Time Warner becomes more evil

Just when you thought you couldn’t possibly hate the cable company any more than you do, they raise the bar on suckiness. Time Warner Cable will soon be implementing bandwidth caps on their high-speed internet users in what looks to be an effort to kill streaming media companies like Netflix. Watching a handful of Netflix-streamed movies each month like my friend Greg Brown does would be enough to push you over the bandwidth cap.

I found out tonight that I’m not immune for being an Earthlink customer and not a Time Warner customer. According to the advocacy website StopTheCap.Com, Time Warner plans to cap Earthlink customers as well. So much for the illusion of competition!

All of this makes me wish we had municipal Internet like down the road in Wilson.

Rainy return to winter

We’ve really enjoyed the balmy days we’ve had this past weekend.I watched in disbelief as my outdoor thermometer topped 86 degrees on Sunday! And while rain hasn’t been my favorite thing this year, today’s rain did wash away a mountain of pollen. It’s been very, very dusty the past few days.

Tonight cold weather makes a brief reappearance. Wednesday morning will be sub-freezing. What a crazy week we’re having, weather wise!

Delayed

Well, the fun week at work alluded to in my last post hasn’t happened yet. I’m still stuck with one ticket that is proving difficult to resolve. My fun project has had to wait in the meantime.

I hope to work more on it tomorrow so that I can show it off this week.

Busy weekend

Where to start about our weekend?

Saturday morning the family and I met 14 other neighbors to pick up trash all around the neighborhood. We collected over a dozen trash bags of litter and cleaned out creeks that feed eventually into the Neuse river. I got doughnuts and coffee for participants and vests and tools loaned from the city. It was a great turnout and a great way to make an immediate difference in our neighborhood. I’m happy to say that we did not have nearly as much trash as last time. I don’t know if that’s because the last trash clean-up kept recurring trash from collecting, or if the recent non-stop rain simply washed it all downstream. I’m thinking the rain just cleaned things out for us. Ah well.
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“Hold off on any big purchases”

Some managers will assure their employees that their jobs are safe. Then in the next breath, they’ll add “but … hold off on any big purchases you might be thinking of making.” The implication is that what’s safe now may not be safe later.

While that seems like prudent advice in this type of economy, it’s also the reason the economy is in the funk that it’s in. By telling employees to hold off on those car or home purchases, the very spending that is America’s economic engine is not being spent. Those jobs that weren’t initially in jeopardy eventually are in jeopardy.

While it might not be prudent to tell employees “go spend like there’s no tomorrow!” the irony is that might be what it takes to truly save their jobs.

A look at Google’s hardware

Google for the first time gave the public a look at its server hardware. It uses custom-made motherboards, 12-volt-only power supplies, and each server has its own built-in UPS battery. Also, Google datacenters consist of standard shipping containers – containing thousands of these custom-made servers. Very interesting!

Hole in the bucket

There must be a hole in Raleigh’s bucket somewhere. In spite of all the rain we’ve received lately, we ended March still a half-inch below normal rainfall for the year. Granted, we ended March almost 3 inches above normal for the month, but still.

From the NWS Climate Summary:

WEATHER ITEM   OBSERVED TIME   RECORD YEAR NORMAL DEPARTURE LAST
                VALUE   (LST)  VALUE       VALUE  FROM      YEAR
                                                  NORMAL
..................................................................

PRECIPITATION (IN)
  YESTERDAY        0.00          1.53 1962   0.11  -0.11     0.98
  MONTH TO DATE    6.83                      4.03   2.80     5.53
  SINCE MAR 1      6.83                      4.03   2.80     5.53
  SINCE JAN 1     11.01                     11.52  -0.51     9.95