Spend the 10 minutes and 24 seconds it takes to watch this video for an excellent overview of what the issues are surrounding Net Neutrality. (Thanks to Paul Stamatiou for the link to the video.)
Back in May of last year I decided to relinquish the email account I'd been maintaining for more than 10 years and to rely solely on Gmail as my email server of choice. That choice saved me $21.95 per month that I was foolishly spending with an ISP just to keep that email address alive, and with the freed up money from that, I began spending $6.00 less per month for a web hosting plan with Dreamhost, which hosts this blog and a couple of others and which has enough space for many more projects. It was a wise choice that I should have made much earlier.
As I indicated I was going to do, I didn't turn on my computer at all on Saturday the 24th, and by so doing I observed Shutdown Day 2007. In general, I'd have to say that the day was very pleasant, quite productive and surprisingly easy to do. Some of you who commented on my interest in this day didn't see what the point was. For me, it was to see what kind of reaction I had to the self-imposed restriction not to use of my computer for one day. After awaking at 5:07 AM and going strong until about 11:30 PM, I can say that the event impressed me enough that I may just make it a regular monthly practice.
Just a quick post near midnight on the 23rd to say, I'll see you on the other side of Shutdown Day 2007. Be back on the 25th. Have fun while I'm away.
My blog has always been just a place for me to test whether I could put things on the Internet and a way for me to comment on things I find interesting as I surf and experiment with them. Although I've been blogging now for about 5 years, I've never added advertising to this blog to make money from it because I didn't anticipate having much of a readership. However, I've been pleasantly surprised to have gained more readers than I would have ever thought possible. And those readers are gradually becoming accustomed to commenting here occasionally. For that, I'm grateful.
Today at 9:30 AM I turned off the computer with the intent of leaving it off for two hours. Actually, however, I left it off for 2 and a half hours. It wasn't so bad. I didn't get the shakes or suffer severe anxiety. I'm sure that I'll be able to manage the 24 hour shutdown on Saturday; in fact, I'm looking forward to it.
I visited with my son Mike last night, as I always do on Tuesdays when he is working late, and he noted that when he read my post about Shutdown Day he thought to himself that I might had better try a few shorter, trial runs at this thing before going entirely cold turkey for a whole day on the 24th. I suppose he thought that the shock to my system might be too much for me, much as a doctor would advise a man my age to come in for a checkup before initiating any serious exercise program, lest I precipitate a coronary. I think he said it mostly in jest, but in some ways I think he has a good idea.
I described the problem I experienced in finding a place to upload a large AVI file in this post the other day. This morning I've discovered another alternative.
Today is my pal Paul's 83rd birthday. I want to wish him a Happy Birthday publicly here on my blog and to say I hope he has many more years of happiness there in his adopted home in Berlin.
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