Brrr...

It's cold today. Not horribly cold, but the family car's windshield is frosted over. I'm fine in a sweater but my brothers are wearing coats. I'll see if I can wear shorts during Amblings this afternoon (yup, this would be Amblings #3) rather than the long polywannacrackerene sweat-pants my brother gave me...but then again the temperature might drop even more and I'll be forced to wear them :)

Facebook and 1xRTT

First off, I just made a Facebook account, due to popular demand. I was surprised to find that most of my friends are already on (!). I put up somewhat of a profile, and set up text messaging etc. so everything's all fun and such...

http://hs.facebook.com/profile.php?id=506930825

That's my profile for those of you who want to see it...though it appears as though you'll have to log in first.

As the one-and-a-halfth thing on this post, I'm working on SAT prep for my math subject test tonight. Physics will be tomorrow. I also have to do a description, or rather a brochure of how an MRI works. Fun...but hey, I wanna be here :)

Second, I'm actually posing this using my cell phone...using it as a modem for my computer! Yep, things are fun when you're techie. The connection, riding off of Sprint, is 3x faster, to my reckoning, than dialup. Small problem: I can only use 12MB of data per week. Ah well...at least I can surf the web wherever I want and at speeds faster than my landline will give me. Plus nobody will be yelling at me to get off the phone...unless I get back onto dialup to download a large file or two.

Gotta get back onto SAT prep. Talk to everyone later. Look at my Facebook if you can for posts there!

My Rationale for Blogging

"There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried. Not for nothing one face, one character, one fact, makes much impression on him, and another none. This sculpture in the memory is not without preestablished harmony. The eye was placed where one ray should fall, that it might testify of that particular ray. We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents. It may be safely trusted as proportionate and of good issues, so it be faithfully imparted, but God will not have his work made manifest by cowards. A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise, shall give him no peace. It is a deliverance which does not deliver. In the attempt his genius deserts him; no muse befriends; no invention, no hope."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance

Not that I'm a humanist, but hey, I pretty muc agree with this.

P.S. This was a passage read in Civilizations class. It ain't all boring after all! YES!!! Anyway, needless to say, today's civilizations class was good...very good...

Sufjan!

I checked on eMusic today and Sufjan Stevens' Christmas Songs five-album set is all online now, a week after it became available via CD. The slightly annoying thing is that the whole five-album set, spanning six years of Christmases (one of which had no album), has forty-two songs in it. Two more than my grandathered-in (as of three days ago) 40-download-per-month basic annual subscription will allow. So I'm going to have to get the Christmas albums in full over the next two months, but taht's okay. I'm only paying $10.50 for the whole bunch, anyway.

Then again, what you get for the extra $8.50 when you order the physical set is the actual discs, the actual album artwork, an essay, a "Santa Sufjan" photo, an animated comic, liner notes and Christmas stickers, as well as a few other things. But hey, my friend has all of that, and I can look at it when I please. I just really want the songs.

Speaking of eMusic, they're now offering a free download for every day to anyone who gets their toolbar (for Internet Explorer) and signs up with their service. The two downloads put up so far are pretty good, and show a bit of what's out there as far as the million tracks on eMusic go.

But anyway, yay Sufjan! I love, I repeat love Get Behind Me Santa. Would've paid 99 cents plus tax on iTunes for it...except that iTunes song quality is bad. But anyway, I really like Sufjan Stevens, and his Christmas albums are no exception.

Speech Recognition...It's Nifty

...I'm writing this post using the speech recognition built into Windows Vista.  It's actually quite nifty.  It's sort of like working in a Star Trek setting.  The only problem is that accuracy is not perfect so at end up having to correct quite a few words after I say them.

Nonetheless, it's fun.  I am actually using a microphone right now, but I also have the headset which comes in handy, courtesy Skype.  I'm actually going to go get that have set right now...

Now I'm using a headset, which is a little bit easier to use.  But still, the inaccuracy remains, reminding me that I am not in Star Trek.  For example, I kind of got messed up just now...  It took me a long time just to italicize Star Trek...

Ah well, we aren't in the twenty-second century yet, and I'm typing this last paragraph. But nonetheless, speech recognition is pretty neat...

Seven Swans

OK. Here's the last post for tonight...I'm pretty tired so...

I was ableto master, or learn to a reasonable degree, Sufjan Stevens' "Seven Swans" on the banjo. The banjo part, that is. So now I can say that I've done it, and pure sweetness is in order.

And pure sleep is in order any time now. Night, all...

Stuck on Dialup

I live three miles or so out of town.  And I can't get broadband internet service via wire. Which really, really stinks, seeing as how I'm online practically all the time.

It's annoying that I have to go into town and use someone else's internet connection to download files of any reasonable size in any reasonable time period. Yet look at my choices...I don't get WIndStream DSL (which is $60 for 6 Mb if anyone besides me knows what that means) or Verizon DSL ($15 for 768k). No 4mb/$45 RoadRunner either. All I have right now is $10 a month dialup service.

What are my options, and the options for anyone living outside of town in my area? There are two options, really: WildBlue (sattelite) and BeeCreek (fixed wireless). Let's compare them:

WildBlue - $200 setup

BeeCreek - $220 setup, 25 GB/month bandwidth limit

WildBlue - 512k down, 128k up for $50 a month
Bandwidth Limit: 7.5 GB/month down, 2.3 GB/month up

WildBlue - 1Mb down, 200k up for $70 a month
Bandwidth Limit: 12 GB/month down, 3 GB/month up

WildBlue - 1.5Mb down, 256k up for $80 a month
Bandwidth Limit: 17 GB/moth down, 5 GB/month up

BeeCreek - 256-384k for $42 a month

BeeCreek - 384-512k for $53 a month

BeeCreek - 512-768k for $74 a month

BeeCreek - 768k-1Mb for $84 a month

BeeCreek - 1-1.5Mb for $158 (!) a month

Then there's HughesNet, but that's basically just a mor expensive version of WildBlue...

I'm thinking of offering some DSL provider $500 to run a line to somewhere near my house. It' just plain depressing living on dialup like I am. Ah well...will have to wait till Monday to call them...

Night everyone...maybe...