Niners will be 8-8

Okay now that the pre-season has ended I will share my predictions for the San Francisco Forty Niners, the greatest team in NFL history!

Since the pre-season is designed to shake out a team's roster, not necessarily to win games, it is difficult to make predictions. However, for what it is worth, here are my observations.

1. The Niners are back. This is a talented team that is no longer in danger of having a 2-14 season. EVERY team in the NFL needs to prepare seriously for them.

2. I have not seen any moments of brilliance. Certainly many players have showed skillful play, but I never saw something that made me jump out of my seat.

Given (1) and (2), my initial evaluation is that the Niners are a solid but average NFL team, as such their record will be average. My prediction: 8-8.

Embarq DSL scam or honest mistake?

Is Embarq scamming customers, or is this an honest mistake?

A few months ago I upgraded my DSL service from 3 Mbps to 5 Mbps, about a 40% increase in speed. It costs me about $10 per month more, but since I work from home I figured the fatter pipe was worth it.

Stupidly, I never actually verified that I was receiving what I paid for. If I logged into my online Embarq account, I could see that I was getting billed for the faster service, but I never measured the bandwidth speed itself.

Until yesterday. You know where this is going. I was paying the higher rate for the slower speed. I contacted Embarq and they confirmed it and gave me a one month refund. I pushed back and they gave me a full refund for all the months I had been paying the higher rate.

Here is how to test your network speed. Go to Speakeasy.net and select the location closest to you. Are you getting what you pay for?

Do you still use a landline?

Interesting statistic of the day: From September 2006 to April 2007, the percentage of Americans in cellphone-only households for the first time overtook the percentage in landline-only households.

Personally I have one, but it is really only for DSL and the home alarm system, not for talking. I don't usually pick it up when it rings. Friends know to call my cell.

Soon it will seem ridiculous to have landlines. I can imagine in a not-to-distant future a child quizzically asking a parent: "Why would someone want to call a house instead of a person?"

Tea discrimination

Tea drinkers in the United States suffer from a subtle form of discrimination. It isn't malicious, just thoughtless. Kind of like giving a right-handed person a pair of scissors designed for left-handedness. Here you are expected to drink coffee.

I notice this thoughtlessness especially when I travel on business. In my hotel room this morning, for example, there is a coffee maker with a variety of what appear to be good quality coffees to choose from. The tea selection isn't so attractive. Moreover, the coffee machine is polluted from coffee use, so any attempt to actually make tea would result in a weak coffee-tea flavored cup-o-crap!

The choices are similar in the hotel restaurant. I have become accustomed to bringing my own packets of Earl Grey with me when I travel. So this morning I grabbed a cup of hot water from the restaurant urn and used my own tea.

Gross... the employees obviously have used this urn for coffee. The flavor is unmistakable. No problem... when I get to the office I grab another cup of hot water from the conference room urn and check out the tea selection. Fracking Lipton. Lipton is a bag of bitter brown dye, and to tea drinkers is the equivalent of giving a coffee drinker a packet of 1970s-era instant Sanka. So I grab another packet of my handy Earl Grey.

UGH! Same problem. This urn has been used for coffee!

Years ago when I visited Toronto I was pleasantly surprised to see tea everywhere. There was even a basket of different teas sitting in a basket atop a corner hot dog vendor cart!

Please people, can't we all get along? End tea discrimination in America!