Albert Banks

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Release Date: 02/21/2006
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Sound Mirrors is the first full length album from Coldcut in nearly 8 years. I’m normally not a fan of Electronica, but the hip hop beats and intriguing mixes are engaging. The LP features the vocal talents of Jon Spencer, Roots Manuva, Mike Ladd and many others.

Favorite Tracks
Man In a Garage
True Skool
Mr Nichols

Don’t you think it is rediculous that several interstates still have a 55 MPH speed limit? No one really obeys that limit. It was put into effect 25 years ago and is outdated. Even most cops won’t pull you over in those zones – particularly in large cities. So, in an act of ‘civil obedience’ students from Georgia State University and other local colleges paced the entire midmorning flow of Atlanta Perimeter (I-285) traffic behind them at 55 mph for half an hour. Check out the video.

Video Courtesy of Google Video

As I turn on DBN tonight, I see the familiar sight of Duke basketball. Tonight they are taking on Georgia Tech, a middle of the ACC dweler. Probably not a great game, but it is the Duke Basketball Network. Oh, you haven’t heard of DBN? Maybe your cable provider doesn’t have it. You should call them and ask about adding it to their lineup. Or maybe you are mistaking DBN for ESPN. You know… the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network.

It seems ESPN dicided to screw Entertainment and other Sports in general in favor of Duke basketball. They are on every night. Check this stat: 20 Duke men’s basketball games are on ESPN or The Duke – Oops, I mean The Duce. Duke only plays 30 regular season games. So that’s two thirds of their games. I’d say that makes them DBN. And this isn’t by accident. These games are scheduled well before the season even starts. CBS tried their best to become WDBN (Weekend Duke Basketball Network) by picking up 4 games on the weekend.

As a Florida basketball fan I have to suffer through FSN Flordia and Sun Sports. And half the games are tape delayed. Who still does that? Don’t even get me started on Craperson Pilot Sports!

So, enjoy the rest of the season on DBN. Oh, and if you are wondering what network is carrying the ACC tournament. You guessed it, Duke Basketball Network!

First, some background… My company and many of our clients host websites with a company called Mediatemple (MT) in Los Angeles. My ISP is Cox Communications.

Tuesday Night: Bad things started happening. I coudn’t connect to our company mail server. I couldn’t load our company website. So, I tried to login the admin side of our server. Can’t do that either. Figured I’d give it some time.

Wednesday Morning: Still no dice. Client who hosts with MT and lives in the Florida panhandle says he can’t check email or load his website (his ISP is Cox also). Okay… so I tried going to Mediatemple’s site to put in a support request. Guess what? Can’t load their page either. I know what you’re thinking, my internet connection is down. Nope! I can reach other websites, check email from other servers, etc.

Wednesday Night: Having worked in tech support I went through the normal checks and fixes. Restart computer, clear cache, check other browsers, try without firewall, restart router, restart cable modem… All to no avail.

Luckily I had Mediatemple’s number and called tech suppport. I explained the situation in detail. After holding for a minute the support guys asks, “Is your ISP Cox?” Well of course it is… “Ya, they seem to be blocking all our IPs.” Supper! So I call Cox Support. I spend 50 minutes on the phone with this absolute moron lady who has me do all the checks I did before. I explain what Mediatemple told me and she says Cox would never block anything! Yeah, right! Four times she tells me she can not help any more and I should call my PC maker or Microsoft or Norton or Santa Clause or the Easter Bunny ’cause maybe they can help more than her. She doesn’t understand we had the same problem on a Mac and at different locations. The problem is not my computer and not the server, damnit!

Finally, I get to second level support and he has me ping the domains and IPs that I can not reach. Obviously, I can’t ping them. He eventually gives me a ticket number and I go to a higher level support. Once I reach them and explain the situation in detail, the tech says, “Did they not tell you we are having DNS problems?” No, they didn’t. But that would really make sense. He kindly adds the domains to the list of problems.

Thursday Morning: All is well. So, what have we learned. First and second level support are not only untrained monkeys, they are not informed of these outages. And I never got an answer as to how all IPs hosted by Mediatemple got blocked/lost/messed up. Sounds fishy. I later learned other sites including MySpace had the same problem. What a bunch of COX!

The answer to this question may seem simple, yet it has been a topic of discussion at several points in my life. Most of you would say tomorrow begins after midnight. That would be a good answer. But what if you were awake at midnight? Does that mean it is tomorrow for you? It sure doesn’t feel like tomorrow after one tick of the clock. So over the years I’ve come up with two conditions that can make it tomorrow:

1. You have gone to bed for over an hour and wake up after midnight.
2. The sun is up.

If you meet at least one condition, it is tomorrow for you. I mean if you stay up until the sun is up, it is definitely tomorrow, no doubt about it. And if you’ve gone to sleep and wake up after midnight, hello new day! The logic is completely flawless.

Less than a week after the release of version 1.0, I have an upgraded version of the Netflix plugin for WordPress.

New features:
Added tab to Plugins menu to set variables throught the wp-admin console.
Added before/after option to add html before and after display.