Small Team, Big Impact: The People Behind Photos (video above) from Facebook’s “Life at Facebook” page

Whoa! According to the above video Facebook is currently (as of three months ago) storing roughly 19,000 Terabytes of photos.

The video states that they’re growing at a rate of 1 billion new photos a month (2,000 every second). Based on a VERY rough guesstimate of 500K a picture (half a megabyte) which doesn’t include the various “versions” of a file that they store including thumbnail, “medium” and the full size, that works out to an additional 476 Terabytes in a month. To give you a sense of size, that’s approximately the space required to store 142,606,336 songs… which is increasing each month.

It must be mindblowing to see the infrastructure that has to be in place to not only handle that number of photos but to also accommodate the explosive growth! Anyone at Facebook want to give me a tour?

I was (as I always am) working on the media server tonight and noticed I wasn’t getting the speeds I used to when transferring data locally. I was maxing out at around 4-5MB/sec (indicating 100Mbit speeds). The router and ethernet card in the Ubuntu machine are both Gigabit capable, and worked in Hardy Heron (Ubuntu 8.04). After some googling, I stumbled on to this thread which showcased how to disable the RTL8169 driver in 8.10 (since it’s apparently causing headaches to people others than just myself).

sudo nano /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-network

Press enter after the above command is entered into the Terminal. Now paste the following:

# Prevent r8169.ko from loading and allow r1000.ko to load
blacklist r8169

Now save the file by pressing Control + O then Enter. You can now exit the document by pressing Control + X

Now reboot Ubuntu (or restart the networking interface if you know how) and you should see 1000Mbits listed when you right click the network icon in the task bar and get info about your connections!

This file, in addition to increasing text size, can block ads. Read on for the “how”.

my_ad_blocking.css

I can’t find the original source, but it could be from here or here. Not sure.

What I’ve done is edited this file throughout the past couple months as I visit various sites to include even more “rules” for ad blocking. I’m pretty sure I’ve killed off most facebook, myspace and google ads everywhere.

How to use

Save my_ad_blocking.css (updated on 6/28/09) to the following directory:

Then, in Safari, navigate to the Advanced tab of your preferences and select the my_ad_blocking.css file. Quit and relaunch Safari to experience web browsing without ads! (For the most part). Please link me to any sites you find that have ads that you’d like to remove in the comments of this post and I’ll do my best to keep the file updated!

I’ve been a Comcast customer for roughly 4 years (off and on) – and I’m fast approaching the point of canceling my service completely. While the service itself has been steady and reliable over the 4 years, the customer service varies wildly. I’ve had extremely positive experiences: Call center CS rep and Supervisor Michelle and Judy were extremely helpful; But I’ve also had downright horrible experiences with other call centers (I’m looking at you – Guadalajara, Mexico) and service centers (260 Potrero Hill location).

Read on for my complete and fun-filled experience.

Some history…

As a college student (now graduated!) I’ve moved frequently. I’ve patronized Comcast’s services whenever possible (which excludes my brief time in the dorms at SFSU). As I’ve mentioned before, the service itself is fantastic and that kept me coming back. At my previous residence, Comcast was managed by my room mate. After moving out, the account remained in his name. I continued to make payments (I guess it’d be considered “on his behalf”) and changed the information online to match my own information. After a service outage, I brought up transferring my account over to my name and was told I’d have to visit the service location nearest me (260 Potrero Hill, SF, CA). I put the transfer off as anyone who lives in SF knows it’s a pain to drive into the city.

Moved…

I then moved to a new location. I called in to asking to cancel my service as there’d be a brief period where I wouldn’t need Comcast’s services. I also told the CS rep that I would (honestly) be considering DirectTV and ATT for HD service and Internet. The CS rep persuaded me to keep my service active and offered me a deal I couldn’t refuse. I would receive Starz, the HD starter package and the expanded basic (SD) cable plus 16Mb “Blast” internet for around 100/month. I agreed, and continued my service.

After moving in…

I ended up purchasing an HDTV and realized my previous (non-HD) cable box didn’t output HD signal. I called and was notified that I’d have to drive down to the Potrero location to grab an HD box since they couldn’t guarantee that they’d be able to deliver a new HD box to our address.

It was the week before the Superbowl so the service center was packed. My room mates waited over an hour for an HD box…that ended up being defective. A second trip out resulted in an older and refurbished box, but we were happy to finally watch HD content.

Then I received our first bill with the new plan. It was more than I expected – roughly $145 instead of the ~$100 I was quoted. My call was escalated to Judy (the supervisor), who met me in the middle. While I wasn’t able to get the promised price, I was happy to have her hear what I had to say and meet me halfway with the price difference. I also asked her about transferring the account over to my name, and she confirmed that I unfortunately needed to go down to the service center. I also asked if my promotional deals that we’d worked out would be carried over and was assured they would.

Today’s experience…

Today (April 18th, 2009) I made my first trip (my room mate’s third) to the Potrero service location. The wait was relatively short at around 20 minutes. While I unfortunately didn’t grab the CS rep’s name, I believe her employee number was 50190 (scribbled on my work order form). There were a number of issues I had with my experience at this location.

Credited amount. My existing account (and all the promo pricing that had been worked out) was cancelled, and a pro-rated amount for the rest of this month was credited by check to the original account owner. The check (I was told) should arrive in 4-6 weeks. She said there was no way to transfer this credit to our new account. We’ll have to now deal with getting the check to our ex-room mate and have him write us a separate check for the same amount.

Completely different service. She also downgraded our service to 6Mbits (from 16Mbits “Blast”) and added the Digital Classic package to our cable service. After seeing these differences, I asked if it was possible to just keep my existing promotions (which I was told would transfer over). She told me it wasn’t possible, and I’d been given bad information. At this point I asked to downgrade my service to 1Mbit internet and basic cable and I’d deal with this later since she wasn’t able to transfer the promo. She said to downgrade my service would require a technician to come out to my residence (and a service fee), so I said to leave the service as she’d set it up.

For clarity’s sake. I asked once again if it was at all possible to get the same promotion that I had prior to transferring over the name. I also expressed my frustration that if I’d known that I’d lose all my promotional pricing, I would have left the account in the previous account holder’s name. She said there was no way she could meet my request since it wasn’t possible to “customize” a promotion for my account, so I left.

Call center hell…

This is getting long, so I’ll summarize:

• Called in, walked through internet reactivation / installation (download installer guide)
• Call got disconnected and didn’t receive a call back (as the CS rep promised to do if disconnected)
• Called back, requested supervisor, put on hold to discuss previous service transfer, hung up again.
• Called back again, requested supervisor
• Waited 25 minutes for a supervisor
• Told there’s nothing he could do for me (Guadalajara Mexico call center supervisor)
• Said I’d like to be transferred to a call center in the US instead to see if there was anyone else that could help me
• Said “no way to transfer out” – Said ok, I’ll call back
• He said “Thank you for calling comcast”, muttered “Have a good day” then promptly hung up)
• Called back again, spoke to “Michelle”

Michelle, like Judy, was an extremely helpful anomaly of the typical Comcast customer service I’d experienced. I sincerely appreciate everything that these two did to resolve my issues, and hope Comcast realizes that they’re the only reason I didn’t cancel my service on the spot.

Michelle was able to transfer over the previous promotional pricing I’d agreed on with Judy with the exception of Starz. She also stressed that the promos should have been transferred over at the service center without question. I thanked her for her help but am honestly still slightly irked that simply changing the name on my account meant I lost a year of the free premium programming that convinced me to stay with Comcast instead of DirectTV.

For now I’m now back at my promotional package, but come October, 2009 I’ll re-evaluate whether I want to continue going through this hassle every 3-4 months (calling, arguing, explaining, getting frustrated, etc.)

If any Comcast representatives would like to contact me, my twitter account is probably the best way to do so (just @reply me).

My hopes are that someone at Comcast will be able to (at the very least) re-activate my Starz promotion. I’m not looking for 15 years of free service here…but this is also an excellent opportunity to surprise me with excellent customer service.

This has been an honest opinion of my personal experience with Comcast service and Comcast customer support. Everything stated in this post is factual as notes were taken throughout my experience to thoroughly and accurately document my experience.

UPDATE: After posting a tweet to @comcastcares and emailing their customer service email address, I’m pleased to say that (while they weren’t able to reinstate my Starz subscription) they offered to extend my existing promotion beyond the current six months as well as discount my HD DVR. This was a more than acceptable compromise and I’d like to praise them for their excellent customer service. If only the rest of Comcast could perform at the same level as these mavericks!

UPDATE 2: Just spoke to Mary, Executive Customer Relations who was able to re-add my Starz subscription and resolve all my remaining issues. My faith in Comcast has been restored! Thank you Mary