Greg's Horrible Waste of Internet Bandwidth

I called our gas company a few years ago about switching from home heating oil. Here's how the conversation went. <Cheerful voice> "Hello, thank you for calling XXXXXX! How can I help you?" "Hi, I'd like to switch to natural gas from home heating oil. Can you help me?" "Yes sir, I'd be glad to! Please give me your address." "1212 Anywhere Lane, Middletown CT" "Thank you! Give me a moment here...<tap, tap, tap, tap, tap>...yes sir, I think we can help you! We'd be glad to have you as a customer!" "Ok, I see you're advertising some specials, price reductions on boilers, etc...?" "Yes sir! Let me get a total here...please stand by...Ok, we can switch you to natural gas and we'll sign you up, install the equipment, give you a state rebate for the switch, and give you a reduction for your first year's for annual delivery. How does that sound?" "Excellent! So wha...

Seems to be the new rage to "cut the cord" and move to streaming of only the channels you want to watch. The complaint is that there's a lot of chaff in our desired wheat. To get your preferred channel you have to scroll through a lot of stuff you don't want.  Underlying premise is that if you cut out those channels and only pay for what you want then the overall service will be less. I don't see it. Problem is, that chaff kinda covers the cost of the wheat. If/when we start streaming only the channels we want then I predict we'll start to see overall aggregate costs increase. We're seeing it now with Amazon Prime and NetFlix, and more and more companies are spinning off their channels to streaming. If each one of those costs $9.99 each, how many $9.99 channels will we buy before we're above the monthly cost of, say, Comcast or DirecTV that (used to) have it all? And the production companies are loving it: they are getting more fees per household than ...

"I am so busy doing nothing... that the idea of doing anything - which as you know, always leads to something - cuts into the nothing and then forces me to have to drop everything." - Jerry Seinfeld "Everybody looooves 'Democracy'...well, until they lose the election. Then all of a sudden there's a problem with 'Our Democracy' that we need to fix because it's clearly not working...of course, that only we can fix." - Anonymous "Spending an afternoon balancing a set of S.U. carbs amounted to an existenstial experience on par with building an ornate sandcastle directly in the path of the incoming tide." - B.S. Levy "Politicians always misunderstand economics -- but only toward their advantage." - Anonymous “You have not converted a man because you have silenced him.” - John, Viscount Morley "Here is a test to find whether your mission on earth is finished: If you're alive, it isn't." - Richard Bach “Histori...

A buddy asks..."So you've driven 43 (or whatever) race tracks...how many have you been upside down on?" And I reply, "TWO!" "What's the other one?" The other one was...Hallett Motor Speedway. I did my two driver's schools at Texas World Speedway in 1984 (1985?) so signed got off for the Regional license. But I learned that as long as you're on a Novice Permit they can't block you from a driver's school which is the best frackin' track/butt-time value on the planet... So I entered the Hallett driver's school that next month. I don't remember the exact name of my instructor for that third school - I wish I did, 'cause I want to have a beer with him - but he knew I was signed off and he was just baby-sitting me and was all about having a good time and pushing me to go faster. At some point he convinced me -- either he really believed it, or he thought I'd get the joke -- that I could do Turn One (countercloc...