I must go home to an internet-less apartment. It will be beer, books, and maybe a DVD.
God! How do people live this way?!?!
In which I reveal my ignorance, part two
StandardWho knew jaywalking as a pedestrian norm was safer than a norm of crossing at the crosswalk?
I’ll admit that it pings my skepticism meter (along the lines of “Volvos are dangerous because people feel safe in them and drive like idiots”) but I still hmm over it.
Seen via this article about the punching incident earlier this week, when the Seattle police officer used “the punching technique” when a bystander objected to a jaywalking arrest.
Amazing coincidences!
StandardSo, Wednesday after work I discovered I couldn’t connect to the internet at home. This was annoying, because I have writer-type crap that needs doing, but hey, it happens. I called Qwest tech support and after nearly an hour and a half I was told they’d traced the problem to my modem. I was entering the username and password correctly to connect to the ISP, but the modem wasn’t retaining the info (or something). They could access my modem, but I couldn’t get the internet.
Obviously the solution was to buy a new one, which I did. It wasted an hour and a half (notice the trend) of my evening, but I went out and bought a new Qwest-compatible wireless modem. ($90!)
When I brought it home to install it, guess what? Same. Exact. Problem.
After another long call to tech support (you know how long it took) the guy informed me that, by amazing coincidence, my brand new modem had the exact same problem as my old one. AMAZING! Go back to Best Buy, I was told, and exchange it for another one. And see if you can get them to test it right there in the store.
And… fine. I don’t believe them, but fine. I’m not going after work today (because I have a life[1]) but I will be going first thing tomorrow. So long, most productive writing time of the week! I will have to reschedule you, because I have to fix my fucking internet connection.
And if this doesn’t work, Qwest is out. I’d hate to lose the email address I’ve had for years but I may not have a choice. The main problem is that I don’t have any other really good options. The cable ISP in my area is Comcast, and those bastards are the ones pursuing the lawsuit against the FCC about packet-slowing. To hell with them. What other choices do I have?
::Shakes fist at corporate tech support::
Best Buy provides the email address for the manager of the store I’ll be visiting tomorrow. I’m going to drop him a line to let him know what’s going on and why I’ll be there. I’m sure Gary Mylie will be overjoyed.
[1] Not really
In which I reveal my ignorance, part one
StandardI will shamelessly reveal my ignorance here, because everyone is ignorant about different things, yes? First, I want to link to Oil spill crisis as opportunity, a rather detailed post that covers a lot of ground, including a much friendlier analysis of Obama’s “War on the Oil Spill” speech than my own, a clip of Rahm Emmanuel that I can’t watch, and a really awesome graph (I mean REALLY AWESOME) that shows what our energy sources are and what they go to.
But I want to comment on this:
Someday when battery technologies improve, the fuel and power worlds will blend in the U.S., and there will be strong and direct economic relationships between the production of electric power and the use of oil.
His point is that Obama is using the oil spill (caused by the extraction of a fossil fuel used mainly for transportation) as a basis to regulate coal and natural gas, too, which are used for very different purposes.
And this is something I’ve thought a lot about, too. Once we have a sensible (unlike, say, flywheels) way to store a lot of energy inside a moving vehicle, people will be able to charge their vehicles at home/work, and we’ll be powering our transportation sector (or at least, large portions of it) off the grid.
The grid, of course, can get energy from hydro power, solar, wind, tides, whatever. It doesn’t have to be coal, for instance.
However, my understanding is that the real problem here is the battery (makes sad face). There is no great new battery tech breakthroughs, are there? Most of the advances (to take one prominent example) made in powering portable devices is in LEDs and other ways to reduce power usage, not storage.
But maybe I’m wrong. Have there been big advances in battery technology? As far as I can tell, the barium-titanate powders never panned out. Am I missing something or is this a pipe dream?
But be sure to check out that graph.