Got an unexpected letter from my insurance broker:

[FONT="Franklin Gothic Medium"][B][SIZE="4"]NOTICE OF CANCELLATION[/SIZE][/B][/FONT]

My money to renew my policy was due on the 11th (Monday). Check was received by the company 9th. The broker jumped the gun and sent the notice of cancellation before the big company told them that I hadn't paid.:gah:


I am glad they didn't send me a notice that my health insurance was canceled, because when I saw those big letters I almost has a coronary.
[url]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=stdi-1tIUhM#t=7[/url]

[QUOTE=chappy;380248]The local thugs have come out of the woodworks and people are taking advantage of the shuffling of police forces in the area, but at the same time any petty larceny or street fight has now obtained a status of "inspired by" or "attributed to" the protests.[/QUOTE]

The cops aren't helping their reputations any by forcibly confiscating cell phones and cameras and randomly arresting reporters (even ones sitting peaceably in a restaurant, eating), none of which they have any legal right to do, sans a warrant.

NC reader "fresno dan" has a nice [url=http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/08/links-81414.html#comment-2289649]article link on the subject of systematic police brutality[/url] today:
[quote][b]fresno dan[/b]
[i]
August 14, 2014 at 9:31 pm
[/i]
[url]http://www.theamericanconservative.com/seven-reasons-police-brutality-is-systematic-not-anecdotal/[/url]

In central New Jersey, for instance, 99 percent of police brutality complaints are never investigated

Those officers who are found guilty of brutality typically find the settlement to their victims paid from city coffers. Research from Human Rights Watch reveals that in some places, taxpayers “are paying three times for officers who repeatedly commit abuses: once to cover their salaries while they commit abuses; next to pay settlements or civil jury awards against officers; and a third time through payments into police ‘defense’ funds provided by the cities.”

Simply put,” says University of Florida law professor Katheryn K. Russell, “the public face of a police brutality victim is a young man who is Black or Latino.” In this case, research suggests perception matches reality. To give a particularly striking example, one Florida city’s “stop and frisk” policy has been explicitly aimed at all black men. Since 2008, this has led to 99,980 stops which did not produce an arrest in a city with a population of just 110,000

During President Obama’s gun control push, he argued that “weapons of war have no place on our streets;” but as Radley Balko has amply documented in his 2013 book, Rise of the Warrior Cop, local police are often equipped with weapons powerful enough to conquer a small country. Police use of highly armed SWAT teams has risen by 1,500 percent in the last two decades, and many police departments have cultivated an “us vs. them” mentality toward the public they ostensibly serve.
===========================
COMMENT – They don’t serve us, we serve them. It was an interesting experiment, limited government, but its over
=====================================
Here’s the real clincher. A Department of Justice study revealed that a whopping 84 percent of police officers report that they’ve seen colleagues use excessive force on civilians, and 61 percent admit they don’t always report “even serious criminal violations that involve abuse of authority by fellow officers.”

==========================================
Remember the “don’t be a snitch” movement. Looks like the boys in blue do it too…[/quote]

Bandwidth woes.
 

Background: I live 10km due south of Cambridge, perhaps the most geek-infested city in the UK. Until three or four years ago, the best bandwidth I could manage to the interweb thingy was 1/0.5 Mbps ADSL. Then came ADSL+ which slightly more than doubled it; that is wat I now have.

A couple of years ago a consortium of local government and BT decided to spend large amounts of taxpayers' (local, national and European) money to provide "superfast" broadband to the entire county. Superfast in this context means >= 10/1 Mbps FTTC. I was one of the local activists who helped raise awareness and demonstrate a widespread demand for the service.

BT announced that FTTC had gone live in my village. The local government group also publicised that happy state of affairs. As I live ~100m from the cabinet I should be able to get 80/20 Mbps connectivity; BT's availability checker confirmed this. So I asked my ISP to upgrade my connection. Here's the mail received yesterday afternoon.

[quote]Hello Paul,

When attempting to place the order, we ran into a problem. According to BT there is currently not enough capacity at your local exchange to support FTTC connections at this time, because of this vispa (or any other ISP) will not be able to place the order for FTTC until the during or the end of September.
[/quote]

Typical bloody BT :rant:

In the city I was living before I went to Brazil I could easily have fibre internet up to 400 Mbps/40 Mbps. I was in that time with a package of Internet (50 Mbps/10 Mbps)+Phone+TV for only €34,99/month but now the price dropped to €25. ADSL only up to 24 Mbps/1 Mbps. Because Portugal is a small country it is covered by fast internet connections (fibre).
In Brazil I only had ADSL internet of 10 Mbps/1 Mbps and I payed more or less €30/month.

I have 175/175 Mbps unlimited at home. It's nice. But the $135/month cost isn't.

I have 3.5M, for about euro 15.- a month. When it rains it doesn't work. No joke, water gets into the underground pipes, old telephonic network, blah blah. Freaking. Frustrating. Now is the rainy season here... :smile:

[QUOTE=xilman;380457]...BT announced that FTTC had gone live in my village...
[/QUOTE]
That really is Fibre To The [I]Curb[/I] instead of Kerb...

[QUOTE=Nick;380471]That really is Fibre To The [I]Curb[/I] instead of Kerb...[/QUOTE]s/Kerb|Curb/Cabinet/

5M up 1M down, part of a $160/month package that includes a phone and basic cable TV with two extra packages.


Apparently some farmer* somewhere would be offended if the cities got better connectivity service than his place in the f*cking boonies. Because of this, in order to offer a service to someone, it [B][I]must[/I][/B] be available to everyone within the area (i.e. province).

So, a company like Sasktel is evening out the cost of providing internet to the north of Saskatchewan by gouging the cities. In Saskatoon, we're still relatively sparse but we could easily support the infrastructure for fiber. However, I do believe there is a regulation against offering service to specific cities and not the rest.


*or other demographic. You know, [I]that[/I] one.

Pesky injuries
 

I play bassoon in one of the local university orchestras; term starts this week, so the first rehearsal was yesterday.

Somehow over the summer, despite never having golfed, I managed to contract golfer's elbow ( inflammation of the medial epicondyle tendon of the elbow ). I'd noticed that this was uncomfortable when lifting weights (easily avoided) or picking up babies (also easily avoided, though dropping babies is even more frowned upon than dropping weights).

Yesterday I discovered that it was also distinctly aggravated by playing the bassoon :sad:

I have experienced tendonitis in the elbows off and on for years. The best therapy I have found is the application of cold packs. We keep two large gel packs in the freezer all the time for various complaints. By large, I mean sold for putting on the back. The bag of gel goes into a cover with long elastic straps with Velcro ends. It measures about 8" x 13". This does a great job of wrapping around most of a knee, and pretty much all of an ankle, wrist, or elbow.

I have pitched this treatment to many people with almost universal positive responses. Anti-inflammatory drugs help, but for long-term improvement there is nothing like regular application of cold.