Crunchyroll is, according to their About page, “the leading global video service for Japanese Anime and Asian media.”

With that in mind, I really had much higher expectations for their service.

Their content is great and they have made some nice deals with the various big-name media companies, giving them the ability to simulcast content and make it available earlier than anyone else.

But they need to start putting some of their money into usability testing and developers!

I’ve been using CR for a couple weeks now, both via the web and their Roku channel. It has made me absolutely loathe their queue system.

It feels like you have a poor understanding of how people actually use their product…

The only things in my queue should be episodes that I haven’t yet watched. I don’t see why it should be a difficult concept.

There are industry-standard ways to address these problems (see also: Hulu, Netflix, Amazon, etc.)

Reading back in old threads, it seems like they initially were trying to kill two birds with one stone… but making the queue serve the purpose of letting people manage a list of shows they like and also shows they are currently watching just sort of dilutes both goals.

Do. Not. Like.

I’m teaching myself C# (again). Learning another language can get frustrating sometimes.

Going from the “Well, I know how to do it in the other language!” stage to “Oh, that’s right… I remember” part still takes a bit of time, but at least I’m going from VB.NET to C#.NET, so it wasn’t that different.

Having a goal in mind definitely helped.

My motivation behind picking up C# was pretty straight-forward… There was a poorly written plugin for PlayOn for Roku that I wanted to make my own version of. I mean, if an app’s going to scrape a website for free episodes of tv shows, it should at least do a good job of it! All of the examples I found were in C#… so I just sort of went with it…

I made a lot of progress with my plugin and got over a lot of the initial hurdles that held me back last time. Most of it just required my getting used to the syntax differences from VB.NET. I can’t say I’m in love with the language, but I certainly don’t hate it anymore.

The plugin is still a work in progress, mostly due to copyright protected media streams… but I like a challenge. I’ve decided to hold off until the next API release is pushed out (currently in Beta) because it should have better support for what I want to do.

While the plugin is on hold, I’m teaching someone who has never do ANY programming to make some simple apps in C#. I’m looking forward to seeing how that goes.

Not only does it help give me an excuse to brush up on my understanding of C#, but it’s fun being there to see those “Ah-hah!” moments when the person realizes that pretty much anything can be built (within reason, of course) and all it takes is effort and a bit of ingenuity.

As much as a complain about companies who are constantly getting it wrong, I have to say that Delta actually did it right with their Twitter support team.

It started out with me doing my usual shout into the dark…

Some companies monitor Twitter actively and some don’t.

Within a minute or so of posting my question, I received a helpful response from @DeltaAssist, letting me know the situation and giving me an option to address my issue.

I sent them a direct message with the information and they took care of the rest.

Beautiful.

Now, yes, I can certainly fault Delta for not giving me the option to do that functionality myself via the website… I mean, if all that’s needed is a SkyMiles account number and a confirmation number, what’s the issue…? But at least there was a “Plan B” that worked.

Using Twitter to quickly solve customer issues is awesome. I just wish more companies used it like that.

OMG. I want to strangle someone!

For the past week or so, I’ve been dealing with an issue where a simple UploadValues call to the WebClient object was taking 10-30 seconds instead of the nearly-instance response time I was expecting.

I’ve tried going at it from different angles.

I’ve done everything I could possibly think of. I tried using HttpWebRequest/HttpWebResponse. I tried explicitly turning off the proxy check. You name it and there’s a good chance I attempted it.

Today, though, I finally had a breakthrough.

I was looking at a TCP trace from the connection and noticed the responses being returned from the site were ‘chunked’.

Even though it’s something I’m sure .NET has handlers for, I figured it was worth looking into. It’s not a feature my client can tell the server not to use, per se, but since it was functionality added to the HTTP 1.1 protocol, I decided to find a way to force the request to use HTTP 1.0.

Unbelievably, that did it.

The response time went from roughly 20-sec to 1-sec. I was ecstatic and — at the same time — I was also pretty ticked-off.

Was it the chunking that was the issue or another HTTP 1.1 feature? Was the site misconfigured somehow? Is it a known issue?

I still have a lot of questions remaining… and some more research to do. At least I have a workaround now.

This is an email I get from Bright House each month…

Dear KEVIN FAIRCHILD,

Your Bright House Networks online statement is now available.

Michigan customers, view your statement online at http://webcare.michigan.brighthouse.com
For immediate closed captioning concerns, please call 1-866-898-9101. Written complaints may be mailed to L. Byrd, Closed Captioning Coordinator, Bright House Networks, 14525 Farmington Rd., Livonia, MI 48154 or by Fax (734)437-3338 or email to Michigan.ClosedCaptioning.

Tampa Bay customers, view your statement online at http://webcare.tampabay.brighthouse.com
For immediate closed captioning concerns, please call 1-888-289-8988. Written concerns may be mailed to D. Morgan, Closed Captioning Coordinator, Bright House Networks, 1004 U.S. Highway 92 West, Auburndale, FL, 33823 or by Fax (863)288-2229 or email to tampabay.closedcaptioning.

I can almost forgive the whole putting-the-name-all-in-uppercase thing… but it cracks me up that they include information for two very different areas like this.

A few immediate questions come to mind…

First, they KNOW where I am. They know I’m served by their Tampa offices, so why not just provide me with relevant contact information? If I ever needed to look up the number for their Michigan office, I’d Google it.

Secondly, are they really only in two markets — Michigan and Tampa? That doesn’t exactly make me feel like I’m dealing with a large trustworthy company… Even if they are limited to those two areas, they should at least give the impression of having broader coverage. Besides, why is one a city and the other a state…?

Lastly, assuming they are in only those markets, what are they going to do if they expand? What’s next, including contact information for Hoboken and Timbuktu customers?

It’s even weirder when I go to the main Bright House Networks website. When I click “Pay My Bill”, I have to enter my zipcode — to see if service is available in my area. Wait, what…? If someone is paying a bill you sent them, I sure as heck hope there is service in their area… And, again, if I’m going to be logging in anyhow, it should be able to determine my location based off of that, anyhow…

Once I am logged in and ready to pay my bill, the sidebar on the left shows “michigan – contact us” and “tampa bay – contact us”. Ouch. Looks like they went from capitalizing everything in my name to leaving everything on their menu lowercase. How often does a Tampa Bay customer need to contact Michigan or vice-versa? Why is this even here???

As I navigated around the site a bit, I did find something that answered my question about service areas. According to the site, they serve the following markets:

Tampa Bay and Orlando, Florida; Bakersfield, California; Indianapolis, Indiana; Detroit, Michigan; and Birmingham, Alabama; along with several other smaller regions in Alabama and the Florida Panhandle

Now I’m even more confused. What does someone in Birmingham see when they get emailed from Bright House…? Do they see a listing for Tampa Bay and Michigan like I do or do they see, Birmingham and — say — Indiana. And now that I’m thinking of it, why don’t I get something a bit more realistic, like maybe Tampa Bay and Orlando?

This just seems like one big “developer fail”…