Monday, 10/31/05

I received a cracked disc from Netflix on Saturday, for only the second or third time in almost two years. In the past, they've offered to send a replacement disc, and done so on the next business day (without waiting for the broken disc to be received). This struck me as a good move on their part, especially as I don't imagine very many discs were broken at the time they were shipped out.

On Saturday, though, I elected not to receive the replacement disc, because I'm completely hooked on Veronica Mars and I wanted the next disc in that series instead, as quick as possible. I've since learned that if you decline the replacement offer, they don't cross-ship.

I suppose I can't really blame them, since doing otherwise could create an incentive to get quicker service by breaking the discs already in one's possession, but I wish this had been spelled out at the point that I declined replacement. 12:16PM «

Monday, 10/24/05

I don't know what I find most peculiar about GumBlondes.com (an all-Flash site) -- portraits of mostly-celebrity blonde women allegedly composed entirely of chewed gum. It's possibly the remarkable rate of improvement from the grotesque #1, the compelling but unnerving #2, the hypnotic #5, the appalling yet perfectly-executed #11, to the nearly photorealistic #15. #17 will probably end up as an album cover. I have no sense of the scale of these works and no firm sense that they are what they claim; still, they're worth a look. 03:53PM «

Friday, 10/21/05

Tivo's representatives' estimates for concluding the exchange of the Tivo have this week risen from "within five days of our receipt of the defective machine", to "within seven to ten business days of our receipt" to the latest, "will ship within seven to ten business days of our receipt". I'm tempted to call right back and find out if it goes up again. 01:25PM «

Thursday, 10/20/05

My Tivo is very slightly broken. The same day the moderately controversial OS 7.2 version got downloaded and installed, the thing began hopping forward half a second or so every time it was unpaused, and after every thirty-second leap forward. I figured this was a glitch to be corrected, and after a couple of weeks of awkward baseball replays I went looking for an email address through which to register my incremental annoyance.

However, Tivo is no longer providing email support, so I had to wait until some quiet afternoon when I had half an hour to kill to call them up and register my annoyance in a rather more time-consuming fashion. Bonnie, a charming phone rep if ever there was one, took my concerns so seriously that she almost immediately offered to replace the whole unit, despite its being more than a year out of warranty.

I had to jump through a few hoops first by making sure that the VCR pass-through wasn't implicated, and less helpful support reps would later insist that my remote might be broken, but after dissuading them of this fanciful notion I eventually did get an RMA number, and sent my revolutionary televisual buddy off to Louisville to be poked and prodded by well-meaning experts. When I unwisely inquired about why this wasn't costing me anything, I was told that the RMA process had been unsettled by the unexpected closure of a receiving facility and warehouse, and that contrary to stated policy Tivo isn't charging anybody for returns or exchanges at the moment. Who am I to argue with logic like that? Even the weak 30-day warranty on the refurb replacement isn't worth fighting over; the hard drive in the box I had has been running 24/7 since 2002 and was not going to live forever.

However, the downside of largesse-via-logistical-upheaval is that they received my unit (my dependence is such that I will tolerate a Freudian interpretation) last Monday morning and as of this afternoon still haven't shipped the replacement. I was told a very strange story about how they will only be able to track it by the USPS delivery confirmation number under which I sent the box to them, and I can't eliminate the possibility that the rep with whom I spoke today was just nervously making things up.

It seems unlikely that I'll have it back by the start of the World Series, a prospect I greet as warmly as watching a baseball game through one of those Clockwork Orange contraptions. I watched an episode of Lost last night with nothing but a mute button to protect me from the commercials; it was a terrible experience. My old friend Sarah wrote an unconventional CSI episode that airs tonight, and I may have to go the BitTorrent route if I can't find the groove. Truly, man was not supposed to live like this. 05:55PM «

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