A Day Late

I wanted to take a moment and express my utter disappointment in the broadband internet options around Provo. If you live in Provo, you basically have one option and that’s Comcast high speed internet. On average I lose my connection and have to reboot my comcast modem around 4 or 5 times a day (keep in mind I’m at work 8 hours of the day). When it is working, it’s really not that fast. The upload speed is rarely above 200kbps and the download hovers around 600kbps. For all this, I pay around $45.00/month. Now that may not sound bad to some people, but compared to what I had in the past, it’s awful!

A little over five years ago I lived in Springville, which is roughly 2 or 3 miles south of where I live in Provo. At the time Springville had an ISP called AirSwitch. I won’t go in to the entire AirSwitch story (if you want to read it, go here) but basically a few techy neighbors decided to create a LAN around their neighborhood. They connected their LAN to a high speed backbone (T1 line I think) and suddenly the whole neighborhood was enjoying high speed internet access. Naturally word spread, demand increased and the company was born. Eventually, almost the entire town was wired with a fiber optic backbone. Depending on the network usage at the time you could connect to the internet at up to 10mbps. For this, I paid $19.95 /month. The service was reliable, cheap, and incredibly fast. I remember downloading RedHat ISO images in the time it took me to eat a sandwich. I’m not sure what happened to the company, I suspect mismanagement, but a few years ago it went under and AirSwitch was no more.

That was how things used to be. Now I’m stuck with this unreliable, poor quality, overpriced, COMCAST TRASH. There are a few other high speed options in the area that utilize wireless technology but they’re not any cheaper (which is really what I’m looking for). Isn’t technology supposed to improve as time passes? I’m betting it’ll be quite a few years before I see a 10mbps internet connection for $20/month. Supposedly Provo city has started the iProvo project. Unfortunately the area I live in is in the very last phase of the project (scheduled for July 2006). Assuming the project stays on schedule (it won’t) that’s a long time away. So, I have to wonder, what would it take to wire my subdivision and connect it with a T1 line (or something faster)? Possibly something worth looking in to.

Was there ever doubt that I would get one of these? Really it was only a matter of time. This was actually a business purchase, not a personal one. A few weeks ago I was developing a web site which was mainly going to be used by Safari users. Every time I made a change I felt compelled to walk over to our graphic designers G5 and make sure everything still looked ok in Safari. That’s when it hit me, if I had a nice Mac Mini on my desk I could just switch over to it, test the page on Safari and keep on working. Fortunately the low cost made it an easy sell. So far I’m very impressed. As expected, it’s well designed. It’s a shame I have to ruin the sleek and sexy design by attaching cables to it, but there’s not much I can do about that.

UPDATE: FreeMiniMacs.com

As you can probably see, I migrated my Movable Type weblog to WordPress. The process was pretty straight forward. A big concern I had about migrating was losing my search engine links. Fortunately I was able to find some nice Movable Type import and mod rewrite instructions that will automatically redirect anyone who tries to access one of the old movable type pages. The whole process only took an hour or two (and most of the time was spent searching for the search engine fix). Anyway, I know the weblog looks a little WordPress generic. I’ll get around to customizing it one of these days, but not today.

A friend called today and said he tried to post a comment to my last entry and received a message that he was not allowed to post comments. Turns out last time I was adding IP addresses to my banned IP addresses I accidently added a blank entry which apparently matches any IP address. I thought it was a little unusual that I hadn’t received any comments for the past few weeks (particularly comment spam). I have to admit I really enjoyed the break from the comment spam. I removed the blank entry so comments should be allowed again. Sorry about that. Thanks for notifying me, Wayne.

After just over a year, I’m now a dog owner again. I picked up the puppy last Friday thanks to the help of some friends. After much consideration I named him Kody. Kody is a yellow lab and turned 7 weeks old last Monday. He was a little shy/sad/nervous when I first brought him home but that didn’t last long. He got his first bath that night, with American Crew shampoo (it was all I had). He seemed to enjoy it and hey let’s face it, that crew smells good. After his bath he was very playful.

He’s definitely a smart little guy and loves to play. He tends to play hard and then drop over where he stands into a deep sleep. The house training has been going pretty good. He’s had a few accidents but on almost all of them I’ve been able to catch him in the process and take him outside to finish. I take him outside at least every 3 hours when I’m home. He’s to the point that he will immediately relieve himself when we go outside (when he needs to of course).

I’ve also been working on kennel (or crate) training him. That’s coming along very well. Up until now I’ve had to keep his kennel in the basement while I sleep, cause of the crying (I still wake up every 3 hours and let him out). Last night was his first successful night sleeping in my room in his kennel. When he gets puts in he’ll whimper initially but goes to sleep fairly quickly. We went to bed about 1:30am last night and he woke me up at 3:45 to go outside. I was expecting to make one more outside trip during the night but he slept until 8 o’clock. I actually had to wake him up and practically drag him out of his kennel. During the day, while I’m at work, he stays in the basement (which is unfinished). I sectioned off a fairly large area with some chicken wire and he seems to be adjusting to it well. He doesn’t like being left alone but he’s getting better. Usually one of my roommates is home during the day to play with him periodically. If they’re not I’ve been going home on my lunch break to play with him.

Like most lab puppies, if not all, he loves to chew on things. I bought him a few chew toys and such but it’s interesting that his favorite things to chew on are some old towels I had. He’ll play with his other chew toys too, but he definitely seems to prefer the towels. I’ve trained him pretty well that he won’t try and chew on me. Usually a loud “NO!” will get him to stop. Teaching him not to chew on other people is still a challenge. Anyway, he’s a cute little pup. I don’t expect he’ll stay little for long. For those who are interested, here are a few pictures of him.

I was watching the news a week or so ago and they featured a web site called “freeipods.com.” The idea behind the site is you signup and pick an iPod you’d like to receive. They offer all colors of the mini-iPod in addition to the 20GB model. To receive your free iPod you have to participate in one of their sponsored “offers.” The offers vary from joining BMG or Columbia House, applying for a credit card, subscribing to a newspaper, etc. In addition to completing an offer you have to refer 5 people who also complete an offer. Once you and your five referrals complete an offer, you request your free iPod.

Sounds like your basic pyramid scheme, huh? Well…probably because it is. None the less, the news featured a couple teenagers who successfully completed everything and received a free iPod. It all sounded a little too good to be true, so I did a little google searching and discovered similar reports from CNN and Wired magazine. I also found a few weblogs with positive information about it. I didn’t find anything negative so I decided to signup and see how it goes.

The offer I chose was the free blockbuster online 2 week membership. You have to remain a member during the two week trial after that you can cancel. When you signup for the blockbuster offer you must enter a credit card number. If you neglect to cancel after the free two weeks you get charged $17.95/month for your membership. That’s the kicker on most if not all the “free” offers. You HAVE to remember to cancel or you’re going to get charged. It’s also good to read the fine print. One of the free offers was for a free 1 month membership (I forget what for). However, in the fine print it indicates you must submit your desire to cancel 2 weeks before the free trial runs out, otherwise you’ll get charged for the next month. The blockbuster online seemed like the easiest, most trustworthy so that’s what I signed up for. I loved the two week trial membership. I received 3 free DVD’s in the mail and also two free in store rental coupons. Not bad for not paying anything. Also, I should note that the offers aren’t always available. For example after I signed up a few friends tried to get the blockbuster offer but it was unavailable. I suspect the site limits how many people participate in each offer. I checked today and the blockbuster offer is available again, so it looks like they upped their limit.

That’s been my experience thus far. The offers are pretty easy to complete but the hard part is finding 5 people to refer. You’d think it wouldn’t be that tough, but it is. Anyway, if anyone who reads this is still interested. Here’s my referral link, feel free to click on it and signup: http://www.freeiPods.com/?r=12078946.

For some good reading, check out the list of “Top 100 Speeches” on americanrhetoric.com. Wish I had more time to comment on it.

Thanks to Dan for pointing out the link.

Yesterday I received a letter/application from a financial institution I have a credit card with, announcing I had been preapproved for an instant $5,000 loan. All I had to do was fill out the form OR I could call the toll free number and have the check within a day or two. Best of all, no payments till 2005 (check me if I’m wrong here, but 2005 is not much more than a month away, right?). All this for the low rate of 19.99%.

This isn’t something new. I probably receive one of these a week. But yesterday I couldn’t help but think, “how dumb are people?” I’m sure more than a few people respond to these enticing quick and easy finance offers but if you think about it they’re not enticing AT ALL! At least the one I received yesterday wasn’t. They were trying to sell this loan with two different themes (spin?). First, it’s quick and easy. Well…let’s see, I have a credit card from you guys…wouldn’t it be quicker to just go out and charge everything I needed? I wouldn’t, but that seems like a “quicker” solution to me. Second, they were trying to push the idea that the money could be used for much needed home improvements, unanticipated expenses, etc. Ok…once again, I have a credit card from you guys. Why couldn’t I just charge everything? Considering my credit card interest rate is 7.9%, this offer of $5000 at 19.99% interest is just not sounding that appealing to me. Honestly, I don’t know why people fall for these things.