Old Weird Ward
Unless otherwise noted, that which is posted here is opinion, which is protected by the First Amendment to the US Constitution. If you don't like my opinions, go somewhere else. Nobody is forcing you to actually read this drivel.
The presumption exists that you can read at all.
That may be a large assumption.
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Tuesday, March 30, 2004
- - - - - High Speed Access to the Internet - - - - -
As my legions of admirers know, I really despise dial-up. During the Great Movetm from California, I had to live with dial-up for 3 months. Drove me batty, made me grumpy, and would have given me the Heartbreak of Psiorisis if it had continued much longer.
We finally got our DSL up and running shortly after we moved into the New Joint. The local telephone company supplied with a new combination ActionTec 1520 DSL Modem/Router/Switch.
We've been having periodic problems with that thing. At least once a week I've had to power-cycle it, which is a small pain. The big pain is the intermittent slow speed and hesitations that have plagued us for the last month.
This morning, The ActionTec DSL Modem/Router/Switch puked, yet again. All of the LAN connections just...stopped. This is the third time this has happened. Each time, the only solution was a power-off/power-on cycle - a "cold boot".
Enough already!
I now have the equipment I used in California: A SpeedStream DSL modem, connected to the WAN port on a LinkSys BEFSR 41 Router/Switch. Now, we wait to see if anything bad happens. I ran that combination for as long as three months with no glitches, and then, it was a power failure that caused the "cold boot".
- - - - - More on Gas Prices - - - - -
The US Dept of Energy's web site has an interesting page HERE.
Among other things, the average tax burden across the 50 states is 31%. If you scroll down a bit further, you'll find a coherent explanation of why California's gas prices are so damned high. Boy, am I glad I've left California and gone to SE Georgia!
Excerpt: The State of California operates its own reformulated gasoline program with more stringent requirements than Federally-mandated clean gasolines. In addition to the higher cost of cleaner fuel, there is a combined State and local sales and use tax of 7.25 percent on top of an 18.4 cent-per-gallon federal excise tax and an 18.0 cent-per-gallon State excise tax. Refinery margins have also been higher due in large part to price volatility in the region.
California prices are more variable than others because there are relatively few supply sources of its unique blend of gasoline outside the State. California refineries need to be running near their fullest capabilities in order to meet the State's fuel demands. If more than one of its refineries experiences operating difficulties at the same time, California's gasoline supply may become very tight and the prices soar.
In other words, if anything goes wrong, prices hit the sky in very short order.
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