Joo-dish-oo-what?

Is this a DC thing?  Every time I hear someone on a Metro loudspeaker mention the Judiciary Square Metro stop, they pronounce it “joo-DISH-oo-wary”.

I don’t often take the Red Line out that way, so I don’t hear it very often.  But today something was going on there, and they made an announcement at Pentagon City while I was waiting for my train.

I’m home early, by the way, because Satan’s Cable Company, Comcast, is supposed to come out again to fix our tv and internet.  I was told the other day that they had to do some work outside, and no one needed to be home.  Apparently that was a lie.

I really hate Comcast.  The service is bad.  I hear they’re much better in Maryland, but in DC the service is not good.  The guy who came to look at our connections the other day was very pleasant, but he couldn’t fix the problem.

Anyway, if there was any real competition in the cable and internet market here, I would switch.  But there currently isn’t.  A neighbor is trying out the DirecTV and Verizon DSL route.  I’m going to have to see how he likes it.  I’ve had bad experiences with satellite tv, and I’m sure Verizon is going to complain if I ask for DSL without a Verizon phone line (Although I think they have to provide it).

So, I’m at home, using my wireless internet card from work.  It’s AT&T, and it works occasionally.  Actually, the card says Cingular on it, but Cingular doesn’t exist anymore.

And now I’m just rambling, which usually means I should just stop and hit “Publish”.  So I think I’ll do that.

Nano update – Day 2

1817 words yesterday.  428 on the Metro this morning.  If I can knock out nearly half my daily word goal during my commute, that would be awesome.

The story is going well so far.  I love how characters kind of pop up out of nowhere.  I mean, sometimes I have a character in my head before I start, and I’m more or less waiting for the right moment for him or her to make an appearance.  But sometimes I’m writing, and someone pops up, and turns out to be important.  The campaign manager hoping her guy gets elected so she can get a better book deal is one of those.  The surly, hungover police officer might be another.  I’m not sure if he’s going to end up with a big role in the story.

Anyway, I’m happy so far.

Not a lot of words

I wrote 205 words this morning on the Metro.  That’s not too many.  Although, it’s more words than I’ve ever written before during my work commute, so that’s cool.  It’s tough to stand and write, especially since I had my normal bag plus my work laptop this morning.  But I don’t usually bring my laptop home, and if it really gets to be a problem, I can probably get a seat most of the time.  I tend to not sit on the Metro that often because I don’t really like sharing a seat with strangers, and anyone who gets on the train probably needs the seat at least as much as I do.

But if I’m going to be writing, and it becomes too difficult to do standing, then I’ll sit more.  Let those elderly and disabled people stand for a change.  They shouldn’t be riding Metro at rush hour anyway.

No one can stay away

I went back to Starbucks this morning, despite my claims to the contrary.  I had gone the other day just to break a $20 and found that the grande coffee was back below $2.00.  This morning, I just couldn’t bear the thought of the awful office coffee (black, because the only thing worse than bad coffee is powdered creamer).  And they weren’t busy, so I asked the guy who served me about the price change.

He very nicely explained what happened, and it’s actually an interesting explanation.  Starbucks did, in fact, raise prices back in July.  That pushed the price over $2.  But then Virginia changed the tax laws.  They stopped taxing plain coffee.  They still tax the coffee-like milkshakes, and they tax the food that Starbucks serves.  According to the guy, they will even tax your coffee if you get it with a pastry or something.  I think the distinction is between “coffee” and “food”, and coffee is considered to be part of the “food” category if you drink it with something to eat.

Anyway, very interesting.

Athletes DO graduate from college

Race, Class, and Graduation Rates

These two together make a valuable point that’s often missed in the operatic hand-wringing about the failures and abuses of college athletics: when you’re talking about graduation rates, it’s important to compare apples to apples.

Interesting article.  Everyone has heard about the abysmal graduation rate of college athletes, especially at the top sports schools.  But the point here is that comparing the graduation rates of athletes to the overall graduation rates isn’t fair.  If you look at the graduation rates separated by race, it becomes clear that the problem is not that too few athletes graduate, but that too few minorities graduate. 

This is not to say that this isn’t a problem.  But the potential solutions to the problem are very different.  It reminds us that it’s very important to actually identify the problem before trying to solve it.  This should be obvious, but too often it isn’t.

Back in college, as a math major, I remember hearing over and over how important it was to first understand the question.  At times, I thought, “Leave me alone, of course I understand the question, and if I didn’t, it’s your fault for the way you wrote it.”  But then you get to the real world, and it becomes less and clear what the questions are.  I guess my professors were right. 

Anyway, the article suggests that athletes’ graduation rates would take care of themselves if we helped out minority students.  Which seems like a good idea to me.

Its almost time.

Just over fifteen hours until Nano starts. I’m ready to go. I’ve got the beginning of the story rattling around in my head. I’m a little afraid that the beginning is ALL I have in my head, and the whole middle and end thing is going to be a struggle. But now is not the time for doubts.

I didn’t sleep well last night, and I’m not sure why, but it’s going to make it even harder to stay up until midnight tonight and start before I go to bed. I do that most years. It feels like a nice head start.

Anyway, I’m excited about the story.  I have a name for my main character.  Well, I have a first name.  She needs a last name.  I notice that none of you slackers responded to my request for character names.  That’s fine.  When I’m a rich and famous novelist, I’ll just forget all of you.

Net neutrality is not net neutrality

Obama pledges Net neutrality laws if elected president | Webware : Cool Web apps for everyone via Boing Boing

Net neutrality, of course, is the idea that broadband operators shouldn’t be allowed to block or degrade Internet content and services–or charge content providers an extra fee for speedier delivery or more favorable placement.

Actually, net neutrality is a problem that would just go away if we had real broadband competition in the United States. Techdirt repeats this ad nauseum. Broadband operator_ should_ be able to offer different levels of service for different prices. In fact, they do now. No one seems to think that Verizon offering a cheap DSL connection, then a more expensive fiber optic connection, is a horrific affront to the fundamentals of the internet. And broadband operators should be able to prioritize content.

If people really had choices in the broadband market, this would cease to be an issue. Provider A could degrade whatever they wanted, and Provider B would step in and take all their customers. Look what’s happened in Japan, when they forced sharing of infrastructure. OMG, fast cheap internet! And competition! Without net neutrality laws!

I won’t blame Obama for this – I imagine he has good intentions, but isn’t getting the whole story. The rest of the Democrats are right in line with him on this, too, so it’s not just his mistake. It’s just funny how people want to promote the freedom of the internet by adding regulation to it.  And, frankly, I think the Republicans are mostly against it as a knee-jerk “no regulation is good regulation” sort of thing.  I doubt they actually took any more time to understand the issue than the Democrats did.

Well, its not quite under $300

A little while back, I said if the Bookean Cybook Gen3 ebook reader was less than $300, I would buy it.  So it was released today, and it’s $350, or $450 with some extra accessories.

I still want one.  I’d love to be able to play with it first, but I may not be able to resist.  I mean, why did I go to college if it wasn’t to get a job so I could afford to spend $350 on totally awesome gadgets now and then?

Go see a play

On Thursday, the wife and I took my mother-in-law to The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee.  NB that I am not linking to the official website of the play because it has a stupid Flash intro.  You can Google it if you’re interested, and the Wikipedia entry probably has a link, too.

Anyway, it was very funny.  There’s one sad song that lasts way too long near the end that doesn’t seem to fit the play at all, but otherwise it’s all very good.  The whole play is, as the title suggests, a spelling bee.  They invite a few members of the audience up to spell along with the cast members.  It’s quite obvious that the audience is supposed to set up a few one-liners, and then go back to their seats.  One of the audience members actually spelled some word I had never heard of correctly, and they had to give him another really hard one to get him to go sit down.

I think my favorite part was when they defined “Mexicans” as “An American slang word for people from Guatemala, El Salvador . . .”  I think there was more, but I couldn’t hear over the laughter.

Anyway, I recommend the play to anyone with the opportunity to go.

Whats with the spam?

My Akismet spam filter on the comments here at Complaint Hub has been letting me down lately. In general, it has been fantastic. It’s caught about 8,000 spam comments since I started the site, and only caught maybe three or four real posts. But lately it has been holding more and more spam comments in moderation, emailing me and making me tell it that the comment is spam.

Some of what it’s been letting through are quite obviously spam. The latest was a brief message and then forty links to hardcore porn.

I hope this means that Akismet is just nearing the next step in their release cycle, and the spammers are getting better at fooling the filter, but all will be back to normal soon. I hate captchas, and don’t ever want to use one here, so a filter like Akismet is a necessity.

If Dante were writing The Inferno today, what circle of Hell do you think he’d put the spammers into? I’d throw them into the Eighth circle with the panderers (a person who serves or caters to the vulgar passions or plans of others (especially in order to make money [source]). There they would walk in a line, being whipped by demons. That seems appropriate.