How bad is this Web host, the host I have eight sites on? Trouble started on October 16th, when my Web sites and e-mail were down for the entire afternoon. Starting 10/21, service has been absolutely abysmal. E-mail down for days at a time. Web sites went down then, and are still down. E-mail up and down, but mostly down, every day since the 21st.

Do yourself a favor: always search for comments about any product or service you are considering buying before you put your money down. If you do that, you’ll see HostDepartment.com has an enormous number of negative comments. Add this one to the list.

You want broken technology? HostDepartment.com is the most broken technology since cassette drives as data storage devices on personal computers.

Just when you thought the summer heat had already revved up all the crazies, here comes Keith Griffin, who blames his cat for child porn found on his computer. Thank goodness Griffin and his porn-mongering cat live in Florida and not Texas. We have enough colorful characters who made strange news headlines.

How smart is this cat, name not released pending notification of relatives, that he can download child porn? And if he’s into porn, why child porn and not cat porn? Do cats secretly find children sexy? Guess we won’t know until the police break the cat, and sweat him out until he talks.

Griffin claims his cat walks on the keyboard, and several times has downloaded bizarre things. Yes, that could happen, and maybe you could get one or two porn images downloaded. But this cat walked so much, according to Griffin, he downloaded over 1,000 child porn images. That cat should be tired after stomping on the keyboard all that time.

Surprisingly, the police didn’t believe this story and arrested Griffin rather than the cat.

I use Time Warner Cable for my cable Internet access because I have no better high speed option. For testing purposes, I also have basic DSL broadband from AT&T, which is all I can get because I’m too far from their powered connection points. Thus I get pitches from both companies to add new services at least once a week.

Cable companies love to sell Voice Over Internet Protocol phone service, but they have always priced it far too high. While Vonage advertises $25 per month, cable companies jack it up to $40 per month even though they own the connections to each home. Why? Greed, I guess, but I haven’t been able to get a straight answer from a cable executive.

Recently, a flyer came from Time Warner Cable offering residential VoIP service for $20 per month, for 12 months. At first I was thrilled about the price reduction, figuring it would be tough on Vonage but good for consumers. But the fine print said the price was only good on a service plan that offered unlimited calling only in Texas.

This is a disgusting trend, and Time Warner Cable executives should be ashamed of themselves. The Internet eliminates distance for domestic calls, and to charge long distance rates outside an artificial barrier like a state line makes no technical sense whatsoever. This is the type of stupid phone pricing I expect from AT&T as they struggle to keep their landline business profitable. To see a cable company use this type of pricing only shows their contempt for customers and a perversion of the values of using the Internet for telephone calls.

Time Warner Cable officially sucks.

Let me explain this as politely as I can: I do not “create content.” I take knowledge and wisdom from one source and translate, explain, clarify, and humanize that information for better understanding by readers.

In most cases, I gather technology information from vendors, users, or my own research. I present that material for readers so they can gain the benefits of technology without making the same mistakes earlier users made.

It saddens me to see so many writers accept the label of “content creator” without realizing they have been marginalized and their work commoditized. Calling translated knowledge “content” puts it on a shelf like toilet paper.

I am NOT a “content creator” who fills Web pages with keyword-laden drivel. I do not “create content” by typing two sentences of keywords then quoting press releases or other news stories or blogs. I refuse to cut and scrape and plagerize other people’s words to stuff useless text onto a Web site that offers no value but only the hope your eyeballs will be tempted by a tangential and annoying text ad.

If you are a professional writer as I am, stand up straight and refuse to answer to the term “content creator.” If you read to learn, be entertained, be distracted, be surprised, or be transported to another world, join with me in denounced those who “create content” and try to tell us it’s writing.

If you’re looking for a “content creator,” go to hell.

What a surprise to see this blog listed in the blogroll for Screaming Weasel, a “partly cloudy Pittsburgh rant n stuff.” Check out the news from the Northeast with a funny and political viewpoint.

Thank you, Google Alerts. And, of course, Screaming Weasel.

I’m attracted to weasel names, and have the domain SlackerWeasel.com. My daughter was playing with it, but lost interest immediately. What should I do with SlackerWeasel?

Today the time changed. Powers That Be moved the dates that have been used for decades to make the time changes a couple of years ago, making the switch to and from Daylight Savings Time dicier than usual.

To my surprise, or maybe not, Microsoft Vista SP1 on a five month old HP computer did NOT handle the time change. Even when I went into the time settings and forced the computer to use Network Time Protocol to check the official Windows server at time.windows.com, it still didn’t make the hour jump for the right time. I had to set my brand new Vista computer manually to display the new time.

To my surprise, or maybe not, a six year old PC running a Linux distribution from Ubuntu (8.04) caught and made the time change automatically. Old PC with a BIOS made before the time change switch gets it right, brand new PC with Vista can’t.

Just another in the seemingly never ending “Vista sucks” story file.

You have to admire someone with balls, especially when they’ll show them to you for $2.99 per minute. Larry Flynt, taking over the mantle of Old Porn Guy Spokesman from Hugh Hefner, made plenty of headlines recently when he said the government should bail out the porn business. I say yes.

Why? Because unlike the hedge funds, mortgage securities repackagers, and Ponzi schemers on Wall Street, the porn business provides something tangible to their customers. Granted, porn on the Web isn’t as tangible as many would like, but just wait until we get 3D with TouchMe technology and virtual reality gloves and, um, other things.

America will not rise up out of this recession by making it safer for more Wall Street MBAs to trade paper filled with financial promises understood and regulated by no one. America will come out of this recession when people make and sell real products and entertainment products customers can get their hands on and will purchase.

The technology industry should be particularly enthused by a porn business bailout. After all, would VCR players have made it in the marketplace if we just had Disney tapes to play? Would VCR cameras have made it if they were just used to get bad videos of kids soccer games? Would digital cameras have the success they have if they didn’t allow people to take and share, um, personal images without the interim step of turning over private film to some pimply faced kid at the drugstore film processing station? Where would DVDs be if not for porn? And the new HD consumer camcorders?

We haven’t even talked about streaming video. Do you really believe engineers work hard to improve streaming video for more corporate sales meetings?

Yes, we should bail out the porn business. Certainly those of us in the technology biz should rally on their behalf, because we know how much they’ve helped us in the past. Perhaps it’s time for the tech people to more openly jump into bed with the porn people. Sure beats video games.

This blog entry limited to those over 18 unless accompanied by a parent.

This so belongs in the “Broken Process” category, even if it’s not directly technology. The entire mess, as Illinois authorities were too slow to push Governor “Gimme Mine” Blagojevitch out of office before he appointed Roland Burris to fill the rest of Obama’s Senate term, just gets funnier and funnier.

Everyone’s upset about what to do next and how to fix this mess. Guess what – it’s fixed. The Senate has to let Burris in, because the laws in Illinois say the governor gets to appoint the Senate replacement when it becomes necessary. Senators serve the states, not the federal government, so none of the DC DoGooders should have a say in the matter.

Here’s my advice to those Illinois residents all upset about this mess: quit electing rotten crooked bastards as your governor. The last gov is in jail, and this one will be. And if you can’t stop yourself from electing thieving weasels to office, make sure law enforcement has the tools and budgets to put them in jail before they screw up big things like Senate appointments.

The discussions about the fact that Burris has far more credentials to be a Senator than Sarah Palin does to be Vice President are left for another time.

This is starting to look like one of the soap operas where a guy marries one girl but keeps dating his old girlfriend. Microsoft said Vista is their new true love, but they just can’t give up XP yet.

Let me rephrase that. Microsoft is happy to dump XP and force us all into the clutches of Vista, but we darn pesky users keep throwing fits. When big big companies that send Microsoft truckloads of money each month yell loudly enough, even Steve Ballmer has to listen. So Microsoft once again allowed XP to remain a viable option. In effect, Mother Microsoft is saying the older child really is better than the youngster.

InformationWeek may have the best headline with “Windows XP Extension Reflect Vista’s Woes.” Yes, but for most of us, the woe is us when we install Vista.

Speaking of broken technology, I bought a new computer with Vista. Between HP and Microsoft, I’m not always sure who to blame for the pain and aggravation I’ve been going through getting the stupid thing up and running. Read all about it in my Smart Tech for Small Biz blog for ITworld. The last post in the series (Vista Out of Box Experience Part 4: Summary) may be a good place to start. If you then want more painful details, read the earlier posts.

Any questions why Microsoft is pushing Windows 7 down our throats? Or at leat the Windows 7 hype? The more they fill the news sites with Windows 7 vaporware, the less focus on Vista. And believe me, less Vista is a good thing.

According to the Reuters story “MP3 Player Headphones May Hinder Pacemakers” your iPod won’t kill you, but the headphones might. Why? The strong magnets in the headphones can, when held on your chest near your pacemaker or implantable defibrillator, interfere with your life-saving heart machine.

The story isn’t clear about the differences between headphones and earplugs. While the title says “headphones” the accompanying photo shows the ubiquitous white iPod earbuds. Scientists tested clip-on and earbud types of headphones, says the story, so I’m guessing the writer isn’t being careful enough, or didn’t have the space, to distinguish between the results for headphones versus earbuds.

I’m waiting to hear how Apple will spin this. My guess is that they’ll announce anyone with a pacemakers or implantable defibrillator should keep their earbuds in their ears, listening to their iPod, at all times. When you take your earbuds out and lay them down on your chest, that’s when you can be in trouble. As long as the music in your ears keeps beating, your heart will keep beating.