In the Parlance of Our Times

My co-worker just ordered an iPod (the $250 video ipod) for her son's 9th birthday present. It amazed me that a 9 year old would ask for this, but my first reaction was to wonder how long it would last in the hands of a boy that age. As I was imagining all the ways he could find to abuse - or lose - an ipod, I remembered Louise and Tom's experiences.

Tom barely had his ipod a year when he treated it to a walk in the pouring rain. That was the beginning of the end of his hard drive. Fortunately we were able to salvage the ipod with a replacement hard drive purchased from ebay.

Later that year he borrowed my ipod shuffle. That went missing in the space of about two weeks, but happily turned up under his bed. Not before he'd been all over town looking for it, though.

Then there's Louise's ipod nano. She sat on it within the first four or five months of ownership. It seemed totally dead, but once we replaced the screen it lived again. Not unscathed, however. There's still only one channel of sound coming from the headphone jack. It's enjoying semi-retirement connected via a dock to our kitchen stereo, a setup which allows full sound output.

Last but not least, there's Louise's experience with my shuffle. It went all crazy on her when she attached it to her iMac and couldn't be used again until we found and applied Apple's ipod shuffle reset utility. But that probably wasn't her fault.

So if these 20-somethings have such a hard time keeping an ipod in working order, how much worse can a nine year old be? I'll be watching with interest - and probably helping her do ipod surgery before too long.

This blog - more than any other blog on this server - has been bombarded lately with spam comments. And no matter how high I set my junk filter, they still don't get flagged as junk by the blog software.

Because I've grown tired of deleting hundreds of these comments a day, I've now set the blog so that commenters must sign in to the TypeKey authentication service before leaving a comment.

I hate having to do this, and apologize for any inconvenience. Once my blog has dropped off the radar of the spammers I will try opening up comments without registration again.

Around here we have three choices for broadband service - DSL, cable and satellite. DSL came first and so that's the one I signed up with. When the others came along it didn't seem worth the bother to swtich, though I'm often told that cable is faster and cheaper. Inertia never seemed like a very good reason for sticking with the DSL, but until now it was all I had.

My new reason for not switching to cable is outlined in this Boston Globe article. Cable companies are cancelling broadband service of heavy internet users. They say that the heavy use of one household can degrade the service of many users in the area, so it's worth alienating a few customers to make many more happy.

Two things strike me here. First, these heavy users aren't running businesses or massively popular web servers or anything else extraordinary. They are just taking full advantage of some of the many things we can do on the internet these days - downloading movies (legally), video chats, and other high-bandwidth activities. There are many business models being developed which revolve around some of these activities, and count on a critical mass of people having broadband available. If cable companies are going to cancel the broadband of people using these new internet services, where will that leave the businesses?

The other thing that strikes me is this. Whenever I've tried to argue against cable internet based on the notion that cable users share their "pipe" with neighbors, I've been told that I don't understand how it works. Seems now that I did understand all along.

I'm sticking with my DSL.

I have been in love with the Zipcar concept from the first I heard of it. They rent cars - by the hour or by the day - to members in several major cities. Members go online to reserve the car and then simply walk up to the car - Zipcars are parked all around the city - when it's time to drive. The company uses wireless technology to deal with all the details - making sure the right person has access to the right car at the right time, for instance.

I first heard about Zipcars in a newspaper article, and when Tom moved to Boston and became eligible I encouraged him to sign on to the service. For just $25 a year he can get a Zipcar membership through Berklee. Knowing that he has a car around the corner that he can drive should the need ever arrive is well worth the $25 annual fee.

As it's turned out, Tom hasn't actually had the need to drive one of these cars. Yet. Today he reserved one to use this weekend while we're visiting. We're going to drive down to the Cape to visit my parents, making a stop in Brockton for my brother and an IKEA run. We'll soon know, then, if the reality lives up to my expectations of this service.

I'm pretty sure we're not going to be disappointed. Stay tuned.

We had our first Zipcar experience and it almost went off without a snag. The car was where it should be, when it should be. Tom gained entry by waving his magic Zipcard at the windshield and off we went.

Our one snag was when it came time to gas up. Gas is included in the rental fee (as is insurance). A gas card is provided in the car, but we hadn't read the instructions carefully enough. The pump prompted for odometer reading and PIN. It took us three tries to get the odometer reading right (the first two times, Tom was reading TripA and TripB) and then a couple to figure out the PIN. When we finally had it all right, the card still got rejected. We don't know if this is because of our previous attempts, or if the particular gas station just doesn't accept that card. Zipcar promises to reimburse for gas if there's trouble using the card, so we'll be putting that promise to the test.

Tom was happy enough with the experience to rent another car for this weekend. He found it a little more difficult to reserve a car for a three day weekend than it was to reserve for just a day - none of the nearby cars were available - but he'll be visiting his friend in style in a Volvo. Too bad the Mustang convertible was booked!