Sessions for School Board!

I haven’t made updates in a while, but I’ve been a bit busy.  If you haven’t heard, I’m running for the Columbia Public Schools’ Board of Education.  Find out more about my campaign at my website http://www.sessionsforschoolboard.com

Thanks,
Jonathan

My Spam: Puppy!

This is the most adorable spam I have ever gotten.  If spammers just put photos of puppies doing things humans do, I think they would be more effective.  Think about it.  Puppies getting their computers cleaned of viruses, puppies solving their ED problems, puppies getting their unwanted hair removed, and puppies using cell phones…

My Spam: Update Notice for My Computer

Do these actually work on people? My email is telling me it has run a scan on my Mac and I need to update my Windows software.  Clearly this is legitimate.

My Spam: Books I own

This was intersting.  It’s a simple online drug store for Viagra and Cialis from “Cheyney” email address from Japan.  While it’s just a simple image, the spammer included an excerpt from a book to get through my filter.

 

I started to read it and it sounded strangely familiar.  I tossed a line into the goog and found it.  It’s from the book Curriculum Design by By Michael Golby, Jane Greenwald, Ruth West, a book a was given by my grandmother and is still sitting on my shelf at home.  Here’s the page below from Google Books.  It starts on page 151 just before the second paragraph.

 

My Spam: Доступнaя реклама

I have no idea.

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My Spam: Toe Fungus

Yuck. If my feet ever start looking like that (they don’t, feel free to ask, I’ll show you), I’m going to call my doctor, not find a miracle cure in my Junk folder.

I also enjoy the unsubscribe link at the bottom which takes you to this page:

There is no way I’m going to confirm you are harassing me at the correct email address. I looked at your code.  You’re just recording my email.

My Spam: Laser Hair Removal

I cannot really complain about an issue with this spam.  Laser hair removal, I get it.  Some people have unwanted hair.  Looking at the picture, I do wonder what this woman’s back looked like before the laser hair removal.  I also wonder if I went in to get a “Full Face” if they would only charge $89.

Chuck Berry Plays Columbia…

I had a great time at Chuck Berry last night.  Brilliant photo journalist Jim MacMillian moved into the loft above My Secret Garden so we had a great view from his windows and the roof.  Though this was the tenth or so time I’ve seen Chuck perform, it was still a great show.

Here’s Jim’s Photo:

Here’s my great photo with Chuck, The Tiger and Jesse taken from the roof with my iPhone:

 

You can watch the entire performance on Jim’s Blog: Here

My Spam: Jupiter Jack

Maybe it’s because he’s loud or maybe it’s because he died, but I have been getting non stop emails about the Jupiter Jack. What I do know after watching the commercial, I’m glad I never had to be screamed at by Billy.  Poor Carla, is that how he conducts every conversation?  “I’LL BE RIGHT THERE!”  “HAPPY MOTHERS DAY!” “YES I WOULD LOVE SOME MORE COCAINE SIR!”  Hard to do anything discreetly when you are yelling at everyone.

 

My Spam: A message from Carl

Call H has sent me a message. A private message.  What could it be?  If I don’t read it Carl will be so disappointed.

What Carl is a fan of the Mizzou Tigers too? Wow! I wonder how our Passwords to FanIQ compare? I’m totes going to enter my FanIQ password and find out.  Oh wait, it’s doing a call to google analytics to figure out where I’m from then pushing an image of my local sports team… And it’s not even the FanIQ website I’m on right now.  Carl, how dare you trick me…

My Spam: Mister X

Mr X wants to make me money. I don’t have anything against mysterious millionaires, but there’s this and there is Mister X (Vortex), so I have some concern.

Tech Sessions: Don’t get duped by overpriced cable

I hate cables; I wish everything were wireless. I spend hours trying to find ways to hide wires at my home and office. I went so far as to build a faux wall in my office to hide all the television cable (it is hard to explain to contractors why you want a wall that doesn’t do anything).

Besides being unsightly, cables are often overpriced. Retail stores typically carry only expensive ones, blaming the price on quality.

A few weeks back, right before the second digital transition, I went to pick up a couple digital converter boxes with my government coupons. With the $40 coupons, I grabbed two different converter boxes from the shelf - one costing $29, the other $55. As I began to walk toward the checkout, an employee asked me if I needed any cables. I tried to blow him off, inching my way towards the door. But he strongly suggested I get a $74 indoor antenna and a $24 Dynex six-foot Composite Video/Stereo Audio Cable because I would need a quality connection.

I also dislike big box stores, so I usually make an effort to avoid eye contact with employees to avoid theses types of situations. So in my defensive state, I wasn’t sure how to respond to the suggestion of buying $100 in accessories for a $30 device I planned to keep under glass for emergency purposes and knowing I could get an equivalent six-foot composite cable online for $3. After a pause, I asked him how well it worked at his home. As he began to brag about his HD satellite setup, I slipped away.

Retail stores make money off consumers’ accessory and cable purchases. Their margin on the Blu-Ray Player you just bought isn’t great, but the margin on the $100 HDMI cable they helped you pick is. Sure, they sell a $13 HDMI cable if you check on line, but good luck finding a store that has the $13 model in stock.

Cables are nothing more than bands of metal (usually copper) soldered to a connector at each end to make sure they are plugged into the right port. They are used to transfer data via an analog or digital connection. Analog uses a series of electronic pulses and digitally breaks data down into binary 1s and 0s. Yes, the quality of a cable does matter, but not as much as sales associates would have you think.

The big concern with analog cables is interference from other devices, especially power sources, which can create buzzing and hissing in audio, and snow, distortions in color, and rolling in video transmissions. In digital transmission, it’s important to have the bandwidth to clearly transmit all the 1s and 0s for the receiving device to decode the message.

Most of the time I read or listen to arguments about cable quality and cost, it comes down to a lot about hearing or seeing a difference. And most of the studies have been sponsored by companies trying to market their products.

A self-proclaimed audiophile on audioholics.com posted a home experiment that needs to be recreated under controlled conditions. He and four audiophile friends did a blind experiment to see if they could hear the difference between high-end name-brand speaker wire and some much more affordable, but still high-quality, speaker wire. They were unaware the person conducting the experiment had replaced the standard speaker wire with wire coat hangers. “After 5 tests, none could determine which was the Monster 1000 cable or the coat hanger wire,” the audiophile wrote.

One quasi independent study (http://tinyurl.com/26rj8k) of digital transmission from Gizmodo and Monster demonstrated that almost any cable that is two to three meters long (the length most of us use) can do the trick when transmitting 1080p video. The study also showed that while more expensive cables did stand up better during long-distance transmissions of current standards (1080p), they could not handle future standards (1440p).

Don’t think spending a lot now will guarantee the cable will last a lifetime. Even if it does, by the time you upgrade your TV or stereo, the technology will have changed, possibly making that cable obsolete. Even when planning ahead, future standards of 1080p (12-bit) and 1440p will require much more bandwidth than even the most expensive cables currently offer.

When purchasing cables, know the technical specs of your components. If your TV has a top resolution of 720p, there isn’t any reason to drop $100 on a cable to connect your Blu-ray player. If you upgrade your TV later, you can always upgrade from a $5-10 cable. If you plan to connect a projector to the ceiling to run an HDMI cable through the wall, it would be a good call to invest in a higher-quality cable. You don’t want to pull cable through a wall more than once.

Sometimes more expensive cable is not necessary, sometimes it is, and sometimes it’s not worth it. Whatever the case, be aware of the upsell at the big box stores. Be prepared to only have the top-of-the-line cable as an option as you check out.

If the purchase is planned, figure out what cables are needed, and order them online, where you can get a better deal. Plan ahead and shop within your budget. If a cheaper cable doesn’t cut it, you can always return it for something better. When all is said and done, it comes down to how it looks and sounds to you and how much you are willing to pay for that look or sound.

COLORS Event Today

From the COLORS Website:
There seem to be a million different ways to use the Web for social networking—Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, to name a few.
How can a business make the most of the opportunities?

Join Tech Expert (and Columbia Business Times Columnist) Jonathan Sessions as he shares tips for using social networking tools to improve your business. He will also lead a discussion so participants can learn from each other.

Wednesday, July 29th, 11:30-1:00

Sandwiches from Hoss’s are included in the ticket price—$12 for members of COLORS and $15 for non-members.

Miller’s Professional Imaging (Conference Room)

1717 East Point Drive

Columbia, MO 65201

(Miller’s Professional Imaging is a large building, located just past Hollywood 14 Theaters)

If you want, you can pay ahead, online, at http://colorsevent.eventbrite.com/

For questions or to RSVP without paying online, contact Sean Spence at seanspence@earthlink.net or 823-1308.

This event brought to you by the COLORS Member Benefits committee.

Tech Sessions: Evaluating Mediacom’s business phone service

As Internet speeds continue to increase, service providers are able to utilize the expanded bandwidth for new services. Phone companies are now offering TV services, while cable companies are providing phone services. Mediacom has been providing phone services to homes for a while and just started a business phone service, providing much needed competition to CenturyLink (formerly CenturyTel).

Already a Mediacom cable and Internet subscriber, we at Tech 2 were offered the chance to be the first customers of Mediacom’s Business Phone Service.

It felt risky being the cable company’s guinea pig. But I was willing to take the risk because of Mediacom’s track record with its phone service to homes. Also, our office is directly across the street from Mediacom, so we knew where to find them if we had problems.

I felt even more confident after the preliminary visit by a Mediacom representative. I was copied on an e-mail sent to Mediacom corporate with the subject line, “It doesn’t get any better than this!” The e-mail outlined all the things that would make the Tech 2 install easy.

The e-mail: (with my translations)

1. It’s directly across the street from the office. (Again, I knew where to find them.)

2. High Speed Internet and video is active, passes drop cert and cable input and splitter are on the plywood. (We already have Internet and cable from them, the signal strength is good, and the cable line comes in next to the plywood with our phone lines.)

3. There are two phone lines to port, and they were easy to identify on the punch down block. (They found the lines from CenturyLink easily on the punch block, the device that connects the lines from the phone provider and our internal lines that go to the wall jacks.)

4. There is ample room for the eMTA and IDC Bridge (the massive piece of plywood in our phone closet is big enough to place the Mediacom device that translates the data from a cable line into phone lines).

About a week after the preliminary visit, I met a lone tech in my office. I expected to see a tech and the Mediacom trainer who came to the preliminary visit, but instead a single tech with limited phone installation experience (read: none) came to complete the install. Not surprisingly, Tech 2 was his first experience with business phones, and he was fresh out of the Mediacom business phone boot camp (all of his tools were brand new and still in the packaging).

Uh-oh, I thought.

After getting the new equipment mounted and connected, the tech tracked down lines from CenturyLink on our punch block, but was clearly distressed. He explained that Mediacom trained him on an empty punch block, so he was having trouble figuring out ours. Now, I was distressed.

While the extra wires from our internal router were confusing, he figured it out eventually. He disconnected the CenturyLink lines, connected the lines from the new Mediacom device and called to have our numbers ported from CenturyLink to Mediacom.

It worked. Within a few minutes, both of our lines were working.

We did discover a hiccup immediately after setup. Mediacom had automatically given us call waiting, which prevented calls from rolling over to the other line. But Mediacom quickly fixed the problem.

We have been operating with Mediacom phones for over a month now without issue. Calls are clear from both sides, even when our office is experiencing heavy Internet usage. Most impressively and pleasing, our phone service was uninterrupted during two recent Mediacom Internet outages. I figured our phones would be down every time Internet service failed, but surprisingly that wasn’t the case.

So what’s the bottom line? It costs pretty much the same as CenturyLink’s business phone service. But by bundling it with all of our other phone services, we were able to save money. Offering one to eight lines, it works as simply as a landline from the phone company and offers all basic phone features (call waiting, ID, voicemail, etc,) plus several enhanced options like e-mailing the audio from voicemails. Just as easily, the service can be used with any new or existing phone systems. For more information visit http://mediacomcable.com/BusinessServices/busPhone.html.

So far, we have been very pleased with Mediacom’s phone service. The call quality and reliability are as good as the phone company’s, and the Internet service is better. The technicians are a tad inexperienced, but they have the basics down. Our technician worked quickly and called us later to make sure everything was up and running as planned.

Mediacom’s new business phone service isn’t going to work for everyone because it’s not available everywhere. But for some business customers, it’s worth looking into because it allows for cost savings through bundling services. And in a tough climate for businesses, every potential savings is worth a closer look.

MJ Dance Party at Teller’s Tonight