My last rant (Time Warner Sucks), I felt, was pretty good. It pretty much summed up in conclusive fashion how Time Warner abuses its power as the only possible provider of cable service to your home. However, they've failed me as a customer YET AGAIN.

  We are moving out of this house on the 15th of June, and called TWC to get it canceled that day. So what happens? A truck arrives at our house early this morning (June 7) and shuts off our cable and internet. The one time they're not late is when they shut us down a full week early. So I call, and the lady on the phone says "hmm, how odd, it's in here for the 15th, we don't know why they came out." We have to wait a whole day for the tech to get his happy ass back out here again and turn it back on. FUCK CABLE.

  This is why deregulation of cable failed. When the conservatives pushed deregulation of the cable industries through in 1996, they ended capitalism and instituted monopolies. Time Warner is my ONLY choice for cable here, and I can deal with that, get satellite (I'll deal with that in a minute) and DSL (we don't have a phone line to our house, not an option) or go without. Tell me, next time you argue with a conservative about capitalism or socialism, what they say to the idea that only one company is allowed to deliver a service to your home and they have 100% control of the price and options you get. Capitalism, the "Survival of the fittest" of the economic policies, gives way to "survival of the most prominent lobbyists."

  Case in point, when we move to Virginia, the cable provider we're assigned to is Comcast. We have 4 tv's; did you know that as part of their own internal rollout of digital services called "project Cavalry," you must have a box on top of every TV you want to watch on. A box you rent for $7 a month. I suggest you read this: "How the Unknown Digital TV Transition Could Screw You" We want the digital package where I can order my MMA Pay Per Views on the main TV, but to have that service on one TV you must have it on all.

  So get Satellite and DSL you say? Oops, where we're moving, the homeowner's association (you know, that loveable institution where people who can only get what they want by complaining to a bureaucracy get to fuck with their neighbors) has decided that having options for what you want to watch is too ugly. So we have no fucking options, except good old fashioned, monopolized, deregulated comcast.

  If you have the option to get satellite, I strongly suggest you exercise it. I would have had I know how effed up the whole cable industry was, and when I get to a place where I can have sat tv I will, but for now I will have to suck it up with this.

Time Warner sucks. We've had Roadrunner for about 2 years and it's complete garbage. I've complained for a long time about it, but now I have evidence. First of all, I did 2 download tests to assess the speed of roadrunner. I downloaded an ISO of the new Ubuntu distribution (9.04) over both Bittorrent and http here at home on my Time Warner Roadrunner Cable and at school over the wifi network. At home, I activated the downloads each night at about 11:30 PM when I went to bed and stopped them at about 7 AM when I left for work the following morning. The night of the torrented download, over the whole night, I'd downloaded 46 Mb of the 700, and the night of the http download I'd downloaded 134 Mb. (BTW, could there be some throttling going on here, which they said they don't do? hmm.) That means over bittorrent I'm getting approx. 1.74k/s over torrent and 5.08k/s over http, which is paltry yet typical. We have trouble chatting while streaming video here. From the exact same source on the same laptop at the UNCG wifi network, I got the WHOLE 700Mb file in 6 minutes 28 seconds over torrent and 11 minutes 14 seconds over http, meaning speeds of 1.85Mb/s for torrent and 1.063Mb/s over http! We've even called a tech out to the house, he hooks up his meter, says "looks fine to me, have you considered paying for Turbo?" and leaves. No I'm not paying for fucking turbo, I should be paying for dial-up since it would be a GODDAMNED IMPROVEMENT.

Speed is not the only egregious offense either. For your consideration, I present the following evidence: (click the images for larger versions)

Exhibit A: Thursday, March 26, approx 7:00 PM, www.woot.com goes down. No woot-off, all other traffic works including shirt.woot.com, but woot is down.


Eshibit B: Sunday, March 29, approx 5:30 PM, my website goes down but other traffic is fine. My domain's server logs show no errors and people I chat with can access my site, only I cannot.


Exhibit C: Sunday, March 29, Approx Midnight, fark.com and some of the sub pages become inaccessible. Sites fark linked to are fine.


Exhibit D: Monday, March 30, Approx 9:30 PM, my site goes down again showing the same symptoms as Exhibit B. The site works, I know it.


Exhibit E: Tuesday, March 31, approx 7:15 PM, a single Megaupload page goes down but others don't.

This had been happening extensively around this time, I only took the care to document it a few times. Now, according to Time Warner, they're just innocent helpers. "Hey, we saw you got an error when trying to access this page, here's some things that might help you out while what you're looking for is inconveniently down." However, there's no errors. After that last intercept, I went into the little "Why am I here?" link on that page, where they have an option to "Disable Roadrunner Suggestions." I of course click that, and suddenly, I get no more intercepts. More importantly, I get NO MORE ERROR PAGES EITHER. it's not like all these sites go down for frequent swatches of time as Time Warner would have you think. What was happening is Time Warner randomly intercepts your traffic and sends you to a page full of sponsored links, collecting advertising revenue, until you opt out. This practice is SUPREMELY illegal and a violation of their end of the TOS (not the suggestions but the intercepting of my traffic, though how do you really prove that), yet for 99 of people they wouldn't think of it, they'd think TW/RR was being helpful.

Couple all of this evidence with the Time Warner tiered internet debacle that was going to be tested right here in the North Carolina Triad, and it's pretty clear you have to be an idiot to go with Time Warner for any of your services. I haven't even gotten into the 2 months we had digital cable SOLELY for the purpose of watching MMA Pay Per Views and the system didn't work from day 1, we'd try to order and they wouldn't have events or they were labeled the wrong channel or wrong time and you'd miss them or couldn't pre-order them.

We'd cancel if we weren't moving in a month or if we had a phone line coming to the house to get DSL, but the least we can do is tell you to NEVER GET TIME WARNER OR ROADRUNNER INTERNET.

Seriously. Everyday Italian, with Giada De Laurentiis, is simply pornography. Let's look at why.

1. She is boobs. I'm sorry, but no one cooks in that few clothes. I don't think that's safe; that small an amount of clothes would absolutely result in an oil burn to the chest. The average episode of EI has about 5 inches of cleavage, which is wholly unnecessary. With that much boobage, you are putting it on TV hoping that people will be looking at it.
   
   "I want to be respected as a chef!"
2. The porn music. The whole musical selection is from soft-core 90's porn. If you close your eyes and listen, there's really no difference...
3. Her choice of descriptors. She is leading male viewers on! How can I be paying attention when she says things like "Mmmmm, it's so soft and creamy in my mouth!" and "The longer you keep it in there the more soft and tender it gets." There's just no reason for that. Watch the episode one time, and for every instruction she gives, try to say "Man, I'd like to _____." It's dirty EVERY TIME.
   
   "It's just the right size to fit into my mouth." She seriously said that!
4. The show intros. The last episode we watch she started in a bathrobe coming from a spa. Seriously? Seriously???

Anyway, I'm off to go watch another episode of Everyday Italian. Later!

Let's all remember that two unwilling teenagers in Alaska have been deemed fit to raise a child, but a loving couple made up of two men or two women who have good jobs and a stable household in Arkansas are unfit to raise a child. Fuck the double standards that social conservatism has brought in this country, do you really think jesus would want to see a kid rot in an orphanage or foster home over being given care and full time attention? And in CA, people have decided to reverse all of the happy relationships that were authorized by the state in favor of some moral high ground? And here in NC, candidates slander each other by suggesting the other is an atheist? And for the presidency, people try to slander other people by associating them with a religion, when all they know about that religion is the extremes?

Fuck religion in this country. Fuck it all. You were given a constitution that allowed you to make your religion a personal decision. The founders were sick of people telling them what and how they had to believe in, and you take that and try to say "within the narrow realm of the accepted christian faiths?" The other day we were out with friends, and of everyone, I, the "amoral atheist," was the only one to never go to a strip club, never try a drug, and never drink before I was 21. I'm in a monogamous heterosexual marriage! I live a life more aligned with christian morals than most christians I know, who the MOTHER FUCK are you to tell someone else how to live based off your beliefs?

This is my declaration of war on religious oppression in our society. I've always been nice, I say my piece but allow you to say yours. If you think you can take the rights away from others, I'll fight with everything I have to take your rights away from you.

We the People of the United States (except gays), in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice (but not for gays), insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence (but not for the rights of gays), promote the general Welfare (not gays), and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves (as long as we're not gay) and our Posterity (who won't be raised by gay parents, even if they are raised in a foster home), do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.