Pulp Free

A new item to add to my want list… A simplistic, yet amazingly ingenious invention!

Why didn’t anybody think about a Bic Pen utensil set before?

One of the winners of the Dining in 2015 international design competition–co-organized by Design Boom and Macef, Italy, was ‘din-ink’ by Andrea Cingoli, Paolo Emilio Bellisario, Cristian Cellini & Fancesca Fontana. For other winners, visit Design Boom.

The news has been a buzz on some of the possibilities of Comcast starting to implement bandwidth caps for their cable modem users. Fair enough from the standpoint that many other organizations have reasoned previously. However - for the $30-60 most of us pay for usage doesn’t contain provisions for usage - if I want to have something downloading all day long I should be able to. I chuckled to myself and said - hey - no biggie - I’m with Charter and they never make the news…

Wrong.

“Eventually, we will go to a usage-based solution,” predicted Marwan Fawaz, CTO of Charter Communications Inc., last month at the CableNEXT conference in Santa Clara.

Bummer. I was really hoping for those new DOC SIS 3.0 speeds to come my way without shelling out the $$$. However, my real concern comes in with the details outlined for Time Warner from my favorite Tech Web site, Ars Technica:

Last week, we learned from a leaked memo that Time Warner Cable is preparing to roll out usage-based broadband service tiers to new customers in Beaumont, TX. The company has since confirmed its plans, with monthly bandwidth caps set at 5GB, 10GB, 20GB, and 40GB. Customers who exceed their cap would be hit with an undetermined per-gigabyte charge, but Bell Canada’s overage fees, which range from CAN$1.00 to CAN$7.50 per gigabyte, may give some inkling of where Time Warner’s overage fees will end up. Usage caps are a short-sighted response to capacity constraints, one that’s likely to hurt the company more than it will help in the long run—especially with new broadband options on the horizon.

So where does that put me?

On my most ravish month in December, 2007 - I somehow managed to pull almost 270 GB of data. If my math is right, 100% usage of my 5mb line (for 30 days) would get me close to 1.6 TB - So should I be asking for an 83% refund for bandwidth not used? Or based on the pricing from Canada, would I be charged some $1,750 for overages?

Guess we’ll just have to wait and see…

(I will say that I’ve been much happier with my Charter service since they came out and replaced the entire cable line from the pole to my house last year… Not a single day’s outage… Don’t give me something new to hate you for…)

During my most recent wasteful passage of time scouring the Internet for globules of goodness, I came across an entertaining, useless exercise… Since I’m a musician, this was made even more humorous for me…

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
   The first article title on the page is the name of your band.
2. http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
   The last four words of the very last quote is the title of your album.
3. http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days/
   The third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

My results?

Lookout Studio - Fast As You Can - (Image Credits)

The only way to last a really long time is to build something useful enough that people will want to keep it going after you die, and to cultivate a sense of ownership in other people. In short: make good shit and give it away as fast as you can.
Lisa Williams, The Lessons of Nixon, 05-19-06

Aridification - Make A Sudden Move - (Image Credits)

New York now leads the world’s great cities in the number of people around whom you shouldn’t make a sudden move.
David Letterman (1947 - )

And last but not least (this one made me laugh since SLA’s are just so humorous to begin with… at least in my workplace…)

Service Level Agreement - Rarest Thing I Know - (Image Credits)

Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway (1899 - 1961)

To be fair, most of these selections were first time through - but Wikipedia gave me some hardships because it liked spitting out names of people, countries, foreign names, and strangely enough - names of rock bands already in existence! And Flickr was just terribly slow (and they mentioned their databases being a little cranky right now… boooo!) So give your own cover a chance… Let me know what you come up with!

I’ve been a member of Netflix since the time of caves and torches. I love the service… Dropping movies into my queue so that I don’t have to remember what I want to watch keeps my head clear for other, more important thoughts. However, lately - Netflix seems to be slowly less interested in keeping me happy. You see - I think I’ve been unprofitable to them. I essentially watch too many DVDs. How did I come to this confusion? I haven’t had a single movie ship from my queue in almost a week. Curious about this behavior - I Googled a few choice keywords and found Web sites have done calculations pinpointing such a phenomenon.

To save you from my own dribble - check on the background of such an unfortunate realization on these Web sites: Essentially:

• Tip For Beating Netlix Throttle
• Frequent Netflix Renters Sent To Back Of The Line
• Manuel Villanueva - My Opinion Of Netflix
• Netflix Customer Support On Throttling

So what am I waiting on? Something so esoteric that Netflix probably only has one copy of a DVD? Naaaa… Movies like The Bourne Ultimatum and Shrek the Third.

What annoys me the most is that I’ve had Bourne Ultimatum on my “Saved” movies queue since I heard it was coming out. It’s number 1 on my list and I’ve been sitting waiting for it to ship. Now perhaps since I have it listed as HD DVD it might be taking longer? But c’mon. People are waiting and Netflix can’t pick up a few more copies of a popular movie almost a month since it came out? Ugh.

I’ve only rented 14 movies in the last 30 days… And most of those only came from the bottom of my queue… I’m waiting a few more days with open slots until I’m pegged to cancel this membership… How in the world can I have unlimited movie rentals when my queue is full and Netflix isn’t shipping any movies? So I’m waiting now… to see when the first movie of 10 ship…

(Oops! Forgot to add my throttled tag…)