A friend of this blog, Johan Steunenberg, who has his own terrific blog at http://steunenberg.wordpress.com/ (although in German - thank goodness for the somewhat iffy Google translator), commented on my Comcast rant, and pointed me in the direction of Twitter, a “micro blogging” service that is apparently monitored by Comcast in order to keep tabs on what their customers think of their “service”.

First a thought on Twitter. Apparently this system is all the rage for tech geeks and those that are extremely self-absorbed. It allows you to update the world, or those that might be interested, as to your every move or thought, as long as it can be described in 140 characters or less. This technical innovation, as much as any that I seen emerge over the last few years, begs the question “Why?”. I do see some good come out of it, like getting many of its users on the Beat the Hell Out of Comcast bandwagon, but other than that, a reading of the various posts just makes me feel very annoyed. Looking at the posts of one of the more followed posters, I see these entries…

Sunny outside. Writing inside. 03:55 PM April 05, 2008 from web

sneezing fit. spring is closer than it appears in the mirror. 05:18 PM April 04, 2008 from web

And from another micro-blogger picked at random from the list of ones that that guy follows, we get this informative bit of knowledge….

short ribs smelling AMAZING here in Connecticut! about 16 hours ago from web

Again, there is obviously something more to Twitter than meaningless posts, however, I don’t have the time or the patience to weed through the meaningless to find that true meaning (and yes I realize that some could argue this particular post doesn’t have any great meaning…)

On the other hand, I did find this…

Someone obviously hates Comcast as much or more than do I in order to have spent the time and dollars that it took to produce this pretty slick love note to my cable/internet provider.

As for the latest on my experience with Comcast…I’m relaxing at home and watching the Astros play yesterday, when suddenly, the standard pink and cream converter box message screen consumes my tv, informing me “Cablecard firmware update in progress”. After some twenty minutes of this the box turns itself off and I’m left with nothing until I unplug the #@&*(*&^ thing and reboot it. I really despise Comcast.

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