Class action suits

I just got an email from Netflix; they had a class action suit against them a while ago, and the settlement was that affected parties would get one free month subscription. I got an email from them in November of 2005 announcing the settlement, but they didn't have the mechanism in place to collect it yet. I canceled my subscription a few months later.

A few months ago (in 2008) I signed up for a free 2 week introductory thing, then called them up and check if I could collect my free month now. Nobody there even knew what I was talking about, but eventually a supervisor was found who said "yeah, that's still tied up in court."

Finally, yesterday, I got an email with a URL I could use to get my free month.

So, 3 years from the settlement to any payout. The original filing was in September of 2004, so it was over a year before the settlement as well.

I think the lawsuit was silly, really, but the times involved are indicative of typical class action suits in my experience.

I was auto-enrolled in this, and just chose not to opt-out.

I still have the payout check from the only previous class action suit I bothered to opt in to; after about 3 years of legal wrangling, during which time they sent me 3 or 4 updates, some many pages of printed matter in full-size envelopes that cost a dollar or two to mail, I finally got the settlement; it was a check for FIVE CENTS. Many times less than the postage for the updates, let alone processing of the form I filled out, or printing all the stuff and managing the lists. Clearly the lawyers were the main beneficiary there.

Audiobook finished

The Rock Rats by Ben Bova
Book 2 in the Asteroid Wars series.

More MP3 player noise

It just won't sync reliably (actually, won't connect at all right now; I messed with it for an hour today, tried 3 different cables, different ports, and rebooted. It worked once then just died. I give up on it; it's just teasing me.

The Samsung I'm borrowing from my daughter is OK but the battery life is down to about 4 or 5 hours.

At this point I'm thinking the Sandisk Fuze. I was looking at a Sandisk Clip but at a 10 hour battery life it's marginal (also there are reports that some units drain batteries while off; a hardware issue apparently, probably fixed on newer models but still, most players don't actually last as long as they're rated for). The Fuze has a 24 hour rated battery life per charge, has a Micro SDHC so you can expand the memory up to 20 GB or more with cards, and the word online is that its a "nearly perfect" audiobook player; it actually recognizes audiobooks as a separate genre and keeps them separate from music, and Sandisk is actively fixing annoyances reported to them by the audiobook community, and they're releasing firmware updates regularly.

It also supports photos and video, is smaller than a credit card, and about as thick as a pencil. There are third party skins for it too and it mounts as a standard mass storage device and charges with a standard USB connector. Standard is good. The Micro SDHC slot also is very nice; not only can I expand it, but I could even have a library of different kinds of music on different cards for very cheap (I just bought a few 2GB cards for $5.99 each).

At $85 for the 4GB unit it's more than I'd planned to spend, but I do have a $50 Amazon credit right now... Also, it's probably about time I stopped screwing around burning through $15 players every few months and got something a little nicer.