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It takes the heart of a tyrant to run a prison camp in the best of circumstances. The Casa Di Evils’s networking kingdom had gotten so out of hand over the last few months that the Superdaddyman was left with no other choice than to go to the source. Sitting downstairs from him at this very moment is the most diabolical criminal mastermind of this generation, and he has to be stopped at all costs. He can pull out the “cute” card at will and render most super heroes completely helpless in the blink of an eye, but this is no ordinary super hero he is dealing with. That malware infested, network killing, shortcuts to fill the screen, slow as molasses running up a tree, pitiful excuse for a PC that sits in his internment cell needs to be dealt with swiftly, and all of the whining of “But I like those Wild Tangent Games,” and “What about my high scores?” will save him no more! The Superdaddyman is armed with a Windows XP CD and he knows how to use it!

Now it takes stealth for any super hero to take on such a mission, so our favorite super hero {being of cunning mind} staged the first task of “Operation Diversion” by setting up an awe inspiring tool {Xbox} in another room, and then gluing {turning it on} Captain ADHD to it! Supplying the indoctrination tool with many covert add-ons {disks} so as to make sure that he is enthralled for the necessary 2 hours it will take to get the quest completed, the Superdaddyman then starts the tasks. Opening up the machine {and coughing up all of the fur balls that immediately escaped} he then added memory from his box of recycled parts. This diversion tactic is used after the Captain realizes that his entire life has been wiped clean. The Superdaddyman will immediately run phase two of “Operation Diversion” by pointing out to Captain ADHD that he has twice the memory and can destroy the world twice as fast. This tactic has worked on the other two evils’s with amazing ease when they pulled out the “temper tantrum” from their bag of tricks after such maneuvers.

The computer being a Hewlett Packard was furious over the sudden emotionless format that was being perpetrated upon it. The 7000 pieces of spyware that Hewlett Packard puts on your computer from the beginning is guarded by its own bios to make sure that people like the Superdaddyman don’t steal away its own profit engineering adventures. Knowing full well that reinstalling the disks that came with the hunk of crap will simply re-create the problems and worse {adding the virus known as Norton Anti-Virus to the issues as well} the Superdaddyman used a different XP installation disk. This one had been accidentally {of course} stripped of any of its miserable time wasting habits as well, like registration, and the need to input serials etc. It will be a clean copy after all is finished, and the added bonus of Captain ADHD being confined to quarters while he desperately scours the internet for all of the tools of his trade again is icing on the cake.

After removing all of the Hewlett Packard partitions for this, and partitions for that you could almost hear the computer scrubbing all of the dirt off of the hard disk during its format procedure. At that point Hewlett Packard is losing the battle, but you never know what evil lurks in the heart of bios. The restart should be an interesting conundrum to say the least. We’ve been down this road before as the other two evils’s both own reengineered Hewlett Packard’s as well. Technically they are Compaq’s but we all know the only thing different is the box they come in. These are what the Superdaddyman always acquires for the evils’s when their old ones die, since you can hit the local Wal-Mart at 5am during the Christmas sales and get them for under 300 bucks, and then reengineer them when they get crappy. Of course this one here came in the actual Hewlett Packard box so it could have some extra security in place to keep super villains turned super hero from stealing their spyware revenue purely out of pride!

The look on Captain ADHD’s face was priceless at the time of reckoning when he saw that his screen was clean and green, 5 Icons and a start menu that could be displayed in one row, instead of the 4 rows that it had before. Immediately he started protesting the decision to wipe his computer of all of his malicious little friends that were desperately trying to install themselves on the other computers in the Casa. Usually after they were rebuked the malicious little friends would resort to plan 2 and kill his connection to the internet {in an attempt to drive the Superdaddyman mental} forcing the Captain to launch into the Superdaddyman’s room while he tries to sleep complaining about not being able to play his “games.” Pre-programming the firewall to block the major spyware game downloading sites from the start should keep his computer spyware free for days, perhaps … ok maybe hours … Oh hell I bet if the Superdaddyman was smarter he would go downstairs and see that the computer is already back to the way it was. Ignorance is bliss ;8o)

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Playing around with things I only half understand is what I have done since I was a little boy. I learned all of the states and capitals when I was about 6 because it was something to do, but I have only seen 8 or 9 of them. I’ve gotten better about it all since I am not taking the time to figure out exactly the number, but then again maybe it is the cloudiness of it that makes it all that much more fun. I don’t know really, but what I do know about is computers. I have no professional training in the least, but that again would take all of the fun out of it now wouldn’t it?

I amaze everyone except the idiot that runs the networks at work with my ability to do whatever the hell I want on them, no matter what he does to try to stop me. The Vice President of the company in charge of my specific area doesn’t like it a bit, but since I use my abilities mostly to humiliate those that get paid more than I do, he has fostered {with encouragement} the belief that I have always had about it all. It’s someone’s job, and at a respectably large salary mind you, to keep people like me from doing whatever the hell I want to with the company network. Moreover, I think that the company mutt should be thanking me for all of the security enhancements that I have forced him into creating. Most of them are totally by accident actually but it takes someone with a 6 year old child’s curiosity to get to the bottom of every hole. The last big exploit went kind of like this …

As told to the Vice President when called into his office, “I logged into No Feather’s account, since Three Feather accidentally sent out his password to everyone, so that I could download a picture of two guys ‘doin it’ and then set it as his desktop wallpaper,” and at that point usually I give him a minute to swallow what I just said before I continue. “Then I can take a picture of him with my camera phone sitting at the computer with gay porn on his screen and save it for later use, after he logs on,” then I look for the sign that he wants me to continue, along with exasperation, “Well after I found the image I wanted on Google, I went to save it to his picture folder, and noticed that through the Internet Explorer ‘Save As’ prompt I could get into every folder on the network, and then sent a message to the Admin about this exploit so that he could fix the problem,” as I always do knowing full well that he blows off any correspondence from the company janitor, and more over probably has me set to go directly to the “spam” folder. “So after a few days I felt that it was my duty as a diligent company employee who wants nothing more than to make sure that the company data was perfectly safe, and I put notes in everyone’s private folders warning them of the issue, so that they could be aware of the issue just in case,” followed by the shaking head it is usually my cue to close the conversation. “You know I didn’t look at any of it because I would have personalized the notes better.”

I seriously think that the fact that the Tech Weenie is related to one of the grouchy people on the Board of Directors saves my job in these instances, because he would have to follow me up the hill and off the property too. Unlike me he happens to care about his job and wouldn’t find getting fired very good encouragement to find a better one. Realistically at this rate he has pretty much proven that he can’t. I have been accidentally finding these vulnerabilities for years there, and have made some sort of catastrophe out of all of them. I think I have written enough stories about the Diabolical Captain ADHD to announce that it is a family trait, but again the “hacker” mentality comes from that 6 year old child’s voice that can’t stop looking, or trying, or doing that which should be beyond us. This is how Computers became a fascination to begin with.

When I was just a little Jeremy computers were big clunky things that my school teacher father couldn’t really afford. Thanks to Commodore they became something that a father who was sick of their son pulling apart the electric blender to see how it worked, and often putting it back together again to try and make it work “faster” could afford to fill their son’s time. Needless to say after I took it apart and couldn’t make it work faster, I had to try to figure out ways to make it work for me the way I wanted it to. Later it just became a question of trying to get it to do the things that other people could do with it, and the “clone creativity” came out of me. 12 years later and all that Commodore had to offer me before they went “belly up” I had an IBM compatible PC which could do a lot of things differently than my last Amiga could. Most of them were far more different, and I must admit that the Amiga was a far better dream appliance than the PC.

My PC {a 386 with a whopping 1 meg of RAM} ran DOS 5.0 and Windows 3.0, so like most people at that time I removed Windows because 3.0 was dreadful. Using DOS pretty much meant that you had to make your own things, so I started wanting to make things that {as always} involved other people. With a copy of Wildcat BBS I had found the true gem of the last 15 years of my life, corrupting other people. My computer was far more than just a way for me to do things, it was a way for me to get other people to come along and benefit from my ability to break into the local University server and download massive quantities of porn. After uploading it all to the file servers on my BBS {Bulletin Board Service} hundreds of people throughout the state of New Hampshire could dial in to my computer and download blazing fast {9600 baud} pictures {in monsterous 320 by 240 resolution JPEG format} to their own computers, and life was good.

That Bart Simpson need to be the center of attention {almost always negative} was ingrained in me from birth, and my BBS had gone from being a DOS text based downloading machine to being a total knock off of AOL by the time my first wife ended up with my computers in the divorce. Oh well, life goes on, and as of 10 years ago, I had a Captain ADHD on the way that should have better diverted my attention anyway. He was almost 3 months old before I had inherited my Grandfather’s PC and had started building websites to pass the time while my new wife was out doing God knows who, and I was stuck at home with the baby. I was pretty good at it too, as my sites were making great money during the days of that magnificent Clinton fake economy, where anyone with a web page could get big boon web revenue. Within two years Pets.Com and all of the other fake IPO’s fell apart, and with that all of my fake revenue went away. I clapped my hands together and closed down my sites ahead of the game, and waited for my next wife to leave me with my computers.

I’m happy to announce that my third wife didn’t have to compete with my “hacker” tendencies, as I spent most of that marriage finding other ways to ignore her, and drive her away, but when it was all over I found the computer again. My plans were never so grandiose that I wanted to corrupt others in such the manner that I always had, but then came my back injury which forced me to spend a lot of time out of the real world. I started writing until I had corrupted quite a few people, and then started doing artistic things with less corruption involved. In full circle fashion I had gone back to writing, and when it bored me I worked on my website as a hobby. Real life interferes with these things that I would rather do, but I keep that 6 year old child’s curiosity about anything that I see others doing, with a twist. I still like to tweak things a bit to try and make them go faster, or do more, and that got me in trouble with my ISP of course.

Working in that fashion I decided to try and make my clone of Myspace again. It’s always been a side hobby, but I found a cool pile of scripts to do most of the work, and then add my own brand of “tweaking” to it to try to push the envelope. It also works great because I can develop scripts and tweak others without having a high speed connection. My old hobby of downloading massive quantities of porn for some strange reason always requires very fast bandwidth, and in turn pisses off the powers that be at Comcast. Hobby’s are a good thing, and as long as I never start thinking more of myself than I actually am, then I am all set. If either of you reading this get bored and want to track my progress, you can see the new “project” by going to http://coffee.jeremycrow4life.com ;8o)

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Well it was certainly fun to be a Comcast customer today. I woke up as I usually do {in a bad mood} to certain others in this house having computer problems. Nobody could get on the internet, so I examined the situation, but by the time I had gotten up the internet appeared to be working fine. I tried a few sites on some of the computers in the house, and when I got to my site some church in Kentucky was replacing all of my pages. I was furious to say the least, and I feel sorry for all of the tech support guys I was lamb basting with my issues. In the end they were reduced to reading my web pages to me so that I was convinced that they could see them. I couldn’t understand because all of my pages on other sites that my site was serving images too couldn’t display the images either.

The poor guy on the other end finally convinced me that there was an issue with Comcast itself, and it’s DNS was all messed up and routing everything to the wrong places. All day fighting around this I realized a trend in all of the pages that were being served {accidentally of course} to my computer from Comcast’s Domain Name Server. They all appeared to be the type of content that you used to get before the invention of the “Pop Up Blocker.” I am hypothesizing here, but I am allowed to do that as Comcast is the most over monopolistic, congress owning company on earth, and truly believe that they must have been screwing around with the system a bit. I’m thinking something along the lines of fixing it so that the Error 404 pages of other sites would point towards advertising that they were serving to it’s customers. I’m sure there will be more relevant ideas coming out from everyone as soon as we can get to the information.

It is insane that a company can be allowed to own all of the broadband internet in this state, but to simply charge 50 bucks infinitely, threaten customers to use less bandwidth and then on top of that openly mess with its own system to block Torrent traffic, and then force advertising on us all goes over the top! They have become such an omnipotent being around here that they don’t even apologize when they willfully interfere with what people pay for. As someone who hates the “open lawsuit” way of dealing with everything, it is like a kick in the balls to have to admit that Comcast needs to be sued into obscurity.

Now back to the farm. I was trying to get all of my auto insurance quotes in line today, and see if anyone could convince me to leave Allstate. I do this every time my insurance policy is up, and I will admit that the last few years I have paid on average 70 to 100 more for my coverage, but lately all of the companies have come out with their big “push” to talk about how they save you up to 400 dollars by “switching” so I was intrigued. There are still just two companies that give me a better rate if I want it. The first being Geico {would save me 123 dollars to “switch” but as we all know will double the rates the next year, after you lose your loyalty bonuses with who you have} and the other being Nationwide {which will send you your premium back if you ever have an accident that costs more than your premium … and yes they can legally do that} so again I am staying with Allstate.

What slayed me though is Progressive which used to be the cheapest of them all. Originally it was just a money laundering arm of the DNC, but somehow they must have become more than that. Their quote was an insane 420 dollars more than Allstate for half the coverage. It was so over the top that I actually responded to the e-mail with the quote in it by saying “And it was 400 dollars more than the next highest quote!” which actually got me a reply. See how stupid they think I am … {annotated of course}

Dear Mr. Crow, {How charming}

Thank you for contacting us. {Charming again} We appreciate you taking the time to obtain a quote. {Of course it was pretty easy on you, wasn’t it?}

Thank you for getting a quote with Progressive. {Ok all the “thank you’s” are starting to remind me of the Indian guy at the Quickie Mart} I hope we made the process easy for you to compare rates, coverage and service. {Oh hell yeah, it was somewhat of a glaring example that was hard to miss} I'm sorry the quote we provided you is not competitive with other rates you may have gotten. {Sorry I caught it}

Insurance companies generally base their rates on their expected cost of doing business, including the cost of paying claims. {Like the 0 I have had in 20 years?} We use information about drivers, driving histories and vehicle makes and models to determine accurate prices. {Ok so take 0 add a 4 cylinder with 120k on it and a sexy Minivan and you get “danger Will Robinson”}

Because insurance companies have different costs of doing business, rates will vary from one company to another, and no one company will have the lowest rate for every driver. {Your cost of doing business is obviously tied up in trying to convince people you are cheaper … Ok I get it}

Insurance rates change often, so we encourage you to shop around again to be sure you're getting the best combination of price and service for you. {Um, I think I had alluded to that already, but again I am an idiot}

We look forward to having you shop with us again in the future and invite you to compare our rates, plus our 24/7 in-person and online services, with what our competitors offer. {See above}

We appreciate the time you took to explore our Web site and quote a new policy with Progressive. {But next time you come through please don’t compare our prices first, it’s horrible for business}

Sincerely, Whatsername, Progressive Internet Representative

Um, No? If there is one thing that I learn its “Don’t go back to the prison yard if you make the inmates horny!” I did find a things that were interesting though when I went around to all the different sites. AIG doesn’t even sell insurance in New Hampshire. This is usually a sign that they can’t gouge you here and it isn’t part of their business structure. New Hampshire is one of the wonderful states that doesn’t force you to have insurance and places blame on those that have accidents instead of oppressing everyone with it. This creates the need to actually give better drivers better rates since better drivers don’t even have to drive with it. Of course it is best to have it because they will force you into having it if you do have an accident even if you aren’t at fault. Insurance companies love that aspect because you pay an extra 200 dollars for SR-22 if the state makes you have it.

Of course after paying 39 dollars for my 4 cylinder to get a full tank of gas, these insurance companies should just be happy that a lot of us still own cars to insure. Don’t think that doesn’t factor in to why I am not to particularly thrilled with paying an extra 400 dollars so that my vet bills can get paid in case of an accident. My pets aren’t allowed in the vehicle unless they come up with some gas money damnit! ;8o)

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The Slammer – An Ever Growing Web Novel – Chapter 5.2

“Jack, you’ve had a great career and you are a first ballot hall of famer, but do you really want to hear yourself being announced as ‘the greatest pitcher who never won crap’ every time you are being paraded out for some public engagement?” John said to Jack as he was trying to brush him off with his invigorating eating. Jack swallowed hard, and then looked thoughtfully at John so he continued, “You’re not setting a very good example for the other pitchers if you don’t listen to your catcher either.”

Indignantly Jack started on John, “Hey, I have played for a bad team my entire career and the only thing I have going for me is the fact that I have shined through it all,” he contemplated and then added, “It’s not easy to step back and let someone else get outs when nobody else has for most of that time John, among other things,” he peered to John’s left at Jay who was examining the desert menu, “It feels strange having Jay here without Lily. I didn’t think he went anywhere without her?”

John looked next to him at Jay who was sitting there and shrugged, “He hopped in my car, and wouldn’t get out. You should have seen the look on Lily’s face when we drove away, but I figured he wouldn’t interfere with our talk,” John leaned over and pointed at the ‘strawberry longcake’ on the desert menu in Jay’s hand when the waitress inquired, “Now let’s get back to what we were really talking about.”

After pointing at the ice cream puff Jack started again in a softer voice, “He hears every word, and stores it for later use,” and then they both looked at Jay who started nodding in agreement, “I wouldn’t be surprised if Lily sent him along as a spy.”

“Well it’s good that you have acknowledged that she is smarter than you are,” John said with a smirk because Jay started nodding more vigorously, “Besides she has been calling my cell phone every 10 minutes since we left. I finally had to turn the damn thing off.”

Jay was working on a pile of placemats that he was signing his name on. He had been getting really good at this pass time whenever they go out. “The kid’s smart you know,” Jack said in a matter of fact manner, “his autograph will be worthless pretty soon supplying every restaurant with hundreds of them every night. It will keep the hounds off his ass later in his career,” Jay didn’t flinch, “Why did you come along with us anyway?”

After a long pause that demonstrated Jay wasn’t going to answer John chimed up, “Lily is babysitting Chris, and Jay must have thought that we would be more interesting than those two. I mean that doesn’t take much to figure out really,” John then looked at Jack who was giving Jay a very sly look, “Yeah I suppose he does pay attention to what is going on after all.”

There wasn’t too much conversation during desserts because all three of these men take to dessert like they are children. Jay, of course managed to eat his dessert while continuing to sign place mats. John observed that perhaps Jay was signing place mats a bit more fervently then he usually does, and perceived that he may be doing it as a defense mechanism to get him through the awkwardness of being out of his element and away from his sister at the same time. Jack was the one to break the dessert silence, perhaps because he noticed Jay muddling through in silence with it all. “Ok, your point has been taken buddy. I am going to have to know when to shut down. Change is good.”

“It could be worse,” came out of Jay’s mouth and startled the other two, “Lily is alone with a guy, and can’t use me as an excuse to get away,” after stuffing the last of his strawberry mousse in his mouth and swallowing, “Can we go to a movie?”

Jack pulled out his cell phone and went to hand it to Jay, but pulled it back real quick, “Looks like she is calling us obsessively as her excuse to disrupt the date,” he said after looking at the twelve messages from her number. John held up his phone screen to show twenty three messages on his phone. “You’ll have to call Lily and tell her that we’re going to the movies Jay,” Jack said after handing the phone over to him.

Jay took the phone and tapped out her phone number saying each number out loud as he pressed the buttons, “Do I press the green button?” he asked Jack who nodded. Within seconds of pressing the green button Jay stated into the phone, “Jay is doing great, and you really need to watch your language,” his face didn’t change as Jack and John couldn’t really avoid listening to the hysterics coming through the earpiece on the phone. “Aren’t you worried that Chris is going to think you are crazy?” he said while the other two started strangling off their mirth. The voice over the earpiece got quieter to the point that John couldn’t hear it sitting right next to Jay. “We’re going to the movies, so I’ll be home late,” and with that the hysterics started up again like a tornado, “Can you put Chris on the phone?”

Jack tried to talk through his laughter at this point, and finally John spoke around Jay, “I would love to see the look on the kid’s face as he is sitting across from her right now,” which had Jack nodding his agreement while slapping his knee. “He’s totally inept socially and this probably has him having a panic attack,” John added before being overcome by his own laughter.

“I want to talk to Chris,” Jay asked again, and the noise coming through the earpiece subsided again. “I’m doing great, thank you for asking. How is everything going there?” Jay asked very politely with a smile on his face. “Don’t worry about that, she’s actually a lot of fun when she wants to be. She’s pretty funny too. You should ask her about her last date several years ago.”

John and Jack looked at each other and started busting out laughing again, “Chris would like the peanut gallery to close,” Jay stated while looking at both of them. They quieted down a bit and Jay continued on, “It’s not late. We have a few days off because of the All Star break,” he paused a moment, “Tell her that I will talk to her when I am finished talking to you,” the chaotic yelling of Lily came through the earpiece again, and with that came the laughter of Jack and John, “Guys, please,” Jay said looking between the two of them, “This isn’t easy you know, Lily is probably clawing at him while we are trying to talk already”

John grabbed the phone away from Jay and then started talking into it, “Chris put Lily on the phone,” he waited a moment and then said, “I’m not going to embarrass you because that’s your job, I just want to assure her that Jay is ok and he deserves a night out with the guys while you ladies go out and do some knitting or something,” his face strained as him and Jack both exchanged hilarious but silent laughter, “Well that’s a start, you and Lily appear to be speaking the same language now. Put her on the phone please.”

Jay took the phone away from John who was straining to try to keep it while also fighting off what should have been hysteria from his laughter. “No it’s me Jay,” but the voice on the other end wasn’t coming through loud which means Lily must have composed herself again, “I want to hang out with the guys tonight, and I think that Chris and you should hang out tonight,” Jay sat and listened to his sister for a few minutes, “There were a lot of girls at the game today that wanted to hang out with him, and I would rather that you hang out with him Lily,” which appeared to be followed by silence on the other end of the phone. “You’re going to end up like Aunt Bella watching those dumb shows after ‘The Price is Right’ and talking to a dog that never stops barking,” after that Jay actually made a face from Lily’s language, “No, they never said anything, but they seem to think this is really funny. I’m not used to being one of the guys, but I think I am pretty good at it by the way they are laughing.”

Jack held out his hand and Jay placed the phone in it. He held it up to his ear and began to speak, “Lily, it’s Jack,” he paused a moment, “Jay wants to go to the movies, it was his idea and almost everything after asking us if we would go has been a surprise to us, so I think that he wants you and Chris to hang out,” he paused a moment, “I don’t personally find it to be your business when I leave a game either, but you seem to get everyone else involved whether you like it or not,” he then thoughtfully looked at the ceiling and continued, “I have spent the night listening to John tell me that I am an idiot, and the most Jay has done is nod in agreement” and the others could hear Lily laugh on the other end of the phone. He listened for a minute, “Well I had to agree that I am an idiot, there is video evidence of it spanning back a couple of decades, but that is beside the point. I agreed to listen to people that have a stake in what I do, and I think that you should do the same,” he listened again while Lily must have calmly explained something to him, and then stated clearly like he wanted her to hear it as such, “Sitting across from you is a man who must have watched you acting like a lunatic for at least an hour now, and I bet he is still looking at you like he is enthralled, correct?” he listened, “Show him something different for a few hours and see if he still looks at you the same afterwards ok?”

After handing the phone back to Jay he gave the thumbs up to John. Jay put the phone to his face, and started to speak, “I should be home by tomorrow or the next day,” which surprised John that she remained calm, “Well they talked about some place called ‘The Foxy Lady’ where I am going to watch women dance on tables, or something like that,” and while the explosion started on the other end of the phone Jack and John both put their heads down on the table in exasperation. … to be continued

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The Twins of Kane – Leviticus 3.2

I could have seen anything coming at this point, but I think that it happens to be more along the lines of, I could simply accept anything happening at this point. My son appears to be involved in this whether I like it or not, but at least I felt like he was an unwilling participant. I couldn’t see what he was up to when Mary, or should I say whom I thought was Mary was here, but I am starting to distrust my own lying eyes. Technically I am now behind the first time I had ever met Lou, but at the same time unless I jumped out of time again, then I had already met Lou, and didn’t realize it. My mind was racing at the time trying to see where time started and where time began, but I did know that if I had jumped again without knowing it, then Ricky had as well.

This didn’t seem plausible, but then again maybe this happens to a lot of people, too terrified of their own insanity to tell others. Aside from going on and on about how psychiatrists throughout the world know this but are sworn not to tell, I figured that logically it’s a bit too difficult to explain. I need to talk to Lou again whether I like it or not, but I took my chance when Jake walked into the house to pull the slip of parchment from my pocket. There were words on it that spelled out, “It’s just you.”

Well that settled that anyway. At least I didn’t have to talk to Lou about jumping in and out of time like I am. I held the piece of parchment in my hand staring at it and simply attempted to think my next question to it and see if that gave me any results. I tried so hard actually that I could feel my eyes straining, and I think I was holding my breath until I started changing colors. When the last bit started dissolving and new words were forming, they spelled out, “You look rather foolish, perhaps you should try some patience,” and that answered my question about the bugged eyes and colors. It dissolved away again and the next set of words said, “Those that resemble omnipotent cannot change or alter time. They cannot move through it any differently than mortals do,” and as if it were reading my thoughts as they were coming it changed again, “If immortals were ultimately omnipotent then there would be nothing that forestalls their every whim,” it wiped itself clean and spelled out, “There may be things more powerful than them. If they were truly omnipotent then they would know that,” patiently I watched as it changed for the last time, “It would also make it, not omnipotent in and of itself.”

Once I had realized that the parchment was done writing, I stared off down the road wondering aloud, “So God created all of this, and yet someone might have created God in some form of an infinite loop,” but it did create more questions than it answered in its simplicity. More over I was starting to wonder why I cared about any of this because like just about everyone throughout history, it doesn’t affect me and I can’t change it. Yes! That was the secret to it all; I clearly remembered the family tradition of ignorance that had gotten many of us through centuries of unanswerable questions. Just because I had e few extra tid-bits of information didn’t make me any closer to the answers and why should I care anyway? I put my thumb on it and simply assumed that the piece of parchment didn’t want to overwhelm me with too much information.

I probably didn’t want to know at the time, but I could almost feel the words on the parchment changing again. I wasn’t looking at it but I could feel it wriggling around in my hand almost. I looked down a bit startled to see, “Actually no, I’m just really busy, and sometimes I like to take what you would call a smoke break,” and I smiled. Again I could feel the parchment changing more than I could see it even though I was staring right at it. I hadn’t been able to feel it before but it was growing so pronounced now that I found it strange that I hadn’t.

Before I could read the words that were forming, I was startled by Jakes voice, “Mom, do you want something to eat?” and I turned around quickly with my heart hammering in my chest. My solitary moments to sit and talk to myself, and my imaginary friends keeps getting interrupted. Before I could answer though Jake reached down and pulled the parchment from my startled hand, and asked “Can you read this?”

I held out my hand waiting for him to put the parchment back, and replied “It’s mom speak for ‘tell your nosey son to mind his business’ and that’s why you can’t read it,” but when I had it in my hand I couldn’t understand the script at all. It looked Middle Eastern like Arabic, and fortunately I remembered that it was Aramaic like Lou’s bible. I casually asked him, “What did it look like to you?”

“It looked like the scribble you see when a terrorist demands something on the news,” he chortled. The shared joke that had me laughing and nodding was disturbed by that same feeling that the parchment was changing again, and it took everything in me not to look down at it. It’s best not to be obvious about it all at this point anyway.

Again I was startled from the voice coming from behind me, “Hello Miss,” came an unmistakable voice, “I’d like to know if I could have a word with you about your ex-husband, if you don’t mind?”

When I turned my head there was Lou standing there with a State Sherriff’s uniform on. I couldn’t help laughing, but it created a very strange look on Lou’s face. Jake on the other hand heard the magic words or something close enough to equate his father and turned tail into the house. At this point in time, if my times were correct his father is still alive. After I was sure that Jake was out of earshot, I said with a grin, “Kansas State Troopers and Sherriff’s Deputies aren’t allowed to have long hair, so you better tuck that pony tail up into your hat if you want your new disguise to work.”

“There’s too much of it, and I’ve never been able to cut it off,” he grinned, “Usually I just confuse people into seeing me differently then what I am, but I am having trouble with that lately,” and he wasn’t exactly smiling after he said that but he appeared to be trying to grin.

I looked over my shoulder to make sure that Jake wasn’t spying on us and then said, “Maybe there aren’t enough people around that you can confuse,” feeling very smart all of a sudden I added, “I mean you can’t confuse everyone, it doesn’t work on me, does it?”

There wasn’t much of a change in his face for a moment, but it did curl into a grin when he said, “I don’t know where you got that information from, but if I choose not to trick and confuse you it doesn’t mean that I can’t,” which he took in my smirk for a moment and then said “I shall snap my fingers, to give it a bit of a carnival effect if you would like?” and then he snapped his fingers while holding them up and to his side.

I spread my legs a bit and crossed my arms with every intention of giving him the “I caught you Mr. Man” look that all mothers do. Unfortunately it was interrupted by my gasp when my wrists brushed against fabric that I knew damn well wasn’t on me, or at least wasn’t when I put my blouse on. I ran my hands up my chest to feel, what was unmistakably a t-shirt, without the buttons that I had buttoned up earlier. Looking down I could see that words were written on it, and even upside down I could read “I hang out with the Devil and all he gave me was this stupid t-shirt!”

“You should see what it says on the back,” he then added very seriously, and I wasn’t amused. “The trick is to start unbuttoning it, and then your mind will take it back to what it is. It’s your way of not allowing me to dictate what you see, and if you refuse to see what I show you then I can’t force you to,” he looked over my shoulder towards the face that was peering through the window and then added, “I don’t want to give away my secrets, but I do want to give away the secrets of others,” and he continued to gaze at Jake, while I stared at him.

“Ok, what do you want?” I finally asked him, “I mean you obviously wanted to talk to me alone, all games aside, and I think you should ask me quickly before Jake can’t take it anymore and comes outside.”

“You changed time,” he said to me rather bluntly, “You took Ricky’s soul back from me by jumping back in time. I don’t know how you did it, and I don’t know how his mangled soul jumped back in time with you, but what you did made him change his path before he ruined his destiny,” he held up his hand before I could speak and finished up by saying, “I can’t change time, but for some reason you can, and I don’t know why. Before I met you I thought I knew everything, and aside from the damage to my ego, you can change the outcome of your town,” he looked over my shoulder at Jake again who was still firmly in the window and leaned in, “I get pulled to where ever you are and I think Darius does too, but if you can stay in this time long enough I can stop him from destroying that factory since I know when and how he did it.”

Recognition filled my head and I started nodding mutely. I was terrified actually because I didn’t know how long I was going to be “here” or in this time. “If I could stay here I would, but I don’t jump out of time on purpose, and I don’t have infinite amount of memories to tell me how it happens.”

Lou nodded and said, “I know, I’m just telling you what I derived and what I am trying to do. Even if you leave this time it doesn’t mean you won’t come back, but I am feeling worry which is strange for me as well, and I think that it is the coming of having been here too long,” again he stopped me from speaking by holding up his hand, “It’s not your fault or your concern, and Jake is coming out now,” his tone completely changed, “Ok ma’am if you see him please tell him that we need to talk to him, and have a nice day,” he tipped his cap towards Jake and said, “Be good,” before he walked off.

In a dizzying moment I turned around to see Jake standing in the doorway to the kitchen holding a pane of glass, and I was sitting on the floor with the parchment in my hand, “Trust no one, and never lose me.” I wasn’t puzzled this time since I actually remembered this. Looking over at the window I saw that it was still broken. Now I’m at a loss because I don’t know if anything I had done changed all of this around me, but the window being smashed told me that things appeared to be the same. Then it hit me that the Ricky I had talked to hadn’t done this yet, if he had done this at all, but it came out more like it should have all along. In a wailing stream of tears from between my fingers, because I think I had finally started losing it like a normal person at last. … To be continued

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Well it was starting to get rather boring around here without the Troll Woman next door coming over to complain about something, but fortunately spring is here, and that means all kinds of things to piss her off. This of course is the same neighbor that had erected a stockade fence with all of the posts facing my yard, so one cannot expect her to be rational about anything. I took great delight in calling the town after she told me “I paid for the fence, so I’m not looking at the ugly side!” The silence had been in place since then, {after the town called her and told her that it was to be fixed do to “poor neighbor” regulations} but she stood on my doorstep two days ago telling me that I had to pay for her lawn crew to come and get the leaves that had blown into her yard after my lawn crew had cleaned up mine. I was still a bit bitter over all of my flower beds getting trampled by her fence crew erecting it the wrong way, and having to stand on MY side of the fence to do it!

Needless to say, I politely offered to go and get the leaves off of her lawn {all 15 or so of them} and she told me that I wasn’t allowed on her property. I went about it with her as politely as I could for about 15 minutes and then finally told her to shove it. The town clerk called me yesterday to ask if she was serious over her phone call to them about the leaves. “That woman is insane, does she come over and give you a hard time a lot?” the woman on the other phone asked me, to which I had to reply honestly that she was a lunatic. Since the town clerk had been a family friend for at least 3 generations I took her on a stroll down memory lane, and reminded her that that house was possessed by demons or something.

I remember the last two “families” {for lack of a better word} that lived in that house and the “Troll Woman” is simply infested with the same demon or whatever that the last owners had been possessed by. The last owners lived there for most of my life, and the wife {The one that used to stand out back and howl} was so certifiably insane that when her son ran off and became a Mooney, we simply thought it was a step up! The husband who used to stand at the fence shooting at imaginary animals in the woods finally killed himself {and it was quite a mess I heard} partly because he was insane, and partly because you would have too if you had his wife! I remember after his funeral my grandfather coming home and saying “I was hoping he would hang on longer than the last owner!” and these were the gentle reminders that I was giving the town clerk over the phone, who was living on the other side of the house at the time.

The Troll Woman had her husband sent away to a home, and I am sure that he is happier than a pig in shit being there. She doesn’t visit him, and it’s probably because her son {the one who used to chase the cats with the lawn mower} wants to keep his inheritance and the way Troll Woman is going her husband may outlive her. Best to stay on his good side, I would assume. He probably never would have had to go away if she hadn’t have driven him to it actually. I used to be their lawn man, and would go over and do their yard twice a week, and the leaves in the fall. When she finally started going visually insane she would give him hell for it, and finally made him do it himself. Considering the man had use of only half his body {from the stroke he had had years before} he didn’t do too bad really, but after a few weeks though she used to scream at him all day to go do the lawn, until he was out there every day mowing the dirt because she forced him to kill the grass. It was after she had finally driven him to sun poisoning that they took him away to the home 2 years ago.

Now trust me, I am not one to think that all women drive men to their grave {just most of them} but that was a glaring example every day out my window. At least the poor bastard got out of there before they found him in a state to make the town ambulance drivers quit, like the last owner, but I am still hoping for equal opportunity demons before the Troll Woman threatens to outlive ME! Greektradgedius is all in a tither because she thinks that the Troll Woman will do something strange to the dogs, even though I assured her that my jubilation over dead terriers will keep her from ever thinking of it. Beside the fact that her cat spends most of its free time over here in this yard, and I am an expert with a pellet gun. Hatfields and McCoys New England style let me tell you.

This coincides with the other phone call I received yesterday from The Mother of All the Evils’s telling me why she hasn’t been around to see them for a few months. Despite my trying to shush her up by pointing out to her that it was simply normal behavior for her she continued along. “I have cervical and ovarian cancer that is caused by late stage HPV. The drugs that the doctor has me on are making me sick all the time,” she started out before going into a long drawn out explanation of “I don’t know how it could have happened?” What the fuck am I supposed to say to this that wouldn’t come out along the lines of “are you really the only person north of Virginia that doesn’t know you are a whore?”

After her long drawn out lecture {in typical concerned mother who doesn’t visit her kids or pay child support fashion} about how I should have the girls put on the vaccine immediately, I assured her that Lazius Boycrazius had gotten the HPV vaccine and that Imtoocutus isn’t allowed to have sex yet. I think Lazius Boycrazius told her all of the things that I had been dying to say to her personally after I had gotten off the phone with her. She didn’t even bother to try any brainwashing and pity on Captain ADHD and simply hung up on her before she could. It’s usually the only reason she calls the house anyway, so I can call it a small victory with a life lesson tagged on to it. Lazius Boycrazius walked around the house without a care in the world afterwards which finally prompted me to ask her if her mother told her what her “problem” was. She said that she did, and then told me that she told her the reasons and a few more problems that she had and could actually work on while laying around. It was the fact that she started with “stop laying around” that must have set her mother off ;8o)

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Well now that I have an MP3 player that actually plays all of my MP3s, I have been pounding through my new audio books at work and driving around in the car. When I was using the iPod piece of crap I had reserved myself to listening to the same audio books over and over again simply because they worked, rather than endure the frustration of putting in a new book and having it skip chapters. The Zune appears to have no problems so I continued on in the David Eddings series “The Belgariad” which I hadn’t read in my teenage years. I remember that all of the total dorks at school used to spend all of their free time reading these books, but I was too busy drinking and destroying property like all of the cool kids to read any of them.

Now that I am no longer a cool kid and the father of several “not” cool kids myself, I have taken to listening to audio books while I work, and I prefer audio books that are funny and adventuresome. These books remind me of a cross between Rodenberry, Rowling and Tolkien in the way that they lay out a very good fantasy map, create cultures, and then get you personally involved in all of them. When I started in the first book “The Pawn of Prophecy” it was like any good Star Trek series in the way that it made you interested to the point of being curious towards the various characters in the book. As it continued on it reminded me of a Harry Potter book in its dynamic character building surrounding an orphaned boy with hardly any knowledge of his past, but leapt into a fascinating adventure because of it. The books tend to end a little on the uneventful side, but leave you clamoring for what is happening next.

Now keeping in mind that most of the Harry Potter fanatics are out there with that feeling of emptiness because their favorite teenage hero has been permanently placed into normal progression with no books on the horizon, I would suggest that these various books by David Eddings would fill the void quite nicely. There is even a bit of a twist to it, now that I have finished “The Belgariad” series which consisted of 5 books, and two add on books at the end where the author took all of the parts that were forced out by the editors, and compiled them. The sequel series “The Malloreon” which I am now on the first book of called “Guardians of the West” immediately starts out with the questions that you would have left over at the end of any good series of books. I find myself wrapped in the development of the characters as adults, and celebrating their life learning and triumphs as if they were old friends. Most of it is rather hilarious as you go through the real life {and seriously as fantasy novels go, these books really make you feel like these people are normal} birth of a child etc. Picture Harry Potter going into a fit of stupor while Ginny is giving birth to the first child, and Mrs. Weasley sends him outside to chop fire wood just to get him out of the way. Harry doesn’t think about using magic or servants because all he can do is babble about how babies need fire wood, and then comes in crushing the table with a cord of wood and is surprised that there is a baby there. It’s excellent writing and it is endearing.

Eddings was very understanding about what other fantasy novels lacked, and took effort to develop women throughout his novels while at the same time making sure that they were normal women. He was often {from what I read online} bludgeoned for being a racist and a sexist in the way he wrote, but like most things that have the “racism” and “sexism” tags applied to it, the things he writes are normal. The princess deciding to have armor made so that she can lead the troops into battle while her future husband is off fighting the epic battle is placed on hold while she pitches a temper tantrum because the smith didn’t put “breasts in her armor, is a great example. She didn’t have any but was extremely self conscious of that. It was a normal adolescent problem that was developing in her because the man she was in love with was often surrounded by women from other cultures that tended to be far more developed. Other interesting endeavors into foul language {despite the fact that the author doesn’t feel the need to write specific words, but colorfully explains when they are being used} which always tends to threaten greater men purely by the way they are used, always amuses me. The King of Reva taking on an entire army of Membrate Knights who finally cower to him, not just because he is the greatest king in the west but because his tirade of swearing like they are ruining his day scares them, is quite hilarious! When his wife is having a hard time getting pregnant she goes into a tirade swearing and throwing things, and he cowers to her, but is shocked when he discovers that she learned all the words from him.

If you are like me and you are looking for some easier reading that doesn’t get too complicated, has a good sense of humor, and interesting plot twists then I would suggest picking up a copy of “The Pawn of Prophecy” by David Eddings. It’s timeless and kid friendly. The books are far more endearing then Tolkien or Lewis {more like Star Trek or Star Wars} and the characters are very realistic. Often you will stop to say, “I know someone like that!” no matter how outrageous they are, and more often than not you will find people in a fantasy environment acting like normal people in the real world. When you are done with that book the rest of them will become more important as you go along. The fact there is a 5 book series that takes over after the first 5 book series will make it all that much more appealing because we always get that feeling of “damnit, that’s it!” when we are done with a series of books. ;8o)

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I have this amazingly worthless iPod that I have tried to pawn off on all of the kids, and finally have had to give up on it. It was a gift actually, and it has kept me from getting a good MP3 player for too long really. Most people don’t believe me when I tell them how horrible iPods are, but what can I expect? The computer world has been like this ever since the beginning, and now it is some sort of full circle event that has come home to roost. I’m sure that the iPod fills a wonderful void for people that don’t care about what they are doing, but in general that has been the whole Apple crowd in a nutshell for as long as I remember as well.

It started with a maniacal dictator, preaching to his subjects from a golden tower from the moment he was given any sort of power. Nobody in the computer industry will give Steve Jobs any head space because he is what he is. If you need a monopolistic, ego maniacal dictator to lead you around by a collar, then stop pointing your fingers at Bill Gates and go right to the source. The man who created Bill Gates was standing at the end of the hall during the Technology show that started the PC revolution holding his newest Apple computer and didn’t think that IBM would be standing at the door heading the consumers in another direction, and he never really got over that. Apple had actually owned the Personal Computer industry until their ego got in the way. IBM was at the time the cooler kids on the block, and the consumer market shifted really hard. Microsoft was just a tool in all of that by providing the operating system.

What knocked me out in the beginning of the desktop wars was when Apple stole the Xerox operating system in the 80s and then, in the interest of getting even with IBM, gave it to Microsoft in the hopes of getting Microsoft to stop making software for the PC. Ranting and raving about how Microsoft stole the operating system did them absolutely no good, and to even consider Windows to be in the same league as the Mac OS was laudable but what happened from there? 10 years of apathy on behalf of the people at Apple had basically nailed it into the ground. Apple purists {like any other cult} had pecked and poked at Microsoft for years with no real improvements to its own platform despite the insurmountable head start that they had, and in the end they had one thing going for them which I am still seeing to this day. Macintosh is the computer for stupid people. A wonderful niche in general, but it seems to achieve the slated objective of a cult, to keep people blissfully ignorant to everything else.

I had thought that Apple was finally going to die off, when they fought back with the invention of the iPod. It was pure genius really to simply attempt to dominate a market that was floundering, yet had the opportunity to come into its own relatively quickly. The iPod, I am assuming was a great little toy when it came out, and thanks to the lack of competition of a “caviar style” MP3 player it has been a huge success. There was a time when the world was desperate for a “caviar style” personal computer too, and it reminds me of the Apple II which filled that niche for a couple of years. Almost 30 years later I am seeing exactly why I had sworn off of Apple computers and went to Commodores, and then why I had gone to IBM compatibles when Commodore went the way of the Pterodactyl. Apple will never learn from its own mistakes, because their need to be incompatible with everything else becomes infuriating to those of us that usually know what we are doing. Their need to force people into “repurchasing” every year seals the deal.

The whole Apple strategy of convincing people that “plug and play” functionality is the zenith of computing comes at a cost, and anyone that has ever used a Macintosh knows this. You generally pay 40 percent more for a comparably equipped Macintosh, you pay up to 3 times as much for inferior add ons, and in the end they will make their own computers obsolete within 2 years. It works great for things like Schools and radio personalities that have unlimited funds, but how does that translate to the real world? I have rarely met anyone who went out and purchased their new Apple product, bragged about it for a while and maintained a level of happiness about it a year later. Most of the people that I have ever known with an Apple product are jealous about what their things can’t do and mine can, and either resort to complaining about the “Microsoft Monopolistic Machine” or leaving Apple.

Now I have managed to keep most of my PCs running for 5 years minimum on 20 to 100 dollar upgrades now and then. When they have finally demonstrated that they are sick of being upgraded in the Microsoft path, I have always been able to convert them over to Linux and have wonderful new computers for another few years to compliment the new PC I purchase or build. The Apple computers always require a 2000$ upgrade every two years regardless. Apple purists will jump all over me {seriously, a cult} and tell me that this is not true, but those are the amazingly miserable slogging around with a truly “old” computer. I am sitting here with my 6 month old iPod {generation 3 nano} and grabbing my old IMEE and loading it up with audiobooks because I have had enough. I am sick of iTunes, I am sick of the iPod refusing to work if I tag the MP3s, and I am sick of the stupid thing having to be reset every few weeks.

The only thing about it that I will miss is that it could be plugged into my car radio. This form of indoctrination has managed to hold onto me for the last month of this ordeal, but there is nothing worse than being into an audiobook on the way to work and then not being able to listen to it when I get to work because it won’t play through the headphones. Apple technicians have stated the obvious old Apple line of “You should be editing MP3s with iTunes” or else they can become corrupted. Pointing out to them that they work with everything else after I edit them with MediaMonkey makes them downright indignant. Mostly because I am using other things I am sure. In the end I had hacked the thing open significantly {formatted the disk inside the stupid thing, and re-emulated it to think it was a Phillips MP3 player which required a bit of C+ … the fuckers} and now am just happy that I hadn’t paid 200 dollars for what is a 40 dollar MP3 player. Needless to say, when Apple makes this iPod obsolete and incompatible with its own software, I will not be paying for the 300 dollar upgrade to the generation 4, or generation 5 that will probably be out 4 months later.

Fortunately I have a Linux machine that I can do these things on because the big secret that Apple tries to hide from its masses of Zomacs is that Windows is every bit as much “stupid people” compatible these days too. I was reading articles about laptops the other day {trust me online reviews are very enlightening} and some of the comments are hilarious if you translate them a bit. “I bought this laptop for my sister who isn’t very bright. I wanted to get a Macbook, but it was too expensive” {note … My sister is an idiot so I immediately thought “Apple”} “She needed it for college, and I was impressed that for half the money she was able to use this Acer with twice the power!” {note … even my total idiot of a sister who is lucky to be going to college to begin with can use this Vista computer} “I am thinking of getting another one of these for my 5 year old son” {note … any idiot can use Macintosh or Vista, but I would rather give my son hope of overcoming that} and so on and so forth.

Even those Mac commercials with the Bill Gates looking guy simpering, and the guy who looks like he would trade his computer for some weed are starting to play the Microsoft angle on their commercials. “The new Microsoft Office for Macintosh is out, so now you can do all of your office applications on a Mac” {note … I thought Mac did everything better? How about you get a Linux computer for about a quarter the price, save the 500 dollars you pay for office and get OpenOffice.Org which can do all of that for FREE!} but who really cares? I think in all reality there are two types of computer people. Those that want to do things and those that want things done for them, and how each one gets there can vary a lot. Assuming that we aren’t taken in by the glitz then it takes a little time to figure it out.

My solution for all of this was to take some advice of a computer illiterate but MP3 savvy young lady that lives upstairs from me. I bought her a Zune two years ago because it had a few feature that the iPod didn’t have at the time {even though what she had originally asked me for was an iPod} which was a large screen, FM Radio, and Wireless G. She had looked at her new Zune initially with that look of “Oh My God, how will I be able to show my face in school without an iPod!” and later on with the other loser in school that got a Zune instead of an iPod started realizing that it was quite a bit better. She happily used it for the last two years, and has enjoyed sharing the secret of being able to wirelessly beam songs between her Zune and all of her friend’s Zunes. Yeah, the two losers with Zunes were able to get the whole gang to get rid of their iPods and get Zunes because it was obviously better, and I asked all of them what they thought. “Awesome” was the usual reply.

Needless to say I was at Wal-Mart tonight looking at a new computer for my Aunt for her birthday. Her old one just tears the network down and hasn’t got the strength to run a decent antivirus so I finally gave up and assumed my usual responsibility of spending my money to make my life easier. I was eying out the Zunes while I was there and decided that it was too expensive to purchase one right now, but I also decided that the computers that were there were a bit too pricey for me to simply purchase to make my life easier. Staples was my next stop because I knew that they had computers there for 300 bucks {as opposed to the 500 at Wal-Mart} and I walked in there and pointed to the computer I wanted. “Staples” is a candy store to computer dorks like me, and I have to do my business and get out! It was going to take 10 minutes which of course was a sign from God that I should look around, and low and behold there was a pile of 30gig Zunes sitting at the end of an isle with a sign saying “Clearance 90$ each” on them.

To make this horribly long story short, I am sitting here with my new Zune charging, and the Zune software compiling all of my music for me into a library. This is no easy task because I am only up to the Ms and it compiled 742 artists, 2379 albums, and 29139 songs so far. The total ended up being 1142, 4428 and 76709 in case you are wondering. I know this because the Zune software displays it all in a very eloquent triple pane view that is extremely easy to weed through. It also synchronizes everything with a simple “drag and drop” interface that is very good. It doesn’t change the format of everything on the fly {often making MP3s ruined in the translation} like the iPod does and more to the point the whole package makes the iPod 10 times more pathetic then what was obvious just using it without knowing how much better the other players are. The fact that it comes with a rubberized anti-shock casing instead of polished stainless steel and delicate glass paneling like the iPod makes me think it looks like Apples to Apples all over again. When iPod falls to the usual 5 percent market share that Apple always ends up in, I think we should just take all of the people crying about how unfair it is that Microsoft always wins, and neuter them. Perhaps it will finally end the vicious cycle of Macinwhining that I have had to deal with since my school got its first Macintosh back in 1985. We all went to a PC class on Kaypro IBM compatibles but the Macintosh was in the library so people could use the “paint” program during study hall. That hasn’t changed much either. I’m just glad I knew better then to expect anything from an iPhone and got a Centro instead ;8o)

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The voice on the answering machine was a sweet and attractive sounding young woman. She was calling on behalf of Comcast, and needed me to call a number about my High Speed Internet immediately. I knew what it was about. I’ve ranted and raved about these things enough over the last few years, and of course I knew I was a prime target. I had rooted for Verizon to win its battle over Comcast to sell its wire lines to Fair Point just like I had rooted for MediaOne {later to become Comcast} to win its battle to be allowed to offer phone service, and in the end it was all for not. I always believed we needed choice and New Hampshire is being run by monopolistic dictators that spend all their money buying senators from Pennsylvania, and there isn’t a thing any of us can do about it. We are more “Mob Run” then Rhode Island now.

I called the number and was told unceremoniously that I was in the “one tenth of one percent” that use the most bandwidth, and if it happens again my internet service will be cut off. Nobody outside of Comcast knows what this amount is. Nobody has access to whether or not it really is “one tenth of one percent” and what formulation it uses to come up with this amount. It doesn’t matter really because the only way to stop it from happening is to pay your bill each month and not use your internet that you are paying for. I’m pretty sure that they won’t be handing out rebate checks to the bottom “one tenth of one percent” so there really isn’t anything to shoot for.

After spending a day looking around I have found out that I have no place else to go either. I went to the Verizon website which a couple of weeks ago was offering FIOS service for about 10 dollars more a month, but now are not. This of course was because they have sold themselves to Fair Point which ran all of those emotional ads with the old guy explaining how great they were at supplying high speed internet, and that was why we had to stop Comcast from blocking the deal. The deal officially took place last week, and by calling them I found out that they immediately cancelled all DSL and FIOS service in the State of New Hampshire, with an apology. Absolutely nobody offers DSL service in my area anymore because they couldn’t compete with Comcast, and now Comcast is going on a dumping spree of anyone that uses its uncared for {through lack of competition} network too much.

Now technically I am guilty of being a bandwidth hog because I have my phone line {through Vonage}, my network {so all the kids can get online with their own computers}, and large volumes of Usenet traffic going through my cable modem. I have spent the last several days going through article after article about Comcast and its willingness to kill off its “offenders” of bandwidth and the results have been mixed. For every article that complains about it, there are dozens of people who talk about how bandwidth hogs deserve it. Nobody truly knows what the formulation is, but when you look around you will see one common thread. They are always looking for the top “one tenth of one percent” each month. Once you have been targeted you WILL be eliminated, and once you are gone then there will be a new “one tenth of one percent” to be eliminated next, and sooner or later it will be everyone who actually uses their “unlimited broadband” a lot. Once Comcast has their network full of people that don’t even need high speed internet access, then they will be happy and can just count their profits.

In the end I will have no choice but to go back to dial up because collusion has completely robbed the area of any competition in this market. Verizon sucked the marrow out of the bones of our phone lines so that no company will even attempt to offer services. The lines were never maintained or even upgraded. We watched Verizon trucks and Green Mountain trucks blocking traffic around here for years and all they were doing was keeping the antiquated system running. I spent the last two days trying to find anyone that provides broadband other than Comcast in the area and it is exactly 0 unless I want to pay Earthlink 120 dollars a month for a 768k DSL line, and I am pretty sure that if I started the process we would find out that they don’t actually service this area. I found a few that “thought” they did along the way until they went to schedule the appointment. Comcast owns all of the cable lines outright and they are going to rule them with an iron fist, and Verizon has escaped after all of the bones are sucked clean leaving Fair Point to get the last dregs at the bottom of the cup. It really reminds me of how much I hate New Hampshire in the end, and wish I had never come back. ;8o)