Chasmo’s Place
Just a biomed, ma’am, just a biomed.Live from my iPhone
Well WordPress released an iPhone client, so let’s see if I will start writing again. I don’t know if I will, I want to but I am not promising anything.
Yesterday was my 40th. Man am I old. How did that happen? 2 months to go for B/C. That’s it for now.
Obama’s True Colors
Why aren’t the Democrats in an uproar that Obama completely ignored West Virgina? If he is willing to ignore people now because the polls say he will lose, will he be able to fight losing battles when in office. I am not talking about battles that are lost before they start, but those tough battles that are being fought because they need to be fought, even though probably can’t be won easily. Tax reform, immigration, the Iraq War, the war on terror, fair trade, global warming… If he isn’t going to easily win these will he just ignore them? That is what he shouted from the mountain yesterday in WV, oh wait he never went there. Well I hope not, but all of his track records in the Senate show that is his pattern.
Stuff
Well I am slacking again. On the way to work I was listening to TWiT and Leo was talking about filling 5 hours of video time a day from his new office, and everyone was ripping him, because he states he is going to put real content up, not just a Chris Pirillo sit in front of a webcam for hours, and thinking that I want make sure I put something up everyday. Who knows what it will be. Today is a hodge-podge of ideas. So, here we go…
Well my biggest hit on these pages was my rant about Comcast, and how their customer service just plain sucks. Since then I have 3 outstanding calls to these VPs that were calling me, none of which have been returned. Great job guys. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, and obvious from my experience, Comcast has people whose whole job is to scan the interwebs for rants about Comcast. Well that alone speaks volumes about how much of a reality this is. If you need people to do this, you are merely plugging big holes in your ship with a paper bag, it simply doesn’t work. While I think it is wise for them to do this, because they certainly get a lot of bad PR on the web, calling the posters up and giving them a month free or something similar doesn’t fix the whole, it masks them. I am sure, from talking to people who have written me regarding these entries, those whom have similar sites posted to their free web page supplied by Comcast, have had their accounts either blocked or their site blocked, or accounts simply cancelled. None of these things do anything to fix the problem either. What it does do is upset the people that are posting these entries, such as myself, even more, hence they go elsewhere and post more similar entries. What Comcast needs to do is focus on fixing the issues, not painting over them. Returning phone calls, hiring enough people to man the phones, so no one waits on hold for more than 5 minutes to talk to a human. Having humans, instead of computers answer the phone. Here is an idea, giving people what they pay for, instead of figuring out how to charge them more for services that they already paid for. Now that word is out that they are capping what people can download, and how much, they are working on plans to put a 250GB cap on their unlimited plans. Doesn’t sound unlimited to me, does it to you? Now, you may be saying, “Chasmo, 250GB, is a lot.” Well right now it may be, but if you look at what is going on out there, people are starting to download movies to rent from iTunes, XBox store and amazon, not to mention the music and TV shows. It all adds up pretty quickly, and is going to quickly become more and more prevalent. They already throttle the download speeds they give you so that you get slower speeds than promised. Yes their ads say up to, the highway signs say speed limit 65, which means you can go up to 65 MPH, how many people really go slower? The fact is you expect that speed. And to throttle it without telling you is just bad business. The fact of the matter is, the executives may have grown up where consumers didn’t have a voice, consumers now have a voice, and once more people are listening, you know that, you hire people to watch that, now the next step is to actually fix the problems, not squelch them.
Ok, so enough Comcast bashing, no matter how well deserved. This AM, I woke and made Squish and I lunch, she a Lebanon bologna, salami, and swiss and a German Bologna for me. I have been on a Bologna kick lately, not sure why, but hey its cheap, and thats a requirement right now, and I like it so why not. Oh and a pear for me, Squish still didn’t eat an apple in her bag, so it stays. I am also into pears again. An old favorite.
Thursday we leave for Jekyll Island for Emily’s wedding. We are flying down on my NWA frequent flyer miles. If we couldn’t do that, we wouldn’t be going, it is simply too expensive. We were hoping to have a new picture of B/C, but alas the anatomy ultrasound can’t be done until next week. Shannon plead our case to Dr. Ufberg, but he simply told her, you can’t take a picture of what isn’t there yet. Oh well, but we get a new picture on the 28th!
Oh, and I am not wearing pants.
Leo’s Got To Go Pee
Well I still got nothing. This weekend I did nothing. I have lots to do, but did nothing. So my wrtinging here is about nothing. I am listening to MacBreak Weekly, and Leo just anounced he has to go pee, hence today’s title. Did I mention I got nothing? Did you notice I got nothing? Oh well the phone is ringing, maybe I got something…nope nothing. Maybe later…
It’s Been Awhile
Well I really don’t have a lot to say right now, hence no posts. I am hoping that tomorrow, or over the weekend I will be inspired to write some. Just for fun I have added my Amazon Wishlist, so if you feel you must buy me something, for any reason, I have posted some ideas for you. No charge to you, yet another free service.
Also if you took notice, my last flickr post was of another Philadelphia Parking Athority truck parked illegally outside the hospital. They should be fined 4 times what anyone else gets fine as they set the rules, or so they think.
Clinton Wins PA, Looses The US
Yesterday Clinton won the primary for PA. You go girl! 55-45. This is great Clinton gets to stay in the race, would have anyway, by all accounts. But is that what is good for the Democrat party? I don’t think so.
Let’s face it with all of the W fiascos, this race is the Democrats race to loose. Last week the first poll I have seen with these results came out, McCain beats either Obama or Clinton. Up until then all of the polls had either candidate beating McCain. Why? Well I think its simple, every week the Obama/Clinton campaigns get ugly and uglier, with most of the mud being thrown at each other, instead of whom it should be thrown. Meanwhile McCain can sit back and watch the slugfest. Both of their ratings are falling, and even Obama is saying McCain is better than W, while not an endorsement, not bad. By Clinton staying in the race, which by all accounts, she really can’t win anymore, she is keeping her party divided, and in fact helping the division grow. Now after the Conventions it will be much harder for them to pull the party back together to show their unity which we now know is really non-existent. How can either say they are unified now? After all this mud slung.
If McCain were smart, instead of playing his own ads, he should play theirs and help their own little mud slugfest. They keep adding fuel to their own bonfire, and unfortunately they have tied each other to the post in the middle.
On another note, last night made some fantastic burgers on the grill, but forgot I still had some fresh corn. I guess tonight I have that. Yum! Oh, and this AM, I can’t find my watch, how rude!
Primary Day In PA
Well as I am not registered as a Democrat I can’t vote in this Primary. But apparently the zealots outside the polling places can still harass me with their ludicrous ideals. Its very funny actually, because these people seem to think that because they are involved in someones campaign they know everything about the elections, and yet when you ask them a question, as I did of someone this AM with a Hillary T-Shirt on, outside the firehouse polling place, “Hillary was in charge of Bill’s health care policy, and could not get it passed then, why does she think she can now? And more importantly, she, as her husband did, if the polls change on what is important to Americans, will she change to the new subject and drop(thats the issue, things didn’t get finished [this happened to their health care]) the last subject?” They just give you a blind stare and smile. Or my favorite was one of her cohourts, “It’s better than Bush!” Well yes, it would be, but that is irrelevant, Bush isn’t up again, and too the candidates own admission we need someone who can run the place, not someone who is better than someone that isn’t even running. The problem is we are still too worried about who is to blame, and in fact all of the candidates are too blame for the problems with this country as they are all elected officials now, and have all partaken in getting us here, weather they want to own up to it or not. We have a tendency in the United States of thinking if we deny something, it is the same as wiping it away and it never happened. Not so. Hillary and McCain voted for the war, Obama wasn’t there. The whole, we were lied to to bullshit, is just that, if you look back pre-war you can find speeches of Bill Clinton stating that he was given intelligence saying Saddam Hussein had WMD. The fact is if we were lied too, it started over a decade ago, prior to W’s policies. Yes we shouldn’t be in Iraq, no, we never should have gone. But the fact is we are there, and no we shouldn’t run away from it, as Obama and Clinton think we should. And no we shouldn’t be there for 100 years as McCain thinks we should. What do you say? I oversimplified their arguments. Yes I did, to show another point, most of us know what Katie Couric, or whomever we watch nightly, if we watch, told us, not what these candidates actually said. And why? I think its because we are sick of hearing these sound bites. This election has gone on entirely too long, we need election reform, and these are my ideas:
1. Abolish the whole Primary thing. If the big parties think we still need it (who is running the show, the Parties or the people?), fine, 90 days prior to the election, on the same day for the entire country(everyone’s vote matters), we have a Primary. Everyone can vote, not just if you are registered Democrat or Republican, everyone. That way we see whom the people really wanted running. And to make it better, those running have 90 days prior to get their word out. We are in the 21st century now, we now when a candidate farts in a corn field, not ten minutes later. We don’t need years for the election, we need less than one.
2. The Candidates must have a better than 90% attendance rate at their current position. If they are not showing up for work now, who says they are going to once they are elected. Its that simple.
3. Ads. We will start with posters. Put your posters up wherever you want (public spaces), but 72 hours post election they must all be down. Hefty fines to be imposed on those who don’t take down their posters, lets say $5 for every standard letter size poster found. $10/every 4x letters size poster… Those fines to be paid by the party to the cities they are found in for their parks commission or such. Keeping the city green. Within 30 days. TV ads, everyone is sick of these things. All candidates are allowed 1 commercial per night, 3 during the day(must be used between midnight and 6PM, don’t you lose them, no banking), per day. Those ads may not be of the negative variety. If they are, there opposing Candidates will be granted 1 more Prime Time ad (even if the negative ad was done during the day), to be paid for by the candidate who did the negative one. These ads are to inform us why we are to vote for you, not why we shouldn’t vote for the other candidate. We, the people, don’t want to see your ads all the time, and hopefully with these ads you, the candidates will get out the information you want. These ads include those made by those extremist groups such as Move On. So if they put up a negative Democrat ad, all of the Republican candidates lose that prime time ad, thus they are hurting the candidates they supposedly support.
4. Debates. There will be 6 3 hour Debates during the election season. Approximately one every other week. This is the way you word really gets out. All questions will be sent in by the people, not the press, to be chosen randomly from a hat, during the debate. The candidates may see all of the questions prior, but will not know which of the thousands will be asked, during the debate. The time will be divided equally among the candidates, to answer the questions. All debates will be televised as well as shown on the internet and radio. Any station may televise all or any of the debates, but must be shown in their entirety commercial free.
5. Campaign contributions. This is a tough one, debated by all. First of all this is a government for the people, by the people, that being said, corporations have no business buying into the election, and all should be banned. Second of all, individuals have and should continue to have limits to what they can contribute, but what should be mandates is all contributions should be anonymous. If no one knows who gave what, benefits and retributions for those contributions can’t happen. How to do this? Well all contributions happen to a central “bank”, stripped of all information IDing the contributor, and then passed to the candidate.
6. Press. This country has one of the greatest things going for it, freedom of the press. But the press very proudly proclaims one candidate over another. The press in the US, does less reporting these days that editorializing things. For instance in one paper a headline may be “Firefighters Loose 2 to Fire” and another paper “Firefighters Save 3″. Its the same fire, but one chose to highlight the 2 that were killed over the 3 that were saved. The same happens in politics. In fact newspapers proclaim whom they endorse, TV has yet to outright do that. How to stop this? Well one way is to have them mandate the last page in the front section be a page where the paper has to print whom they have endorsed over the last 2 years. This way you can look, in the same place, to see where they are leaning, and they can still print whatever headline they want, without effecting it. TV is more difficult, maybe putting the D or R after the reporters name? I am not sure what to do, but that is the way I am leaning. Radio, maybe TV also, a special time a day a disclaimer played. Now this disclaimer can’t be at 4AM or a time when most are asleep, maybe at the end of the main newscast, stating the leanings of the station. I don’t really like doing this at all, but most people don’t understand that the news can, and knowingly does, lean one way or another.
…to be continued…
Walkabout
Squish and I walked the city for a few hours yesterday. It was a beautiful day, I think it got up to about 85°F, Squish got a little sun burned, and I took over 200 photos, two of which seen here, actually they are made up of ab out 12 photos, but stitched together into two. I have to work on the coloring of the Delaware River one, but I still think they cam out ok. Had lunch at Mrs. K’s Koffee Shop, came home and died on the couch, well got to work on these photos. It was just nice to gt out and play a little.
This morning I am running over to the Hot Begal and replenish our supplies. Yum! (Can I say that even thought the Hot Bagel isn’t Red Robin?) Squish has to work a this afternoon at Traffic. Probably do a few other errands today. Anways, thats all for now.
Digital Media
So, on my way to work, I was listening to the latest Mac Break Weekly, and again the topic of NBC and iTunes came up. For those whom don’t know last year NBC took down all of their shows from iTunes citing that the copy protection isn’t strong enough. Then they started their own online service, Hulu.com to show their wares. The difference is that on iTunes you pay once, $1.99, and on Hulu you get the media for free. On iTunes you can watch it anywhere, on anything. On Hulu, only there, in your browser, with all the ads put into the show. Now NBC says they will come back if Apple fixes their copy protection. The thing they really want is to be paid the $1.99 every time you watch the show, and for every device you want to watch it on. For example, if I watch it on my Notebook, pay the $1.99. If I want to watch it on my iPhone, $1.99, my media center, $1.99. They think they can get away with that because the advertisers do pay them for every time you watch it. They don’t understand that those days are ending. We, the consumers are fighting back that model. How many people Tivo their TV viewing and skip the commercials when watching back now? I rarely watch live TV, I will wait an extra half hour so that I can watch and skip thru the ads. If they want to keep ads, product placement is the way to go now. Have House drink a Coke, have Denny Crane eat a Whopper and so on. Yes we don’t have way to know their specials anymore, but do we really care? Local TV, reruns can all show their ads like usual. Then NBC can charge Coke and Burger King every time the episode is shown. NBC says they will put these $1.99 episodes up on the internet, and people can download these for free, pirate them. Well someone has to explain to them that there are plenty of programs that will rip episode from their flash players, and thus they can still do that, only now they only got the pennies(if that), from the advertisers, instead of the $1.99 from iTunes, and they can still pirate them. Surprise.
Merlin Mann on the episode was talking about how the NBC(Big Media) model is dead. The world is now digital, and NBC can’t turn it back, no matter how much they want to, todays kids expect all of these things for free now, they won’t pay, its that simple. My generation will if we can, but if you take that away we will find another way to get our content. I now I look at iTunes first, and then go another route. NBC has taken that away. I would use Hulu, but many of the times I want to sit at my computer and watch a show, I don’t have that internet connection, so I simply can’t. If I buy it I can watch it at my convenience. So I have to find my own way. Again, todays kids go the other way first, and hulu only reinforces that model. Andy Ihnatko understands, but thinks that NBC is too big with too many people that depend on that money to pay their mortgages, and thus can’t really change. My feeling is that many of the big media companies have been gouging their consumers for so long they think that they are entitled to that money now. For example, for many years when CDs were new the record companies were paying close to $5(very conservative estimate) for making a CD, and selling them for $16 to $20. They would say that next year they would drop the prices to get closer in line with the realities of cost, but right now not many people have CD players so we have to have the prices high to make a profit. Ok, but next year never came, but their cost kept dropping. Hmmm. Guess what the execs at those companies salaries were growing at a much higher rate than the average. Hmmm. Now they want their increases to stay the same and yet the consumers have less money. Does that work? No. They fact is they have to change. The music is out there. The TV is out there. Understand that. Its time to change your model. I think that a major problem is the executive salaries are highly inflated and you have gotten away with it too long, so you think they are actually the value of the service. This is not just the media companies that have this issue, its really all major industries in the US, hey kids the vast majority of the countries can’t carry your colossal weight anymore, you are going to have to cut back, you are the fat that needs to be trimmed. You are not as valuable as you think. In most cases if you took all of the higher echelon out the companies would run the same or better. Think about that, talking about turning the wheel doesn’t turn it, the people pushing that gear do.
NFL Fires Shots at Comcast
This little snip was sent to my by my friend Buster:
NFL | NFL Network filing complaint
Thu, 17 Apr 2008 16:15:57 -0700
The Associated Press reports the NFL Network is filing a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission against Comcast. The network announced Thursday, April 17, it served Comcast with the required 10-day notice of its intent to file a complaint. The NFL Network is accusing Comcast of discriminatory and anticompetitive treatment in violation of the Cable Act of 1992
I doubt that anything will come of this, but it would help if other groups go after Comcast also. I don’t think that the NFL is made of Angels, they have their own way of gouging the consumer, but how many companies to I want to slap?
