What do you think?  How do you feel?  I’d love to hear what others have to say on the topic.

A couple of years ago Sara Bareilles appeared on the scene with a super-catchy tune called Love Song.  One of the things that made it so catchy, and probably the defining quality of the song, is the main piano riff, which has a fun and unique sort-of jazzy cadence.

Fast forward to this morning when I woke up in bed to one of the worst radio stations in the country, Mix 107.3 FM.  It’s one of the local stations here in Washington DC, and they’ve got this guy who calls himself Jack Diamond and hosts the Jack Diamond In The Morning show.  I have the dial on my clock radio set to this station because as much as I hate it, every other station is even worse when it comes to the morning programming.  So, under protest, I continue to leave my 23 year-old clock radio set to Mix 107.3 hoping that one of two things happen.  Either A, I wake up to a song instead of to the Jack Diamond morning talk show, or B, I wake up to a substitute show and host instead of Jack Diamond and his extremely lame sidekick Jimmy something-or-other.   Anyway, I digress.

Back to what I was saying…  A new song I had never heard before came on the radio while I was lying in bed this morning.  It’s called Haven’t Met You Yet, by Michael Buble.   Immediately it reminded me of Love Song, by Sara Bareilles, because it pretty much IS Love Song, but with a different melody.  I actually didn’t recognize the melody at all, which might mean that it’s original, but given how much I recognized the piano riff, I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that the melody was ripped off from another song too.

Who Michael Buble is, I couldn’t tell you.  I know nothing about him other than that he sucks, and that he blatantly ripped off Sara Bareilles.  If he had a brain he’d at least pick a song that wasn’t hugely popular so recently.  He could have ripped off some old song and no one would have known.

One item that I find interesting here is that under most circumstances in pop music, the melody is really the most important hooking factor, and the rhythm is generally a secondary component.  However, Sara Bareilles’ Love Song hooked everyone with both a memorable melody and with an extremely catchy, rhythmic, syncopated piano riff.

Usually when one artist accuses another of ripping off a song, it’s the melody that’s the center of the debate.  However, in this case, Michael Buble’s melody is definitely very different from that of Sara Bareilles’ Love Song.  Instead of stealing the melody, Buble and his co-writers apparently just took the catchy piano riff and changed the chords.  The riff in Haven’t Met You Yet still sounds like Love Song, but Haven’t Met You Yet as a whole song just plain sucks.  It’s ultra-mediocre with an unappealing melody, and there just isn’t a single thing about it that makes someone want to listen to it aside from the catchy piano riff.  And since he “borrowed” the catchy piano riff in the first place, what does he really have here with this song?  Why would any radio station ever consider playing it?

-Doug

Along with bug fixes and cosmetic changes, here are some of the features that have been added:

• Automatically reboot if required after installing WSUS updates
• Automatically force reboot if normal reboot fails
• Automatically stop pinging after reboot
• In addition to installing downloaded updates you can now specify to search for available updates, then download and install them all with a single click
• Save and load state (XML import/export)
• Wake On LAN

For years now I’ve been paying for a 7mbps internet connection through my local cable company, RCN.  At some point several months ago I noticed that my bill listed me with a 10mbps connection.  The RCN website no longer even listed a 7mbps plan.  However, even though my bill said 10mbps, I’ve regularly tested the connection speed over the past months, and it always maxes out at 7mbps.  I tested it one last time before heading off to work this morning, and it was still at 7.

Finally this afternoon I got around to making the dreaded phone call that I had been putting off for months.  I wasn’t at all surprised when the technician on the other end of the line said “I’m showing that your account is already active for 10mbps.”  Of course he wanted me to be sitting at my computer to walk through some tests with him, which is something that I couldn’t do since I was at work when I called.

When I got home this evening, the first thing I did after turning on my computer was a quick bandwidth test.  Lo and behold, I’m now magically getting a full 10mbps.

If the cable company is going to try and skimp its customers because they know that most customers wouldn’t ever realize that they’re not getting their full bandwidth allocation, the least they could do is not pretend we’ve already been upgraded to 10mbps, when clearly we haven’t been.

Example 2:

After I got off the phone with the tech support guy I called up the billing department.  As everyone knows, cable bills are totally fluid.  It seems like each month the amount I owe increases by a little bit.  It’s just small enough that I notice it but don’t want to bother calling up to complain because it’s such a nightmare dealing with customer service.  When I got on the phone with the representative this afternoon I said “My bill continues to rise each month.  Is there anything I can do to lower it?”  After putting me on hold for a minute or two he comes back on the line and says “I’ve just applied a promotion to your account, and you’ll get $10 off every bill for the next 12 months.”  I told him thank you and then hung up.

Now, on the one hand it’s nice that you can call up and ask them to lower your bill and they’ll kindly oblige.  On the other hand, it kills me that they rip us all off until we actually say something to them about it!

Example 3:

A few months ago my cable modem was malfunctioning.  I had already done all the troubleshooting and was quite sure that the problem was with the modem.  After 5 days in a row, 5 different tech support reps, and approximately 5 hours on the phone, I was still getting “Sir, we don’t see a problem with the modem or the connection, and there is no supervisor available to speak with you.”

On the 6th day I called again.  Their system is setup in such a way that if you go more than 5 days without a resolution, they will finally let you talk to someone who actually has a clue.  Within approximately 5 minutes, this second-tier technician was able to diagnose a problem with my modem, just as I had suggested all along.  He gave me the address of a local office where I could exchange it for a new one, and I was once again up and running.

I HATE CABLE COMPANIES!

Remote Reboot X

Anyway, I’m just beginning to get this site off the ground, and while I have a very good idea of what I want to do with it, there are also tons of question marks.  Writing is not exactly my forte, so I’ll probably try to limit the philosophical rants, while maximizing the guides, tutorials, utilities etc.  We’ll see how it goes.