Rants

So, here in good old Iowa, we have had the shift as with many other states that went from blue to red. A new, well really old actually, Republican Governor and part of our congress.

Now, all of these people pretty much ran on 2 issues. Jobs and the economy. So far, here are the priorities that they have put first:

• Stop gay marriage
• Discriminate based on religious beliefs
• Stop early pre-school (or at least make it more difficult)
• And now – ban abortions and many forms of contraceptives.

When you guys lose your seats at the next election, try not to be too shocked.

I’m a Mediacom subscriber. They’re the only cable modem choice in town and DSL just doesn’t have the speeds that I want out in my area. So, for internet, they’re the best option I have. They have a customer portal that is less than impressive. In fact, every time I use it I want to cancel my account. It annoys me that much.

Why I hate the Mediacom portal

1. One of my biggest pet peeves is that I cannot setup my credit card to be charged on a monthly recurring basis through the portal. They can accept a one time payment, but not recurring. In order to set up recurring payments, I have to call a customer support representative. When you call them, they cannot take your information either. Uh…what? Instead, they send you a form to fill out and send back in. If the process is to fill out a form and send it in via snail mail, let me DOWNLOAD THE FREAKING FORM ONLINE!!!!!
2. I can however place a one time payment at any time. However, you can place a one time payment multiple times and the owed amount never gets updated. For example, I apparently paid my bill online multiple times last month. So this month I owed a pathetic amount of $11.08. Which I paid several hours ago. Yet, when I go back to look at my balance, lo and behold, it appears that I still owe $11.08. Maybe I should pay it again.

Do you live in the Brain Belt?

I’ve heard it called Silicon Prarie before, but I hadn’t heard of the Brain Belt. Back when I worked in Green Bay WI, we used to call it the Silicon Tundra. They of coarse are all just made up names to talk about the tech boom that is happening in the midwest.

Just in Des Moines, we have some pretty impressive tech companies. My current employer LightEdge Solutions is head quartered here. We’re the first company to tie Microsoft’s OCS messaging system to a Broadsoft VoIP platform for hosted consumption.

As I was checking in today on the latest tech news, I found out that Twitter has announced that they are building their own data center.

Death to the fail whale they are calling it. Maybe so, but what really got me was this.

Twitter will have full control over network and systems configuration, with a much larger footprint in a building designed specifically around our unique power and cooling needs.

I’ll fully admit, I may be one of the few people that doesn’t watch Glee. I may catch clips from time to time, but never on a regular basis.

So with that baseline set…here’s something that I’ve noticed recently. iTunes has definitely started pushing more of the cast albums at me in their weekly “what’s new” marketing emails. Here’s the thing about the Glee cast versions of songs…when listening to the sample track, it doesn’t get me to buy the song. Instead, it makes me search to find the original song because their cover reminds me of how awesome the original version was.