Yearly Archive for 2006

Page 7 of 71

Comcast Already Sucking

Published by Waldo Jaquith on December 1, 2006 in Business. 21 Comments

Local technical mailing lists have been filled with the anger of Adelphia — now Comcast — cable modem users who have found that they simply can’t view some websites. Comcast has had a routing problem since about the 17th of last month. They’ve been telling callers that the difficulty is with the Comcast network, not with individual computers or connections, and is affecting the entire area. Brian McNeill talked to Comcast for the Daily Progress, and they told him:

Lisa Altman, a Comcast spokeswoman, said the Philadelphia-based company has received only a handful of complaints from the Charlottesville area.

“We do have a very limited number of customers that are experiencing some issues and we’re working around the clock to resolve the issues,” Altman said.

[…]

Altman declined to say precisely how many complaints Comcast has received.

So they’re both incompetent and liars. If you’re a Comcast customer, consider registering your complaint with them at 888-683-1000.

Better yet, vote with your wallet. The two most popular alternatives are the Waynesboro-based Ntelos (nee CFW) and Embarq (nee Sprint). I’m a big Ntelos fan, particularly because they know they can’t get away with pulling a Comcast, what with being local.

Gray TV Goes HD, Gets New Channels

Published by Waldo Jaquith on November 29, 2006 in Business and Meta News. 29 Comments

With Comcast’s acquisition of Adelphia, changes are afoot. In a press release today, CBS-19 (and ABC-16, and Fox-27) announced that they’ve managed to snag channels 2, 3, 6, and 9 for their channels. Presumably NBC-29 will remain at 4, the position they’ve long occupied on Adelphia. The shuffle is slated to take place on December 28. And it seems the rumors are true: Comcast will be offering high definition video, with ABC-16, CBS-19 and Fox-27’s HD commencing “within 90 days,” station GM Jim McCabe wrote in an e-mail this morning.

Local Blogads Options

Published by Waldo Jaquith on November 27, 2006 in Blogs, Business and Site News. 4 Comments

There are a good number of local businesses wondering how to reach the thousands of people who read local blogs; here’s how to do it.

Some folks have taken to advertising here via Blogads (the image-and-text vertical rectangles often found at right), but there are now a couple of other local blogs that are newly part of the Blogads network. Sean Tubbs’ Charlottesville Podcasting Network starts at $10 for a one-week run of a full-sized Blogad, and nailgun (the excellent and popular local music blog) starts at the same rate. Also, I’m now accepting them over at Charlottesville Blogs for $15/week.

I think local businesses would do well to give ’em a whirl.

Historical C’ville Maps

Published by Waldo Jaquith on November 26, 2006 in General News. 2 Comments

The U.Va library’s Geostat Center makes available maps of Charlottesville from 1907 and 1920, and they’re pretty great. The detail and level of description is what really makes it. The room-by-room rendering of the Woolen Mills’ Pantop Academy, for instance, notes that there are night and Sunday watchmen, that it’s heated by steam fueled with coal, and that there’s a 20,000 gallon water tank. Businesses’ names aren’t given but, instead, they’re described. Downtown, Sal’s was a barbershop, CVS was a telegraphy shop, the corner of 3rd SE and Water was a carriage shop and a wheelwright, the Jefferson Theater was the Jefferson Theater (“moving pictures”) and Timberlake’s was Timberlake’s. (Not everything has changed.) All are accompanied by metadata so they can be loaded into mapping software, for that extra touch of awesomeness.

800 Refugees Relocated Here

Published by Waldo Jaquith on November 26, 2006 in General News. 5 Comments

There have been a pair of interesting articles in the past few days about the hundreds of refugees resettled in Charlottesville by the International Rescue Committee. The first is what I guess qualifies as propaganda, an article by the State Department, and the second is Bob Gibson’s pieces from yesterday’s Progress. I knew that refugees were being relocated here, but that was the extent of my knowledge. I had no idea that we’re unusual in the scope and scale of our role in that process, that our schools take a big hit on those kids thanks to No Child Left Behind, or that nearly 100% of refugees are self-sufficient within four months of arriving here.

Give these a read — it’ll give you a new perspective on C’ville’s role in the international community.

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