The Steussy Ranch

Phil Harding, current age 46. He is 13 in the photo above.

I last talked with Phil in 2001, when he was unable to come to my wedding. Recently, a group from our high school class (New Castle Chrysler High School 1981) found each other on Facebook. We’ve been wondering what’s happened to Phil.

Last known address: 2280 Mira Monte Corona, CA. 92879. Married. Two daughters.

Worked at Val Verde Unified School District as Technology Integration Specialist.

If anyone knows where he is, please make a comment here or email me.

I’ve added a 1.5TB hard drive to our network here at the Steussy Ranch. It’s called Ocean. It appears to be a bottomless pit for information.

I installed it on Wednesday and I’m just finishing now getting all of the basic data into it. This disk carries more information than all of our computers combined. It will work as automatic backup device (I have other methods for a weekly manual backup) and as a repository of non-essential data. It will also be my movie editing platform, since one hour of HD video is now taking up to 80GB of space.

Dang, this thing is big.

Manhattan Fruitier, an excellent high-end fruit basket to the stars family business has now closed their Los Angeles office after ten years of operation. My wife and her friends have been an integral part of Manhattan Fruitier for more than a decade, so we’re very sorry to see it go. Even I helped out there one Christmas, when the demands of the videogame industry were at a low ebb.

We can only hope the change is temporary.

I finally got to reading Jeff Jarvis’ “What Would Google Do?” (I meant to start it the day it came out, but got sidetracked by Charles Stross’ excellent Merchant Prince series). The book is thoroughly excellent and I wanted to do some choice quotes that I have seen so far:

Of course, people misuse the internet. They misue everything else, why should the internet be different?

Is there any scarcity left in media? Some argue that our attention is shrinking, but I don’t buy that. My attention is constant—I have 24 hours in a day, 18 of them awake and 17 of those sober.

Google has spoiled us rotten. Think back to the time before Google—it was only a decade ago—and remember the mines you had to dig to find any bit of information. Good God, we actually went to libraries.

I finally got to reading Jeff Jarvis’ “What Would Google Do?” (I meant to start it the day it came out, but got sidetracked by Charles Stross’ excellent Merchant Prince series). The book is thoroughly excellent and I wanted to do some choice quotes that I have seen so far:

Of course, people misuse the internet. They misue everything else, why should the internet be different?

Is there any scarcity left in media? Some argue that our attention is shrinking, but I don’t buy that. My attention is constant—I have 24 hours in a day, 18 of them awake and 17 of those sober.

Google has spoiled us rotten. Think back to the time before Google—it was only a decade ago—and remember the mines you had to dig to find any bit of information. Good God, we actually went to libraries.

First of all, the reason I have Directv is simple: NFL Sunday Ticket is the only way you can be guaranteed to be able to watch the team of your choosing every week. Go Colts!

That said, let’s go through all of the negatives:

• Poor reception. The slightest wind will blow your dish offbase, causing you to miss an important Jeopardy answer or Peyton Manning touchdown. For all of the advertising of HD quality, the highly compressed broadcast you receive from Directv is much lower quality than local broadcast HD.
• Horrible DVR. OK, it works. But you need to push “Play” or “Pause” or any other button, then wait for three to five seconds for the box to respond. Where, oh where, is my Tivo?
• Penny-pinching, Pound-foolish Directv policies. Our bedroom DVR went down last month. Their solution was to send us a replacement box. We do the installation ourselves. They still charged us $20 for their faulty box. $5 for talking to a live customer agent. A series of small fees that show up on your bill. Speaking of which …
• Billing issues. Our first three bills were completely wrong. All of them needed to be readjusted to get us what we ordered in the first place. Directv drained so much money from my credit card, we didn’t have to pay them again for FOUR MONTHS. We immediately took ourselves off automatic billing, since it was clear these people were not to be trusted.
• Opaque Services. We get Directv for the football games, right? On the second Sunday of the season, we set up the (oh so terrible) DVR to record the three games we’re interested in and go out to visit friends for the day. We return. Turn on the TV. Black space in each recording. Call to customer service. “What’s wrong with our service?” “Mr. Steussy, I see you don’t have the SuperFan package. That gives you HD. It’s another $100 for the season.” “What??!! No one said anything about that! There’s nothing on your website about this! And we watched the games last week on HD with no problems!” “Maybe we had them on for free last Sunday, but you need SuperFan to watch HD.” “(expletives) I’m already in for $300 for the season – which is non-refundable, right?” “Right” “F***! Go ahead and screw me for the extra hundred dollars. Now turn on a switch so I can see my football games.” “Thank you sir. You’ve now been charged and it’s not refundable. Do you mean the football games you already recorded today?” “Yes.” “We can’t do that.” “F***!”
• Two year commitment. Why? Is it like you’re giving us something? The cellphone company at least give us a DAMN PHONE. We don’t get anything from you. When we quit the service, we need to ship back all of the equipment, or you’ll charge us insane retail rates for those boxes. I know – it’s happened to me before.

My thought is that the executives at Directv clearly see their future – there isn’t one. The end won’t come as quickly as it will for newspapers, but the writing is on the wall. The future of TV, movies and sports will be delivery over the Internet. That way, the NFL gets rid of the middleman and pockets my (oh-so-painful) $400 (that should only have been $300). The future is already here with AppleTV and Netflix-over-XBox, and it’s only going to get bigger.

The other TV services (cable and Verison FIOS) aren’t looking at so bleak a future. At least they can provide internet access and charge for that! Satellite coverage doesn’t work well with internet connections (the lag is too great), so this is the end of the line for Directv. They know it, and are trying to gouge every last dime that they can.

Unless you have a compelling reason for you to get Directv, I strongly urge you not to. If you do need to have Directv and THERE IS NO OTHER OPTION (football fans, rural citizens, Central and South American expatriates – I’m talking to you), keep a hand on your wallet at all times.

Thanks to everyone who came on Saturday to Camilla’s 4th birthday and everyone who participated Sunday in Bella’s 9th and Calvin’s 7th birthdays.

I need photos from both parties, please! Full size ones. It will be toward the end of this week before anything gets posted.

Happy Birthday, Camilla! Sorry for delaying the cake, Aaron.

Aaron is no longer a baby. He walks, talks, reads and plays. Watch him here.