About this site
This is a site for general musings of a personal nature for me, Joe Welinske. I’m a lifelong bleeding heart liberal, securely tucked under the left wing of politics, and I’m a card carrying supporter of the ACLU.
I’m pretty good at separating my work from my personal. So if you are interested in the work side, please check out writersua.com and my work blog. No politics or profanity there.
Below are links to the most recent IRS filings by the Society for Technical Communication. It takes some work to make sense of the numbers. But you can get a good idea of where the membership dues are going.
These are public documents. Feel free to download, post or otherwise distribute.
9/11 Memorial and World Trade Center
I received a certificate in the mail from the 9/11 Memorial organization. When I was in New York a couple of months ago I had an appointment adjacent to the new World Trade Center site. One of the buildings fronting the construction hosts a visitor center with tributes to the 9/11 tragedy. The current center is temporary with a few exhibits chronicling the disaster and its aftermath. There is also an artist rendering of the planned Memorial Plaza. It looks like it will make for a very nice historical marker and common space. They were looking for $100 donations to help fund the memorial so I gave them one.
9/11 Memorial Certificate
I’ve been to Manhattan many times but I hadn’t been all the way downtown for probably fifteen years. And I think the last time I was in that area was when I went visited WTC. I remember worming my way out of the labyrinthine subway/PATH complex underneath the towers, out into glimmers of sunlight cutting through the shadowy canyons between the towers. Looking up from the base I couldn’t help but say to myself that that’s a tall fucking building. I’ve always enjoyed visiting skysrapers, appreciating the engineering and architecture.
A really enjoyable documentary called Man on a Wire came out a few years ago. It was the story of tight-rope artist Philippe Petit who performed between the towers in an illegal stunt in the 70s. The images of Petit walking the wire a thousand feet in the air are really thrilling. But I found the backdrop of the movie interesting too. It went into the people and politics that got the towers erected in the first place.
Standing on the WTC perimeter now you just see a big empty space. Construction barriers of plywood and plastic mesh limit the view from the street. The tips of tall cranes are visible, pushing out from the belly of the foundation for the new towers. I couldn’t help but raise my head to the sky and stare straight up where those towers had been. They had seemed unmovable and timeless. But in the end as fragile and vulnerable to an unimaginable disaster as the tsunami that wiped out Sendai in Japan.
The new memorial opens on September 11. Probably with a lot of partisan, election-cycle screed. But after that it should settle into use as a quiet oasis of reflection within the hustle and bustle of the surrounding financial complex. I always thought the Vietnam Veterans Memorial got it just right. It doesn’t have statues of soldiers on horses with guns or dates and places of battles. Just the names of those who died inscribed on a long, dark mirror flowing along the curve of a slight hill. Really powerful in its subdued nature and message. Hopefully the 9/11 Plaza will be something similar.
Getting screwed with international smartphoning
I’m headed to a working trip to Germany for Tekom. This time I’m not connecting up to the voice and data packages offered by AT&T for my iPhone. I learned my lesson last trip to Europe.
I’ve avoided using my cell phone on trips outside the US because of the rip-off prices that the carriers charge for roaming. I already pay for a premium broadband connection, two smartphones with data plans and Boingo. I really don’t need more charges for what is essentially the same fucking service. I can only use one data stream at a time. I’m paying for massively parallel service. But I digress.
A couple months ago I found out that AT&T would pro-rate international charges. I figured I would try it out on an eight-day trip to Stockholm. I know how to manage my data right? I have the AT&T app. And the iPhone has a usage meter. And I have controls to turn things off when I want.
So I signed up for the voice package, the 20 MB data package, and the text messaging. I also had them schedule it to be turned off 8 days later when I would return to the US. I thought I had it all wired. During the trip I did a few modest phone calls to home and a few local calls in Stockhom. I used mapping features, a couple of news apps, and email. I sent about 20 text messages.
I found that I hit the data max by the third day of the trip. I dutifully set all the data controls to OFF and didn’t use any more apps or maps.
When I returned I checked my bill:
Voice roaming surcharge $29.70
Voice package pro-rated $2.60
Text package pro-rated $4.67
Text surcharge $4.40
Data package pro-rated $11.60
And the kicker: a data surcharge for $143.00.
Despite my diligent effort, my phone sucked down an additional 17 MB at $5 per megabyte. It never did register properly on my usage meter or in the app. Plus I didn’t figure on the 20 MB cap being pro-rated in addition to the days I had the service being pro-rated. So it was $5 per meg for another ten or fifteen megs. The customer service person helped me reduce the bill by changing my data to a full month plan. $59 for 50mb. So that saved me eighty bucks but I was still steamed.
The end result was $112 in addition to my monthly bill for what I consider to be minimal usage.
One other thing. I always need to get broadband access for most of my trips. In this case it was the ass-clenching price of $20 per nite for five nites. European Internet access sucks the big one. High prices for shitty bandwidth. Another hundred bucks. I guess this would offset the Smartphone charge if you used one or the other. For me, I prefer to sacrifice the mobile for the broadband.
One tip: check the iTunes store for a mapping app for your destination. If it is a big city you are probably in luck. That way the maps are cached in your phone and there is no data charge involved. Just the two or three bucks for the app.
You also can’t beat Skype, especially if you have a Skype Out account. I’ve been using that for a couple of years on trips and it is so cheap and effective.
The only thing I miss is the ability to make local mobile calls. One solution I’ve used is to buy a cheap sim wherever I am at and put it in an old feature phone. But it is always a pain in the ass to shop for the sim and then try to get it installed while listening to foreign language instructions on the phone.
The ELI Event a new novel by Dave Gash
Dave Gash just published a sci-fi novel. I’m looking forward to reading it.
http://www.hypertrain.com/eli/
Who is the Stig?
The Stig exposed! I guess Ben Collins had to reveal himself to make some more coin. I can’t blame the guy. I don’t imagine you have much leverage at contract time when your head is always in a helmet and you don’t speak. David Prowse, who was the body in the Darth Vader suit, can sympathize.
If you don’t know what I’m talking about you don’t watch the BBC show Top Gear. I’m still hoping for an American version of the show. Adam Carolla did a pilot episode awhile back but nothing came of it.
Currently reading:
Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain
Transmetropolitan by Warren Ellis, Darick Robertson
Lorne Michaels – SNL
The September issue of Rolling Stone Magazine has an entertaining and revealing article about Lorne Michaels, the creator and producer of Saturday Night Live. The article describes how he pitched the show, recruited the original cast, and kept things together for most of the past thirty-five years.
He tells how one network exec didn’t think that young people would stay home on a Saturday night to watch and 11:30pm show. I remember debating that on many a weekend in the mid-70s. Do I leave the party and go home? Do we move the party to someone’s basement where there is a TV? It was frequently a part of the discussion. The skits were what we talked about on Monday at school. It was so sharply different from the rest of television. Raw, irreverent.
You Tube has made live TV a reality for all of us. Live was never really live for people who didn’t live on the East Cost. But it was close enough.
A few years ago I bought a DVD collection of the first season. What seemed unbelievably off the hook at the time seems tame now. And reality TV and Internet-based content has diluted the wonder of “live” TV. But the cast was amazing. Belushi. Akroyd. Chevy Chase. Bill Murray. Gilda Radner, Lorraine Newman. Garret Morris. The names roll of the tongue like the starting line-up of the ‘69 Cubs.
The show has definitely been a roller coaster of quality. Some years were mostly forgettable. But even during bad seasons there would be a few personalities and sketches that would make for water cooler talk for months.
Storm win over the Dream!
I had to get the news on the Internet since I was in Sweden. I went to game 1 of the finals with Shannon. We also went to game 2 of the conference championship series against Phoenix. We were there for both Seattle Storm wins in the 2004 WNBA Championship series. A long drought. It is great to see good basketball from great seats at a low price. My seats for the championship game were a third of the price of the nosebleed section for the upcoming Illinois-Gonzaga men’s game at Key Arena. And that game means next to nothing for either team. I still miss my Sonics. Curse you Howard Schultz and you Oklahoma dickheads.
Hiking in Tyresta National Park
Tyresta National Park is a beautiful and unique landscape just outside of Stockholm Sweden. I enjoyed a nice day hike there while visiting the city for the UA Europe Conference in September. The park is a giant hunk of granite that has been pulverized and reformed over hundreds of millions of years. It provides a fertile table for all kinds of lush vegetation. A variety of mosses and lichens and ferns carpet the exposed rock.
The well-maintained trails meander through forests, meadows, marshes, bogs, and even an area gutted by fire. The fire destroyed a significant portion of the park about ten years ago. Now central part of the trail system makes an eerie traverse of the burnt landscape. It is not barren though. Shrubs and grasses have filled in the bare spots and the forest is regenerating.
The route I followed was 14 kilometers and took my about four hours. That included a few breaks. The trail is mostly flat. The only encumbrances are roots and stones. Wooden boardwalks take your through the marshy areas with dry feet. Other parts of the trail leave the dirt path and take you over sections of smooth rock. The trail is easy to follow. But it is also marked at close intervals by colored shapes painted or nailed to trees. Signposts with distances are at all trail intersections.
Getting to the park from Stockholm is easy by subway and bus. The 807 bus travels regularly throughout the day from Gullmarsplan to the village of Tyresta By. The village is the site of an ancient Viking Settlement. A small farm offers sandwiches and beverages. There is a modern visitor center with free maps and helpful staff. And access to Tyresta is free!
Hi-speed Internet is long overdue
It was interesting to read that a public utility in Chattanooga is offering one gigabit internet service – albeit at $350 per month. But it shows a couple of things. One, that the capacity is a function of economics and not the technology. Two, that a public utility is able to offer something that my for-profit provider won’t. It is a shame the US Internet structure is so inferior to other countries. We’ve allowed anti-competitive monopolies to take control of this vital resource.
Personally I use a premium Comcast service. It costs $60 per month for 22 down and 5 up. This relatively high speed (by American standards) is consistently delivered right on the numbers. I’m always getting what I’m supposed to be getting. It is using the same pipe as the lower speed mainstream service. But good luck getting consistent bits with that.
If we really had a capitalist system I should be able to choose between any of the providers in the country based on price. Bits are bits and mine are packet-switched around the world on a minute by minute basis. All the routing infrastructure should be supported with a flat tax that takes into account regional variations in costs. We also need to legally separate the bit providers from the content providers. I don’t need Comcast forcing me to accept packages of content that I don’t like.
