Tag: technology fail

Ah, summer…

Yes, summer is really here, and today the temperature here in Winthrop by the Sea has reached 93 degrees, with a heat index of 100.  So naturally, this is when our air conditioner decides to partially break down.  We have AC in the basement (where it is least needed) and partially on the first floor, but it basically isn’t working at all on the second floor and so the temperature in our bedroom hit 85 degrees in the shade.  We are temporarily sleeping in the basement on the sleeper sofa until the HVAC guys can come on Monday.

The only one of us who seems totally unaffected is Violet.  She doesn’t seem to mind the heat at all.  Scratch, on the other hand, has camped out in the basement with us and the dogs.

Did the Continental Army seize airports during the Revolutionary War?

Yes.  Yes they did.

One of the bloodiest battles of the Revolution was fought on the Field of Logan (as it used to be called) in July 1775 between Massachusetts militia and two British army regiments: The Royal Regiment of Foot, Light  or ROFL Regiment; and the Western Tottenham Regiment of Foot, or WTF Regiment.  They were supported by a battery of artillery known as the Twickenham and Sussex Artillery, or the TSA.

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Hello there, Canada

In the last two days something interesting has happened here on our humble little blog.  We’ve had 978 hits from The Great White North.  In 48 hours.

I wish I could tell you that something one of us had written was brilliantly funny or had gone viral, but somehow I doubt that’s the case.  While both days were fairly international and we did have visitors from around the world and, indeed, our total hit count was more than just the Canadian total for both days, something’s up.

I have a theory.

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Today is the anniversary of the worst maritime disaster in American history

It was April 27th, 1865 – 151 years ago today.  And I bet that most people have never even heard of it, even though it killed more people than the sinking of the RMS Titanic in 1912 or the sinking of the RMS Lusitania in 1915.

It was an American steamboat named the Sultana.

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Municipal broadband for Cambridge?

Oh, please please please let it happen.  We did notice a question about our internet service on our last resident survey so it got us thinking about it again.

As some of you may have noticed, Kelly and I have had repeated issues with the quality of our Internet service here in Cambridge over the years.  It is something that both of us care deeply about as both of us have worked in IT and both of us are everyday users of the Internet for personal and business purposes.  But considering that we live in what I would consider the technology capital of the East Coast, the quality and quantity of Internet service providers is terrible, frankly. Cambridge considers itself a major center for innovation and it certainly is, but it is also somewhat ridiculous that for many people Internet connectivity is both expensive and unreliable.

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IT redundancy really is your friend

Like I mentioned in my earlier post, I have managed to rebuild our server into a better machine than it was.  But for some reason the hard drive from the old server was giving me fits, trying to move data.  Perhaps it was damaged somehow.  I am not sure.

But I do know this: a backup of the backups saved our data.

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Our home server has had some issues

Years ago, I decided to build my own server.  Part of it was wanting to have the experience of building and running my own server, because I had shockingly little server experience of any kind.  Part of it was knowing how such a machine could help me manage the home network I was also building.  So in 2010 our home server came into existence.

And then two weeks ago, it went out of existence.

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Internet in Greater Boston – fewer options for more money

Greater Boston, and especially our home of Cambridge, is undoubtedly one of the technology capitals of the United States, and certainly of the East Coast.   And yet Kelly and I have struggled for years to find a decent, reliable Internet provider for a reasonable price.  Currently we are using Comcast, because we simply could not get reliable service from Verizon no matter how hard we tried.  It was depressing, but at least we figured it probably wouldn’t get any worse.

And then earlier this week I read that our Internet/phone/cable provider, Comcast, is going through yet another merger.

Sigh.  No good can come from this.

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No, your car cannot be hacked

Not in the way that most people think of “hacking”, where some teenager or twentysomething thousands of miles away taps away on their laptop in an Internet cafe and gains control of your car.  Never going to happen, and do you know why?

Because your car is not a wireless device, like a PDA or a laptop.  It may have computers in it, but they aren’t networked together in the way that we think of a computer network.  That’s why. 

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