My wife and I moved to a new house last December. During the utilities setup routine, I researched our Internet options and was attracted to AT&T’s “Basic” DSL package (“up to 768 Kbps” for $20 a month).

Once my equipment arrived and my activation date reached — which by the way, I had to wait another week after receiving the equipment for it to be activated. What the hell? — I found the service to be borderline useless. My DSL downtime was approaching almost 12 hours each day, and when it did happen to work, my download speeds were crawling below 100 Kbps.

Hoo boy. Time to complain.

I contacted AT&T through their online “Live Chat” support, where I was given tips for placement of my modem within my home — which I tried to no avail. I tried the “Live Chat” support once more and they reluctantly sent out a technician to my home. At this point, between the equipment shipping, activation delay and troubleshooting, I was beyond the 30-day “no ETF” cancellation window.

One rainy Friday morning, a tech showed up at my house, looked at some wires outside (he didn’t even step inside my home), said that he saw what the problem was and needed to schedule another technician to fix it. The issue should be resolved soon, he told me.

Weeks and months go by with no improved service. Full disclosure: during this time, I discovered my neighbor’s open WiFi and had been blissfully enjoying the uninterrupted high-speed Internet, so the annoyance of my own network was forgotten for a while.

Eventually the guilt of “borrowing” my neighbor’s Internet engulfed me and I tried once again to resolve my AT&T DSL woes. Being such a nice guy and all, I decided to try upgrading my service, hoping a faster package might boost my signal. I called AT&T and was directed to their sales department. While the sales person was “happy to assist me with upgrading my service”, they quickly discovered that my house was ineligible for any service other than the “Basic” package. Apparently my home was too far to the main DSL line. “That’s too bad,” I told him, “Then could you please cancel my service?” He transferred me to someone else and my service was canceled without any objection on AT&T’s part. I had Time Warner High-Speed Cable Internet within a few days and couldn’t be happier.

Weeks later I received a $100 early termination fee from AT&T. My eye twitched.

I spent an afternoon on the phone going through the AT&T billing center. I calmly explained my situation:

• My DSL service was not working,
• I contacted AT&T support,
• They sent a technician,
• The problem was not fixed,
• I tried upgrading and was told I couldn’t,
• I had no choice but to cancel the service,
• And I would like this $100 fee removed.

After a few rounds of “sorry sir” and “let me speak to your manager”, I still received no resolution; the $100 fee stands.

Here are some interesting bits of information from “Lauren”, the highest-ranked person I was able to talk to.

• There is no record of any technician coming to my home. I must be lying about this.
• AT&T acknowledges that my home is far from the main line; my home cannot support faster DSL packages. According to Lauren however, I apparently meet the minimum requirements for the “Basic” package

I know that this “up to” portion of advertised speed gets a lot of press lately, so I was shocked to hear the following from Lauren:

• If AT&T were to provide a constant speed of 0 Kbps (e.g. no service), this still qualifies as service within their contract.

Jesus.

I later noticed that if I “Check for Availability” on AT&T’s website, my home address is now listed as “Unavailable” for ALL packages, including the Basic. That is correct. If I were to ask Lauren to restart my service, she would not be able to.

AT&T Live Chat representative “Shirley” also confirms this.

To add salt to the wound, AT&T has also now sent the bill to a collection agency.

Look, I’m honestly not trying to screw AT&T out of money here. I’m paying AT&T ~$100/month for my damn iPhone already; this isn’t about the money. This is a principle thing.

If I had to move suddenly or some unforeseen event forced me to cancel my service unexpectedly, I have no problem paying the early termination fee. My point here is that AT&T advertised a service to me that they could not provide. And now they are charging me $100 for canceling this broken service. I am 25 years old. I hopefully have a few more decades of “potential customer” in me.

And frankly this whole incident leaves a really bad taste in my mouth.

–

Any tips? Any horror stories with AT&T DSL?

*blink*

James Cameron’s “Avatar” cost around $237 million. That’s not the most expensive film yet (Pirates 3 was $300 million), but holy crap.

At a running time of 162 minutes, that means each time you blink your eyes, you missed about $8,500 worth of movie.

So overall, your blinks missed about $7 million.

Really puts clean eyeballs in perspective, doesn’t it?

www.LyricPuzzles.com

For those of you who enjoyed the Sprocket PictoPuzzle last week, check out my newest pet project LyricPuzzles.com.

Law: All chick flicks must cast Judy Greer as the lead's best friend

I knew it.

Google Suggest is quickly becoming my favorite Google tool.

Start typing a string into the Google search box and a cool list of AJAX-powered predicted finished queries are presented to you. “4 9 e” – ah, here it is “49ers schedule”. Very helpful. It seems simple and innocent enough.

But try typing “Christianity is ” or "Judaism is " and you’ll see a potential problem. Offended much?

So why would Google suggest that “Christianity is bullshit” or that “Chinese people eat babies”? Well, technically they aren’t. YOU are.

Google keeps its Suggest algorithm under strict lock and key, however hints from Google insiders reveal that the suggestions are naturally what you’d expect – they are largely dependent on a search string’s popularity. Those offensive and juvenile suggestions exist because normal people like you and me have actually typed those exact words into Google. And it’s not just one person – tons of people are using that search phrase!

It’s hard to believe though, isn’t it? Are there really that many people searching for “jon stewart is a douchebag”?

How to be Cool

The issue here is the concept of “trending”, where something’s popularity is ironically a function of its own popularity.

You must have experienced this countless times in your own life: Paris Hilton, The Jonas Brothers, Twilight. An item gets exposure by being popular, and more exposure leads to more popularity. It’s a frustrating cycle, especially because the real “value” of the item is typically lost in the mix. Does Paris Hilton have “value”? Are the Jonas Brothers more talented than any other garage band on your block? Is the Twilight story anything new? No! But they’re popular! Why? Because they’re popular! (See my TrendSim post for a cool simulation of this effect).

So how does this relate to Google Suggest? Follow me:

By including a certain search string in the suggestions, Google is increasing that particular string’s exposure. People are now more likely to click the suggestion, even if it’s not what they were originally looking for. This increases the string’s popularity, and cements its justifiable exposure. A search suggestion stays popular BECAUSE it is popular. The problem with this system is that queries of little “value” get sucked into this engine. This is why we see useless suggestions like “neil armstrong is my uncle” and “jackie chan is dead”.

Updating the Google Suggest Algorithm

It’s a tricky problem.

If they aren’t already, Google should strive to improve the Suggest algorithm to combat this “trending” effect. Here’s one way:

Each new search string receives "popularity points" each time that they are a fully 100% text entered search. “Popularity points” decay over time, so to maintain growth, a string must be frequently searched for. If a defined point threshold is reached, a string may start to appear as a suggestion to all users. Once popular, the search string subtracts "popularity points" each time that it is successfully clicked via suggestion. Points can still be added however for natural searches – those where a suggestion is NOT clicked.

This algorithm becomes a self-regulating control system. Popular queries naturally converge to the threshold, able to fall of face of the Internet if they are not readily maintained. It’s not perfect – people might see a popular suggestion and still type it without clicking the suggestion. But it should at least help.

Meanwhile, relax and enjoy the mayhem that Google Suggest brings. Did you know “Google is Skynet” and "Obama is literally Hitler"?

With all this Mayan "2012" and Apophis end-of-times nonsense, I thought we could all use a little brain teaser to relax.

The following 11 images are generated automatically using the Google Images API. Which image should come next? If you're stuck, try regenerating the images for new clues.

For those awesome enough to figure it out, post a link to the NEXT possible image, and rejoice with superior laughter over your defeated peers.

Cheers to our winner Zack!

Everyone else: Keep the chain going; plenty more photos needed. What's next??

The Third & The Seventh was created entirely by Alex Roman. USING A FREAKING COMPUTER.

That's right. That thing you just drooled over was entirely CGI. The whole damn thing.

Every season I swear I'm quitting.

The plots are horribly recycled, and the real-time aspect has become overly gimmicky. But I'm too hooked at this point and I've given up trying to fight it. Jack Bauer is just too badass and my liberal brain needs an outlet.

So to make "24" easier to digest, I've decide Bingo cards are in order.

And speaking of original ideas, I've apparently run out myself.

As I sat down to code up a JavaScript "24" Bingo card generator, I happened to notice that someone had beaten me to the punch by a good two years. Much credit and cheers to plutor.org for their incredibly awesome original 24 Bingo Card, from which I am technically now "inspired".

This newer version works in some recent "24" cliches from the past couple seasons.

"24" Day 8 premieres January 17th at 9PM on FOX. Dammit!

On April 13, 2029, Earth has a 1 in 250,000 chance of having a very bad day.

Instead of freaking out, maybe we should catch it?