Computer Ninja’s Weblog

I have been trying to ignore the Halo 3 coverage everywhere online as I don’t have an Xbox 360 and the hype has started to make me want one (even though my bank account is at -$44.63). But this type of stuff is hard to ignore when you go to a tech school and campus was noticeably void the morning after the Halo 3 launch. The same thing happened when Halo 2 came out my freshman year, not to mention the Ethernet cables strung through the dorm hall as the old dorm had a weird network topology where only a few LAN devices could see each other.

I was close to getting through the week without needing to write about Halo 3, and then I saw the New York Times’ Halo 3 article. An NYT reporter quoted two Georgia Tech students waiting in the Halo 3 line… this can’t be good:

In Atlanta, an arc of young men lined a balcony at Lenox Square, the city’s biggest shopping mall, as they awaited the game’s debut at a GameStop store. Ari Velazquez and Dan Gibson, roommates at the Georgia Institute of Technology, said they had converted their apartment into a sort of high-tech video game cave, sealing windows with blankets and cardboard and stocking up on ramen noodles, chips and white-cheddar popcorn.

“We expect that, like, no one’s going to go to class tomorrow, and the teachers are going to know,” said Mr. Gibson, 20.

“We’ve been in Internet seclusion for like weeks,” to avoid any leaks about the game’s plot, Mr. Gibson said. Mr. Velazquez gestured toward the balcony in the Atlanta mall and added, “If I found out the ending of the game right now, you’re going to have to hold me back from jumping.”

Did I mention that those two students are in my Computational Media major, which is unfortunately referred to as the “gaming” major by those outside of our loop. There you have it, Georgia Tech really is as geeky as you’ve heard.

A Japanese doctor says, “Medicine in my country is so advanced that we can take a kidney out of one man, put it in another, and have him out looking for work in six weeks.”

A German doctor says, “That is nothing. We can take a lung out of one person, put it in another, and have him out looking for work in four weeks.”

A British doctor says, “In my country medicine is so advanced that we can take half a heart out of one person, put it in another, and have both of them out looking for work in two weeks.”

The Canadian doctor, not to be outdone, interjected, “You guys are way behind. We took a woman with no brains, sent her to Michigan where she became Governor, and now half the state is out looking for work.”

Tags: Granholm, Michigan

After asking around for headphone suggestions and receiving some great responses, I decided to go with the Sony MDR-EX71SL earbuds. As I didn’t want to order anything online and wait too long, I went with these earbuds, which were easily found at a local Best Buy for around $50 (although they can be found for much cheaper online). They are what you would call in-ear earbuds in that they don’t just sit next to your ear but are stably fit inside your ear with silicone rubber ear pieces.

In-ear earbuds have their pros and cons and that depends on what you’re going to be using them for. When I first tried the earbuds on after fitting the appropriate ear piece (it comes with small, medium and large sized silicone ear pieces), I was pleasantly surprised at how much noise they blocked out. I immediately thought of the implications of these earbuds on plane flights, Caltrain rides, studying and the like.

Testing

Due to the seal the earbuds make in your ear, bass is impressive and treble is crisp compared to the standard iPod earbuds. I tested the bass in the MDR-EX71s with the standard iPod earbuds with one of the bassier songs in my iTunes library, Timbaland’s The Way I Are, with the following EQ settings: dB +10, +4, +2, +3, -1, -1, +2, 0, +3, +6 with the preamp set to +3. It was a world of difference. The iPod earbuds had absolutely no bass in comparison.

To test the treble performance of the MDR-EX71s I picked a song I thought to have some very high frequency parts: DJ Tiësto’s Walking On Clouds. I set the iTunes EQ to Electronic and pushed the preamp to +3 dB. I received similar results - the 71s make the iPod earbuds look horrible. Many of you will call me out on comparing the $50 71s to run-of-the-mill iPod earbuds but when you consider that a huge percentage of 71 users are upgrading from iPod earbuds, it’s good to compare the two.

Pros

With the proper ear piece, the MDR-EX71s fit very well for me. While running I only had to readjust them a few times and that was because I accidentally pulled them out of my ear. Other than that, I never felt like they were going to fall out.

MDR-EX71 earbuds use a 9mm driver, which is smaller than its non-in-ear counterparts that use drivers around 16mm. However, since there is a seal with in-ear earbuds they are more effective and can get away with the smaller drivers as not much of the sound escapes. In-ear also means that you don’t have to crank up your audio device to overcome background noise, thus saving your iPod’s battery life (although that is fairly negligible unless you have something like the $1,150 UE-11 Pro quad-driver earbuds which are so sensitive/effective that you are only supposed to use 20% of the volume on an iPod).

Cons

Now let me tell you about the cons of the MDR-EX71 earbuds. My main issue with the 71s is more general to all in-ear earbuds; they are so good at blocking out background noise that using them when running or cycling is dangerous, so much so that the back of the package states:

For traffic safety, do not use while driving or cycling.

I definitely agree. I took the 71s for a run and found myself constantly glancing behind to look for oncoming cars/sketchy people in downtown. With in-ear earbuds you hear more internal sounds: your breath, heartbeat, vibrations on the audio cable, sort of like wearing a stethoscope. I found that somewhat annoying when using the earbuds for sports activities.

Furthermore, the design of the audio cable makes me wonder why Sony even bothered to include an extension cord. It’s not like you can use the earbuds without the extension cord as the cable is only a few inches without it. Also, the use of an extension cord means there are two connectors in the middle of the cable, which adds weight. When running I had to hold the connector in my hand or else it would continually try to tug the earbuds out of my ears. I don’t think it would be a problem if the audio cable was just one single cable.

For comparison: Standard iPod earbud plug bottom, Sony MDR-EX71SL earbud plug top.

Thoughts

The Sony MDR-EX71SL earbuds offer great value and performance and can be classified as a mid-range product. I would recommend these earbuds for everything but sports activity. They are great for studying in noisy places, blocking out noise on public transportation and iPod listening while walking around campus. I won’t be using these for sports activity. While they do stay in your ear, they block out too much noise to be used safely and the ~3.5 foot cord is too cumbersome, requiring that you wrap/hold it.

Perhaps clip-on/behind-the-neck headphones are just better suited for sports? As for non-sports earbud applications, I am awaiting the release of Klipsch’s IMAGE in-ear earbuds that are purported to be the world’s smallest (and at $350 they aren’t cheap either).

The search for the ultimate sports headphones continues. For me all that means is a reasonably short cable, ear pieces that don’t fall out yet allow background noise in.

Working on a report that is due at the end of the month. Firs time doing it solo. Had some help last year on it, but I should be okay. It’s been fun doing it the 2nd time around.What else? Getting ready to have the next two Fridays off. Hopefully my work report allows for me to have them off. In other words, I hope to be able to get my work done and have some breating room.I’ve recently had Wide Open West bring me high speed internet. Comcast just can’t seem to get it right. They finally gave me 3 full months of credit for the internet portion of my service on top of the whopping $25 credit they gave me when I called on Sunday. So far, Wide Open West has been good, but I’ve had to use some 3rd party DNS servers, as the ones that Wide Open West provides seem to be janky. I did a Google search and found that 4.2.2.1 - 4.2.2.4 were open DNS servers that people who were complaining about Wide Open West’s DNS servers were using. I made the switch last night, and didn’t have nay problems with sites not initially loading up. I had this problem where I’d try to go to a site, like www.flickr.com, and it wouldn’t load at all, then I’d refresh, and it would either load, or load partially, missing the stylesheet, or images, or something else. I assumed it was a DNS issue, and I think I’m right. We shall see.

Dear Comcast,

On Saturday morning, Jesse, tech 2244 I believe, came by to try and solve my connection problems. He seemed like a nice guy, sincere, and truly wanting to help me out. He checked all my taps, replaced a jumper between my two splitters, and was on his way. He said him or his supervisor would call me on Sunday to let me know what possibly got fixed with our node in this subdivision, as a line tech left a note on my friend’s door, Mr. Chris Rouvalis, explaining to him that the network problems in this area should be gone now. That, coupled with Jesse’s attempts to fix (4th Comcast attempt in total since my July 7 tech visit) my problems, caused me to cancel my Wide Open West appointment I had for yesterday, to get high speed internet from them.

WHAT A FOOL I WAS. Yesterday, at about 9am, is when I first noticed my cable modem wasn’t even locking on. Normally, when I lose connectivity, as of late, my lights show no indication of this. This time, however, my modem showed me it wasn’t connected. I called my friend, Chris Rouvalis, to see if he was connected, since we typically share the same problems with our connection, at the same time. Sorry for me, he had connectivity, all day. I didn’t notice connectivity here again until 7:03pm, per my Motorola Surfboard’s Log. So, we’re talking 10 full hours of no connectivity. Another indicator of not having connectivity is when my cell phone rings with a number I’m not familiar with. We have Vonage for our phone service, and it’s set up to forward to my cell phone. I was getting calls all day, further reinforcing my new opinion of Comcast’s high speed internet service. Utter G-A-R-B-A-G-E!!!!

In speaking with the customer service representative yesterday who set up my upcoming Friday morning visit (the 5th one, doesn’t it sound like a F***ING great time, to waste my time with you people at this point), was only able to put a $26 credit on my account for the outages I’ve had since my July 7 visit. I almost hung up right then and there. $26? Are you kidding me? That and the 2 free pay per view movie coupons. Oh boy?!!!???!?!? Comcast is so generous. What I was expecting the phone rep to do was give me FULL CREDIT for the $42.95/mo I pay going back to July 7, as well as offering me something else, like a year-long introductory rate, or better yet, a permanently lowered high speed internet rate. Does Comcast want to keep my and my neighbors as a customer, or not?

You have wasted 4 Saturdays of mine since July 7, not including the time I’ve spent on the phone with you, and the aggravation it’s caused my wife and I. The phone rep said that a supervisor wouldn’t be able to make the visit this coming Saturday. I think if you want to do anything in your power to keep me as a customer, you’ll not only send a supervisor here this Friday, but you’ll credit me more than the paltry $26, lower my bill, and use my internet problems as a test case for your future techs. I’d love to see 10 technicians and a supervisor here this Friday morning. Think of it as the “cold case” that Comcast can’t solve. Give the technician who solves it something really special, 2 free pay per view movie passes!

Rona, please call me again today, 586 xxx xxxx, so we can discuss 1) The technician not filling the promise of being able to do anything with my bill, as you alluded to, and 2) Finding a way for Comcast to keep me as a $100+/mo. paying customer, and 3) Not doing everything in my power to get the entire neighborhood to drop Comcast as a provider.

Again, I feel so dumb for canceling my installation appointment yesterday morning with Wide Open West. How silly of me to actually think I could trust what Comcast did over the weekend was actually going to fix my connection problems.

Tags: broadband, Comcast