RonVitale

In Memoriam: Dorothy Burke Kozak

September 26, 1961 to September 8, 2007

I received confirmation yesterday that my French teacher from high school, Dorothy Burke Kozak, passed away on September 8, 2007 after battling cancer.

Over the past weekend, I tried looking her up on Facebook to see if I could get in touch with her again, but I had no luck in finding her there. In Google, I came across some disturbing searches about a memorial mass and after contacting the church my fears were confirmed.

I had last contacted her back in the late '90s so it had probably been close to a decade since I had last written to her. At that time, I was engaged to be married. Fast forward ten years and I am married with two children. I would have liked to have learned how she and her family were doing, what she was up to, but that was not to be.

She was a major inspiration in my life. If it were not for her, I would not have struggled to go to study in Paris, France when I was in college nor would I have decided to earn a French degree as my second major. I had always planned on being an English major but she taught me the beauty of the French language and of the French people's great culture.

I remember staying after class one day with her, telling her that I had a French pen pal and she pulled out a map of France and we looked up where my pen pal lived.

What saddens me is that she passed away at such a young age. She wasn't even 46 yet. I am just so thankful that she was my teacher for about a year and a half. I remember that when I was a senior in high school she left work on family leave as she was going to have a baby (a son I later learned). All of those memories seem so long ago. I just wanted to take a few moments to remember her and to celebrate the fact that she was an excellent teacher and I learned so much from her.

Longwood Gardens

The kids were off for President's Day today so I decided to avoid all the usual insanely crowded places and took them to Longwood Gardens. We've been there many times and they're currently having an Orchid festival. Now taking two young kids to the gardens was a bit adventuresome of me, but thankfully no one melted down and all turned out fairly well. Sure, I'm a bit exhausted dragging all the gear around (stroller, snacks, diaper bag, drinks, etc.) but I really enjoyed seeing my son going around taking pictures with his Fisher Price camera. There were some beautiful flowers to see and they both had a blast in the Children's Garden. How I was able to convince them both not to get wet with all the water shooting up in the air, I still don't know. But I did get lucky and I'm not going to complain. I can't wait until the weather is a bit warmer so that we can go back and be outside. My son wanted to see the tree houses again, but they closed in November and I suspect that they'll not be open again until Spring.

Still, I got some great pictures! I really like taking my own pictures and making them for a desktop as it's nice knowing that I made the desktop wallpaper myself. Here are a few more pictures:

• Daffodils
• Yellow tulip
• Purple tulip

Amazon: Kindle 2

Well, it's here: The Kindle 2. If I had money to burn, I'd buy one, but at $359, I'm not going to run out and buy one anytime soon. Would I like to get my hands on one to try it out? Hell, yeah! Now I've seen an iPhone up close and I know it's like comparing apples to oranges but I like the form factor of the iPhone. I also like what you can do with an iPhone. It's unfortunate that the battery life isn't quite there yet for the device, but I think that in a few years from now we'll not have to worry about that.

As for the Kindle 2, well, it looks a bit cooler and I like how thin and light-weight it is. Having the ability to carry so many books with you at once is nice, but how many books do you need? When I travel for work or go on vacation, I typically only bring one book with me. What I would like, well, what everyone would like is the child of an iPhone and  Kindle 2. Imagine that: A device which would allow you to surf the web and read your books on it. Now that's a device which I suspect will be coming in the future, but we're not there yet. I don't believe it's possible to make a device that has a good of enough battery life yet. Yet with flash drives becoming so big and so cheap and battery life increasing each year, I wouldn't be surprised if such a device is closer than we might think.

But coming back to 2009, we have the iPhone and the Kindle 2. Sure, there are other devices that allow you to surf the web, but I think as soon as one is about the size of a Kindle 2 that is full color and allows you to surf the web then I think that the print version of magazines/newspapers will have seen their day. I think that day will come, but I don't see it happening soon. Rather I think there will be a slow decline of print--a decline that will take decades. I am a lover of books and enjoy holding a book in my hands and being able to share it and beat the book up without having to worry if I broke it. But with a Kindle 2, you can have so much more, but it's not a necessity. It's not what one needs, but rather what you might want as a toy. If you had $359 in your hand, would you buy an iPhone (yes, I know the data plan costs involved) or a book reader? I'd vote for the iPhone as I would have a phone, camera, mp3 player, video player, could surf the web and play games. With a Kindle 2, I can read books, play mp3s and subscribe to some newspapers/blogs and have the Kindle 2 read to me (but in the test video I watched, how many minutes could you listen to that robot sounding voice? Five? Ten minutes at tops). The clear winner, in a tight economy, is the iPhone--even though it's comparing apples to oranges most people have limited funds and they're not going to run out and by both--especially since the iPhone now has book applications you can download for a few bucks.

A Rant: Digital TV and Comcast

So... I get a bill from Comcast in the mail and see that it's $20 higher than what I had expected. About a week and a half ago I received a notice from Comcast telling me that they would be lowering my bill by $20 as I was such a great customer and they wanted to keep my business. (I also received some "free" on demand movies but I would need to pay for them and then send in for a rebate--lame!). I thought it was pretty interesting that Comcast had decided to lower my bill by $20 as two days earlier I had received a notice from Verizon that Fios was coming to my area. Now I've been waiting for Fios for some time and would love to try it out.

I saw the expensive bill, figured I call to find out what happened and, here's what happened: A level 1 customer support person informed me that the promotion I had been on had expired. I was now being charged the regular price for my Comcast services. I asked if there were any other promotions that I could take advantage of and was transferred to a supervisor.

When I was connected up the phone chain, I was told that my promotion had ended and that Comcast would work with me as they understood that Verizon was pushing hard to take their customers in my area. Before we went any further, the customer support supervisor, Michael, wanted to know how many digital boxes I had in the house and he asked me if I knew about the 2/19/09 digital transition deadline. I became really agitated and asked him if he was going to tell me that I needed a digital tuner after Comcast had previously informed me that I didn't. Michael explained that several weeks ago Comcast learned that they would need to provide digital adapters (I believe this is what they called them) to their customers who did not use boxes.

It is here that I really became angry because I like to think of myself as being on top of technology and had really been following the digital transition. I know that Congress is working with the President to delay the transition to June 2009 as there are approximately 6.5 million people who are not ready for the switch--15 days from this post. Michael tried his best to calm me down saying that I would not need to buy converter boxes and that Comcast would either install them for me or I could go and pick them up, but I was really angry and frustrated. I explained to Michael that if I hadn't called him today to find out about my bill that I would have had no idea that I needed these digital adapters and I've been a paying Comcast customer for over a decade. I spend over $153 a month on my bill and Comcast didn't even send me a notice in the mail--but they did send me a notice to "give" me $20 off (without letting me know that my promotion was up so I wound up paying $20 extra a month!).

I asked why, as a paying customer, I hadn't received written notice and he informed me that they had just found out several weeks ago. I asked why an e-mail blast wasn't sent out and was told that they hadn't had time. Now I really became insulted by this because I've worked in information technology and at most normal businesses you can run a query and produce a list so that you can send out an e-mail blast. I was informed that it wasn't that simple, but I reminded him that if they've known for weeks that they could have sent out several e-mails blast over time to get to their customer base (which I was told that this would affect around 900,000 people). Now before I go any further I want to be clear: I'm not angry at Michael. He was a good guy. When he was helping me with my bill problem, he was polite and when he made a change on my service and my modem rebooted and we were disconnected, he did call me right back. What I am angry at is Comcast's inability to effectively communicate with their customers. I follower Comcastcares on Twitter, I read up as much as I can (on Cnet and Wired.com) about the digital transition, but to not have this latest bit of information was frustrating.

From what I know as of today, there will be a grace period after the 2/19/09 deadline. If the transition goes through on time, I'll have to figure out how/where to get the digital adapters. I just wish I would have been told this months ago and not by chance as I called Comcast today. I was informed that newspaper ads and commercials were taken out to communicate the message to Comcast's subscribers, but not everyone reads newspapers and watches commercials. I surely don't. I read the news on the web and skip through commercials. But I don't pay $153+ to Comcast a month and believe I deserve to receive a notice in writing to let me know what I need to do and when. I think that's only fair.