| Sunday, August 30th, 2009 |
| 2:52 am |
THE TRUTH ABOUT BILLING FOR TEXT MESSAGING
THE TRUTH ABOUT BILLING FOR TEXT MESSAGING (feel free to pass this on to your friends) If your phone company charges anything, ANYTHING, for text messaging as a feature, you are being RIPPED OFF. It costs the phone company less than 1/1000th of a penny to handle your text message. It's a matter of basic math. Imagine a cell phone plan that breaks down to three cents a minute for use. (There's all kinds of plans and it could be considerably less or more depending, but that's a good starting example.) Know how much information is in that one minute worth of cellular phone conversation? Approximately one million bytes, depending on a bunch of factors, but again, it's a reasonable number to work with. One megabyte. (After all, a song MP3 of four minutes long could be 4 MB in size, right?) * 60 seconds of audio = approx. 1,000,000 bytes. Know how much information is in one minute's worth of texting? Or one Twitter message? LESS THAN FIVE HUNDRED BYTES. Usually a LOT less. * 1 text = approx. 500 bytes. Therefore, to use the SAME AMOUNT OF SERVICE, that being bandwidth, computer processing power, etc. as one minute's worth of speech, you have to send over TWO THOUSAND full length text messages. * 60 seconds of audio = approx 2,000 texts. I recently saw a texting plan advertising excess texts at fifteen cents each… but let's assume they're gouging compared to others and go with three cents for the sake of example. For the SAME SERVICE the phone company charges you 3 cents for sending voice, a reasonable texting plan will now cost you $60 – a price increase of 200,000%!!! * 60 seconds of audio = 3 cents * 2000 texts = $60 * Price increase: 2000 times higher Can you imagine ANY PRODUCT ON THE PLANET that you'd be willing to pay a price hike of TWO THOUSAND TIMES THE ORIGINAL PRICE for? So the next time you get a sales pitch from a telemarketer, or a kiosk worker, who wants to bill you for texting as a feature, TELL HIM TO SHOVE THE PHONE UP HIS ASS SIDEWAYS. You're being ripped off. |
| Monday, August 10th, 2009 |
| 7:52 pm |
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| Tuesday, August 4th, 2009 |
| 12:47 pm |
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| Thursday, June 11th, 2009 |
| 11:12 am |
Abstinence only education.
Okay, just so we're clear here: People Have Sex. It's a fact of life. But some people don't seem to believe that people have sex. So let's just do a little background research, just to confirm things for the record. Is there anybody here whose ancestors never had sex? Anybody? |
| Tuesday, April 21st, 2009 |
| 11:27 pm |
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| Sunday, March 8th, 2009 |
| 8:57 am |
Intruder in paradise' garden again.
I spend all my time hanging out with writers, still, and yet I can't find it in myself to actually write anything these days. My life is so much more rewarding when I focus on improv and game design and various other efforts. But I love the writing community too much to leave it. So folks - if there's anything I can ever do for you to personally justify sticking around - don't hesitate to let me know, mmkay? |
| Saturday, February 28th, 2009 |
| 6:17 am |
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| Thursday, February 26th, 2009 |
| 8:23 pm |
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| Tuesday, February 24th, 2009 |
| 8:50 am |
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| Sunday, February 22nd, 2009 |
| 9:31 am |
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| Friday, February 20th, 2009 |
| 1:58 pm |
Lottery meme.
The Mrs. and I have discussed this, actually. Some of the standard things are - investments, land, travel, debts. I would make a long list of people and I *would* share some wealth with all of them. Nobody would be getting a giant windfall - a thousand people times a thousand bucks is a million dollars, after all! - but there'd be stuff going around. There are some exceptions - a few truly needy people I know that I would pull out all the stops to help. And then I would start businesses. I have a LONG list of businesses that would operate under the same umbrella company. And you'd all be requested to send me your resume, along with what you think your dream job is. :) |
| Wednesday, February 18th, 2009 |
| 11:58 pm |
Sudden motivation.
A bunch of dominoes fell over in my head tonight. Calgary is hosting a comic expo in late April with a bunch of media guests. I'll totally go to this on its own merit - the guests include the actors and actresses who play: Kaylee from Firefly Ando from Heroes Neville from Harry Potter Darth Maul from Star Wars FBI agent Paul Ballard from Dollhouse ...and a wide variety of people behind the scenes of various comics and other media franchises, including an old acquaintance of mine who is currently doing artwork for Star Wars collectible cards. This weekend, I will be prebuying memberships and photo ops with some of them (I'd do this anyways, at least with Jewel Staite). But it struck me - this is the PERFECT opportunity to have finished copies of my games ready to go. I will present them as gifts to the celebrities in question - and have more on hand in case I find anyone actually in the games industry to talk to. Bad Trip is 95% done. I can finish playtestable copy tomorrow. Maridius is working along at a fantastic pace on S.P.E.R.M.S., which I can print playtestable copy without artwork for tomorrow. That gives me two months to have a bag of games. Two months is doable! Plus, then I can get copies done and sent to all the artists involved, too... I needed a kick in the pants for these projects. This can be that kick. Yay!!! |
| Thursday, February 5th, 2009 |
| 4:41 pm |
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| 10:31 am |
Dammit
They're kicking me out after all. |
| 9:23 am |
The saga continues
Apparently I have until tomorrow now to get the place clean - "Routine Inspection" notice has been served. 10:30 Bathroom 11:30 Office 12:30 Living Room 1:30 Dining Room 2:30 Hallways 3:00 Kitchen 4:00 James' Bedroom 5:00 Closets 6:00 Piled boxes / debris 7:00 Dishes / Laundry Plus, Kristine must be notified - one of us will have to stay home tomorrow. Probably her. Off to work. |
| 7:33 am |
Update, slightly positive.
Update. Work is done - managed to get it done without a call to the boss. Spoke to landlord - he's still pissed, I think he's stuck between a rock and a hard place, but I also think he's doing his best to make the problem go away. Told me to sit tight in the apartment and he will phone me as soon as he has a resolution from head office. |
| 6:10 am |
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| Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009 |
| 6:19 am |
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| Friday, January 30th, 2009 |
| 11:49 pm |
Webcomic Roundup.
www.sinfest.net www.questionablecontent.net www.xkcd.com www.lfgcomic.com www.sisterclaire.com Plus, currently catching up on Full Frontal Nerdity. Feel free to contribute your own. |
| Tuesday, January 27th, 2009 |
| 10:15 pm |
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