::::: : the wood : davidrobins.net

Broadstripe, the worst ISP in the world

News, Technical, Guns ·Tuesday August 12, 2008 @ 22:45 EDT (link)

"We must needs attack them, then," Mandorallen asserted. "Our cause is just, and we must inevitably prevail."

"That's an interesting superstition, Mandorallen," Barak told him, "but I'd prefer to have the numbers on my side."
—The Belgariad, David and Leigh Eddings

The quote reminds me a lot of the upcoming election. The conservative libertarian cause is just (stop robbing the people and "redistributing" their income), but we need the numbers on our side to prevail, which also requires some people to vote for justice against their own financial self-interest, which, as Tytler tells us, probably isn't going to happen: the special interest groups all want our money, and the politicians are happy to buy votes from them.

20080805: Mowed lawn.

20080806: Called Broadstripe about bad Internet performance (lots of outages, drops; I have a ping task, and we lose a lot of packets); they said they'd send someone (same day even), but, as usual, promises, promises: Honey never saw anyone and the connectivity's still wretched. Went shooting; cleaned gun afterwards (overdue since I skipped it last time).

20080807: Sprayed weeds; filled sprayer tank all the way (4 gallons); couldn't use it all. Costco.

20080809: Today and yesterday Broadstripe (the worst ISP in the world) called back and said they were going to "re-provision" the modem, but it hasn't done any good; as I type this, I'm in the middle of a 40+ minute outage (I have no idea how long it will go) and there have beep periodic half-hour outages over the past month at random times (they're at 3.58% downtime, or 7h33, for the month of August thus far, and that doesn't properly reflect the disruptive effects of their frequent 1-minute outages to e.g. VoIP calls). Boycotting the Olympics, since the Chinese suck; we need to nuke them before they get too rich and powerful and start doing the evil that they'd really like to, but can't because of fear of military retribution.

Honey's friend Rochelle (from school) was here from noon to around 2200; played some games: Quiddler, Scotland Yard, Boggle, and a new one she brought, Carcassonne (I won, so I rather like it… lots of monasteries; I didn't clue in to the farmer bit until late). She made custard, which was good (last time I made it it was very lumpy, so I watched closely… heating the milk is apparently a good idea, and watching/stirring it constantly).

20080810: Went to the Monroe gun show, last attempt to find a few good holsters locally; didn't find anything. I'll probably order a few Galco holsters I've been looking at on OpticsPlanet. Honey and I had discussed automating one or more players in Scotland Yard (in particular, "Mr. X" first), so we started entered the connections of the big graph that makes up the game map (199 numbered locations, connected in various ways by (bidirectional) taxi/bus/rail and a few boat connections that only Mr. X, the suspect pursued by the detectives, can use).

20080811: Went shooting, 18' and 27'; getting better, still not sure I could pass the Tennessee range test since they require 70% in the 8-ring at 25 yards (75' for those keeping score at home). Although, I can only find one place that states those requirements, so it might depend on the instructor. ZX checked in a few fixes (mainly ones that we'd worked on together; I'm not sure if he's been too long in academia—a master's really isn't that long—but he isn't learning as quickly as I'd like).

20080812: Cleaned Glock.

I was watching Judge Judy and it gave me some ideas about sensible ways to handle alimony and child support; I already discussed alimony in a previous rant (internal link, sorry), but I didn't say much about child support. The deal today is that the man (it's couched as e.g. "non-custodial parent", but even when that isn't the man, the man is doing most of the paying) has to pay to support the child in "the manner to which they are accustomed." Total rot. The state should only require the man to pay to give the child (their equal half of) basic food and shelter—necessities. If the child wants to do better, perhaps they should elect to live with the father.

The state should not generally be interfering, but I support them ensuring that the child gets necessities covered by those responsible for it (and not the rest of the taxpayers), but anything above necessities is the choice of the parent, as it was pre-separation: just because a parent chose to spend more on a child at one point doesn't mean they should be forced to keep that up forever. Also, I support adjusting the amount for location, but, and this will seem odd at first, based on each parent's location. So, the father isn't punished for moving to Arkansas where, presumably, incomes are lower (and cost of living also commensurately lower), but nor is the mother rewarded for moving to California or New York. I am adamantly against the amount paid out depending in any way upon the income of either parent: that is prejudicial and socialistic and morally and ethically bankrupt: amount should depend on cost, which depends primarily on location, full stop.

Books finished: Belgarath the Sorcerer.

DVDs finished: Thinner, Stargate: The Ark of Truth, Charmed: The Final Season, The Invisible, Ocean's Eleven.