eShrek – n. software that is big-business in and of itself. For entertainment purposes only, not business or personal enrichment. (From Old Internet eMail and New Hollywood Shrek, after Yiddish “shrek” (monster), sometimes with connotations of shlock, shmaltz, shmata, or other short throw-away Yiddish words denoting things not highly regarded.) Compare “crapware.”

Damn, I thought I had found a Christmas gift for my wife that was not a gadget. You may love a gadget. You may tell your friends. You may keep using it for a year. Or not. But to me, a gadget is defined as something you don't immediately replace when it's lost. Gadgets aren't game-changers that permanently alter how you live. [Read More!]

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My cable company seems to be self-destructing. We can only hope.

Recently I wrote about my cableco cutting off my service, and not turning it back on until I answered questions about my and my wife's social security numbers and download habits.

Last Monday I called to complain that despite the premium I was paying for 3Mb/s service, I was getting 300 Kb/s downloads and worse. They responded by cutting me off completely. I'll spare you the dialog, but you can just substitute any page from Franz Kafka or Lewis Carroll. A guy came on Wednesday to replace my cable modem and splitter, and it appeared in his immediate testing to yield close to the expected 3000 Kb/s.

Over the next few days I found that I only got that speed immediately after rebooting the cable-modem. After a few minutes, it would drop to 1500, 600, 300, 150, and finally 30 Kb/s. Slower than an acoustic modem from before my children were born. All through the rest of the week, I would reboot, and watch as the speed fell off.

Charter stopped taking my calls altogether. They just hung up on me over and over again.

After one of these calls we ordered DSL from our local phone company. The modem arrived Friday. I plugged it in and it worked! 3.5 to 4 Mb/s. And it has stayed that way ever since. I've been trying to get my mail and Webpages copied off from Charter, but they won't let me log in.

Since then, I've discovered two things I didn't know or pay any attention to when things just worked:

Charter Communications is run by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. What an asshole.

Despite increasing their revenue from saps like me by more than 10% over this quarter last year, they announced this week that they're losing even more money than ever, and their stock lost nearly 20% of it's value. Couldn't happen to a more deserving group.