Charter Communications, which was ranked worst telephone, internet, and television service provider by Consumer Reports, has come up with the perfect scam. The sad thing is, people are falling for it!

Last week, the company kicked off an auction where one unlucky person will win “Charter High-Speed Internet for Life”. There are a few catches with this scam. First, you must reside in an area serviced by Charter Communications. Makes sense, but this leads to the second catch: the free service is not transferable. If you move or no longer have the ability to receive Charter’s services, you’re out of luck until your town gets Charter or you move back into their service area. In this day and age, people move around and your chances of living in a town that puts up with Charter is probably quite slim.

One good thing is the company will give you the highest level of Internet service available in the market you’re living in. For many people, this means 10MB (or faster) service now, and who knows how fast it will get in the future.

My beef is really with the people bidding on this scam. To see just how gullible some people are, check out this list of bids. As of right now, the high bid is $23,852. Seems a bit high for lifetime Internet access, especially when technology evolves so quickly. Look back just 15 years… people were to have dial-up Internet access and the Mosaic web browser was just about to be released. How much would you have paid then for Internet access for life? What will we have 10 years from now for Internet access?

Ok, back to these bidders. Let’s assume the high bidder is 25 years old (because honestly, what 25 year old doesn’t have $24k lying around?). Let’s also assume that this 25 year old is healthy and will be surfing the web until they’re 85. So they are paying $23,852 for 60 years of internet access… which is $397.53 per year or $33.13 a month (Charter’s current promotional rate for 10MB service is $24.99 a month - see the issue so far?). Over the 60 years, the high bidder would have earned an average of $19.94 per month in Interest (at 2% compounded annually), which raises the true monthly cost to $53.07… seems like a rip off to me! If the $23,852 is left in a savings account, monthly interest earnings would be over $39 a month. Heck, why not put it in a money market account or buy a CD and put it to good use versus donating it to Charter?

Now if the high bidder is really dumb, they’ll put this winning bid on their credit card and throw even more money out the window!

I recently started recording all of my old cassette tapes onto my computer, mainly so I can throw away all my old tapes (which are just collecting dust). I have tapes from a variety of brands like Sony, Memorex, TDK, Maxell, Supertape, Irish, Certron, Fuji, Randix, Realistic. Out of the 20+ cassettes I’ve gone through, I’ve only had two problems… both with Memorex tapes. They don’t wind the tape properly, so one spindle stops spinning. That leads to an accumulation of tape inside the tape deck, which isn’t good.

After getting frustrated with having to completely fast-forward and rewind the entire tape in an effort to get a smooth spindle, I read the label on one of my cassette cases. “Full Lifetime Warranty. This cassette will be replaced free of charge if it is ever found defective in materials or workmanship. Simply send it, postage prepaid to Memtek Products.”

So - I wonder if Memorex/Memtek will honor their lifetime warranty?

Not the greatest picture in the world, but the best I could do with a 300mm lens out my back window. Just before 10:00pm ET, the moon took on an amazing shade of reddish-brown.

I’m no meteorologist, but something seems off this year. Over the past number of years, having snow on the ground at Christmas has become increasingly rare. No so anymore! In the past week alone, we have received three snow storms, each delivering over 6 inches of snow. Don’t get me wrong, I like snow… it’s removing it from the driveway that I hate. What makes it worse is the lack of intelligence required to be able to plow a road in my town. This means I end up with a huge pile of snow, in the middle of the road, at the end of my driveway. I didn’t realize I was responsible for shoveling the road… maybe I should send the town a bill?

I’ve got an old footlocker in my office, filled with miscellaneous computer components. I was cleaning it out today… wiping old hard drives before dismantling them and putting an assortment of old cables in a box for eBay, when I came across my old CueCat. For those not aware, a CueCat (pictured at right) is a handheld optical barcode reader, developed by the now defunct Digital Convergence corporation. The default output from these barcode readers was mildly encrypted, preventing most people from using the barcode reader without the CueCat software. However, for many years now, there have been easy hacks available to disable the encryption and allow the CueCat to output human-readable text. I know this is nothing new, but I found it difficult to find the hack specific to the version of the CueCat I have. Someone actually posted the following tips in a newsgroup back in 2000 and I’ve taken some pictures to accompany the tips:

How to Hack the CueCat - originally dated October 2000.

This modification has been verified on CueCat model 68-1965 with internal board version: K023A016 REV:C date code: 0024.

The CueCat is held together with 2 screws. Simply use a Phillips head screwdriver to remove the screws and open the case. Inside is a Hyundai CPU which can be altered to convert the CueCat so it produces plain ASCII output. This can be accomplished by lifting pin 10 of the Hyundai CPU, which is normally connected to ground (so if you solder a wire from 5v to pin 10, you will have a short- so do not do this!). Instead, separate pin 10 from ground. When pin 10 is unsoldered (or cut), it will float high, no need to solder it to anything.

Pin 10 can be found on the lower right side of the bottom row of pins when orienting the CPU so that the word “Hyundai” is right side up. Pin 11 is the last pin on the right of the bottom row. Pin 10 is just to the left of pin 11. There is a short length of PCB trace between pin 10 and the ground plane. This can be cut with a sharp knife, or one can use a soldering iron and desoldering braid to remove the excess solder on pin 10, then gently pry it up with the tip of a sharp knife while heating with the soldering iron.

It took me all of 2 minutes to take a tiny screwdriver and break pin 10 off of the Hyundai CPU chip. After some quick re-assembly, my CueCat was spitting out barcode translations that I could actually read. This is great for cataloging books, CDs, movies, and software using Amazon.com’s Your Media Library feature.

Our long search for a well-priced Nintendo Wii has finally come to a happy end. With no interest in satisfying those eBay scumbags by paying more than $400 for something that only cost $250, we were forced to find an ol’ brick and mortar establishment. Having never ventured out on Black Friday before, I figured - what better time to go track down a Wii? Some quick research on the net Thursday night uncovered the fact that few retailers were going to have Wii’s in stock on Friday morning. K-mart, for whatever reason, was open Thanksgiving Day. Unfortunately, they also sold their stock of Wii’s that day… which meant no Wii’s on Friday.

Best Buy, Circuit City, Costco, Sears… none of them were advertising any Wii availability during their Friday sales. Many other retailers indicated they would not have Wii’s in stock for Friday morning. However, I uncovered an online flyer from GameStop (aka EB Games) which was advertising the Nintendo Wii for $249.99 (of course, with the tagline “limited quantities”). This was our shot. With the store opening at 7am, we figured getting there an hour or two early would suffice. We now knew the store, the last remaining question was which one do we go to? There were two locations inside our local mall and one location in an outdoor strip mall just across the street from the mall. Hmmm, what to do? So off to bed we went.

A mere four hours later, the alarm clock struck 4:13am. By 4:55am we were standing in front of GameStop. No, not inside a nice warm mall… outside in the brisk morning breeze. All of the people in line were really nice, many having been there for hours. My wife and I were 11th or 12th in line and a sign on the door indicated that there would be 23 Wii’s available Friday morning. WooHoo! During our time in line, even when there were only 15 or so people, cars would drive up and look at the line… and then proceed to drive away. If only they parked and got out of their car - they’d be the proud owner of a Wii!

Fast forward past the 2 hours of trying to keep warm and there we were, asking the cashier for our share of Wii. Some tips for waiting in line next year… bring a hat, gloves, warm clothes, comfy shoes, a hot beverage, and something to occupy the time. Oh, and we came to find out the lines at both GameStop locations inside the mall had over 100 people.

Ok, off to play…

I’m not sure what’s worse… bowling a perfect 300 game in practice (see Mr. 300) or bowling a 299. Yesterday in a city tournament, I threw the first eleven strikes and then a 9. I blame the 9 on nerves and an arm that felt like jell-o. Oh well, maybe next time.

I reached a true milestone earlier today… I completed my restaurant trifecta. You say you’ve never heard of such a thing? Well, it’s when you go to three of your favorite restaurants in a single 24-hour period.

It all began yesterday when we brought in P.F. Changs for lunch during a work meeting. I don’t get to eat there that often, but it is sooooo good. I ate so much I didn’t think I would need to eat for a week.

Then for dinner, we were walking through a shopping area and spotted The Cheesecake Factory. Another favorite both for their food and their drinks. At that point, it was the first time I’d been to these two favorites of mine in the same day.

So back to earlier today and the completion of the trifecta. I was in Raleigh Durham International Airport and stopped by another favorite of mine, an A&W Restaurant. It’s not so much the food as it is the fresh A&W Root Beer and Root Beer Floats. Yummm.

And there you have it… The Restaurant Trifecta.

In early 2006, I powered up my old IBM PCjr and realized it would not boot up. The BIOS would beep a few times, but nothing else would happen. How was I supposed to play JumpMan or Shamus?! So to eBay I went and in April 2006 I found and won a working IBM PCjr. It cost me $51 and even came with original manuals, keyboard, and power supply… all in the original box. A great deal in my mind.

Fast forward to the end of August 2007. My original IBM PCjr (which refuses to boot up) just sold on eBay. I threw it back in the original box I previously bought and included my old keyboard and the manuals. The winning bid? A whopping $154.50. I couldn’t believe it. With the housing market in a slump, is this turning out to be prime PCjr selling season?

So I guess the moral of the story is this: Broken crap is worth more than working crap. Who knew?

With the recent demise of SunRocket, I was forced to switch VoIP providers in a pinch. My wife and I did some quick research and had narrowed it down to a few companies that provided features and price comparable to what SunRocket had offered. Since we take advantage of the free long distance and free roaming on our cell phones, having a home phone is not critical - it’s just nice to not have to worry about low batteries and lost signals once in a while. For that reason, we wanted an affordable (read: low price) service. The major VoIP players charge way too much, as do the cable providers. In the end, one company stood above all the rest when it came to the features and the price they offered. Unfortunately, with all the SunRocket customers heading for the same handful of companies, nobody can keep up. After a couple weeks of unreliable service, we’re now faced with our old phone number not yet transfered to our new provider. This means people calling us get a “SunRocket is out of busines” recording.

Turns out there would have been a lot less aggravation if we simply handed out tin cans and ran string to our friend’s houses.