This old house

Last year our heating bill averaged $320 per month during winter.

We installed a new furnace this summer -- prices on furnaces are amazingly good during the off season. It's one of those new-fangled high efficiency dual mode modals. It replaced a dinosaur three times it's size in the basement - a brand our installer did not recognize.

This winter has been every bit as cold outside as last, but the house feels warm (it didn't last year) and our average bill for this winter -- so far -- has been hovering around $110 per month.

This makes me a happy camper. At this rate the new furnace will pay for itself in five years.

Welcome to our Imperial Big Brother (Your ISP)

First it will be to catch copyright pirates. Then it will be to identify your marketing tastes -- think adware on the pipe, instead of your client, with no way to clean it out! And finally they will use it to mistakenly identify you as an enemy of the state because you clicked an middle-eastern pr0n banner.

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/08/att-and-other-isps-may-be-getting-ready-to-filter/


More coverage on the issue:
http://news.google.com/news?tab=wn&ned=us&hl=en&ned=us&q=Network-level+filtering+&btnG=Search+News

Happy New Year

My favorite link that I want to share with you for the new year:

MIT OpenCourseWare . . .