Brandon Live!

I promise I’ll be back to making actual blog posts Real Soon Now.  Lately I’ve been keeping very busy between work and enjoying the beautiful Seattle summer (out here it’s important to appreciate every ounce of sun while we have it!).

I’ve not been terribly good about my blog reading either. 

I’ve been meaning to post about the various concerts I’ve already been to this summer.  Maybe tomorrow I’ll find some time to get on that.

Great 5-minute clip from Jon Stewart’s “The Daily Show” over on Comedy Central’s page.

But don’t watch it too many times, or you might clog the internets!

Good thing these guys aren’t running things… oh wait, nevermind.

Check it out.

Second one is my favorite.

I just boarded my flight from Seatac down to LAX. My phone is my only connection to the wired world for thenext several days, and after we take off I’m not planning on using it for anything other than good old-fashioned phone calls. We’ll soon see just how long that lasts!

So on Sunday I made a reservation for a flight at United.com for July the 6th to fly to Los Angeles to visit my sister and take some much needed time off.  Or so I thought.

I held the reservation on Sunday and purchased it on Monday afternoon.  When taken to the confirmation page, I was presented with the following:

FARE DETAILS:  — JUL 06 SEA UA LAX ————— UA SEA 00000 SEALAX FARE USD 395.35 ————

The blanked out parts are random text and numbers that my eyes glossed over and I have no idea what they mean, but don’t want to post them here. 

At the time I saw “JUL 06″ assuming that meant July the 6th, and clicked confirm.  When I got the confirmation mail I looked it over and saw that the times and flight number were all correct.

Unfortunately my flight was booked for the 7th.  Friday.  Not the day I wanted.  Now farther down the confirmation e-mail it does say July 7th, so I should have noticed it.  But everything else matched, and nowhere does it say FRIDAY or FRI or anything that would have jumped out at me.

So today when I went to check-in online I realized the error that had occured, so I called up United customer support.  I kindly explained my situation and was told “That will cost $100 to change your reservation, or you can talk to internet support and see if they can fix it for you.”  Okay, so I tell “Nicole” to transfer me to internet support.  A half hour later I give up on waiting for them to pick up their phone, and try the original number again.

Now I get a different representative who says that the reservation is for the 7th and he can’t do anything unless I pay $100 to change it.  After some frustration, I give in.  “So with the $100 service fee and the change in ticket price since Sunday it will now be over $200 total” I am told.  Ridiculous, for a simple error on their page (I’m certain I selected Thursday in the calendar control) not helped by a misleading piece of text on their confirmation page, which I now realize meant “July 2006″ not “July the 6th”. 

So I asked if there was anyone I could speak to that might be able to help me, and I was offered a chance to speak to the legendary “supervisor.”  Great.

So I explain the situation to her, and get the same “There’s nothing I can do for you sir unless you pay the service charge and the new ticket price.”  I asked if given the circumstances they could waive the service charge and I’d just pay the new ticket price, which would at least put me close to the $100 I was originally told it would cost.  “No sir, you’re wasting my time” she says very rudely.  Her time?  She’s being paid for this, I’m not.  I’m the one that wasted an hour of my evening and had to pay $200+ to get the same damn ticket I paid $400 for on Sunday.

I’ve had airlines help me out in the past.  Once even when I got lost on the way to the airport and missed a Northwest flight back from my interview at MS.  They (and someone from US Airways I think it was) helped me get on a later flight at no charge.  It made me think “wow, there are real people at airlines after all.”

Sadly tonight I feel quite the opposite.  At least as much as it’s the money, I didn’t feel like anyone there cared that I was getting screwed. No concern for the customer.  I guess they’re just used to it.

Actually, URGE is awesome.  I still think they should fix the authorization the way I described.  But I don’t even think it will be a big problem for me.

Why?  This is the first service where I don’t feel like I actually need to download the tracks.  The library integration in WMP 11 is so damn good and the instant search-as-you-type is brilliant.  So far the selection seems better than any of the other stores.  I’ve already found tracks I couldn’t find on Yahoo, Napster, or iTunes.

Plus I’m really digging the “Acoustic Chill” radio station.  It’s the sort of “radio station” that you can hit “skip” if you don’t like a song.  So it’s really just an on-the-fly playlist being streamed to you.  But I like it a lot.  The whole experience just rocks.  So I’m cancelling Napster and I’m going to pay for URGE when my 14-day trial is up. 

My URGE wishlist:

1)  Higher bit-rate streams.  Right now downloads are 192kbps WMA, which is great.  But the streams are 128kbps, which encourages me to still download stuff when it feels like I really shouldn’t have to.

2)  The authorization/activation fixes I outlined in my earlier post about Napster.

After way too long a hiatus, theys is back!

Also, don’t forget HAPPY FIREWORKS.

They have the same policy as Napster.  See previous post for details.

I must say though - the UI integration in WMP 11 is fucking slick.  Please, please fix the authorization issues!!!

This month’s winner of my award for the worst ever is Napster.  Allow me to explain…

So last week I switched from Windows 2003 x64 Edition back to Windows Media Center Edition - the idea being that now that this computer is in my bedroom at the new house (and no longer in the big open “living room” area of my old apartment) I want to use it as a TV - for when Jon is watching the big TV, or when I want to enjoy the comforts of my bed (or hypothetically, if someone else did).

So all is well and good and Media Center is up and running just fine.  Except for one thing.  Napster.  I can’t play any of the music I downloaded from Napster.  And they tell me they’re going to hold it hostage until July 16th, when I will be given the opportunity to repent for my sins and “deactivate” one of my PCs.  And by “Old PC” I mean one of the OS installations from the same PC that was formatted away.

And when that happens, I will then have to wait another 30 days before I can “activate” my laptop and listen to music there.  So right now, the only place I can listen to my Napster tracks is in my living room on the evil little Mac Mini (also running Windows Media Center). But they’ll keep taking the same amount of my money regardless.

I’ve dealt with computer “activation” for DRM’d media before.  It’s a required process for the music I bought from MSN Music.  However they handle it a bit differently.  You see, they allow 5 simultaneous activations and you can activate/deactivate as frequently as you like.  They do require that you deactivate from the computer you want removed, but I’ve gotten good at remembering to do that before I blow away any OS installations on any of my PCs.  And it takes about 2 minutes to ask them via the online help to reset any orphaned PCs so I know it’s not the end of the world if I forget.

Napster allows only 3 computers to be active at once.  However they let you deactivate a PC without actually connecting from it.  Handy, I thought.  Until I tried it and it told me I could only deactivate once every 30 days.  At this point I already had 3 orphaned or soon-to-be orphaned activations.  I had direct access to machines I wanted to remove from their list, but that didn’t matter to them.  One per 30 days, regardless of where you do it from.  This is crap.

So now I need to investigate how Urge works, to see if they offer a better solution.  Still, switching services and re-downloading tracks is a pain I’d hoped to avoid. 

My ideal solution (other than no stupid DRM) would be this:

1)  Give me 5 activations.  Three isn’t enough because I want my music on my desktop, my laptop, my media center, and maybe at work.  And an extra one never hurts.

2)  Let me deactivate anytime I want if I have access to the PC, just like MSN Music does now.

3)  Let me deactivate an “orphaned” PC once every 30 days, like Napster does now.

4)  As a stretch, give me “guest” activations where I can unlock my music for a short period of time, like 3-5 days or something.  Give me a handful of these every month.  This would be great when visiting friends or family and I could show them how great subscription music services are.

This seems reasonable enough to me.  If no one is offering this now, they should be.