Comcast Continues to Confuse Me

I recently wrote about how we had switched our home phone to Comcast Digital Voice, we didn’t like the service and we were switching back to Vonage. Switching back is a fairly simple process, we simply contact Vonage and have them start the process to port the number back to Vonage.

While this is going on, we are getting inundated with communications from Comcast telling us that we have to have a digital converter box for every television in our house or we will be unable to watch certain channels. Despite the number of communications, I have yet to find anything that actually explains what change Comcast is making and why it requires me to have digital converter boxes. It’s not a huge deal because they will provide them to me at no additional charge. (I will note that, once I hook up the converter box, my HD TV will no longer be able to pull the HD feeds from the local stations that it currently pulls off the cable connection. Make of that what you will).

Anyway, I call Comcast and order the additional converter boxes that I need. A few days later I receive a call from Comcast. The caller tells me that because I have placed an order to port my telephone number to a different service, they cannot place an order on my account to deliver the additional cable equipment to me. Instead, once my number is ported, I should call back and order the equipment again. WTF?

Unfortunately, I missed the call, so all I have is a message. Thus, I could not ask the person to explain this. Does anyone have any conceivable explanation for how this can be? It makes absolutely no sense to me at all.

My number was ported on Monday. I called that afternoon and ordered the equipment again. However, I am still confused.

An Acrobat Learning Experience

On Tuesday, I attended the Acrobat demonstration that I recently posted about. As usual Rick Borstein and Mark Middleton did a great job. Despite the fact that I had already seen each portion of the presentation as part of a webcast, there were still things that I learned that I would never had known had I not gone.

There is still time for you to sign up for the presentations in Seattle or San Francisco. I cannot urge your strongly enough to learn how to leverage the power of Acrobat.

Unpaid Internships

Mark Cuban recently posted a screed about how he was unable to provide unpaid internships through the Mavericks. Mark explains:

One silver lining of a “great recession” that we are now in is that there are a lot of incredibly talented people without jobs, or who have lost their jobs. I didn’t care if they were 18 years old or 73 years old. I thought we could assemble a talented group who would enjoy the internships and could also gain valuable experience to add to their resumes. When the economy opened up, one of two things would hopefully occur. We were generating revenue from this effort and we could hire them, or they had just built up their resumes and improved their chances of finding a paying job.

Makes sense right ?

Wrong. Enter the US Government.

This is what our HR person, who his supersmart and really knows his stuff came back with

“The law says that interns have to be paid unless they are perfoming work that is of no value to the organization; ie., helps them in some way but we get no benefit from their work. Thus we would have to create work that is useless to us if we choose not to pay them. How silly is that?”

I would love to hear the thoughts on employment lawyers on this one. The additional info Mark provides appears to support what he was told.

I understand the concept of not violating minimum wage laws. However, when I look back at the two internships that I did what I was in college, I am sure of a few things. First, if the “employer” would have had to pay me, I would not have had the opportunity offered by the internship. Second, if I had been paid for what I was doing (at least in my first internship) that would have been unfair. Third, the experience I gained in the first internship convinced me that I wanted nothing to do with local government. Fourth, the experience I gained at my second internship, provided me with foundational skills that I still use today.

It’s just sad to learn that the internships I had would be illegal today.