I’ve got a secret about Saturdays… I’ve been keeping it to myself, but I think it’s time to let the cat out of the bag. Ready? OK. Here we go.

If you get your lazy backside out of bed early, you can actually have the best couple of hours you’ll have all week. Let me explain what I’m talking abut though.

My life is hectic. With my own business pulling me in every direction during the week, four kids and a wife at home yanking every other way, there’s not a lot of time for myself. But I have found some and it happened today. I woke up wide awake around 6:15 this morning. Which I always find amusing since during the week lately I can’t seem to get up much before 7:30 (which can be a real problem since I’m supposed to be at the office by 8:00… but enough on that for now). So I got up and rather than the typical weekday we seem to run the kids pretty ragged by Friday so they are still asleep too. Ahhh. Peace and quiet… I get my mp3 player loaded up and went for a walk to the corner store to grab some milk… Now this is good because everyone from my Doctor to my nutritionist (who I finally saw this week and I’ll give an update in our next show) to my wife, to even my kids are telling me to exercise… so a mile or so walk with 1/2 of it carrying two eight pound gallon containers of milk can’t be a bad idea.

So I went on my little excursion, got home… made coffee…. made breakfast, for myself…. read the paper… and managed a trip to the “library” too. All this in about an hour with no interruptions…

As the rest of the gang made their way in, I relented and took care of making them breakfast … pancakes… and while they’re all eating I have snuck outside to the patio with the laptop and am writing now, finishing my coffee. And I can already tell my time is up… I’m already “debating” the pros of picking up one’s bedroom vs. visiting the neighbor’s house with a six-year old… But alas all great things must come to an end… [sigh] … which is OK, after all the lawn needs to be mowed, I’ve got to finish removing that tree that fell down a few weeks ago… the kids have a party this afternoon… my wife needs to go to a shower tonight……..

So take my advice… find an hour to yourself every week… my batteries are charged and ready to go…

- Mike

There has been a lot of talk lately about Net Neutrality.  What exactly is it and why should you care?

To answer that question, let’s take a quick look at how the Internet works today from providers such as Google to consumers such as us.  Google pays their Internet Service Provider (ISP) a fee to connect to the Internet.  Fee structures are tied to the amount of bandwidth used and as you can probably imagine, Google uses a lot of bandwidth to provide its services to the Internet.  This generates some fairly fat fees for Google’s local ISPs.  Now, say that your ISP is Comcast.  You pay Comcast a certain amount to connect to the Internet.  The way things have always worked in the past is that Comcast is getting paid by you to allow you access to the Internet while Google’s ISP is getting paid to provide Google access.  Comcast and Google’s ISPs have what is called a peering arrangement.  This means that the two ISPs agree to exchange each other’s traffic.  Sometimes there are fees involved, but generally these peering arrangements are made with no costs attached.

The issue is that if Comcast has 50,000 subscribers that are all using Google, a lot of Google traffic is passing over Comcast’s wires to their customers.  Comcast thinks that they should be paid for that so they would like to ability to levy a tariff on Google’s traffic passing over their network.  Google would have the choice of either paying Comcast or else having their service deliberately degraded by Comcast or blocked entirely.  Now, on one hand, you might think that Comcast has a valid point – after all, they are carrying Google traffic, but they are not getting paid for it.  On the contrary though, they are getting paid – by their subsribers.  Without services like Google, the Internet would be considerably less useful thus it is possible that fewer people would be willing to pay Comcast for access.

Another nastly little surprise the ISPs could pull would be to decide they want to offer their own services and deliberately degrade the performance of the competition.  For example, let’s say that Comcast decides to get into the online auction business.  They might decide to provide their own crummy auction site to their subscribers while at the same time degrading or blocking access to eBAY.  Comcast subscribers would have little choice in the matter; they would either have to use Comcast’s auction service or else find a new ISP.

Are any of the ISPs doing this today?  Fortunately, no.  However, they have started making noises in this direction and this has alarmed companies such as Google and Microsoft.  The Net Neutrality measures that have been in front of Congress are intended to head this off at the pass.  If enacted, they would prohibit ISPs from engaging in these types of activities.  So, what is happening on this front?  A bill in the House of Representatives failed 269 to 152 and a similar measure in the Senate Commerce committee was defeated 11-11 (it would have required a majority to be sent to the Senate).  The ISPs claim that they have no plans to offer a tiered service or partake in any of the activities I described, yet they are spending a significant amount of money and influence in Washington to prevent any kind of Net Neutrality bill from passing.  Seems to me that if they were not planning to do anything cute, they could find better uses for their money and time.

Despite early setbacks, there is still hope, but you need to get involved.  Contact your Congress Critters and let them know how you feel – even better – find out their position.  There is a chance to revive this in September – let them know that this will be an important issue to you when you vote in November.  Right now, Congress is happy to act in the best interests of the lobbyists – make them act in your best interests.  Granted, you may feel you are choosing one set of corporate interests (Google, Microsoft) over another (AT&T, Comcast, Verizon), but in this case, the best interests of the Internet coincide with the best interests of Google and Microsoft.

A good informational site is Save the Internet

For a slightly more humorous (but still educational) take on this issue, check out the following links:

Ask a Ninja
Rocketboom

- Jim

I spent yesterday baking in the sun in Louden, NH at the NASCAR Lennox 300 Nextel Cup race at the New Hampshire International Speedway. It makes for a long but fun day. I’ve been going up there twice a year for about a decade now. If you’ve never been to a NASCAR event it’s quite the site to see and quite the event.

We leave from home very early in the morning, at about 6:30. Winding its way to the racetrack is the two lane Route 1 for 11 miles and it has been known to make a 2-hour ride last 4 – 5. I’ve been beating the jam for a few years now by taking a shuttle bus that the Concord, NH Chamber of Commerce runs. For $20 you get the privilege of riding a hot, big, yellow school bus again. But they take all the back roads and with police escort gets you there with a lot less hastle.

We end up getting to the track around 11:00am and then wait until the start of the race, which is at 2:00pm in July.

My tickets are in the front row coming out of turn four. And if you know anything about racing, front row is the worst seat in the house for watching the race. I can see about 1/3 of the track from our seats, but perhaps as much fun (if not more) than the actual race is the people watching that you can enjoy.

The race was fun. Kyle Busch won in the end but the moment of the race happened before the race was 1/3 over when Tony Stewart was spun out by Ryan Newman while leading the pack on lap 91. He was not a happy camper but was able to get back on the track and finish the race none-the-less.

After the race is over we march our way back to the buses and make our way back to the car. It’s a crazy ride on dirt roads up hill that have you migrating your way through what seem like uncharted territory. Then we hit the Uno’s near by and wait for traffic to make its way a bit before heading home. So the day that started so early had me resting my head on the pillow at 12:30 am.

Like I said it’s a fun day and one I look forward to, but thank God it’s only twice a year. To my 100,000 friends – I’ll see you all again in September.

- Mike

This week a small part of the world was in Boston for the annual Microsoft Partner Conference.  This conference brings together those organizations that are involved in delivering Microsoft solutions.  A fair number (some 30%-40%) of the more than 7,000 attendees were from outside the United States.  For many visitors this was their first trip to our fair city.  What greeted them?

Well, when they picked up their conference credentials and giveaways, inside the bag they found a small map of the Boston subway system along with a note advising them that they may prefer to use public transit over the buses that were provided by Microsoft to ferry them from their hotels to the convention center.  They were warned that if they chose to use the buses, they should plan to leave at least an hour before the start of the keynotes if they hoped to make it in on time.

I have been going to Microsoft conferences in other cities for a number of years; Dallas, San Diego, New Orleans, Orlando, etc.  Never have I seen something like this.  All of the other cities seem to be able to move people from the hotels to the convention center without insane delays – what is wrong with Boston?  Perhaps it is because our aging infrastructure provides only a small number of viable routes to the convention center; routes that were already clogged with traffic before they decided to put up a huge convention hall.  Fortunately, the Big Dig tunnel provided some small relief…

Then the tunnel collapsed – our $14 billion (and still counting) grand public works project, The Big Dig, had struck yet again.  This time, it cost one poor woman (and mother) her life.  As most people already know, a piece of the drop ceiling came loose from it’s mooring and dropped tons of concrete onto the car.  If there is a bright side to this sad tale; it is that at least it happened at 11:00 P.M. as opposed to the middle of rush hour when many more would have been killed or injured.

Now, as engineers take the tunnel ceiling apart and carefully examine it, construction shortcuts taken by greedy contractors and others are coming to light.  Ceiling bolts that were supposed to be secured by epoxy are just screwed into the concrete, other areas that required reinforcement were skimped on as well.  We now have a $14 billion (and still counting) timebomb in this city which, when it fails, will cause untold amounts of economic harm to the communtity as it will paralyze traffic for years while reconstruction is attempted.

A big thanks to all of our public servants who so diligently kept a close eye on this project.  Thanks too to all of the contractors whose work was so meticulous.  Thanks to all of the visitors to our fair city who are asked to pay special hotel and rental car taxes to help pay for this disaster.  And a big thanks to our fellow Americans who, though many will never set foot in Boston, have helped to fund this project through their Income Taxes.

If nothing else, maybe this will be a wakeup call to all of us that we need to keep a closer eye on our wallets.  This kind of project can be successful, but it requires the oversight of people who care more about safety and cost savings than about lining their own pockets.  Until we demand better of our public servants we will continue to get this kind of incompetence.

Not that I’m bitter or anything…

- Jim