Kev

Awww…. crap. J pointed out that Wipeout is being rebuilt from the ground up for the Sony PSP. I had hoped to avoid finding any reason to get a PSP, but it looks like that’s not gonna happen.

Damn you J, it’s all your fault.

I gotta say – the Tron-looking screenshot intrigues me.

yuck.

I’m sorry, but you’re really fucked in the head, lady. Notre Dame will win a championship when they get the balls to drop their academic standards. You know it’ll happen, and it’ll probably start next year.

P.S. to Notre Dame: Tom Clements is smarter than you think. Stupid move number five, by my count. I love the Irish, but the boosters and athletic board is doing more damage than good. I mean, really, do you want to play for a team with no known coach and a pack of fans who wanna emulate Al Davis?

Some days the smallest thing will set you off. I was going through IMDB‘s bottom 100, and came across a movie my mom loved. I won’t say which, it’s not important. It did, however, carry all the pain this time of year (for me) brings right up to the surface. A movie title shouldn’t be that depressing, but sometimes it is. *sigh*

At times I wish this kind of total recall would go away, because it hurts an awful lot. But then, I worry that I’ll forget everything she was, so maybe it’s good to have a reminder like this once in a while. It still catches me by surprise, as all the massive things that smack you in the face every day never have this kind of impact, but a tiny little detail can dredge a memory from the corner of your brain and hit you with the force of a nuke.

My brain shouldn’t hurt this much, nor should my heart, but-at this time of year-it does. It’s times like these I really hate the season.

I miss ya, mom.

If it wasn’t for Minority Report, the top line of this site would have terrified me. Here’s hoping Spielberg doesn’t fuck it up.

Sorry about that, it’s been a long week. Welcome to the new and improved server. Nothing’s changed in terms of what the collection of deadsquid sites look like, but we’re with a new hosting provider. After five and a half years living it up in New York City, our new home is somewhere in Virginia.

A couple of things still have to be changed, but we’ve upgraded pretty much everything underneath the covers. New versions of apache, mysql, and php along with a new distro, better security, and a faster processor with more memory. The bandwidth isn’t the same, but that’s life.

I believe everything made it through unscathed, and there’s still some final work to do (like mail – ugh), but it looks like everything made it across. Thanks to walt for setting up the firewall and bits of apache and to coop for tackling mysql and migrating our table data. I learned a lot abotu Debian in the last couple days, along with using a new package manager and getting reacquainted with apache config files.

On top of the move, the week has really, really, really sucked. Christmas vacation (Dec 20-28) can’t get here soon enough. I’ll write more later, I’m sure, but I haven’t felt like doing anything of late.

I’m a huge fan of mashups, where someone remixes two or more tracks from different artists together and comes up with something cool. Soundhog is probably my favourite mashup DJ/arteest, and he’s done a lot of great stuff. I was goofing around with Launch last night and came across the Linkin Park/Jay-Z video of Encore/Numb. Awesome. Picked up the CD today, and the live performance video is pretty sweet, too. Good stuff – the two sounds complement each other really well (but that’s just my opinion). The rest of the CD is pretty kick-ass, but Encore/Numb is definitely my pick of the litter.

See their home page (I cannot get at it from some networks who shall remain nameless)

IStop.com service disruption

We regret that Bell Canada, in direct contravention of its contractual obligations to us, has suspended service to IStop over disputed billings. IStop has repeatedly brought Bell’s errors to its attention, without receiving a response. IStop has also attempted to invoke the dispute resolution clause of its contract with Bell, which requires that disputes be arbitrated. Bell has refused to participate. We have directed our lawyers to deal with Bell to arbitrate and to end the suspension of service; so far, Bell continues to refuse to reply.

We have detailed Bell’s billing errors, which include duplicate charges, rate errors, and tariff contraventions. Unfortunately, Bell appears to believe that, as a giant dealing with smaller businesses, it need not concern itself with correcting mistakes or adhering to contracts. We will continue to try to resolve this issue as quickly as possible.

We have made temporary arrangements with another ISP so our customers can get back online. Change your login to istop.userid@internet. for example if your current login is jsmith@istop.com, change it to istop.jsmith@internet. Customers will be assigned a dynamic IP. We are working on a solution for static IP customers and expect to have it in place by 1700 on Friday.

And I quote:

IStop.com service disruption

Bell Canada cut off IStop.com for refusing to pay over a million dollars in disputed charges. Written notice was given to Bell several times over the past 3 years demanding that the dispute be escalated; the contract with Bell stipulates disputes should be escalated to the office of the president. Instead Bell decided to take unilateral action, even after recent communication from our lawyer.

Customers will be given credits or refunds for the service disruption. We will post another update tomorrow (Friday) morning with further details.

While I feel for the company, I feel more for me and everyone else I know who uses iStop. I have a feeling the actions were not as unilateral (I mean 3 years?!? c’mon now, there’s something you’re not telling us) as represented, and the tarriffs state that fair warning must occur. I have to think, based on personal experiences with collections at Bell, that the dispute resolution process is fairly straight forward, and there’s a lot more to this tale.

I would guess that the company decided that “I’m not going to pay” is the equivalent of a dispute, and that their interpretation of the resolution process was that they didn’t have to pay as long as they disputed the charges. Any contracts I’ve ever worked on for don’t read that way, as there’s usually a cap that limits the monies that can be lawfully withheld (i.e. you can only withhold the disputed amounts, there’s a maximum dollar or percentage of a given invoice that may be withheld, etc.).

I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt, though, and just hope they get things worked out ASAP. Their lawyers also may very well have been in negotiations. Sometimes in large companies billing doesn’t keep provisioning updated, and bad things happen. It’s been almost 24 hours now, and I have to think there are a few thousand business and residential customers affected (including at least 5 people I know). Not a good day for them, as I’m sure there will be considerable fallout.

Updated (10:13): istop changed the message on their site – it now reads:

IStop.com service disruption

We regret that Bell Canada, in direct contravention of its contractual obligations to us, has suspended service to IStop over disputed billings. IStop has repeatedly brought Bell’s errors to its attention, without receiving a response. IStop has also attempted to invoke the dispute resolution clause of its contract with Bell, which requires that disputes be arbitrated. Bell has refused to participate. We have directed our lawyers to deal with Bell to arbitrate and to end the suspension of service; so far, Bell continues to refuse to reply.

We have detailed Bell’s billing errors, which include duplicate charges, rate errors, and tariff contraventions. Unfortunately, Bell appears to believe that, as a giant dealing with smaller businesses, it need not concern itself with correcting mistakes or adhering to contracts. We will continue to try to resolve this issue as quickly as possible.

Customers will be given credits or refunds for the service disruption.

My translation: Don’t expect service anytime soon.

Update 2 (10:29): This was added to the message above:

We are working with other ISPs to make temporary arrangements to restore service to our customers. We expect to have this in place by noon today (Friday).

That should be interesting. I’m now curious about which circuit was brought down.

Update 3 (11:30): Well, the istop site disappeared about 45 minutes ago and hasn’t come back. I am researching other options, but it’ll be at least a week to get any switches done, so I’ll wait a little bit.

The zoomquilt (Flash required) is pretty cool. Have a gander. Additional formats, and a screensaver, can be found on the project’s home page.