(I originally sent this as a reply to Mr. Netlix’s email to every customer. Of course it was sent from an automated mailbox, and cannot be responded to. Pretty much like everything else at Netflix, they don’t actually want to interact with their customers)

———————————

Dear Mr Reed Hastings,

You completely missed the boat here.

Your customers don’t care, at all, what your business needs are. To every one of us, a movie is a movie, whether on disk or online. Managing those movies using a single service (Netflix) was a MAJOR part of the value of your service.

By splitting apart these two delivery methods, you have in a single swoop, destroyed one of the biggest value propositions of your company.

I have been a long time Netflix subscriber, and have recommended and signed up scores of friends and family for your service over the years. But over the past couple of years, I have noticed ongoing removal of functionality from the clients, and a growing ignorance of what your customer base actually cares about.

I am still a customer for the time being, but I won’t likely be for much longer. Being a streaming + mail service is unique. Just streaming puts you in competition with a half dozen other companies.

And if I leave, you can count on a whole lot of friends and family to go with me.

You need to rethink your strategy seriously. Maintaining compatibility for two different delivery methods is difficult, but running a business without any customers is a lot more difficult.

Sincerely,
Tyler Gibson

I brought the list a little more up to date, and added one that was a glaring omission from the original!

http://www.snotmonkey.com/articles/34-things-to-make-your-time-at-ncsu-more-enjoyable/

With the release of the Windows 7 RC, I’ve been poking around at it to see what’s new and different. And I’ve already done a couple of things that really improve the experience (for me). Since I couldn’t find them explained anywhere else on the net, I figured I would post them here.

The first (and easiest) is enabling multiple concurrent seessions over Remote Desktop.
http://www.winmatrix.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=22479&st=0

Very well explained, and the downloads can be totally byte verified. Works perfectly on Win7 RC (7100), either by following the directions manually or using their pre-patched DLL and install script (I tried both methods, same working result and same hashed system state).

So, I’ve been super busy working for Microsoft for almost a year and a half now. I have some plans for new content for the site, but it’s all a matter of time (which I have a serious lack of at the moment) to get things put up.

For the moment, a couple of projects I’ve been working on outside of work will have to do:

http://www.vcaddygolf.com is an iPhone application I helped develop and continue to advise on, and

http://www.bigclimb.org is the next charity event I’ll be participating in (this weekend!)

I hope everyone is doing well, and I promise more cool stuff is coming

Yep, I believe in this guy enough to send him money. I guess there’s a first time ever.

So it’s now April 2007.

Lots of stuff has been happening with me as usual. The big news is I’ve partnered with my friend Kevin Robledo at linemodern. We are planning some big things this year, so keep checking out this site and linemodern.com!

Also I’m trying my hardest to finish my Master’s degree this semester, but who knows if I will actually walk in May or in December. I’m just ready to be out and done and be able to make some money off everything I’ve been learning.

I’m going to try and run the Chicago Marathon this October, but right now I can’t afford to sign up or reserve a hotel room, so I’m just going to have to keep training and cross my fingers that everything won’t be full when I finally have the money to commit to it. If anyone wants to donate like 300 bucks so I can go, feel FREE to get in touch with me ASAP.

http://www.ncsu.edu/facilities/campus_map_dev/index.php

Why is it I made a better campus map, and it’s on the ncsu servers, and no one has ever taken it live?

I ponder these things sometimes.

[update] Looks like they finally took it offline, got to wonder what ever happened with it. I’ll see about mirroring the whole thing here for posterity

[update2] Here it is, my final version: http://www.snotmonkey.com/work/maps

It’s been a while folks, but here’s the skinny on my life these past bunch of weeks:

-I entered a competition, sent in my stuff on Oct. 3rd. Didn’t have nearly the clear head or time I needed to really flesh out the idea. Apparently it didn’t get into the finalists pool, but based on what DID make it in, I was almost completely outside the realm of what they were looking for. A month of work for zero pay-off. It’ll take me another week or two to redo it all well enough to put it in as portfolio pieces.

-Finally got around to mostly finishing the new IDSA student chapter site. Still a few bits and pieces to spice it up, but it works and if people will put up their WORK, it will finally e able to show off what our program can do. www.ncsuidsa.org

-Made a set of three coat hooks for my materials class. I’m fairly happy with how they turned out conceptually, but I need a LOT more practice with craft on the lathe. Luckily photoshop should be able to save them for the portfolio.

-Built a soap-box derby car with a group of sophmores. We made a throwback X-Wing fighter, and whomped the competition The base of the car came from a tricycle, and I did pretty much all the metalwork on it. Learned how to MIG weld pretty well, and the rest of the team did an amazing job in framing it out, and the finishing work!

-Been working on a funded project for a company with a couple of other graduate students. Unfortunately it’s all under NDA, but hopefully I will be able to talk about it before too long.

-Made a pretty sweet poster for my history of ID course, it’s a poster in ode to Raymond Loewy. If you don’t know who this guy is, look him up, as he is basically responsible for industrial design in the US.

-Wrote a captcha defeating utility. Complete waste of time, but I needed to prove a point. And now that it’s done (took about 24hrs), I think I may release it to the public so people can make their anti-spam measures better.

-Started the mass exodus of posessions on ebay. With any luck, in a couple of months I will have consolidated all the garbage out of my life again. Sold off 11 items this week, more will come quickly.

-Planning on running a 10k this next weekend if the weather and my health hold up.

-Been working on a chair/furniture line for a competition thing due Dec 3rd. I’m having an extremely hard time with it. Probably gone through 4 designs now all the way to start fabrication before realizing they won’t be strong enough to sit on. Very frustrating trying to make a stable and supporting object into something light, airy and new.

So much more, but it will have to wait for another day

Well, I’m still not sure what prompted me to do it, but this Labor Day weekend was spent up in Virginia Beach running the Rock’n'Roll Half Marathon.

It was awesome. I understand the runners high now. I started in Corral 11, my race number was 11151. I however finished in the top 7000 (woot) out of 21,700 entrants. Quite proud of myself for that I must say. Finish time was 2:12, which was a bit dissappointing. I wanted to be closer to the 2 hour mark, but round about mile 10 my body just crashed and I started slowing from 9:30 mile times to 10:30-11 minute times.

Anyhoo, my buddy Lucy that went with me should have some pictures of the scene, but here are a couple from the official site

It was also freaking incredible to see the elite runners go past the other way. We were lucky to see them because the course basically loops back on itself and it was a sight to see!

I’ve been frantically adding image data from the NOAA to Google Earth of the post hurrican destruction. Others have already mapped in overlays for downtown New Orleans. I will try to constantly update the links as people add more to them, and hopefully we will get more images of Nawlins soon. Simply amazing.

If you have google earth, save these files (right click->save as) to your computer, then just double click them and it will launch google earth and add them for you.

If you dont have google earth, GET IT. http://kh.google.com/download/earth/index.html

http://www.snotmonkey.com/content/googleearth Go here to get the files