Wednesday, August 31, 2005
Construction & Sleep Schedule:
My sleep schedule has been interrupted by construction across the street. An empty lot that is directly across the street from my building is finally being developed. Unfortunately for me, the work begins at about 8am, which also happens to be when I'm just getting to bed. Today, the noise was so great that I couldn't sleep. My unit happens to be facing the construction, and the exterior wall does not insulate me from the noise well enough. I was forced to take a sleeping bag and put it in the hallway outside the bedrooms as the noise was abated by the extra walls of my bedroom.
Neflix Throttling:
I was beginning not to believe in throttling. I figured that Netflix had changed it ways. It took about 4-5 weeks of constatly returning my movies the say day I received them to finally trigger the throttling practice. My account currently shows that for the last 31-90 days, I rented 36 DVD's. For the past 30 days, though, I have increased my rentals to 29 DVD's and that seems to have triggered the throttling practice. This past Monday, Netflix received the two DVD's I returned on Saturday, but only sent out one DVD, which I received Tuesday. The other selection was sent from another location outside of the Chicago area, and I have yet to receive it. That sometimes is necessary if the selection I desire is not in stock at the Chicago area location, but I think it is being done intentionally now. On Monday, I received a DVD That had been sent last week from an alternate location and I returned that the same day. When Netflix sends from another location, the return envelope has the address of that location. I had saved a local "Carol Stream" netflix envelope so I returned Monday's selection in that envelope.
On Tuesday, Netflix acknowledged that it received Monday's return, but again, it chose to send my selection from an alternate location. It did not ship until today, as Netflix doesn't ship from alternate locations until the next day. This was beginning to raise my suspicion. On Tuesday, I received a DVD that was sent out Monday. That is the normal transit time from the Carol Stream distribution center to my place. If I mail a DVD to Carol Stream, it gets there the next day. If a DVD is sent from there, I receive it the next day. The final convincing evidence, for me, was when Netflix pretended not to receive my return today. I know that they received it today, but are just pretending they didn't receive it so they can slow down my turnaround.
These practices are well described in other blogs, such as Manuel's Netflix journal. To Netflix's credit, most people will never experience throttling as it took 5 weeks of say day returns to trigger the practice. The only reason I've been able to turn around DVD's so quickly is that I've been intentionally renting IMAX, 1 hour NOVA programs, and Star Trek: The Original Series DVDS (Netflix carries the original release which contained two episdoes, or 1hr 40 mins worth of programming on each disk). I wanted to see how long it would take for throttling to be triggered, and now I've found my answer.
My sleep schedule has been interrupted by construction across the street. An empty lot that is directly across the street from my building is finally being developed. Unfortunately for me, the work begins at about 8am, which also happens to be when I'm just getting to bed. Today, the noise was so great that I couldn't sleep. My unit happens to be facing the construction, and the exterior wall does not insulate me from the noise well enough. I was forced to take a sleeping bag and put it in the hallway outside the bedrooms as the noise was abated by the extra walls of my bedroom.
Neflix Throttling:
I was beginning not to believe in throttling. I figured that Netflix had changed it ways. It took about 4-5 weeks of constatly returning my movies the say day I received them to finally trigger the throttling practice. My account currently shows that for the last 31-90 days, I rented 36 DVD's. For the past 30 days, though, I have increased my rentals to 29 DVD's and that seems to have triggered the throttling practice. This past Monday, Netflix received the two DVD's I returned on Saturday, but only sent out one DVD, which I received Tuesday. The other selection was sent from another location outside of the Chicago area, and I have yet to receive it. That sometimes is necessary if the selection I desire is not in stock at the Chicago area location, but I think it is being done intentionally now. On Monday, I received a DVD That had been sent last week from an alternate location and I returned that the same day. When Netflix sends from another location, the return envelope has the address of that location. I had saved a local "Carol Stream" netflix envelope so I returned Monday's selection in that envelope.
On Tuesday, Netflix acknowledged that it received Monday's return, but again, it chose to send my selection from an alternate location. It did not ship until today, as Netflix doesn't ship from alternate locations until the next day. This was beginning to raise my suspicion. On Tuesday, I received a DVD that was sent out Monday. That is the normal transit time from the Carol Stream distribution center to my place. If I mail a DVD to Carol Stream, it gets there the next day. If a DVD is sent from there, I receive it the next day. The final convincing evidence, for me, was when Netflix pretended not to receive my return today. I know that they received it today, but are just pretending they didn't receive it so they can slow down my turnaround.
These practices are well described in other blogs, such as Manuel's Netflix journal. To Netflix's credit, most people will never experience throttling as it took 5 weeks of say day returns to trigger the practice. The only reason I've been able to turn around DVD's so quickly is that I've been intentionally renting IMAX, 1 hour NOVA programs, and Star Trek: The Original Series DVDS (Netflix carries the original release which contained two episdoes, or 1hr 40 mins worth of programming on each disk). I wanted to see how long it would take for throttling to be triggered, and now I've found my answer.
