Month: March 2009

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Your PC May Not Be So Personal Anymore

I’ve just seen something that’s left me speechless (if it’s true). It’s a news report from Russia Today about a trade agreement that the Obama administration is apparently working on. The bottom line is that it would give the government the authority to search your computer without a search warrant.  Government agents would be allowed to check your computer (or any other personal electronic devices) for unauthorized copyrighted works and arrest you if any were found.

Here’s the full video from Russia Today.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V44bYL0udQ0[/youtube]

If this is true, then the ACLU should be all over it. But since they’re in the tank for Obama, I don’t see that happening.

H/T: Gateway Pundit

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Restroom Access Act

I have Crohn’s disease. If you’ve never heard of it (and chances are, you haven’t; it’s not a glamorous disease like AIDS), it’s an inflammatory bowel disease which has as one of its symptoms diarrhea.

It’s not a fun disease to have. In my case, I’ve had to have two surgeries which removed upwards of two feet of small intestine.

With Crohn’s disease, when you have to go, YOU HAVE TO GO. You don’t get much time to figure out where the nearest restroom is.

I think I have some “authority” to say what I’m going to say here.

There’s a new law in Illinois called “Ally’s Law.” It came about because Ally Bain was in an Old Navy store with her mom when she had to go. The management of the store refused to let her use the employee restroom. The resulting law forces businesses with employee only restrooms to allow customers to use the restroom if certain conditions are met.

The part of me that suffers from Crohn’s disease says “yeah, about time”. The part of me that believes in freedom says “bad law.”

I think the freedom loving part of me wins in this situation. Here’s why: the management of that Old Navy store made a bad decision; there’s no doubt about that. They could easily have allowed Ally, who was obviously in distress, the use of the restroom. Instead, they didn’t, and now we have another law that tries to force common sense onto businesses.

Yeah, I feel for the girl in this situation; I’ve been there (I had to stop at a stranger’s house one time to use the bathroom). What they should have done was let Old Navy know how bad this decision was, not try to get a law passed to fix it. A publicity campaign would have been better than getting another law passed. Imagine how embarrassed the manager of that Old Navy would have been if his name had been in a news story that related the situation.

What needs to happen is that the public needs to be made more aware of this disease. The last thing we need is to go running to the government for a fix. I find it ironic that in the video on the page I linked to above the mother says that her daughter will overcome the disease no matter where she goes. No, now whenever her daughter feels like she’s owed something because she has this awful disease, her daughter will use government as a first resort.

I’m sorry, but part of having Crohn’s disease is having “restroom awareness”. Her mother failed her when she didn’t know where the nearest public restroom was. Sure, Old Navy could have stepped up and helped, but they weren’t obligated to (at that time).

Now a version of that law is making its way across other states, mine included. Despite the fact that it could possibly help me a some point in the future, I’m against it. Government shouldn’t be used this way.

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UPDATED: Comcast Sucks

Got a nice little letter in the mail today from Comcast. Seems that someone there screwed up and deleted the line item from our bill that charges us for internet access. So now Comcast is correcting their mistake, and they’re such a nice company they’re not even going to charge me for the “free” internet service I’ve been getting!

So, since there wasn’t any indication in this letter about how much my bill would be going up, I had to call. Talked to a guy who told me my $100 ish cable bill would be going up to around $140, not including taxes. That would put it up around $150 or so (they can’t ever seem to tell you how much the taxes are going to be).

I said that as far as I knew, the plan I had included internet access, and as far as I was concerned, I’d been paying for it all along (this “mistake” happened in October of 2006!). Comcast rep said that they weren’t going to make me pay for the over $1300 in internet service I’d gotten for free. Told him again, no, my package includes it. Don’t know what happened on your end, but that’s not my fault.

So now I’m looking at trying to reduce this bill one way or another. His recommendation was that maybe I could get their phone service. Huh? Here I am complaining about how expensive it already is, and he’s trying to upsell me? Do I sound stupid on the phone or what?

I’m going to explore other options, but I suspect that I’ll have to stay with Comcast for the internet (even though it’s not “free” anymore). That means I’ll have to cut back on something else. We’re not using our land line phone much anymore, so that might be an option.

I’m really disgusted with Comcast right now. Somehow they’ve changed my plan from one that included internet access to one that doesn’t, then they have the gall to tell me I’ve been getting it free for two years, but now they’re going to charge me.

Comcast does indeed, suck.

UPDATE: Well, that was interesting. Comcast called my house today and offered to cut the $42/month internet charge to what a new customer would get, which is $20/month for the next six months. I guess it’s better than going through the hassle of trying to find another broadband provider. I’ll revisit my internet options in six months; maybe by that time AT&T will have their TV service more widely available (you know, the TV service that Comcast lobbied the Tennessee state government to not allow). I’m still not entirely happy; I’d like to be able to pick and choose the channels I want, and pay for just those. If you want one or two channels in one of their higher tiers, you’ve got to pay for all of them. Oh well.

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Daylight Savings Time Is A Joke

We “sprung forward” over the weekend, or at least most of us did. Daylight Savings Time went into effect Sunday morning, and as usual, my sleep cycle is screwed up.

Someone computed that the “opportunity” cost of changing the clocks twice a year (if you figure it takes 15 minutes to change all your clocks) was something like $1.7 billion. That’s the time it takes times an average hourly rate of $17 ish times the number of people in the US.

That’s one hidden cost. Another hidden cost is productivity. If you follow your circadian rhythm after DST goes into effect, you’ll end up going to sleep one hour later. So instead of going to sleep at 11 pm, you go to sleep at midnight. If you get up at 7 pm, you’ve lost an hour of sleep. You’re going to drive to work groggier, be less productive at work, and be more tired at the end of the day. And in this current economic situation, anything that reduces productivity should be done away with.

Ben Franklin is credited with coming up with Daylight Savings Time. But it seems he suggested it more as a joke than anything. He says that he woke up early one day in Paris, and found that the sun was already up (at 6 am). He then calculates how many pounds of candles would be saved if people used daylight instead of candlelight (kind of like the “early to bed, early to rise” saying).

No one took the idea seriously until the World War I. The Germans adopted it early in the war, and the US adopted it late. It was ultimately repealed in the US in 1919 because it was so unpopular.

I daresay it’s pretty unpopular now, especially after Congress added a few more weeks to DST. The kicker there is that they used numbers from the 1970’s that touted how much energy would be saved. The government entity that produced those numbers not only says they’re out of date, but they’re wrong. So Congress passes a law based on faulty or inaccurate information. What else is new?

We need to repeal this stupid law. Or at the very least, split the difference, and “spring ahead” a half hour one time, and be done with it.

H/T: Failed Success

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World’s Largest Record Collection

Paul Mawhinney began collecting records (for you kids out there, a “record” is a flat disc you put on a “record player” in order to hear music) 60 years ago. He now has over 1,000,000 records and his collection is worth millions. But he’s put the collection up for sale due to declining health and other reasons.

Here’s a short video about the collection:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWyMjzVXq7Y[/youtube]

I don’t know why someone like Paul McCartney wouldn’t buy this. This collection needs to be kept intact.