Our Youth aren’t watching as much TV

While this is probably generally a good thing, I’m sure television executives aren’t happy that TV viewership hours go down significantly as viewing ages go down:

Of course, I’d guess they are eating up that TV-free time with other screen-based activities, like watching game streamers, YouTube/Vimeo/et al, chatting, and so on. But wow, what a drop-off.

Update on ISP Issue

Well, I had a visit today from a technician for my ISP. He found the outside splitter was made for indoor use, so replaced that. Then, he disconnected an indoor  splitter and gave me a new wireless DVR box. End result is slightly better performance:

I am most happy with my results. And when the kids aren’t on, I actually tested at nearly 120 Mbps. We pay for a 100 Mbps line. No complaints now.

More on Poor ISP Speed, Latency

Since I posted last night about my poor internet performance, I thought I’d post an update today. Although I just reset my modem on Monday, I did another modem reset this morning. Unplugged the router for 3 minutes. Plugged it in. Waited for my system to connect, and ran a few speed tests. Here are the results using 2 different speedtest options:

I got some worse numbers, but ignored those as the system not stable yet. I ran a couple more tests and got about the same results. My connection is currently so spotty, I can’t even connect to my ISP’s website to chat or get the support phone number just yet. Maybe it’s time to shop for a new ISP?

Why is my ‘net Speed in the Crapper?

So I recently called my ISP to complain about some service issues and billing disagreements. Since then, my internet speed has been noticeably worse. I used to get 70-80 Mbps throughput on my line, which I believe is supposed to be rated at 100 Mbps. My latency is typically in the 20-80 ms range. I can’t complain about those numbers. However, since my speed and latency has been so clearly worse than normal, I did another speed test tonight – the first I’ve done in months. Here’s what I get:

With later testing, the speed improved to single-digit Mbps, but latency still turns up in the mid-hundreds of milliseconds across repeated tests. And no, there are no downloads going on right now to slow things. I checked.

Finding My Voice Again

I started the Blahg as a way to share things that I found interesting. For a while, I was really, really, active in maintaining it, spending less time with family or my job than I should have. I took time to setup posts days in advance so the site continued to receive new content when I was away – keeping daily activity going was important to me. It seems that for a while what interested me also interested others. At my most active, I was seeing hundreds of page hits per day. But not all was right for me to keep the site going.

Continue reading “Finding My Voice Again”

Never doubt the ‘hoff

He is one of the greatest performers ever, wouldn’t you agree?  This is 211 seconds of heaven wrapped up in a sexy black spycoat and wintry fur…

I hear he is huge in Germany, although all the video I’ve seen him makes me think he’s really the same size as all the other people there.  Therefore, either everyone in Germany is huge, or Hasselhoff is the same size in Germany as when he is in the US.

[tags]I can’t stop this feeling, Ooga chakka, Hasselhoff, Huge in Germany, Ich bin ein Hasselhoff[/tags]

Because sometimes, math *IS* hard

While looking at my deal sites, seeing if I could come up with a reasonable purchase option for my CyberMonday spending, I found that GameStop is having some holiday shopping deals today.  Checking them out, I found one deal that struck me as just off a shade.

They are only off a little, but I did laugh a little on the inside.

[tags]Unreal Tournament, UT3, Math is hard, Loi[/tags]

Drinking was involved – dead from overdose

Now normally, drinking and overdosing might be a forgettably passable story.  However, when one overdoses on sexual enhancement drugs

Well, that’s just all kinds of crazy, for sure.

A French man was found dead with drug overdose. Officials found twenty-four DORMILAX pills missing from the strips, a bottle of Thai whiskey and a pack of LM cigarette in the room. Bargirl said that the man took quite a few pills and wanted more sex.

I guess so.  Somewhere in there is a joke about too many sex pills and death that’s just waiting to be expressed right.

[tags]Sex, Drinking was involved, Overdose[/tags]