American Internet Concerns

Today I read the following post: It's Time to Break Up AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, Time Warner and the Rest of the Telecoms | | AlterNet and it got me to thinking about a subject that I've often thought about quite a bit because it's important to me. In case you can't tell from the link, the subject has to do with home internet from the telecom providers in the US that provide broadband internet. According to that report, America is 15th in broadband speed in the world behind countries like Hong Kong and South Korea. It's sad to me to find out that the average service in America is only 5 Mbps.

Obviously, the current average is better than it was in the 90's, but we shouldn't settle for what we have when we know that better things exist. Another problem with the service has to do with the prices we pay for broadband internet. A very small number of companies, usually as high as 2 in a given area, own all of the infrastructure and can set high rates because consumers don't really have a choice of anything else. Ideally, there would be more than a couple service providers competing for our business, which would help reduce the cost of service for consumers, and encourage service providers to invest in infrastructure to keep up with their competition. The end result would be faster internet at lower prices, making it possible for the United States to catch up with other countries. If we don't keep our abilities in this area, the US is likely to fall behind other countries in innovation and eventually lose our position as a world power.

Cell phone Family plans

I made a post previously about cell phone data plans so I figured it could be helpful to make another post since I recently looked into pricing for a friend of mine looking for unlimited texting and data plans for his family (2 lines only). Here is a list of the results, but please note that not all plans are the same even though I did my best to find the same or similar configurations. All plans have unlimited texting and data unless otherwise specified and the minimum voice plan. Listed below are the monthly prices.

• $160: AT&T 550 minutes (4GB with tethering for one line and 2GB for the second line. Add $20 to get tethering on the second line)
• $130: Sprint 1500 minutes
• $140: T-mobile 750 minutes
• $160: Verizon 700 minutes

As you can see, AT&T is the only carrier that doesn't have an unlimited data plan, although most of my research suggests that it is very unlikely to surpass even the lower 2GB in a month using the cell data plan. Also, the details as to which plans include tethering to other devices is unclear in some cases. If that's something important to you, you probably should talk to a sales representative or 7 to figure out what the true story is. Good luck on your hunt.

Idea for those "catch the bad guy" tv shows

I just had a good idea for how the "good guys" could catch a bad guy in one of those CSI-type investigation shows. First the bad guy has to live in one of those states where it's illegal to text while driving. Then the good guys trick him to allow them to have access to his cell phone records to get out of a traffic ticket so they can see the incriminating evidence in his text history. Oh, this is so good that it probably has already been used.

A simple change for the better

I had a discussion with a friend about how some of the ages commonly thought of as checkpoints in your life should probably be changed. In particular, the age for driving should be moved to 17, smoking age to 19 and drinking to 23. Now you might be thinking, why should the age for all of these things be moved? Well quite simply, it's because the new ages would all be prime numbers, and being a prime number just makes you better than other numbers. Plus then the age requirement for being president of the United States of America could be moved to 37, giving me another 2 years before I would qualify.

Monosodium Glutamate

So I've been thinking lately about how much I like food with MSG. Actually, that's not exactly true. More truthfully it has been brought to my attention recently that some food I tend to eat regularly happens to have MSG in its ingredients. Now I, as most people who have seen homstarrunner.com, thought that MSG had negative effects on stomach lining for at least hand drawn cartoon girls on lined filler paper. However, according to a Mayo Clinic page about MSG, it turns out that MSG is generally considered safe for humans to eat. The FDA even considers it a food product. I for one am glad that the makers or Doritos have had the presence of mind to include MSG in their products to increase the savoriness.

Depression

I recently read a post about something Michael Todd said at the recent Game Developer Conference. He develops games as a profession, but the interesting part is how he modifies his work to deal with depression. As mentioned in the Choice of Games Blog : Five Tactics for Designing Games While Depressed, he has 5 tactics to keep himself productive, knowing that he is regularly depressed.

The primary focus of these tactics is to focus on rewards and to do your best to break up the boring or tedious parts of your job (every job has these) with things you're excited about. A big part of this is choosing things that excite you and developing in a way that allows you to more quickly see results. He also suggests using others to bounce your ideas off of. In his case, let people play your game sooner rather than later to give you feedback. Another important aspect is to focus on things that play to your strengths. So if you happen to really not enjoy math, don't work as an accountant. In general, you should do as much of what you like as you can, and avoid the things you don't like if possible. That doesn't mean to put off the things you don't like indefinitely, but if you find yourself in a job that is 80% unenjoyable tasks, then maybe you should consider a career change.

As part of this discussion, he suggests getting a tool for keeping track of what you spend your time on. Here are some tools that might help you:

Mac: Time Sink, Pomodoro

Windows: ProcastiTracker

Write a song?

Here's a little cheat sheet to writing a song. I am posting this mostly so that I can find it again in the future when I'm too lazy to think, but this seems fairly well put together. So if anyone is interested in coming up with a brain-dead chord progression that will probably be good enough for whatever song you might be working on then this is it. A simple set of instructions to follow that will get you past the tough musical part and on to the lyrics part.

Thinking

I've decided that in an effort to get my blog to once again become active, I'm going to base much of my blogging on things I read else where on the internet. I installed this handy blogger extension to my web browser to help me quote and link these interesting pages. So for my first entry this year, I draw on some thoughts from a blog post about aging computer programmers losing their skills. Now while this post is specifically about programming, the points I will address I believe to be applicable to more general audiences. Davy Brion mentions his simple plan to keep his skills up in his Thoughts On Developer Longevity:

"

1. Keep feeling stupid

2. Question what you know and think, all the time

"

Now I for one agree much more with the second point than the first. However, to address these points in order, "Keep feeling stupid" is a directive to keep from being too confident in ones own skills to be willing to change and learn new things, especially from other people who might be younger and less experienced. I think that is a very valid motivation, but at the same time, "feeling stupid" can be a demoralizing practice if not done right. I would modify the first point to say, "Stay humble" since humility does not require the self-destructive practice of feeling stupid.

As for the second point, "Question what you know and think, all the time." I try to live by this rule in all aspects of my life. People close to me may notice that I ask a lot of questions and that I twist words around and wonder why things are said how they are said. For me, this is my way of questioning not only what I think, but what everyone else thinks. I know at times people think that my questions are meant to point out something wrong with what they have said or thought, but if anyone is reading this, I am much more hard on myself than I am on people around me. Every time I say something I ask myself why I said it that way. When I step over a crack in the sidewalk, I ask myself why I did that and whether it served a useful purpose or was merely an interesting diversion. So to me, questioning myself is a constant effort that I can achieve on my own. My greatest growth however comes from questioning others and learning about who they are and why they think the way they think. I truly believe that everyone has something good to offer the world, and I for one would like to hear your answer as to why you say "egg" they way you say it if you happen to be able to figure it out.