Elin's Journal

Time Warner Cable to roll out metered internet billing in San Antonio.

Not an April Fool's joke, it's serious. If this is the case, we'll have to get a different provider, because we regularly deal with large files on a weekly basis. And not having broadband isn't an option, since all our business stuff pretty much relies on the web.

We currently have Time Warner's Turbo package, but if they don't put the caps on the business package, we may have to upgrade to that. There isn't any Verizon FiOS here locally (which we would get instead, if we could), Grande only serves certain areas of San Antonio that we aren't in, and AT&T is planning to use the metered bandwidth caps as well.

Why are the caps bad? Well, for one, you won't be able to know how close you are to your cap. For two, watching videos online (YouTube, Hulu) uses a ton of bandwidth. I don't even know how much bandwidth playing online games like Warcraft takes. Basically, it seems to me that it's a way for them to charge you whatever they feel like in a month and you won't know how much you've gone over till you get your bill (it's looking to be $1 per GB over the cap limit). Not cool.

When I paid our cable bill, I asked the one good employee there (the one who always knows what's going on, and who is actually intelligent) about this, and she said they hadn't received any information about it yet. (She was genuinely confused too, as all the video screens in the place were still advertising the flat rate pricing plans...) It's hit the local news already, so they're probably going to be getting a lot of calls soon.

"Resist Her" by the Comateens, an obscure post-punk band from NYC. I own their album ("Deal With It") on vinyl, which was given to me by my Pop when he got tired of it. As a teenager, I listened to it a lot, and never knew anyone who had ever heard of them besides me. (As was the case with virtually dozens of bands I listened to a lot in my teen years- my Pop's musical tastes were diverse, cutting edge and nothing if not obscure.)



On a whim, I typed their name into YouTube. All the videos seem to be posted by them, since there are references to their MySpace page in the information! Too cool.

Now, if I could just find anything on The Orchids, I would be set. The only reference I can find to them online is an eBay auction for their self-titled album. I love that album completely (again, another record given to me by my Pop, which I treasure), but the band is painfully obscure.