carwreck.com: around Boston harbor...

My broadband connection has gotten broaderer (sic).

I have been hearing rumors over the past few weeks that Comcast was handing out free service upgrades which doubled customer's download speeds. I had heard this mostly from people in Cambridge and points north who were originally served by MediaOne. My cable here in Charlestown was AT&T only so I knew it was on different infrastructure than those who were getting the upgrades. This led me to assume that I wouldn't see the speed increase.

A friend convinced me to try what he had heard was the necessary process, which is to reboot your cable modem by unplugging it for a few minutes. This resets everything and when you plug things back in it receives new, faster service (possibly by installing new firmware in the modem).

My download speed before the reboot was 1.7Mbit (as measured at nyc.speakeasy.net) and after the reboot it showed 3.3Mbit. Amazing!

Contrary to the warnings you see on TV... "You should try this at home."

While out for dinner near the South End last night I noticed a number of people wearing Howard Dean pins. It quickly became clear that the Presidential hopeful was making an appearance somewhere nearby. We wandered into the lobby of a hotel and walked smack into several hundred people, plenty of press, lights and Dean on a podium talking about why people should vote for him. We stayed and listened for a few minutes but I had to leave once the clichés got a little thick. He wasn't very impressive.

Full story on CBSNEWS.com

I ran over to work in Eastie today to pick up some calcium chloride for my sidewalk here in Charlestown. We're luck enough to have a plowing contractor in the warehouse next to our office so there's a nice huge pile of salt I can pinch from: I took a five gallon buckets worth. I think that should last me all winter.

I spoke with some coworkers who filled me on on how they fared during the snowstorm. Apparently, the Pilots made the call to close the harbor early on Saturday morning and, thankfully, our guys didn't have to go out and get beaten to death in the heavy seas. By Sunday morning the NOAA weather buoy which is off Boston Harbor stopped reporting sea conditions once it hit twenty-seven foot seas. It couldn't take the beating apparently.

Ships started moving again early Monday morning as the home heating oil, natural gas, gasoline and shipping containers started pouring into Boston Harbor once again.

Since snowstorms are such a major event for me I figured tha I have to at least post one picture. I haven't been good about taking pics in the past few days (not to mention the 30 or so pics I took yesterday without a memory card in my camera...)

I've done a lot of digging in the past few days. In fact I've dug out three people's cars, not including my own. Here's what I was facing on Sunday afternoon when I started on my car:

I love snow! I love driving in snow. I love driving sideways in the snow. Seriously.

Last night was my introduction to heavy weather at work and I'm ~almost~ sorry that my four day shift is over this morning. By 8pm or so last night the wind had swung around to the East and the waves began to build. By midnight we were heading out to meet the last ship of the evening and the seas at the entrance to Boston Harbor had grown to 8 to 10 foot, steep swells with a period of about 9 seconds. That's nine seconds from wave crest to wave crest and that is a very short period for 10 foot seas making for sloppy conditions out there. We were only able to make about six or seven knots of headway on the way out because we would crash off the back of each wave sending a tremendous shudder through the pilot boat. I put Pilots aboard three ships between 8 and 11pm and then headed back in; tail between our legs. Turning around and putting the waves behind the boat allowed me to put the throttles "to the wall" and we began surfing along at close to 20 knots. It was great. The boat isn't supposed to go that fast but when you have millions of tons of water pushing you from behind it's hard to go slow. It was only then that I flipped on the searchlight and realized that it had begun snowing very heavily... Back at the dock we buttoned up for the night and waited for the relief crew to arrive at 7am.

That brings me to the driving in the snow part. I just love it! Driving in snow is way too much fun. I hope not too many people venture out today so that I can head back out later and have some clear roads to play on without other cars around...

I don't make a point of watching VH1 but when I stumbled across VH1's "Big on '03" show on Sunday night I stopped to watch the antics. There was a lot of bad humor and pop-culture excessiveness. There were however a few good moments worth laughing about.

There was a reference to the iPod "jacking" phenomena which was mentioned in this Wired article. Katie Holmes and Bernie Mac came out wearing iPods and Apple earbuds. Bernie's earphone cord trailed off the stage though. They went through the motions of asking each other what the other was listening to and Bernie pulled on his cord, dragging Al Green onstage.

Also tapped as a presenter for the Biggest, Guiltiest Pleasure award, David Cross, true to himself, went a little bit outside the script while he and Sarah Silverman were riding Seques around the stage. If you have seen David Cross before you would understand that there's no way I can describe his humor here.

Other than that, most of the show was pretty cheezy although Outkast's performance was good.