later in the day.

I come home and start playing around with the DVR before they have called us back, and what do I find? This DVR was used, and it was full of Porn. I'm not talking softcore boobages, I'm talking hard core lesbian sex. I thought it was pretty funny but my wife pointed out that if our son had been home at the time and had accidentally found it, we'd have a whole other problem to deal with.

Yeah, so when we called the cable company again (they never kept their promise and called us back) my wife had them by the balls.

She kept telling them that all she wanted was the package we were promised for the price we were promised. Oh and what are you going to do about all this porn you delivered to our house with no sort of protection on it? Fun stuff. Fun stuff.

So now I have pretty much all the channels on the box, plus internet, plus voip phone, plus the DVR, for a very low price. Not that I'll ever watch this much TV, but once we finally got a clued CSR at the cable company who couldn't believe how we were treated, things got a lot better. The CSR even gave us his direct number in case any more crap happened to us.

I just thought it was funny them delivering a DVR full of porn to someone's house. Lucky for them I'm not a litegious person eh?

Why does ESPN hire Chris Berman to do anything that requires him to speak?

Surely I'm not the only one that can't stand the guy. I watched maybe 5 pitches of the HR derby last night before I turned it off out of madness. His stupid "BACK BACK BACK BACK" might be cute once or twice ... a year, but "He ... could ... go ... all .. night ... long" doing the same stupid schtick that people hate him for.

Can't stand him. I seriously wish they'd can him.

Lance Armstrong

I still can't believe he's going for one more. He could have retired last year and gone out on top, but he's putting it all on the line again. He knows there will be contraversy, he knows there will be idiot spectators, he also knows he doesn't need to prove anything to anyone, except himself.

That's courage.

A cool phone comes down the pike:

http://www.i4u.com/article3719.html

Problem? It has a stupid camera. Not an optional camera but they threw one in there because "Why not? Everyone loves a camera phone!"

Except those of us who work for companies who forbid cameras of any kind from entering the building. It sucks that nearly every time a phone has come out that I think I might like to get "oh by the way, it has a great camera! 1MP even!".

Sheesh. Soon ALL phones will be camera phones and I won't be able to get a new one and I'll be stuck with my old clunker.

I'm looking for a good Head to Head fantasy baseball league with very active and competitive teams. Anyone got any good leads, or want to help me form one?

I don't usually pay attention to apple hardware, but I have to admit, this looks pretty cool:

Mac Mini as HTPC

Johnny Carson (1925-2005) was hands down the funniest man to ever do late night television. He will be missed ...

eBay announces they are raising rates.

If I was another auction site like yahoo or amazon, I would be advertising HEAVILY over the next month. Ebay raising rates 60% is ludicrous, a lot of people were already barely making a decent margin, even some of the larger sites. Now they increase it this much and people won't be making a profit and therefore will have no reason to sell there.

I don't understand eBay. For one thing they let sniping go on ... its pretty easy to stop sniping, anyone with half a brain can figure out that sniping leads to lower auction closes and therefore ebay makes less money because of snipers but they refuse to stop it (easiest way is just to make the auction so that it closes 5 minutes or so after the last bid, more like a real auction). Now they raise their rates so high that even hard core ebayers are crying foul.

Frankly, I'm done with it. I'll either sell my crap on Anandtech or maybe Yahoo Auctions, and I'm never buying from eBay either because I know the people selling there will have to inflate their prices to make up for the eBay hike.

All of this so they can continue their stupid broadway musical ads during the superbowl. What a waste ...

Reading over the locker room comments over at steelers.com ...

Ben Roethlisberger has declared that he will donate his entire check from Saturday's playoff game to Tsunami relief. I believe he really cares and this isn't a stupid publicity stunt (after all, he's the offensive rookie of the year, how much more good press do you need)

Just goes to show, Ben is the real deal. I never really cared for the steelers much but I dig this guy. (Especially since he went to a local college. ;) )

I hate the NFC this year, not only are they filled with mediocre teams, but now they have two 8-8 teams advancing in the playoffs.

How absurd!

I'm glad Denver got their asses handed to them yesterday. Frankly, Mike Shanahan irritates me. Pissed me off the way he defended his call to basically break Tony Williams ankle. "All the other teams do it to my guys!! Waaaa waaa!" Go home loser. Champ Bailey is good but he can't cover the whole field when Peyton has about 6 different guys he can go to and he can throw to them very near perfectly.

Anyway back to the NFC, how could Green Bay lose to the Vikes on their home turf? These are the same vikings who lost their two last games, and who were like 2 for 8 heading into the postseason?

And man... who would want to be Josh Brown in Seattle right now... the biggest kick of his entire career and he blew it. It doesn't help though that Holmgren decided to run three crappy plays before letting him kick it, mind you 40 yards isn't _easy_, but you HAVE to make that kick, and you should have made a serious attempt at the end zone, you had plenty of time. Seattle blew themselves up. If the bengals can't resign Rudi Johnson this year though, I hope we can pull in Shaun Alexander, though I doubt we could afford him.

Oh well. I can't wait to see what drama unfolds next week. If the Rams on the Vikings make it to the Superbowl.. that would just be icing.