Al's Blog-o-Sphere

I read this and had to laugh… some antenna advice from The Lord:

In the gospel of Luke Chapter 14, verses 28-30, he admonishes us: “For which of
you, intending to build a tower, sits not down first and counts the cost,
whether he have sufficient to finish it? Lest haply, after he has laid the
foundation, and is not able to finish it, all that behold it begin to mock him,
Saying, This man began to build, and was not able to finish.”

[Thanks to Hans, K0HB]

A conversation on the Reason talk show on WECK this morning about the trouble someone had getting Verizon to honor an offer they mailed to potential FIOS customers reminded me of a recent phone adventure with DirecTV.

I had DirecTV installed a year ago and they threw in all kinds of extras for the first year. But the year is now up and I’m paying full price for everything now, so I’ve been watching the bill a little closer than usual. I opened my last bill and was shocked. Continue Reading…

Did you ever buy something online? Of course you did. Do you realize they track you and try to show you things they think you will buy again? Of course.

But does it really work? Does your history predict what you will buy in the future? Maybe, maybe not. In some cases it has no bearing on what you want to see or are looking for the next time you are shopping online. Continue Reading…

Well, today is the day that WIVB and WNLO will vanish from the sets of Time Warner cable customers. Time Warner took over in this area after Adelphia went belly-up a while ago.

From what I can figure out, the dispute is over LIN television, the parent company of WIVB and WNLO, wanting to charge the cable operator to carry their signals.

According to LIN Television, they want “less than a penny a day per station/per subscriber, for that ability to resell our station’s programming.” The also talk about “fair market compensation” for a signal that they make available over-the-air for free to individuals.

LIN Television’s side of the story is here and Time Warner’s side is here.

Now, I watch these channels either over the air (for free) or using DirecTV, neither of which is affected by this. So I have no axe to grind in this issue.

But I have an opinion. (Of course!) Continue Reading…