I’ve been reading books from the Ender series by Orson Scott Card lately. That’s a wonderful set of books that raises many questions about the nature of intelligence. Would we even recognize intelligence that’s alien to our own, for example?
Well anyway… who would have guessed that we have a colony of buggers living right beneath the Cemestos Gardens? Termites. Sorry little, expensive creatures.
Do any of y’all know of a good exterminator?
I’ve been trying to ignore it, but I just can’t. Netmom first brought the intended purchase of Bellsouth by AT&T to my attention in the comments section on my most recent post of how much Bellsouth and AT&T irritate me with their reckless and irresponsibly greedy plans to charge on both ends of internet connections, but I just wouldn’t believe it.
It seems unusual, at best, for something like this to be leaked on a Sunday and announced on a Monday, although it has evidently been in the works since November. However, this seems to worsen things for we poor bastards who live in the southern US, because Bellsouth and AT&T were the biggest voices in support of the two-tiered internet garbage that I’ve been griping about for months. I said Friday that I’d be suprised if they could pull it off, but with the bastards combined like this, well, anythings possible.
My post Friday fired me up about something else thats been in my mind for a long time: community broadband. It seems to me that we’re spending way too much money for what seems (admittedly, from the outside, but from an educated view) an inexpensive technology. Towns all over the country (the world, even) are starting municipal or community broadband networks (wireless has been popular, but I’m not sure how effective it’d be with the hills and whatnot) in order to lure business and generally cause an ease on their taxpayers.
Who’s interested?
We tried to ignore it. Over the past three days, a mystery stench has been growing, spreading odiferous tentacles of pure hatred throughout my house. Its epicenter appeared to be the kitchen, but as is the way with such things, it was tricksy and difficult to pinpoint.
Sometimes it takes a stranger to your household to sniff out nefarious odors, since you become accustomed to the smells of your own house. This was not such a case. I woke up this morning, and the smell hit me like a sucker-punch to the nose. I decided then and there that it would be my mission to track down the beast and slay it. With orange spray.
I decided to start with the dishwasher. I doubted its complicity in this crime, but I hadn’t pulled it out since we moved in and was sure it was a bit dodgy down there. After finding the proper screwdriver, it was a smooth job, taking only a couple of minutes to pull it out, sweep and spot-mop the gaping maw where it once quietly crept, and to cram it back in its space.
On now, to the fridge. This seemed to be the logical home to whatever stinky nemesis I searched for. It’s not been that long since it was cleaned out (most recently the period of serious broke-ness in which we had almost nothing in there), but some recondite red liquid in an unlabled pill bottle had apparently leaked everywhere. I think it may have been fake blood.
I poked and prodded through our staples, looking for the usual suspects of stink. No rotten meat, no moldy (or mouldy) cheese, no soured milk, no rotting fruits or vegetables. I looked to the door, merely glancing over the various bottles of salad dressing, A-1, mustard and ketchup, expecting nothing out of the ordinary, and then I saw it. A package of buttermilk biscuits, meant to remain frozen until use. Unfrozen.
Having discarded the biscuits, I tossed out a few other things, just to hedge my bets. And now, several hours later, I’m happy to say the only stinky thing in the house is Pigpen.
And then, the water.
Apparently, I got a little overzealous in my cleaning efforts. In retrospect, I guess I must have tugged on the dishwasher a little harder than necessary and somehow messed up the line that takes water to the dishwasher. Upon arriving home, AT discovered water on the kitchen floor. By stepping in it. The problem appears to be a class B leak, meaning duct tape ain’t gonna do it. So AT’s headed out to Home Depot to find a replacement hose for the beast.
We’ll keep you updated.
Did you ever have somebody mess with your head when you were a kid in a joking way, but a way that stuck with you the rest of your life?
When I was 8 or so, my grandpa, messing with me, told me that the bi-level setting for air conditioning in cars was shown to cause heart attacks.
I still won’t use it…
Later today I’ll be trading the Blueberry Farm Courtesy Car in for a rejuvinated and refreshed Tumormobile. I’m ready too, my clutch foot has been itchy…
When I wrote about Ma Bells new plan to make providers, as well as consumers, pay for content, I figured it was some dumbass at Bellsouth or AT&T who would promptly get fired and then beat up in the parking lot with lead pipes by company thugs for making up silly ideas. Well, turns out they’re taking it more and more seriously, and now people are starting to talk.
The party line is that big bad Google and their likes are taking up too much of the bandwidth, and need to be charged to enjoy premium service across the lines. Of course, they’d either drop services or charge for content, which means that whats ultimately going to happen is that you’d be paying twice for you
r internet, IF you want it delivered to you as you have it now. It kindly disregards the simple fact that when you lay down your 20 (or in our case 40) bucks a month for internet it pays for ALL the internet, not just the telco’s content, or the content they approve, or "your end" of the connection, which is a idiotic concept. However, now they want to be paid on both ends. I’ve talked to you about this, so if you’ve been paying attention, its nothing new.
Now, however, congressional subcommitties have been looking into it. We caught a little bit of the action last night on C-Span (accidently) because we were mysteriously drawn into Trent Lott’s jowls. He kept rubbing them while he pontificated on something or other, and it was like those things were made of face butter. He couldn’t leave them alone! My god, I thought, I need jowls like that!
However, the image of him and his jowls couldn’t change the fact that Congress has decided to remove any mention of "network neutrality" from draft rewrites of the 1996 Telecommunications Act (the one that deregulated the Telecommunications industry in order to foster competition, which still isn’t here 10 years later). Essentally, Congress is willing to turn a blind eye to the Telco’s killing off of the internet.
Thing is, I’m not that critical of that. Inevitably, Congressional mucking with the internet is going to cause more problems than it solves, and with the current .gov’s tendancy to cater to big business interests, it’s doubtful that any Congressional meddling would go my way. I’m still of the thinking that if the telco’s started going in this direction (which is unlikely, because I think that big software is currently larger and in charger than Ma Bell) there’d be such an outcry from people who are now screwed out of their Google Earth and iTunes bandwidth that the telcos would restore things to the status quo within a month or two.
Then, however, they’d be able to bitch and moan about corsts, and would then raise their rates. I think thats the real reason they’re doing all this. America currently is toward the bottom of the bandwidth stack, which compared to countries like South Korea (and notice the date on that link, in 2004 they had 8 MB/second cheaper than what my 4 is today), and we pay way more for it. What the hell is that? True, the fact that we’re a bit more spread out may have something to do with it, but I doubt it. I think we’re dealing with pure assed greed here.
Speaking of greed, now that Comcast has introduced its own triple play system (TV, Phone, and Internet), it appears that all of a sudden Vonage subscribers on Comcast are having a hard time with connectivity. Coincidence?
Heres what I’ve got to say about this, and you can take it to the bank. When Bellsouth and AT&T come knockin on ol’AT’s door saying "AT, buddy, we’re seeing all the bandwidth that your readers are using checking out your awesome website, and we’ve decided that we’d like to offer you ‘premium service’ for a ‘premium charge’, otherwise we can’t guarantee good service for your subscribers," I’ll have one thing to say…
Damn right.