Guilt

I miss having the daily newspaper delivered to the house. One of the problems these days is that the newspaper doesn’t really have as much to do with my life as it once did. I live in a place I didn’t grow up in, and the people who are in charge of things (like the newspaper, f’rinstance) aren’t known quantities to me.
I bet it’s different when you live in the same town all your life.
I grew up reading the Santa Rosa Press Democrat and the San Francisco Chronicle when they were actual newspapers rather than sounding boards for democrat party politics. I guess it’s indicative that there’s no Santa Rosa Press Republican. Far as I know, there never was, but at one time the “PD” was just a local paper. I don’t know what it is now, but whatever the contents are, it has little to do with my life.
The paper here in Cowlitz County, Washington emanates from Longview, Washington—just up the road a piece—We call it the “Big City” when we go there. It’s about 35,000 population, but Castle Rock…

I see that college athletes can now sign endorsement deals for payment.



Well, shit.



This sort of crap originates from the Great State of California, you know. The California state legislature and their Supreme Leader, Gavin Newsom, passed legislation allowing such behavior at that state’s colleges. The NCAA followed suit, otherwise all the quality athletes would automatically go to California, because they can get paid there.



Can a college athlete with a giant endorsement deal now even be removed from the student body for, oh, I dunno, refusing to go to classes or failing to pass? Or will that athlete be entitled to continue to represent that college because that’s his income source and he has a RIGHT to it? If he gets expelled does he have a cause of action to retain his endorsement? Is this athlete a student or an employee? If he gets hurt on the field of competition is he entitled to disability payments? After all, he WORKS FOR THE GODDAM STATE!! Probably be represented by A…

I no longer live in, nor anywhere near, California, but even so, am beginning to get weary of the droning of blaming PG&E for the fire issues in that state.
Good plan folks—Blame the evil capitalist. Make sure that the power grid is absorbed by the Great State of California. Let them run it with the same fine degree of ability that they use at the Department of Motor Vehicles.
Good plan. Keep it up.
Yeah, that’s most likely the only possible answer—Evil Capitalists. No way it could possibly be the crushing environmental regulations and lawsuits. No way.

I write the occasional product review on Amazon—Normally it’s because I really liked something that I bought for some reason. There are ALWAYS plenty of critical reviews out there, but precious few honest reviews of praise. I use my real name, and if my name is attached to an Amazon review, it’s an honest review. A couple of days ago, I reviewed a group of “Amazon Partner” retailers. I’d never done that before, but here’s the upshot of the whole thing:
My bride has decided to try to go gluten-free. That’s fine by me. Turns out, gluten-free products are expensive and sometimes hard to find. She wanted to make a casserole (or something) that called for a can of cream-of-something soup. We discovered that there’s a WalMart branded selection of cream soup available for about a buck and a half a can. WalMart.com was sold out.
Figures.
Checked Amazon.
Sure enough, it’s available in quantity from a handful of Amazon “Partners”. For about 9 dollars American a can.
So I wrote the follo…

As a follow-up to the Xfinity wifi hot-spot issue, I went back to the Comcast corporate web site and read, I think, pretty much every word there, and believe-you-me, that’s a bunch of words.

The upshot of that review of information is that I failed to find any mention AT ALL of Comcast deleting or disabling a wifi hot-spot due to overuse (at least I think that’s what happened here). When I say “over use” I’m sort of making that up, because there’s no mention or documentation that over-use has any sort of definition or advance warning. Or that it’s even a thing. The fact remains, however, that when I actually used this wifi hot-spot, it disappeared.

Why do I sort of have the feeling that I’m the subject of an episode of the X-Files?

It’s still interesting to me that Comcast touts this “benefit”, but when it’s actually used and accessed, it gets disabled. As above, I can only surmise that’s what happened, because no one at Comcast seems to know, or will admit, that this actually occurs…

Here’s the way it started—I have an Internet-Centric house. I stream EVERYTHING. Comcast/Xfinity is my source for a signal because the actual signal that comes through the coax cable is massive when compared to the only alternative here which happens to be Centurylink DSL, and not the fiber-optic stuff.
I think you might be able to see where this is going.
Comcast has a 1 TB data limit. OK, not really a limit. It’s a cap. Yeah, that’s it…..a cap.
I have the minimum cable TV package that’s available, and I access it via the ROKU streaming application. When I got that app, I was specifically informed by a Comcast employee on the phone that streaming through that app did not count against my data cap. They were specific. Mostly, when I watch TV, I access it through HULU anyhow, not Comcast.
Had a Comcast Tech at the house today who told me exactly the opposite regarding the Comcast streaming app—he said that anything that was streaming through the modem/gateway (their hardwar…