Sunday, January 1, 2006

QOTD "You live and learn. At any rate, you live." Douglas Adams. [Quotes of the Day] 7:17:11 PM    Questions? Comments? Flames? []

Contrasts This morning's San Jose Mercury-News front section held an interesting contrast in advertising: Macy's, a retailer for whom I have little use, presented a full-page of peace-symbol art created by  "members of  Macy's Starpoint Studio." Timely, and moving. A few pages later, there was a two-page spread from "the new AT&T." That would be SBC, which bought the vestiges of AT&T, and is now spending billions rebranding itself. Now, let's see: AT&T was, when it was broken up by court order in 1984, the world's best-know monopoly at the time. AT&T was split into a bunch of regional Bell operating companies (RBOCs), supposedly to foster competition in telephone services. Then, over the ensuing 20 years, the RBOCs have merged and morphed into their own monopolies. SBC was once Southwestern Bell, which bought up Pacific Bell and perhaps another RBOC that I don't recall. SBC fought off competition for local phone service in California through aggressive lobbying and monopoly tactics, so we have no choice in local phone service (unless you elect to go exclusively with cellular or VOIP over cable). And now SBC expects to gain our trust by adopting the name of its grandfather monopoly. It's even using an updated death-star logo! Stunning. . . 7:16:00 PM    Questions? Comments? Flames? []

Mother Nature says Happy New Year! Just when I was about to write about how we're doing better here in Santa Cruz county than the folks up north in Napa and Sonoma, Mike Taht, who's all the way at the other end of the county, says he's feeling the effects of all this rain on saturated ground: heck of an exit to 2005. I had intended to post the usual summary of the year that was, and a look towards the year that we are now in... but Mother Nature TROMPED in. We've had days of pouring rain, mudslides (one closed the road to where I live), power loss (intermittent power [Postcards from the Bleeding Edge] I hope Mike feels better real soon; it sucks to be sick in this kind of weather. California braces for second storm; evacuations urged. Northern California residents braced for a second storm to hit the region Sunday, a day after the first sent rivers spilling ... [USATODAY.com News - Top Stories] Nevertheless, we are in better shape than folks up north, where there's serious flooding, trees falling over, and other such nastiness. It's been very windy here, plenty of rain, flood warnings and such, but our lake is a long way from being full. I'm glad we took down two oak trees on the north side of the property after one dropped a limb last summer[~]it would have been pretty scary having them threatening the house in today's wind. But, for our friends in other parts of the country (and world), we're doing fine here. 6:53:26 PM    Questions? Comments? Flames? []

© Copyright 2002-2006 Fred Sampson. Last update: 2/1/06; 8:35:49 PM.