Another sunny day in Chincoteague, VA.

If you have something important to tell me in e-mail this week you had better do it in 180 characters or less or I'm not gonna read it for a while.

Went to the Main Street Coffee House this morning for a breakfast scone and soy milk chai latte.

I took a survey with Harris Poll online that asked a number of questions about whether I would drop my land-line service for cellular service and how happy I was with my existing service. Of course I said that I had already done so. When they let me peek at some of the survey results afterwards I found that I wound up in a single digit percentile of people in the same boat.

This week I'm really digging the wonders of cellular service. I'm sure that more is available on the network, but I'm happy with just having any sort of access at all. Last night I set up IMAP with Dale and proceeded to download all my mail during the night and read it this morning at the coffee house. Pretty good deal for a phone that can only handle a 14.4k analog-over-digital connection to my internet provider.

Some ham radio operators who enjoy emergency communication like to criticize the existing communication networks when they fail. W3QX passed along an article in the Wall Street Journal about how consumers are critical of the cell phone companies for convincing them that cell phones are more reliable in emergencies and then having all the cell phones in NYC go out and the Verizon land-lines staying up for the duration. The cell-phone companies say that its the fault of the power failure, not their networks.

Around noon today we went to Irene Rouse Bookseller on Main Street. I got a book called Procrastination (and took my fine time doing it too, thank you very much) and Alex got a pair of Disney books for the beach. I forgot how much I enjoyed hanging around in used book stores. Its not every day that you see a weathered 989 page book about the psychology of the dirty joke for $25. It was almost worth the price but I'm trying to be a little more frugal and I couldn't imagine bringing it all the way up Maddox on my bicycle.

Went out in the kayak today, 25 foot visibility from the surface, crystal clear ocean water on the Atlantic. Found a cloth kite floating in the water (in perfect condition) and had a wonderful day at the beach. Today is also my mother's birthday, and we all had a nice dinner of jumbo shrimp and steak at home together.

Eric Thomas wrote in to say that he wanted my SynOptics Model 3000 10bT Ethernet Concentrator so badly that he would send a FedEx truck to pick it up, and all I would have to do it stick it in a box. Sadly, it is now officially beyond repair from being systematically disposed of in the Baltimore County trash pickup system and from repeated summer rains in the backyard. A shame, really.

No Comments | #3283

Unless noted, all content on epistolary.org is © Copyright 1999-2008 to Rob Carlson with all rights reserved. All information is verified when possible, cited as appropriate and applied in the real world at your own risk. Send all feedback to rob@vees.net.