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Archive | January 7, 2015
January 7, 2015  

New Hampshire’s 200 Year Old Adultery Law Repealed As Of January 1, 2015.

.Anura Guruge December 2014 thumbnail
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by Anura Guruge

Related posts:
 >> Check Category ‘New Hampshire’ for ALL the other N.H. posts >>>>

nhadultry

To be fair other states had a similar law. Those puritans really were puritanical. Some 20 other states have them. North Carolina, if I recall, and don’t ask me how I even heard of this, has (or had) an intriguing ‘alienation of affection‘ law! 

To New Hampshire’s credit nobody can even find when the adultery law was last enforced. In the bad old days you could end up in jail for a year or face up to 39 lashes. In 1992 they changed all of that to a fine of up to $1,200.

But on January 1, 2015 the law, in New Hampshire, is finally off the books. That is the crime part. It can still be brought up, legitimately, in divorce proceedings.

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January 7, 2015  

I Just Got 75Mbps Download Internet (Ultra) From MetroCast In Alton, N.H.

.Anura Guruge December 2014 thumbnail
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by Anura Guruge

Other Related posts:
1. TDS claiming Gigabit by Oct. 2015 — Dec. 30, 2014.

2. TDS Jamaica Call Center a Joke — Dec. 26, 2014.
3. It really is Jamaica — Oct. 29, 2014.
4. TDS outsourcing Call Center — May 5, 2014.

>> Search ‘TDS’ and for other related posts >>>>

Click to ENLARGE.

Speedtest.net tests from various sites:
Vermont, Boston (x2), New York City, Maine.
(See bottom right for server/site used)

MC75vt1
mc75tower11a
mc75comcast1a
mc75twnyc11a
mc75portlandgood

Summary of my results.
The dip was with Portland, Maine.
The next time I tried Portland it was back to 75+.

mc75myresults

Given that all my adult life I have lived per the adage “a bird in bed is better than four at the bar”, I, after a suitable period of cogitation, had no choice BUT to go with the new MetroCast 75Mbps Ultra service. I had planned to order it on Sunday, January 4, 2015 and that is what I did. A lady from the Belmont, N.H. MetroCast Call Center had been very helpful and I made a point of ordering it through her (having got her extension number). They are supposedly not on commission BUT they get brownie points for signing up Ultra customers and I am a very good candidate for brownie points.

Ordered the  that was already in my Amazon shopping cart as I was talking with Robin. As promised, and per Prime, it arrived Tuesday, one day ahead of the install.

This house, built in 2006, has built-in coax cabling (and telephone wiring) to each room. We also had a MetroCast cable, from the outside wall, to the wiring panel. So I was hoping that we would not have to run any new coax cables — and we didn’t, other than a ‘short’ length to have the SurfBoard by my desk, rather than by the jack. The technician, a contractor working for MetroCast, was very nice and capable. He didn’t even have to climb the pole to activate the service. Appears that we had the ‘latest & greatest’ of MC technology installed at our wall when we did last have MC — 4 (or 5) years ago. All he had to do was to call in to have the service activated.

Got 75+ Mbps at once — from the Vermont test site. Had issues with Portland. Well the screenshots above tell the tale.

I can’t tell YOU how happy that I am that I have more than 8Mbps UPLOAD. Upload is the key for me. All the pictures I post on this blog, the files I backup on , videos I post on , the books I publish to Kindle and CreateSpace require UPLOAD bandwidth. IF the 8Mbps sticks around that would be twice more than I had this morning. I could immediately tell the difference when I was uploading the images in this post. I expected that it would be quicker and it was. Pretty fast.

Can I tell a difference with download? The first thing I now notice is the latency in the Website before it can spit out the content at me. So that was to be expected. You are still at the mercy of the server speeds. Download speed only comes into play when there is something to shoot down the pipe. Yes, content appears a tad faster. I have not looked at any videos yet.

Right now all 75Mpbs is connected directly to this PC. The rest of the house is still on a 15Mbps TDS connection. I also still have my 15Mbps TDS connection — right here, on its own Ethernet cable so that I can cutover in a flash.

I have NO contract with MetroCast. Paying monthly, by check. Yes, paid for the first month and the $100 install. BUT, if the bandwidth drops I will ditch them without compunction and go back to TDS. I am keeping BOTH TDS lines, and paying for them, till next week.

IF I can get at least 65Mbps on Saturday night I will go with MC. I am then going to get a whole new 802.11ac Wi-Fi network for the house. I am going to need a switch too because we have 4 wired devices — the  that runs our being one of them — and I don’t like not having any spare wired ports in case I need one. I am also going to get a 802.11ac Range Extender. That, hopefully, is next week — IF MC works.

Yes, of course, I will keep you posted.

January 7, 2015  

Pope Francis’ $12/Ticket New Year Raffle For The Poor, 43 Items — Top Prize, New FIAT Panda 4×4.

.Anura Guruge December 2014 thumbnail
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by Anura Guruge

Some Related posts:
>> Lombardi misleads …
>> 15 Cardinal designates.
>> Vatican III?
>> Camerlengo, Jean-Louis Tauran.
>> February 2015 consistory.
>> Pope plans to reorganize Holy See.
>> Francis and Ratzinger at consistory.
>> 19 cardinal designates for 2014.
>> 2014 cardinalabili list.

poperaffle134a1a

Click to access original ABC News coverage.

poperaffleticket1a

From the same ABC News article as referenced above.

The items being raffled, the drawing being this Thursday, January 9, 2015, like the Harley Davidson bike he auctioned off for charity last February, are gifts that he has received as pope.

I applaud the pope. This is a nice gesture, but it, in the grand scheme of papal wealth, is just a gesture.

I am glad. I am happy. This is the second time in the last 6 months that the pope has ended doing something that I have been campaigning for him to do. The first of these, quite famously, in July 2014, was when he stopped wearing the gold pallium pins that I had railed about from the first day of his papacy. That made me happy. I have been harping on for years, even when Benedict was pope, that the pope should have a HUGE yard sale in St. Peter’s Square and sell some of the thousands of unwanted, unseen items cluttering the Vatican and give the proceeds to the poor.

With this raffle the pope is basically doing what I have been urging, though it is a very limited 43 item raffle as opposed to a huge yard sale spread across St. Peter’s Square. There is also a key difference. All 43 items are gifts bestowed to the pope, as opposed to the Holy See — though some would argue the distinction. But, the pope is the absolute boss. If he wants to raffle these items no one on Earth can stop him. This is good stuff.

I only have one complaint — a very valid one at that. The pope could have raised much more money with just these 43 items IF he made the raffle tickets available ONLINE. The raffle tickets are only available in and around the Vatican, for example at the Vatican Post Office. You can’t buy them online. Yes, of course, this simplifies logistics and avoids issues with overseas shipping. But that could have been overcome. The pope could have easily listed these same 43 items on eBay. If he had, there would be have been a frenzy. I am sure he would have raised MILLIONS MORE! So a huge lost opportunity. But, nonetheless, a start, a gesture.

Maybe next time he will do it on eBay. Or they can set up their own auction site, and maybe call it HolyBay.

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