September 22, 2003 Archives

Over a month ago a fairly round hole opened up on the street between my neighbor and my driveway. The town was called and they brought out a small construction horse and non-working blinking light.

Since that time, nothing.

Well, nothing on the part of the town. I did a little exploration, staring down the hole. From my learned standpoint, the hole goes all the way though the Earth to the Indian Ocean (when I was a kid we used to say if you dug deeply enough you'd end up in China... but what did we know?).

A few weeks ago, and a few feet from the first hole, a second hole opened up. I called the town's highway department, where a person with the excitement level of either hole, said they'd look into it (hadn't I already taken the burden off them by looking into it myself?).

Today, the holes sit. One covered by the high tech horse, the other out in the clear.

Won't the joke be on the town when one day a UPS truck breaks on through and starts delivering packages somewhere in the Indian Ocean? Maybe they're just waiting for the hole to heal itself?

It has now been 1½ months since Helaine and I started playing poker online. We continue to enjoy it and be frustrated by it.

Maybe we have the wrong expectation of good play. After all, to quote Kenny Rogers, "every hand's a loser, every hand's a winner." Still, it kills you when someone goes in with a 2-7 off suit (statistically the worst hand you can be dealt) and wins on the river (fifth and final turned card).

As of last night, we were down nearly $150 and then we got warm.

I came in 167th in an 1,100 player $3 tournament (only the top 99 won money), felt lucky, and switched to a $11 - 9 player tournament. I finished first and won $44 (actually net $34). Then, this morning, Helaine played in a $5.50 - 9 person tournament and finished first for $22.50 (net $17).

So, we're back under $100 down and still having good, cheap fun. Considering a $5.50 single table tournament can take 1.5 hours or more, it's a reasonable way to kill time.

I think I said this in one of my blog entries that was lost when the website crashed: We have probably won versus the other players. Our losses are entirely to the house for their share (rake) in hosting the games. It's good to be the house.

So, here we are, still in September and look what's showing up on the ground. These would be the Detroit Tigers of the leaf world. Leaves with no reason to stick around until the end of the season.

It is far too early to know what kind of winter we will have. But, what difference does it make? There is no good winter.

Snow and cold and all the other inconveniences. I dread it. There's a reason that we'll never retire to Bangor.

I read an article on c/net earlier today. It's about broband ISP's, like Comcast which I use, limiting bandwidth.

The article was interesting in that some customers had been kicked off line, unsubscribed to the service, for violating an unpublished limit which Comcast will not divulge. Just don't go over it!

What seems to be missing from this article, and what worries me about broadband, is the people selling the service are selling it at their own peril.

Comcast and other cable companies make good money on pay-per-view and premium services. But, with a good broadband connection, there's a case to be made for getting your premium entertainment directly off the net and eliiminating the middleman (Comcast). Comcast's profit on PPV and premium channels comes from being the gatekeeper. If they're bypassed, that's gone.

A perfect example already exists in sports. Both MLB and the NFL sell Internet packages. Those packages compete with other premium channels available on some cable systems. Comcast gets nothing extra for providing the pipe that brings basbeball to my house. And, I don't buy games on PPV.

Are the cable companies and/or phone companies the right companies to be our broadband gatekeeprs (After all, even phone companies are now seeing competition from VOIP carriers like Vonage)? Certainly, they have an advantage with much of the infrastructure already in place because of ther more mature businesses.

It's going to be interesting to see this play out over time. At this point the FCC is not exactly pro-consumer, so I don't expect outside pressure, yet.

(As part of my retirement portfolio, I own a little Comcast stock)