You may be asking yourself why I switched in the first place.  Well as you all know we have very few choices when it comes to broadband Internet.  We have our phone company or our cable company and that is it.  If one of them makes you mad, you only have one other place to go.  I live in an older neighborhood where the infrastructure is crumbling beneath us.  Our phone lines are 50+ years old and our cable lines date back to the 1980’s.  This is just another reason we plan on moving in the next two years.  Back to the subject.  When we moved to the Oklahoma City area in 1999 we had then Southwestern Bell DSL.  The service was decent most of the time but then  when they would go down, we could never get in touch with technical support because of their terrible automated phone system.  A person wants to scream about 15 minutes into the circle of death pressing 1 for English and 2 for Spanish and so on… 

What is a person to do?  Switch to the competitor, Cox Cable.  I did this around 2002 and again I was pleased for a while before we have the same failures.  Again, we have some very old infrastructure both inside the house and outside.  After losing connections over and over again, we switched back to AT&T in 2006 knowing what we were getting ourselves into.  I must say this time the service was much better than before and hey!  My old phone number was available that I had when I was a kid so I chose it.  The service was outstanding up until a couple months ago and now we are losing service left and right.  Before you say anything, I know the problem is outside my house because I disconnected all wiring from inside the house and then connected the modem directly to the box outside the house. 

Once again, what is a person to do?  Go to the competitor Cox Cable.  This is the only recourse that we have when the system is not working.  I know many of you are saying… Why would you ever go to DSL when  you could have cable?  Cable is faster than DSL in almost every case!  Well, this may be true in theory but for the average user, you cannot tell the difference in performance. 

I have six computers on my network and one of them streams audio 24 hours a day.  There are three hard wired desktops and three laptops.  Heck there are seven if you count my phone that also uses wifi for my unlicensed mobile access (UMA).  My son uses Bit Torrent (legally) because he has a band with his friends.  In addition I have tested my network running Skype video on two computers, and streaming video on Ustream.com at the same time.

With all this running simultaneously, our network runs flawlessly on the AT&T Elite DSL. This Elite plan is supposed to supply up to 6 mega bits per second (Mbps) and I have tested around  5.4 Mbps at the best.  The cable plan that I am subscribing too is a 12 Mbps and I have had the 10 Mbps before.  My dad already has the 12 Mbps cable and it is very good.  One thing that is worthy of pointing out, it does not matter if you have 8,000 Gbps fiber optic cable going to your house, if the web site on the other end is bogged down, the page is not going to load any faster.  This is something that some people do not understand.  If you are sharing files (legally) and 100 people are downloading the same file, you are going to get a slow download even if you have broadband.  The point in all this is that for the average user, the difference between DSL and Cable is negligible.   I came to this realization years ago so the supposed improved performance of cable is barely even noticeable to the average user.

There was another reason this time for the switch.  The telephone number that I now have is the same number that my parents had when I was a kid.  Unfortunately these numbers are assigned a three digit prefix that are assigned to AT&T for Del City.  If I were to move to another suburb in the Oklahoma City metro, I could not take this number with me.  By porting it over to Cox telephone, then I can take it with me as long as I stay within the 405 area code.  This means if I move to Midwest City, Moore, Oklahoma City or anywhere else in the metro, I can keep my childhood phone number.

And finally there is one more reason for changing.  In December 2007 we had an incredible ice storm as you may remember in my post on December 11, 2007.  This storm damages power lines all over the metro including cable lines.  The last couple of months I have noticed Cox cable running brand new lines in my neighborhood.  I am not sure if this has anything to do with repairing the old and damaged lines or if there is an actual upgrade that would enhance the performance.  In either case, it is certain to be new infrastructure that will help eliminate connection drops.  The old lines were silver, likely aluminum lines while now there are black thick lines.

I hope this helps to explain my reasoning for the switch this time.  The change will not actually happen until next week.  This is one of the reasons that I use my own domain and a web based email as my email account.  This way, if I change, it is transparent to those on the outside.  I never give or even use the email given to me by my ISP.  I am anxious to see how well the new service will work.  I am pretty sure that it will be more dependable if for no other reason the new cable lines being installed.  They have already upgraded the ones behind my house.  I look forward to trying some bandwidth tests with some of you online.

It is interesting that despite my many railings against Google Fanboys, I have become one.  It seems that every time I turn around there is another free toy that I can play with.  In fact I am typing this using the Google Chrome browser.  My phone has a Google sync application that syncs my Gmail address book, and calendar.  Anything that I put on the web, suddenly comes to my phone.  This pains me to become a fanboy because I have always had a soft spot for Yahoo since I have been with them from the  beginning.  It seems that Yahoo has decided to join forces with Microsoft’s Bing.com.  Bing is also pretty good at search.  I do like to have all of them succeed because I believe competition is always good for the consumer.  If you have one dominant player then creativity can suffer.  This is funny that I talk about creativity when I am the least creative person on the face of the earth.  I am hoping that Bing and Yahoo can finally get to a point where they are competitive again soon.

This morning it rained as I went to work but as usual it was clear and sunny when I got off work. I really hoped that it would stay around until I got off work so I could enjoy it. Our lawn mower broke down or maybe I should say it was purposely destroyed this weekend.  I will not elaborate on here as to not embarrass the person that did it.  Now we need a new mower just so we can mow the lawn and it is getting tall.  I am just hoping that we do not get a fine before we can get the mower replaced.

UPDATE: 19 Aug 2009

I owe this person an apology.  No one broke the lawn mower but rather it vibrated some screws out.  Since the drive shaft is slightly bent, the mower runs out of balance and vibrates as it runs.  I tightened that bolt and mowed three strips and the bolt came back out.  So I just wanted to say that I was wrong.

I will be going to Illinois in a couple weeks on a personal trip.  I will only be spending the night and then heading back the next day since I need to get back to work.  I was supposed to be going to San Antonio on a work related trip this week but I was cut from the list due to financial concerns.  I am actually glad I was this time because there are things going on at home that need to be dealt with.

My work has been so overwhelming lately because there are so many things going on as well as having new trainees.  It is interesting that I am supposed to be training them and I am a trainee myself.  I guess on the bright side, it shows that my supervisor has confidence in me.  I will think the glass is half full .  With so many things going on at work I often forget where I was.  I am the kind of person that likes to take notes and do things in an orderly way.  Unfortunately I work in an environment where we put out fires through email and the phone.  There is always a crisis going on somewhere in the world that needs our immediate attention.  My orderly notes and to do list has degenerated into a pile of yellow sticky notes all over my desk.  I hate disorder and confusion.  I like to complete a task before starting another but that is impossible in my office.  It is amazing how a letter from a General can get our whole office in an uproar.  It is similar to stepping on a red ant bed and then watching the swarm.  Everyone stop what you are doing and focus on this hang nail the General has.  I say this with some humor but there is some truth to it as I guess it should be in this type of environment.  Despite my talk about being outside of my comfort zone, I love my job.  I feel that what I do is important and I try to do my best.  I just wish everyone could be as blessed as I am.  I will be in class the next two days so I should be able to see some calm before returning the hyper crazed zoo that is my office.

Well I thought I would post a few words since I have not posted much lately.  I love blogging just for the heck of it.  Sometimes I vent like a crazed lunatic and sometimes I just want to tell the world about my day.  It is funny how I come across people that are polar opposites.  Some people are so private and think I am crazy for posting my personal thoughts online.  I have people that tell me that “Big Brother” is listening it so you should not post online.  I got over that long ago when I found that you could search for ham radio call signs online.  Also the County Assessor’s office has pictures of everyone’s home online.  There is just too much going on in the world to worry about “Big Brother”.  Others think it is cool and wish they could do it themselves. I considered taking the blog down a few days ago but I think I will leave it up.  If nothing else, it can be used as comedy when I get into one of my rants.  For those that do read, I appreciate it.

I am not trying to pile on Google or Apple but rather trying to keep things into perspective.  As one that loves technology and the inventions that are derived from it I have seen this worship of the newest toys.  A few years ago it was Linux and I must say I was caught up in this one myself.  Then it was Google, and now it is Apple.  These things never last as technology changes.  This Google and Apple phase will pass and then some new giant will arrive.  I remember it was not that long that Yahoo was the new thing.  I can barely muster the strength to visit Digg.com like I use to because the Google and Apple worship is nauseating.  Both companies have some wonderful inventions and I have nothing bad to say about either but sometimes the hysteria is out of proportion with the market share.

This article on Techcrunch is proof that no one is perfect and Google has the same problems as anyone else.  They often get the reputation that nothing goes wrong there and they are exempt from the problems of the rest of the world.  This company is no different than anyone else.  They are just as likely to have problems as anyone else.  I hope the best for them in the future but I hope this reveals to some of the Google Disciples that no one is perfect.

As many of you may know I have posted about how the government does everything the hard way.  Everything we do is usually impacted by a new rule or policy that makes our jobs harder.  Over the last two days at work we have received this message or some rendition of it on our computers.  This is basically telling us that we cannot use any removable media on our computers at work any more.  This is going to virtually shut our office down in the short term.  My office produces Power Point presentations daily.  We take engineering photographs to display issues that are coming up.  With this new policy we cannot unload our work related photographs or reports.  Sometimes we deal with Excel spreadsheets that are so large that the government email will not allow it to go through.  This leaves us with our memory stick to move files from one computer to another.  We do this every day many times a day.

Although they did not post the reason for this policy, it is quite clear why they did this.  It is my opinion that their reasoning is two fold and that is to prevent the spread of virus’ to government computers.  The other reason is to keep people from taking restricted information outside of the government.  I took this screen shot this morning because I was just amazed at these ridiculous blanket policies.  We have the capability to scan these forms of removable media to check for virus and worms.  There is technology that is available that can encrypt this media that must be authenticated by our government common access cards (CAC).  This really should not amaze me at all because this is typical of the government to create these blanket policies to cripple everyone to punish a couple.  Instead of dealing with the trouble makers they shut everyone down from doing their assigned duties.

To give you an idea of the waste that goes on in the government.  If a person works in maintenance they are required to get their technical manuals or Technical Orders (TO) online.  They must print them out each time they want to work on a piece of equipment.  These printouts are only good for one day so they must be shredded and then reprinted the next day.  This means that litterally thousands of sheets of paper are printed and shreded every day at my work.  This is mandated by law.  If a person is caught using a printout from yesterday then they are subject to disciplinary actions.  This is typical for the government and keeps most people worked up over it all the time.  I am curious how this new policy of no removable media is going to play out as I have already heard that our colenel was even complaining about it and if it is true, he has every reason.

There is not a day that goes by that almost everyone in our office is required to create an electronic report of some kind.  These reports or presentations are almost always presented in a conference room on an overhead projector via PowerPoint or some other software.  I am curious how this will work out since no one will be able to get their files from their computers to the conference room.  One might think that we could just email it to ourselves on the other computer.  That is virtually impossible since to set up our Outlook Exchange server requires administrative privilages.  We would have to call the IT help desk for each person that wants to do a presentation on every computer.  Web base email is out of the question because they have blocked access to all web mail accounts including Cox.net or SBCglobal.  No Yahoo, No Google, No Hotmail.  No social networking sites.  They have even blocked access to even use CD-R’s.  To the average citizen this may seem a little over kill but the the government worker this is an average day.  You can add to this frustration that I received a delinquent travel voucher notice this afternoon for a temporary duty (TDY) that I took three weeks ago.  By law we are required to submit our travel voucher within five working days of return.  Our second level supervisor just signed it yesterday even though I submitted it the day I returned.  I fulfilled my duties immediately and my second level supervisor sits on it for weeks and then I get a delinquent notice.  This is typical of an average day.  I think I have beat a dead horse long enough.  I just had to share this information to get it off my chest.

UPDATE: 21 Nov 2008

Thanks to KC5FM for pointing out the US-CERT web site’s warning about a malicious code being spread through USB Flash drives.  I certainly hope that a fix is discovered soon as work has really been hampered.  You can read the article here…

http://www.us-cert.gov/current/index.html#malicious_code_spreading_through_usb

As many of you know, I am a big fan of Leo Laporte and his podcast This Week in Tech, or TWiT.  As with most podcasts, this one is not only in audio but also streams video via twitlive.tv.  If you are not familiar with this program or who Leo is, I have to give you a little history.  In the early 2000′s and late 1990′s there was a satellite television channel that was called ZDTV that later became TechTV.  This channel was very popular among computer enthusiasts like myself.  This channel had several people that were on various programs and Leo Laporte was one of them.  Some of these shows were Call For Help, The Screen Savers, and Silicon Spin among others.  When TechTV was taken over by G4, a gaming company, they shut down TechTV and all its programming.  Many were devastated to lose the computer programs and were left with a void.  Leo and many other personalities from TechTV joined together and put together a podcast called Revenge of the Screen Savers.  I heard that G4 told them they were not allowed to use the name because they had the rights to The Screen Savers name.  Since many of the TechTV’s personalities are from the same location, they often do there podcasts via Skype.  After several renditions, Leo eventually settled on TWiT and that became the main podcast on the website.  Later, he and other former TechTV personalities put together other podcasts that are on the same page.

Now TWiT has nearly a quarter of a million listeners to the podcast each week.  Leo Laporte has enjoyed a tremendous success with radio shows such as The Tech Guy that syndicates nation wide on weekends.  With all the success of TWiT, Geoff Smith put together the video above.  It is a very good representation of the podcast.  I ran across it and thought it would be worth posting on my blog.  Although TWiT is supposed to be a technology related podcast, they often discuss politics with a liberal slant.  If that does not bother you, it is likely you will love listening to the podcast.  If you have never listened to it, go to http://www.twit.tv to listen or you can catch them on video during the recording on Sunday afternoons at http://www.twitlive.tv.  I think you will enjoy listening to them.

With the onslaught of digital television and other Internet Protocol television (IPTV) systems becoming widespread, there is a commercial market for more Internet.  I think this is huge and I for one think it is about time to come up with a wireless standard for high power Internet transmissions.  The current wifi, or 802.11a,b,g,n are all being used on the crowded 2.4 GHz band.  I had to change out my wireless telephone to a 5.8 GHz band because it was completely knocking out my wifi.  As you know, with our IRLP, and XBox 360 in the house, that becomes a very big issue.  Coming up with other alternatives besides broadband over powerline (BPL) are very necessary if we are to compete with other countries.  As you know, BPL was found to not be a viable option because it radiates off powerlines in the high frequency (HF) bands virtually wiping out all shortwave radio including ham radio.  Again, I think this is very good news.

I will be very excited to see this come to pass in the United States as we have been stuck at DSL, and Cable Internet for nearly a decade.  There are still people in our own country that actually use dialup.  Now that is scary!  I have not used dialup in more than ten years.  Keep your eyes open to the new inventions coming up in the near future.  It will be interesting to see how this new band is going to be implemented.  I know I will be paying close attention.  I will certainly keep you up to date as these things come available.

To date, there are only five reflector channels that are capable of handling the uncompressed audio.  These are 9200, 9003, 9739, and 9755.  Nothing has changed on the reflectors except that the owners of these listed have set up those channels to select UNCOMP as the default codec.  It is likely that not all reflector owners will opt to use this uncompressed audio because of the incredible demand for bandwidth.  Since most of these reflectors are operating on donated bandwidth, they may be reluctant to double the bandwidth required if there are many users like the WIN System which typically has 50+ nodes connected 24 hours a day.

Any individual node that calls another node will be able to experience the improved quality of audio.  Both of our repeaters have been updated to the new audio though our 443.3 repeater may not be noticeable because it is connected to the WIN Sytem 24 hours and they have not upgraded their channel yet on the 9453.  I have been amazed at the improved quality as it is virtually perfect.

Another improvement that came with this, most users will not notice because it happens behind the scene.  Before, when a node would connect to a node for the first time, it would automatically download two .wav files. These were the announcement files that you hear when connecting or disconnecting from the other node.  After you visit many nodes, the node hard drive begins to fill up with many audio files making it difficult to do a backup.  Also since many of the nodes are using older computers, they sometimes have smaller hard drives.  With this upgrade, the nodes now stream these connect and disconnect announcements from the IRLP servers so nodes owners are no longer concerned with filling up a hard drive.

Dave Cameron, VE7LTD, the creater of IRLP put out a beta test version of this upgrade last Wednesday and more than 250 nodes participated with zero errors.  On Thursday night, he decided to push the upgrade out on the nightly updates.  On Friday morning, all nodes should have received this upgrade.  We are thrilled with the performance on both of our repeaters.  Since both of them are on broadband Internet connections, this higher bandwidth requirement was not an issue with us.

Thank you for those of you that use our nodes/repeaters.

Paul

Looks like Obama made a comment yesterday that said something about you being able to put lipstick on a pig, it is still a pig.  Everyone is saying it was aimed at Sarah Palin and I do believe it was though you could make the argument that since he paused before saying it, that it was a spontaneous thought with no calculation behind it.  They fired back and said that McCain had made a similar statement in 2007 when referencing Mrs. Clinton.  And the drama continues.  There is a reason that I usually turn the TV volume down the moment theys begin discussing politics.  Oh well, it is the same thing over and over again.  I will certainly be glad when it is over as you know that it will continue after the election regardless of who wins.

I have been attending a class at work and it has two more days.  It is called Item Unique Identification (IUID).  This is an initiative to assign a unique identification number to every piece of equipment that is either $5,000 or more.  Other items can be added if the program manager deems it necessary to keep track of them.  They used our government identification cards called the common access cards (CAC) as an example of how each of us has an unique number and no other person has this number.  This is reminiscent of Revelation chapter 13, versus 15-18.  I know this is not what it is but sure does give you the creeps.  The government has put this program into place that all items acquired by the government will have these scannable marks beginning 1 Jaunuary 2004.  What gives me the creeps is that never before in history has there been the technology for Revelation 13:15-18 to make sense.  The point being is that the technology is here. The next two days of this class we will be doing practical application.  I must say this overview class that I went to was easily the most boring class I have ever been to.  Razor blades should be issued upon entry for those that just want to end the pain .  Other than this and school there has not been too much going on.

In the last two years I have seen a pattern shift and the roots seem to be around the San Francisco self appointed experts in the computer industry.  They call themselves tech experts so they can increase their influence over phones, cameras, and other electronic devices.  This shift to Apple products by these groups has been building the last couple of years.  I have heard at least one of them admit that he has stock in Apple and Google.  This is interesting since Apple is even more proprietary than Microsoft.  Their products are consistently over priced for equally valued products from other companies.  Apple is even worse than Microsoft in that they require you to use their hardware in addition to their software.  I am not saying their products are substandard but rather they are way over priced.  In fact, I almost bought an 80 GB iPod lately until I realized that a Microsoft 80 GB Zune was cheaper and it even had an FM radio tuner built in.  Let’s face it Apple products are just too expensive.  It is almost like a teenager drinking because his friends are drinking.  Most people say beer is an acquired taste so that means they did not like it the first time.  If you did not like it the first time, why did you try it a second time?  It was that desire to do what your buddies are doing.  I believe it is the same thing here with the Apple frenzy.  Their products are so expensive but you acquire the taste anyway so you can do what your buddies are doing.  I have a real problem with being a follower and those that are.

My observation is that the self appointed tech elites are all followers.  There is a group of about 10 people in San Francisco, that I will not list, that join every social networking system that comes out and then adds everyone that will add them to their friends list.  These individuals add 20,000+ people to their contacts list and then post about the newest toys that come out and pine over Apple products.  Keep in mind the above comment about owning stock in the company.  While they tend to have credibility because of their previous jobs being connected to the computer industry, they lose credibility with the admission that they are stock holders in these companies.  People listen to them because a couple of them have been on technology related programs on satellite.  Another one use to be a blogger at one of the larger computer software manufacturers. 

With their background and their proximity to major computer, and Internet companies, they have taken on a celebrity status among computer enthusiasts including myself in the past.  I see many fads based on people following those they see as celebrities.  I know this because I have fallen for them myself.  I love technology and have found myself adding these individuals to my list as well and following their advice with the group.  It is almost like a cult following that has grown out of control.  Before you tell your friends that I said it is a cult, you need to remember I said it is “like” a cult the way people just follow these people by the thousands.

It is very enticing to be a part of the group and feel as though you are part of something big and have inside information about the newest toy coming out before anyone else knows about it.  It gives the impression that you are also an expert in your circles and people come to you as though you know everything there is to know about computers.  I still have people come to me to ask my advice on computers and I am not an expert by any stretch of the imagination.  I love computers but I am not an expert.  I guess one of the things that woke me up from this trance was the constant confrontation with those with views that conflict with my religious views.  This should not surprise anyone because as much as California tends to be pretty liberal in their political slant, San Francisco has a reputation of being so far out there in their anti-morality views and they are very proud of them.  One day I stumbled on a post from one of them telling about how intelligent people cannot believe in God.  At first I engaged the argument and it kept coming up over and over again.  I finally realized that I have no place in their circles.  As painfully as it was, I removed them from my contact lists.  There are many scriptures that tell about befriending non believers when they refuse to accept God’s ways.  I have nothing against them but realized that continuing to be around those that are so confrontational with my religious views is not only bad for me but for them as well.  I made a decision a few weeks ago to remove myself from the celebrity worship of those self appointed computer experts from San Francisco.

I canceled my Friendfeed account, Facebook, Myspace, Zooomr, as well as other accounts.  If you really think about it, the main motivation for joining them is to join this celebrity worship group.  I could have mentioned the San Francisco people that I am referring to but thought that would have been counterproductive to my cause.  If you are one of them in the group that follows them, then you know who they are.  Some of them are very pleasant to be around and very friendly.  It does not help one’s testimony though when you are befriending those that are famous for their opposition to your religious beliefs.

The Apple/Google/Firefox/Linux worship that I have encountered can be traced back to this celebrity worship on all these social networking sites.  You have thousands of people proud of themselves for their friendship with their perceived celebrity friend.  They can walk around telling their friends that they are friends with ______.  You will find that whatever _______ says, it is followed without question.  This is not to say that Apple, Google, or Firefox have bad products but rather, their appeal is that _______ uses them.  I have found many friends that will join AT&T and pay for their most expensive program just so they can own an Apple iPhone.  These same people have a history of bashing AT&T for being in bed with “THE MAN”.  They hate AT&T for cooperating with the Bush administration (their worst enemy).  Nevertheless because Apple has an exclusive contract with AT&T, they will look the other way.  I firmly believe this same celebrity worship is directly related to the demise of Yahoo, a pioneer on the Internet.  They have been a victim of the endless and relentless condemnation of this group.

With the invention of these social networking web sites and social news pages that allow people to vote stories to the top and bury other stories they disagree with, we have witnessed a formidable force on the Internet.  Microsoft has reason to fear them because I have seen them work.  There are a couple of these social news pages that post about a story and then vote it to the top.  This produces so much traffic to third party web sites that their servers cannot keep up with the demand essentially bringing it down for hours.  This gives the effect of a denial of service (DOS) attack.  I have heard those that use these social new pages brag about this power and have given a name to it.  I will not reveal the name because it will reveal the name of these sites that I am talking about.  I do not reveal these sites because I do not want to make myself liable for my opinion of them.  This practice is real because I have been a part of it for several years.  As a ham radio operator, I have always enjoyed programs that allow you to communicate with each other making myself a vulnerable target for these types of pages.

I often wonder how long this will go on.  I will venture to say it will get worse.  While this is not some moral debate, I do believe we are living in a generation that has rejected God and his standards.  Whenever there are no standards, there is anarchy.  People are desiring to have meaning and cling to these groups to have worth.  I have heard people brag about how many contacts they have even though they admit they do not know most of them.  We are living in an age where people have no idea what is right or wrong and base their beliefs in what the crowd believes.  This moral relativism is a dangerous way to live because the media has a lot of power to convince the crowd.  Remember, it was not that long ago that the American majority thought it was acceptable to have black slaves.  Without a standard that never changes, we have no standards at all.  Who will be the next victims?