Coffee Klatch

This guy’s a true MANUALIST!

Here’s a funny blog post I was directed to today. It’s all about the spam you get and how wrong it is. Well, actually, it’s about all the spam that RON gets and how wrong it is! Pretty funny stuff!! Listen up, Internet!

I really can’t understand cable companies. They give you a nice discount to sign up and then if you decide to stick with them, they raise your rates. I mean, it would make sense to me that if you continued with them longer, they should REWARD your loyalty by giving you perks or lower rates or something. So why do they charge you MORE for staying with them?

I signed up for Comcast’s “Triple Play” last year, which gave me cable for $33, high-speed internet access for $33, and digital voice phone service for $33 a month. Of course, there’s always hidden fees like modem rental, $10/month extra for DIGITAL cable, cable box rental, etc. Plus taxes on the phone service, but that’s going to happen regardless of your phone service.

So this year I found out that after this startup deal was finished my rates were going to go up by almost $50 a month. I called them this last week to find out how much prices were going up and to compare my options. I also looked at all the other options I have for Cable/Satellite TV, I found out that DISH Network had the best prices overall. $29.99/month for the Top 100 package. DirecTV was over $40 for a similar package. Comcast’s basic digital cable was going from $43 to $69 a month. Basic analog cable is $54 a month and I could get it down to $37 if I dropped all the “interesting” channels like History Channel, Disney, Nickelodeon, etc.

Once I called Comcast today to cancel my cable service (since I just got DISH Network installed), they offered to give me a discount and stay basically at the current rate if I kept all 3 services. While I saw that as a decent option, I’d already signed up with DISH. My internet access is going from the original $33/month to $43/month. Phone service is going from $33 to $45, but I need to keep it because otherwise the internet service will go up to $57/month. Plus $3/month for the cable modem rental. And then they surprise me with an extra $18 charge for them to “downgrade” my cable, meaning come out and pick up the receiver and disconnect the cable TV service.

And all because I can’t get DSL at this house. Otherwise I’d use Earthlink for DSL, DISH for satellite TV, and something non-AT&T for phone. But apparently we’re in a pocket where DSL just doesn’t reach, so if I want high-speed internet access (and I assuredly do), I have to use a cable modem.

BTW, DISH has some discounts now that basically give me HD service for free. At least for $10 months. But I can downgrade if I need to when it comes to it. Unless I get so addicted to HDTV that I’m willing to pay a little more for it. So now I pay about the same as I used to, but I have DISH network with HDTV and local channels in HD right through my satellite box.

We’re probably all familiar with how liberally the English language borrows from other languages. But that’s not really the right word for it. Borrowing is gentle and implies returning the favor. I just found this quote on my friend Liz’s Facebook site. I’m not sure of the source, but they’ve sure got it right. And in a humorous way.

“English doesn’t borrow from other languages; English follows other languages down dark alleys, knocks them over, and goes through their pockets for loose grammar.”

I love it!!

You’ve probably heard that the Simpsons Movie is coming out this summer. Specifically, this Friday. The website has lots of fun things, including making your own Simpsons-style avatar and, of course, games. Seems like every movie has a website where you can play games related to the movie.

Anyway, there’s also a related website where you can upload a photo and “simpsonize” it. The website is pretty busy and often slow. I had to try several times just to get the page to load. Also, I haven’t been successful in saving the image I created or even emailing it to myself. I had to to a PrintScreen and paste the image into MS Paint and cut out just the image. Anyway, that’s what’s displayed here. I had to work hard to find a picture that would work. It has to be a closeup of the head and shoulders, with decent contrast and a big enough size. They tell you all that on the site, though.

If you Simpsonize a photo of yourself, please comment on my post here with a link to your new picture.

The UK’s Inquirer news site reported today that Wikipedia now has a page for reporting errors found in Encyclopedia Britannica. Some of the errors uncovered include birthdays, the birth name of Bill Clinton, the definition of NP problems in mathematics (whatever THEY are ), and other scientific, linguistic, historical facts.

Does this mean Wikipedia is a better source for information than Britannica? It depends what information you want. In general, the rule of thumb is that you should ALWAYS double-check your information with a second source before you use it in any way that matters (like a research paper or blog post). While Wikipedia DOES self-correct rather quickly due to the vast number of people who follow different topics, you can always come across misinformation added or changed by someone right before you loaded the page. No matter HOW authoritative a source of information is, you should always cross-check the information with other sources, if only to make sure you didn’t misunderstand what you read.

For what it’s worth, Wikipedia and Britannica are more alike than you might think. Many of the articles on Wikipedia have been taken (literally cut and pasted) right from the 1911 version of the Encyclopedia Britannica, which is now in Public Domain.

Do you want to know more about how Wikipedia works? I mean REALLY works? There’s a great article published on the Harvard Business School’s website called HBS Cases: How Wikipedia Works (or Doesn’t) that discusses how a Wikipedia article was started, recommended for deletion, actually deleted, restarted in greater detail, recommended for deletion again, etc. It’s a little long, but it’s VERY good and should be required reading for anyone who works with technology and information.

It’s time for another comic relief post. Again from The Book of Ratings, by Lore Fitzgerald Sjöberg, which is a terrificly funny book, as I’ve mentioned before. If you find these at all funny, you’ve GOT to buy the book. It’s loaded with stuff like this! Just click the link above.

Today’s humorous topic: Aspects of the Weather Report, with commentary and ratings.

Aspects of the Weather Report

Humidity Index
While I appreciate the attempt to give me a context for my misery, I find the calculation of how hot it feels like to be less than useful. First off, it’s wrong. When it’s 95 degrees in California, I don’t think “Hey, this is just like 85 degrees in Nashville in July.” I’m just glad I’m not there. I think that the weatherfolk should at least attempt to be more evocative. “It’s ninety-two degrees, but it feels like you’re being stuffed fully clothed into a sauna and made to breathe through a wet sock.” D

Fronts
Another thing I appreciate about weatherpersons is their cheerful crusade to educate me. “There’s a warm front coming in off this high-pressure area in the north, and it’s running into a cold front here, and you know what that means!” says the weatherman. “Locusts?” I venture. “Thunderstorms!” says the weatherman. “Well, you could have just said that,” I reply. Then I throw a sock at the screen. C

Forecast Diagrams
Once upon a memory, the forecast was simple and stationary. You had your sun and your clouds. The clouds could rain or snow. Maybe you’d see the word “wind” if there was a ratings battle going on. The local all-weather station now has animated weather that, I think, is supposed to provide a sense of time, so that if there are clouds on the left side of the Monday box but not on the right, that means Monday will start out cloudy and clear up. And if it’s night, the “next few hours” forecast has a moon. The clouds actually go behind the moon, so it’s not meteorologically accurate, but points for trying. C+

Temperature Bands
I think of this as the “envy and spite” chart. With one sweeping glance, you can see that Oregon is having a nicer day than you are, but at least you’re not in Missouri. It’s especially easy for me, because as far as my Nordic blood is concerned, blue is good. Some people prefer living in the light yellow areas, but my gaze is always drawn longingly toward Canada. B

Lightning Charts
One of the nice maps they go through on the Weather Channel is the chart of every single lightning strike, usually displayed in this shimmering band of plus and minus signs like an arithmetic book breaking into a riot. I’m sure they have some miraculous satellite that keeps track of these things, but I’d still like to have the job of standing on my porch looking for strikes and counting “one one-hundred, two one-hundred, three one-hundred….” B-

Sweeping Arm Movements
What I want for my birthday is this: a tape of weather reports without the superimposed maps. Just a man or lady standing in front of a blue screen, staring off-camera, babbling about high-pressure areas and making sweeping arm movements. I think that would be hilarious. The sweeping arm movements would really make it for me. B

Well, I got the book yesterday. I pre-ordered from Amazon, who sent me a follow-up email saying that if I wanted to guarantee delivery on the Release Date I should upgrade my shipping method from Free Super Saver Shipping to something more expensive. I declined but I still got the book in the mail on the SAME day.
Ten hours later (yes, I did sleep in the middle, but it was a total of ten) I finished the book. All 759 pages of it.

I won’t give anything away here. I’ll just say that I thought it was a pretty good book. Good story and decent ending. Not how I would have ended it, but still good (after all, I’m not the author, am I?). Yes, some people do die in this book and you do get to see some things that you’ve been waiting for. And I think there are some questions that don’t get answered by the end of the book, making the reader (me at least) wish she’d given a few more details in the final chapter.

Like any book, there were some slower points and some busier points, but the story moved along pretty well. And when you look at the series, from book one to book seven, it makes a good story with decent character development throughout. And, yet, I’m glad it’s over. Of course there’s still the potential for more books that are set before or after the seven years of this series, but at least this series is over now.

There’s a website that you can visit and plug in the URL of your blog and find out its rating. You can also use this for Facebook or MySpace pages and for websites in general. I think what it does is scan the site for words that would be construed as less suitable for children, etc.

The only catch is the alt-text info and the link info below it are ads for online dating since it’s provided by Mingle2, an online dating service. So I suggest that if you want to get your blog or website rating, use this tool but then remove the Online Dating link and alt-text. I changed my alt text to “This blog is rated G.”

Yes, you’re reading it correctly. A PINK dolphin was seen in a lake in Louisiana a couple weeks ago. Apparently they’re a rare but not-unheard-of type of albino dolphin. They say it’s a bottlenose dolphin and not related to a pinkish breed of dolphins that live in the Amazon River.

Story by FOX News.

In other marine news, a WHALE was caught in June off the coast of Alaska that had the head of a nineteenth-century harpoon embedded in it. Whales are reported to live for up to 200 years, but this is the first time one has been documented so precisely (between 115 and 130 years old).