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It’s disgusting the way that at least one side is drastically twisting the truth in their election ads. The sad thing is that most people won’t be exposed to the truth, just these ridiculously misleading, nasty lies.

But I think the Republicans know that dirty politics works. Attack ads work. Lies work. People tend to believe what they hear, especially when it falls in line with what they want to hear. It’s much, much harder to dispel a lie or rumor than to spread one. But no matter how well it works, it’s just shameful.

Of course the Republicans aren’t the only ones playing fast and loose with the facts. One of Obama’s ads distorts McCain’s voting record on education and big business funding. But browsing through FactCheck.org and other analysis sites like PolitiFact, it seems the predominant offender in this war of lies is the Republican party.

Watch more:

Read the FactCheck.org analysis of the bill in question here. But long story short, the ad is a “A Factual Failure.”

Bty the way, PolitiFact has a great dashboard on who’s using misleading attack ads, who’s making false claims in political speeches, and even who’s the worst flip-flopper.

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We’ve gotten used to our postal service carrier messing up our mail and delivering other peoples’ mail to our mailbox. But apparently the UPS guy has been taking notes.

We recently got this annoying “info notice” from UPS (see image below):

Notice how many checkboxes the delivery guy checked for when he’d deliver the package. So I guess he expected us to wait around from 10:30am until sometime after 5pm. Nooo problem.

But that isn’t even the most frustrating part. For some reason, the UPS guy also decided to play some kind of weird mental joke on us by checking two mutually-exclusive delivery option boxes. The two boxes that are checked are:

• Signature required on delivery (in person)
• You may sign to have package(s) delivered

Reading the back of the notice, we learned that the first checkbox means that “the driver must receive a signature and hand the package(s) to a person” but the second checkbox means that the UPS guy is authorized to leave the package unattended at the delivery location. Um… what?

Luckily for us we have a neighbor who works from home somedays and was able to sign for the package the next day. But wait, how did our upstairs neighbor know the UPS guy was at our door, you ask? Well, because our UPS guy is very friendly and rings BOTH doorbells regardless of who the package is for. So nice of him.

Gotta love the service!

I’ve been a Washington, DC Comcast customer for 3 years now. Why? Because they’re the only game in town. Seriously, if I had ANY other means of getting TV, I would switch in an instant (satellite is not an option b/c dishes are prohibited by my condo association).

So after years of suffering Comcast’s poor service and “comcastic” picture quality and software, why do I continue to subject myself to more of the same awfulness? Well, partially because I’m a perpetual optimist, partially because I know it will give me more stuff to write about on my blog, but mainly because Verizon sucks too.

So we recently decided to switch from Verizon DSL to Comcast cable, mainly because our DSL modem is dying and Verizon won’t replace it unless we fork over a bunch of money. And since Comcast is cheaper and faster, we figured we’d give it a shot.

So we called them up and crossed our fingers. That was on Aug 20th. Apparently, the crossing finger thing didn’t work, since we’ve had three appointments and we’re still waiting for working cable internet and now our cable TV is broken.

Here’s what’s happened so far.

Aug 20th: called and spoke to a representative, who scheduled me for an appointment on Sept 4th, when we would be home recovering from our wedding.

Sept 4th: I called to check that the service rep would still be coming (I’ve learned to call them, not to wait for a call). Oops, they scheduled Sept 5th as the service date. I’m positive I told them the 4th, especially since I added it to my Google calendar as I was speaking to them. So we have to cancel and reschedule for the 10th.

Sept 9th: I receive an automated call reminding me about the appointment the next day. The machine asks me if I want to receive a call 30 min prior to the technician arriving, and I hit 1 for Yes.

Sept 10th, 10:30am: Technician arrives without any phone call. No biggie.

Sept 10th, 10:40am: The modem he has doesn’t work, so he goes back out to the truck to get a different one.

Sept 10th, 10:50am: Second modem doesn’t work. He wants to install a modem/wireless router for an additional fee. We explained that we didn’t want to be charged more just because they don’t have the right equipment (we already have a wireless router thank you very much).

Note: the technician explained that he couldn’t just go back to the office to get another modem for us because his office is out in Beltsville, MD. We live in Washington DC. I know from personal experience that there’s a Comcast office in northeast DC, about 15 min from where I live. Beltsville is way out in the middle of Nowhere, MD. So here’s my question: is he just going to go to all of his next appointments trying to install the same broken modems over and over?

Sept 10th, 11:10am: Since we were being so obnoxious and not taking the more expensive router, we had to schedule them to come back NEXT week… which will be our THIRD scheduled appointment to have cable internet installed.

Sept 10th, 11:15am: Technican gathered up his gear and filled out his form for us to sign - we especially liked that he listed on the form that he started at 11am and worked for over 75 minutes - even though he didn’t really arrive until 10:30am and worked for less than 45 min. Ah, more technician sketchiness.

Update: Sept 17th: Two new technicians showed up today, and after much investigation they realized the real problem - the signal strength of the Comcast signal coming into my house is -14. It’s supposed to be positive. That’s almost assuredly the reason why the technician last week thought the modems were broken. So no high speed internet until they can boost the signal strength.

And this part is true Comcast style: the technicians can’t boost the strength themselves. They said someone else would have to come out and do it. Naturaly we ask, “Well, when will this happen?” Their response: probably within 10 business days, but they don’t know, and you can’t actually schedule an appointment. We just have to keep calling back and asking if the work has been done yet.

Now here’s the real kicker - we didn’t bother to check my TV signal after they left, after all, we had to get to work. When I returned from work later, I turned on my TV, and yup, no signal. Something they did while checking the signal strength has killed my TV. Now I not only have no cable internet but now I don’t even have TV. And the earliest they can come back out to fix it is 3 days from now, in the middle of the day… if that’s not Comcastic, I don’t know what is.

Seriously - W… T… F… I hate Comcast soooo much.

At this point, they can forget about getting my money for cable internet. Once I get my TV fixed, I don’t ever want to have a Comcast technician back at my house.

I’m not the only one who hates Comcast. Checkout the Comcast Must Die post on the totally not-technology-related blog adage.com. This is just the latest I noticed in a long, long string of people complaining about Comcast.

And don’t forget the comments thread on ComcastWatch, which is a great source for reliving other people’s pain.

And where the hell is my Comcast TiVo service? They announced the deal almost 2 years ago!

I’ve spent about 4 hrs now on hold with Logitech technical support. I received a Logitech Harmony 676 Remote as a wedding present, and I was hoping to use it to unify all the devices currently connected to my TV. Unfortunately, the device arrived broken, and getting it replaced has been an utter nightmare.

On Tuesday, I called Logitech Harmony technical support. It took about 15 min to get through to level 1 support. They stepped me through all the basic troubleshooting steps that are on their support site and which I’d already done myself. After about 10 min of that, they realized they’d need to transfer me to “level 2″ support. Alright, I figured now we’d get somewhere. Wow was I wrong.

I spent about 45 min on hold waiting for level 2 support. I couldn’t wait any longer and had to hang up. A little later I called back, and had to wait 15 min for level 1, then went through the SAME steps with the level 1 support technician. When he finally believed me that I needed level 2 support, he put me on hold.

After an HOUR of waiting, I finally got to a level 2 support technician. He quickly diagnosed the problem: my remote was broken and I needed a replacement. Now this is where it gets even worse.

Instead of transferring me to their warranty department, the level 2 support technician took down all my contact info and said he would email it to the warranty department and they would “contact me within 2-3 business days”.

Well, 3 days later, no word from the warranty department. So I called them and after another 30 minutes on hold, I finally got to speak with someone, except guess what, they don’t have any record of me speaking with a level 2 technician, and they can’t send me an RMA until they hear from level 2. Un-frickin-believable.

After more waiting for another level 2 technician to confirm what the last one said but forgot to write down, the warranty department is finally able to send me an RMA, provided I fax or email them my gift receipt. Then they’ll mail me a new one, and I have to pay to ship them back my broken remote.

Update 9/11: After emailing in a scan of the gift receipt 2 days ago, I still hadn’t heard from them, so I called today. After 20 minutes on hold, I was told that they were waiting on me to approve a small issue: instead of shipping me an exact replacement of my unit, they were going to send me a later version since mine was discontinued. Now, I specifically remember being told about this the first time I spoke with the warranty department, and specifically said this was OK. For some reason I guess, they needed to double-confirm. And when were they going to let me know about this? If I hadn’t called, I never would have gotten my replacement. Man, you really have to hound these people.

Overall, I don’t think Logitech could have made this process any more painful. I’m pretty much fed up with them. If anything else goes wrong, I’m going to return the device to Amazon for store credit. And I highly doubt I’ll be buying any more Logitech products in the future.

I’ve been organizing groups of 7-20 people to go tubing on the Shenandoah River for the past 5 years. We’ve always gone with River Riders, not because they were the best but because they were the first we tried and they were decent. But sadly, the era of my friends and I tubing with River Riders has come to a close. From now on, we’ll be going with Butts Tubes. They look like a more fun bunch of people anyway!

The reason for the switch that I recently had to cancel our annual trip because of unforeseen problems. That’s when I ran into River Riders’ ridiculous cancellation policy. First of all, their cancellation policy is no where to be found on their website (as of this post). The only time you are made aware of the policy is in the email you get after you’ve given them your credit card info and made a reservation.

First of all, $15 per person is ridiculous considering tubing only costs $26 per person (total cost of the trip with “extras” had grown to $210). That’s almost 60% of the cost. So I already had a bad taste in my mouth from that, but those were the terms and I was ready to abide by them. So I called up and asked to cancel. That’s when the ridiculousness began.

First they pulled up my reservation from 2005 (instead of 2007) and tried to charge the $15 for 11 people, not the 7 we had reserved this year. After getting that straightened out, they called and left a message saying they’d be refunding me $188.15. Great, although that’s way MORE than they should be refunding! Then I got an email saying they’d be refunding me $99 of the total $210 they’d charged my card.

Now, for those following along with the math:

• 7 people times $15 = $105.
• $210 - $105 = $105, not $99.

So I asked them where the $99 came from? This was their answer: They were charging me tax on the non-refundable portion of my reservation. At this point, I was like, WTF, mate. I told them that their cancellation policy didn’t say anything about tax, and specifically just said $15/person was non-refundable, so I’d like my $105, please.

Their response: suck it (I’m paraphrasing). They were going to charge me the extra fees in spite of my protestations. At this point, I don’t have any more energy to fight them (I do have a real job after all).

So let this be a warning to anyone thinking of going with River Riders - unless you’re absolutely sure you won’t need to cancel, don’t risk their crazy cancellation policy - go with another group.

People having fun on the river, they must not have used River Riders.