RCN Cable

I used to be an RCN customer in early 2000 and loved the service back then. It was cheap and good. It had all of the features, channels and options that Time Warner or Comcast did. Unfortunately, I had to switch to Comcast when I moved because it wasn't offered in my building.

It's been 6 years but I'm back to RCN. I had it installed on July 3rd, which is amazing because I thought they would be closed because of the holiday. They said they were installing on Saturday the 4th as well. Wow. The technician was great. Courteous, pleasant and knowledgeable. The install was fast and I was up and running in about an hour.

I'm saving about $80 per month from what I was paying Comcast and I get the same package: phone, internet and tv. I still have an HD tuner with DVR, my internet speed is 10 Mbps and phone is just because my cell phone gets crap reception in my building.

Overall, it's great. Good features at a good price. My only gripes are that RCN's DNS servers suck. I get a page not found for major sites like Google and Yahoo. I switched my router's DNS entry to OpenDNS and the connections are better. The cable box interface is hoakey. It almost seems like it was outsourced to a small developer that made it up as they went along. It's slow too. The menu seems to react a minute later after a button push. Maybe it's the same developer that did their website. The site is a joke for what I consider to be a major company. The javascript is poor at best, they don't know how to handle special characters in their drop down menus and it doesn't have error handling that works. Worse than those problems was Comcast's call center person trying to do a hard sell on me as I was trying to cancel. She was so obnoxious, basically telling me that I'm an idiot for leaving. She literally, "That's ok though because I know you'll come back." Not will I not go back, but I'm telling everyone to switch to RCN if they can!

I'm very happy I switched. Especially since I get the science channel now!

PowerPoint Keyboard Shortcut: Shift-F3

Many of you may know this already but I just learned this today and found it so useful I wanted to share it.

If you select some text in PowerPoint and hit Shift-F3, it will automatically cycle through the capitalization options.

This article provides some details and examples.

This saves so much time!

Will Middle Name Usage Ever Become Popular?

With the world's population always growing, and name combinations becoming smaller, will the usage of the middle name in everyday speak become more populare? Or will unique first names, like Pilot and Kal-el continue to keep the middle name unnecessary?

Best Places to Look at World Skylines

James Blakeway, author of Skylines of the World, has been photographing city skylines for 20 years. He put together his list of best places to view the skyline.

Adler Planetarium is his #1 spot for Chicago. I would have to agree that it's a close second, only behind "on a boat" or "from the lake".

Denied From AdSense

When I first launched this blog, I was clicking through the various options and found a link that said, "Monetize". *It's hard to miss because it's one of the main tabs at the top. I clicked through and applied, filling out all of the required information and was denied! The error I received was "Difficult Site Navigation."

I think this was reported because at the time, I didn't even have my first post up so Google's automated system must have thought there were no links and therefore no navigation. I realize that this blog will never have the traffic of a perezhilton or an engadget but I thought, "after I get some content up, I'll reapply or ask them to re-review my site."

Maybe I need a privacy policy? Maybe I need to "own" the site for 6 months or longer? Maybe I don't have a "content rich" site? Again, I know I won't get the traffic to even make any dollars but now it's more of a quest.

I tried the help, the forums and the online form but to no avail. It seems as though this is an issue that falls outside of the standard issues and therefore there is no automated help for it. I hate automated help systems. They assume that your problem will fall into some predetermined bucked and that the system can answer it all for you.

Well it's not working so I'm asking if any readers (if there are any out there) know where or how to find the answer.

My "New" PS3

So I finally joined the "next generation" of gaming by getting a PS3 last night. I'm only 3 years late. I've had a Wii for a while and liked that but it always seemed a bit obnoxious, even for a casual gamer. I'm and old school type of gamer: I like to lay on my couch and not wave my arms around to get my character to swing a sword.

When I plugged in the PS3, I was immediately impressed. Wireless controls, simple internet connection setup (wired), and great picture. It was everything I assumed it would be and more. I can turn it on and off from the control, without having to get up. I can surf the web. I can play music, look at my pics, and what movies and TV shows. It has one of the best bluray players out there. Oh and it plays games.

It has demos! I can try a game before I buy it. And best of all, I can do all of this while sitting on my couch! I've tried 10 games tonight alone.

The next trick is to set up the media server piece and I've got a full system. It doesn't seem to be too hard, based on the blogs.

This is what gaming and a game system should have been from the start. Is it the best system out there? Probably. The hard drive is upgradeable, you can run other OS'es, it has USB ports that work with keyboards, webcams, etc.

Is it worth $400+. No way in hell.