Pretty much everyone should have heard about Netflix’s customer service train wreck. Universities will cover this case study in business classes for the next generation. Shares of the company have slid around 40% since the CEO announced plans to split the DVD mail order and online streaming into separate services with separate billing. This comic strip pretty much sums up customer sentiment.
Opinion
21
Sep 11
Sep 11
Why I’m Quitting Netflix
5
Jul 11
Jul 11
100 Days On The 4-Hour Body Diet
I started the “Slow Carb” diet explained in Timothy Ferriss’ book, The 4-Hour Body, at the beginning of April. I weighed in at around 190 pounds with a BMI of 30. The diet is not designed to be fun, but rather to “hack” your metabolism and trick it into burning fat for everyday energy. I followed the diet guidelines to the letter for two months. Over that time period, I lost around ten pounds of fat and an inch or two on my waist. I plateaued around 180 pounds for a few weeks before starting to lose a little more weight, albeit much more slowly than I had previously done. The key to getting past the plateau was learning proper portion control, which I had never paid attention to before. At the beginning if July, after about 100 days on the diet, I weighed in at 175 pounds with a BMI of 26. So, what did I learn?
6
May 11
May 11
My Experience With Charter Communications
My house is in a post-war expansion neighborhood, so it’s too old to have cable outlets in the walls. And it’s just a 2-bed/1-bath, so it flips every so many years. As a result, every owner has drilled holes through the floor to re-route the cable lines wherever they feel like putting a TV. During our first winter, I had to chop up a bunch of wine corks and hammer them into the holes in the hardwood to stop the cold air from seeping in.
1
May 11
May 11
A Review Of Bob Dylan’s Tell Tale Signs
Tell Tale Signs is the official name of the 8th installment of Bob Dylan’s bootleg series. It pretty much picks up where Volumes 1-3 left off, meaning some of the songs and outtakes date back to the late 80s. It has plenty of fresh arrangements of pre-released songs, but there are some really great new songs on this collection as well.
Bob Dylan has never claimed to be a particularly good melodist. That’s part of the reason why he constantly rearranges his older songs, which is what drives so many passive fans (including my mother) crazy about his concerts. But if you were on a “never-ending” concert tour, wouldn’t you want to mix things up as well? It’s this desire to experiment with different melodies that has created such a huge market for Bob Dylan’s throw-away tracks. And by Dylan releasing the songs himself, he’s keeping his works off the black market and in the public domain.
30
Apr 11
Apr 11
Learning Proper Portion Sizes On The 4-Hour Body Diet
I’ve been on Tim Ferriss’ Slow Carb (4-Hour Body) Diet for four weeks now. When I blogged about it two weeks ago, I had lost about seven pounds. I was pretty happy with my momentum and thought things would get even better over the next two weeks. I was wrong. I plateaued during the third week in every fitness category I was tracking. I even gained a few pounds. Last weekend, I reread parts of the the book to try to pinpoint what I was doing wrong. When I couldn’t find any answers, I turned to the internet. I didn’t find much there either, so I started experimenting on my own.
12
Feb 11
Feb 11
The 10 Best Western Films
I was having a conversation last week with a friend about good western films. When I threw out my favorites, he hadn’t heard of them. That’s not surprising, since the heyday of the western genre was before we were born. I’m guessing a lot of people my age aren’t that into watching older movies, which is a shame when you consider the recycled and ‘reinvented’ crap that Hollywood has been putting out for the past ten years. So here’s a primer on which movies you should check out if you’re relatively young and into Westerns. They’re not all old, but they’re all really good.
11
Dec 10
Dec 10
Suggested Track List For Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits Volume 4
It’s been sixteen years since Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits Volume 3 was released. Although several near-anthologies of Dylan’s work have been released in Great Britain and the US over that time (both in stereo and original mono), we all know that Dylan is always willing to wrap the same offering in a new package and charge willing fans whatever he wants for it. I wouldn’t be surprised if a fourth installment in the Greatest Hits series was released whenever Dylan takes a well-deserved break from his never-ending world tour.
Bob Dylan is known for spreading compilations over two CDs even though the music would fit on one. That’s so the consumer will perceive more value and justify the high cost. Knowing that, I would offer seventeen songs across two CDs with additional bonus tracks of older material to entice fans to buy early/online. I think this track list would make a good “Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits 4″ album covering the material he’s released since 1994.
9
Dec 10
Dec 10
Born In Time Lyrics (Oh Mercy Outtakes)
One of my favorite Bob Dylan songs is the original recording of Born In Time, an outtake from the vaunted Oh Mercy sessions. As Wikipedia notes:
Two more outtakes, “Born In Time” and “God Knows”, were set aside and later re-written and re-recorded for Dylan’s next album, Under the Red Sky. Versions of both songs from the Oh Mercy sessions were also included on The Bootleg Series Vol. 8: Tell Tale Signs. “The Oh Mercy outtake of ‘Born In Time’ was one of those Dylan performances that so surrendered itself to the moment that to decry the lyrical slips would be to mock sincerity itself,” wrote an enamored Heylin.
The stripped-down bootleg of Born In Time is a classic. Though the audio quality is pretty poor, the depth of emotion in Dylan’s voice soars above the scratches and hisses on the tape. The later version of the song that appeared on Under The Red Sky was a soulless iteration. It’s almost comical in comparison. Dylan tried to rectify his error by releasing an earlier recording of the song on Tell Tale Signs: the Bootleg Series Vol. 8. It came pretty close to capturing the passion of the original, but it’s just not the same. Because there are several versions of the song floating around, including Eric Clapton’s decent cover, it can be hard to track down a proper set of lyrics for the original recording. The words differ from the lyrics on Bob Dylan’s official website, so I thought I’d post them here for posterity.
16
Oct 10
Oct 10
Coke Taste Test
For years I’ve read pretentious foodies’ comments about how they only buy Mexican Coca-Cola (Coke) because it tastes superior to American Coke. The only difference between the two is that American Coke relies on High Fructose Corn Syrup (a bugaboo to foodies everywhere) for sweetness, and Mexican Coke relies on pure cane sugar. This weekend, I bought a bottle of each and decided to hold a narrow taste test.
Apr 11
My Experience With The ’4-Hour Body’ Diet
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