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skeltoac

First name: Andy. Last name: Skelton.

Grocery JokeJuly 2

Shopping in the produce section, one frugal gentleman says to another, “Pardon me, would you have any grape coupons?”

Persepolis 2.0June 29

The animated feature Persepolis is one of my favorite blu ray movies. Writer and director Marjane Satrapi was a nine-year-old girl living in Tehran during the Islamic Revolution of 1979. The movie covers her struggle to deal with her country’s evolution from fundamentalism to religious extremism. It is a beautiful telling of an emotional life story.

A few days ago there appeared Persepolis 2.0, a mashup of the original graphic novel and the recent election protests in Iran written from the opposition viewpoint. What would it have looked like if the authors had supported the incumbent regime?

Butter-free grilled cheeseJune 16

• Bread slices, 2
• Cheese slices, 2
• Bacon strips, 4

1. Fry bacon over medium heat. Remove bacon and set aside.
2. Place bread slice in pan to absorb half of fat and set aside.
3. Place second bread slice in pan to absorb remaining fat.
4. Add cheese slice and cover for a few seconds to promote melting.
5. Add bacon and second cheese slice and cover for a few seconds.
6. Place first bread slice on top with greasy side up to make sandwich.
7. Turn sandwich to brown both sides and remove from heat.
8. Advise paramedics before enjoying.

10.5.7 adds graphics option for 17-inch MacBook ProMay 13

When I upgraded my work machine from an early 2006 MacBook Pro to the new 17-inch, I restored my old system from a Time Machine backup and lost any custom drivers present in the OS X installed at the factory. This meant I could not change video cards. My machine was stuck in “higher performance” mode (Nvidia GeForce 9600 M GT) with no option to use the “better battery life” mode (9400 M).

I was disappointed when I read the OS X 10.5.7 news and found no mention of the missing video card selector. The wording here was not promising:

Improves performance of video playback and cursor movements for recent Macs with NVIDIA graphics.

But after I installed the 10.5.7 update I found the new option right where it belongs, in the Energy Saver preference panel, shown here:

Hey Apple, you should have included this in an OS X update before shipping the hardware. But it’s too late to argue. My biggest gripe about the 17-inch is now moot.

To Time Warner CableApril 16

What’s wrong with charging internet subscribers per gigabyte? When you pin your rates to an index that is guaranteed to rise faster than costs in order to increase profits, your risk remains pinned to customer retention. This business is sums, not rocket calculus.

The first thing you did wrong was to pick a margin so greedy as to be unjustifiable. Many consumers know or at least feel that half a dollar is too much to pay for a gigabyte of network traffic. Moderately savvy consumers would complain if rates were more than a few cents per gigabyte.

The second thing you did wrong was to try to profit most on the subscribers most likely to feel the inequity. The more bandwidth a person uses, the more likely they can understand their own usage habits in terms of gigabytes; the more likely they have a reality-based idea of the costs; the more likely they are to voice their righteous complaints publicly, educate other consumers, and threaten to subscribe elsewhere.

Many of them also know that they are good customers; they don’t consume your low-value, high-cost call center or web portal resources, they just want cheap, reliable bandwidth. These are the very people you should have favored when crafting your rate plans. Instead you underestimated and insulted them. Now they are clamoring to the competition, it is time to show them consideration. Whatever rat