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The other night, Kelly and I watched the movie Sideways. While it was an okay movie, I remember one particular scene where the characters drove past a California gas station. The price for a gallon of gas was $1.81. Whoa! Can you say ‘dated?’

Gas is now $2.58 per gallon at the cheap places in Raleigh. A picture in today’s paper shows gas at a California station at $3.15. A little while ago I wrote about peak oil. Perhaps its closer than I thought?

Take a minute to participate in my gas price poll on the right of the page.

Robert Cringley looks at the effects of the FCC ruling on DSL that I mentioned in my previous post. Like me, he is doubtful that this is anything but a giveaway to the phone companies.

I believe larger companies are in general too conservative in rolling out new products. This has been especially true with phone companies. Telephone companies missed the broadband boat by 5 years at least. Cable companies aren’t much better. Countries like Korea and Japan are eclipsing us.

In the software industry, the startup comapnies lead the way with inovation (sorry, Bill G.). They do this because they have to, because brains are their biggest weapon against entrenched old-school companies. How many startup phone companes (outside of pure VoIP ones) can you name?

Giving the keys to these larger players will, in my opinion, further accelerate our slide into becoming a broadband backwater.

The Old Nole, my 1990 Honda Accord EX, up for sale. For those not in the know, the Old Nole got its name from the license plate it wore under its previous ownership (my Dad). The name “Not-Quite-As-Old Wolfpacker” never seemed to catch on, so I went with what works!

It’s been a fantastic car in every respect. It has taken the Turners over 221,000 miles. That’s the distance to the Moon! And it still has plenty of life left in it. It comes with sunroof, 4-speed automatic transmission, power windows and locks, ice-cold air conditioning, and AM/FM CD player. It regularly gets 26 MPG in city driving and 28 MPG on the highway: amazing for a car of its vintage.

If you’d like a piece of Turner history, it can be yours for $1800 or best offer. Contact me via email ( markt at markturner dot net) or call eight four six nine three one seven (area code nine one nine, of course). I’ll see if I can’t post some pictures, after I go give it a proper bath.

I went to Crazy Fire for lunch Friday, the first time in a long while. I handed my bowl of food to the cook working the grill and continued a conversation with my coworker.

In a few minutes, my lunch was ready. The cook, a large Latino, brought me my lunch and waited to hear what type of rice I preferred.

“White,” I said.

He stared at me blankly. Too much noise in the restaurant, I thought. Time for a different tack.

“Blanco,” I told him.
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I want to send a shout out to the dozen loyal MT.Net readers out there.

Thanks for reading. Y’all make it all worthwhile!

I just got back from my Asterisk presentation to TriLUG. The room was absolutely full. I don’t think there were seats available. Must have been close to 130 people there.

My slides somehow got corrupted about an hour before my talk was to begin, so I madly recreated them from memory right before packing things up and heading out. I looked like a college kid moving into his dorm, with arms full of computer stuff, backpacks, and laptop bags hanging off of me.

My demo system didn’t behave, which led to some delays, though fortunately not many. My reconstituted slides worked just fine and gave me a good story to tell in the process. I was surprised when Jason Tower motioned to me that I had five minutes left as I felt like I was just getting warmed up.

It was a great turnout. A huge turnout. Lots of fantastic questions were asked. I kept most everyone’s attention for a full 90 minutes, in spite of my technical difficulties. Looking back on it, I’m amazed I pulled it off as well as I did.

Next month’s talk is by former Red Hat CEO Bob Young. Ironically, I owe my speaking success to getting fired by his company. Three years ago, I would have never imagined standing in front of a crowd of total strangers and speaking for five minutes, much less 90 minutes. Leaving Bob’s company led me to my sales engineering job at my last company. It was there I gained confidence in public speaking.

Thanks, Bob, for canning me. Oftentimes those bumps in life are there to teach you something.