Archive for September, 2009
September 11, 2009 at 10:16 am
Well, sure, it’s pretty cool to see your name in the Wall Street Journal (even if it is only online and just one of their blogs, not the actual paper), but I’m not too sure I like being called a snarky techie. Would you?
Hmmmph. I much prefer the “Ruud Questions” interview that’s just been posted on Search Engine People. Ruud Hein asked me questions about U2, faith, SEO, blogging, and much more. Really fun Q&A with a lot of variety. Although I suspect U2 fans will recognize that I kinda-sorta borrowed the opening line from Bono a wee little bit. But it’s true, and that’s what matters.
September 10, 2009 at 9:17 pm
Got an email today from Google telling me that I have to link my AdSense account with my Google Affiliate Network account. Okay, no big deal. The email tells me to get more information at the Google Help Center. So, I click the link and end up here:
Thanks for nothing, G.
September 8, 2009 at 7:04 am
If you’ve read chapter 2 of The Big Switch by Nick Carr, you’ll know some of what I’m talking about here. That chapter is all about Thomas Edison and the electrical inventions he led, as well as the battles he fought over the business side of electricity, and so much more. I thought I knew something about Edison until I read that chapter, and now I’m left wondering … why has there never been a major movie telling this story?
(Note: This is a blog post that I began well over a year ago and am only posting now.)
As the story in Carr’s book goes, Edison was inspired by a trip through the Rockies — on seeing the Platte River he thought there should be a way to use electricity to harness the river’s power. Edison became focused on how to produce large quantities of electricity, how to transmit it safely into the home/office, how to make it usable for lighting, how to measure the amount of electrical use (for billing purposes), and how to make money doing all this. Within two years, he and his team had developed a new type of lightbulb, blueprints for a central generating station, and a way to get the power from the station into the building to power the lightbulb.
He formed the Edison Electric Company to license this system, then formed other companies to sell the products and material needed to make it happen. But Edison’s system was built to serve very small footprints — a square mile or so for each generating station. His system was good for residential areas and small businesses. But large industrial companies bought their own electrical systems to run factories — they didn’t rely on getting power from the electric company (Edison).
Edison hired a guy named Samuel Insull as secretary and financial adviser, and Insull quickly became his main assistant. Insull helped oversee Edison’s company as it grew and merged into General Electric. Insull eventually left for the Chicago Edison Company, one of those tiny electric companies licensing Edison’s system. He grew the company and started buying small competitors, and eventually pretty much owned the Chicago electrical business. His idea was to create large electrical utilities that served mass amounts of customers, not the smaller stations Edison preferred. Insull basically created the first major electrical utility, the Commonwealth Edison Company and as more large customers (factories, etc.) signed on, he was able to lower prices and gain even more customers. (As we know now, this was the way of the future … not Edison’s vision of much smaller generating stations.)
Edison stuck with his direct current electrical system (DC), even though it was limited in reach. Nikola Tesla developed the alternating current system (AC) which had far greater reach. When the public started to realize the benefits of AC, Edison started a propaganda war to try to convince Americans that AC was too dangerous. If you read the Wikipedia entry about this, there’s even talk of Edison employees electrocuting animals in public to show the dangers of AC! Holy $#!@#$. Tesla worked for Edison at one point, but Edison apparently reneged on a promise to pay Tesla $50,000 for help in improving Edison’s DC generating stations. When Tesla came to collect, Edison called it an “American joke.” Ouch.
Anyway, Edison had a hand in inventing or improving the telephone, telegraph, the light bulb, the stock ticker, motion picture camera, and hundreds more inventions. He has more than a thousand patents in his name. A thousand! And, as explained in Carr’s book and even the Wikipedia entry, there’s all kinds of intrigue and compelling storylines in how all of this happened.
So, I ask again, how come there’s never been a major Hollywood movie made about his amazing story?
September 8, 2009 at 12:06 am
We drafted tonight (Monday) for our SEO fantasy football league and I’m feeling a lot better about the Instant Breakfast this year than I did last season. Here’s my team:
If Tomlinson and Portis stay healthy, I think I’ll be in good shape. I drafted Santonio Holmes earlier than Julius Jones, but switched them for week one because I like Jones at home against the Rams more than I like the Steelers taking on Tennessee.
I haven’t compared my roster to the other teams in our league, but I’m thinking I’ll be right in the hunt at season’s end. And if all goes well, I’ll be winning my 3rd title in 4 years and living up to that Fantasy Football Legend sign that’s hanging on my office wall.
September 1, 2009 at 3:47 pm
Verizon is most certainly not amping up my Internet experience.
I’ve been having DSL problems for a couple months now; the connection just randomly drops. Sometimes in the morning, sometimes in the evenings … sometimes for a minute or two, sometimes for as many as 30 minutes. It’s beyond frustrating, and makes working from home extremely difficult.
Verizon sent a guy out in July, and all he managed to do was disconnect the phone line connected to our 2nd DirecTV receiver so it hasn’t been able to send a signal to the mothership since then.
They were supposed to have a guy out again at noon today, but Kelly in dispatch called at 10 am to let me know that they mistakenly scheduled him for four appointments at noon, and he’d be delayed. Then she called back at 3 pm to tell me he can’t make it at all today because they only have two techs in this area, and they scheduled 30 appointments for the two guys just today.
Now I get to sit around between 8 am and noon tomorrow waiting for the next twist in this cruel story.
Update, September 2: The next cruel twist was that Verizon never showed up today — not between 8 am and Noon, not after Noon, not at all. And they never called, either. KMA, Verizon.
Update, September 3: Internet connection was down at least 20 times today that I know of, and probably more since I didn’t spend every waking moment in my office. Sometimes it would go down for 5-10 seconds, others for 5-10 minutes. Extremely frustrating. OWT has been very helpful, and submitted another tech support job ticket to Verizon on my behalf. This is the 6th ticket so far this summer, and so far no answers from Verizon. OWT thinks Verizon might send someone out tomorrow to see what’s wrong.
Update, September 4: It probably goes without saying that Verizon never showed up today, nor did they call about yesterday’s support request. The Friday before Labor Day weekend? Yeah, good luck getting Verizon to care.
