Saw this on Failblog:

That's a pretty sweet Classic Video Game Arcade Home Entertainment System.

Before leaving the internet, I tried to send bi-monthly Toastmaster Area updates to the Officers of G4... Now that the term is ending, I figured I better get one out to promote the picnic -- wish I had time to make it more concise, but this is what I ended up sending:

Hope the picnic will be a success!

Last week went to the Sierras for some camping. On the way up, I saw a bear and completely failed as a nature photographer, but this is my bear sighting:

The bear was scrambling up the side of a hill, I think you can see his rear-end at the very end.

Or it was bigfoot.

It only took a day for Comcast to deactivate the internet after my subscription expired, and the internet was off for about a month.

Trying to get DSL from AT&T was a challenge: they have ads on TV featuring $14.95/month DSL, but if you call AT&T they say "that offer is national, and its not available in your area" and push you to get U-Verse for something like $49.95/month.

Going through their online system, you can see a $14.95/month offer, and add it to a shopping cart -- but when you put in your information and try to get to checkout, it invariably turned into some $29.95/month offer. I went through an online representative and they said I could get $14.95/month if I first subscribed to the $29.95/month offer, called an 800 number to get it "downgraded" to $19.95, and then called another 800 number and link it to my wireless subscription for another $5.00 off -- resulting in a $14.95/month bill.

Not sure it was worth all the hoops you had to jump through, and I haven't seen a bill yet -- but I'm supposed to have $14.95/month internet now for a year.

I perceive DSL as slightly slower than cable for download, but its faster for upload. I haven't run any speedtests -- this is only evaluating it by response times when playing LightBike2 on the iPad. For Netflix streaming, DSL works fine.

And therein lies the rub, without the internet at home I was a lot more productive. Since getting internet back, I'm wasting too much time on Netflix. Hopefully though, I'll get into posting again -- AdSense revenue is way down for May, indicating Google really does prioritize "new" content in their PageRanking.

Tomorrow is April 9th, and my game of chicken with Comcast's billing department will have come to an end.

For the past 4 years, I've been paying between $19.95 and $21.99 for Comcast Xfinity economy Internet service -- its not super fast (especially when trying to upload videos to youtube), but it's good enough for SSH connections, Netflix streaming, and the occasional XBox Live gaming sessions.

For $20/month, it was a good deal. For the "non-promotion" pricing of $45/month, I'd want a better connection.

I've always been able to get the "promotional" pricing by being as nice as I possibly can to the service representative (or, failing that, switching names on the account). Rarely negotiations would make their way to the "retention department," but I'd be as reasonable and accomodating as I could and we'd work something out.

Comcast hasn't been offering the $20 promotional rate in their TV commercials for quite a while -- the best rate I've seen in these spots is $24.95/month for 6 months. Inflation? When I saw my $19.95/month promotion was ending, I was thinking it was an "end of an era" for the $20/month internet bill.

I tried my best to go for the $24.95 rate -- but no dice: "That's only for new customers. I can't offer you that."

I got forwarded right from first-level customer service through to the "disconnection" department, and we scheduled the service to be terminated at the end of the current billing period: April 9th. They've called back twice to confirm (making no effort to improve on the $45/month pricing) so I'm feeling they're serious.

I'll be looking into AT&T DSL ($14.95/month if you bundle it with an AT&T Wireless Plan and are willing to endure their onerous webstore). Either that or move the computer closer to the window to get some of that free Mountain View Google WiFi.

A Google Adsense check arrived over the weekend:

That covered earnings from January and February, which means I'm averaging $2 a day:

According to Google Analytics, most people end up on this site looking for Commodore Programming Tips, Men's hairstyling suggestions, and how Capacitors work.

The people looking for Commodore stuff actually spend time on the site and read the articles, and the Hairstyle/Capacitor people blow through the place -- but there are a lot more of them... The capacitor post was only a month ago but generated a (relative) ton of traffic.

We may get to use work resources to post some ads on the Luminate network as part of a test -- I'll have to choose my keywords wisely to drive only the most lucrative traffic to mccreavy.com.

$125, minus 2 months of Linode hosting ($40) = $85. Wonder where it should go?

Toothpick Tiefighter, 2012
Materials: Toothpicks, Glue, Boredom

Coming soon: Milkshake Straw X-Wing.