Month: September 2009

BendBroadband Launches Stupidly Fast Internet, Odd Logo, Still Caps Bandwidth

You can read the full press release here, but long story short, BBB is taking advantage of DOCSIS 3.0 to push up to 60mbs download. I would assume you will need a new modem for both the 25mbs and 60mbs products. I would guess that most BendBroadband clients probably have a DOCSIS 2.0 modem that looks something like this, and DOCSIS 2.0 isn’t built for this kind of speed.

While the higher speeds are great (though expensive for me, but competitive for similar services), it just means you’ll hit the BBB Bandwidth Cap faster. They did raise the cap to 150 GB on the highest end 60mbs, up from 100GB on their lower-end plans).

And while 60mbs is fast and all, many servers aren’t serving data that fast. This site is on a true 100mbs ethernet connection, but many aren’t (this site was on a 10mbs connection before), so while the 60mbs speed is a bit more than 400% faster than the plan I’m on, the likelihood of seeing 400% faster download speeds is pretty slim (unless you’re torrenting, which will pull data from a variety of locations, and then you might saturate it).

This comes the same day as their new logo design and branding. I don’t know if I’m a huge fan of “the dog”. I just can’t imagine rebranding all your vehicles and building signage — that can’t be cheap.

Discuss/comment below, with more comments over at DSLReports, mostly from out-of-towners.

Note: I know this happened all a couple days ago, according to the press release dates, but I’ve been out of town. Also note: I like the folks at BendBroadband as well as the folks at other local high-end ISPs like BendTel and Quantum. BBB’s service has served me well for years. They even advertised on this site for years (anybody want that spot?). They’re good folks, I just wonder about the decisions being made there sometimes.

September 23, 2009

Time Killer For The Night

Max likes to destroy things. Help him achieve Maximum Damage.

September 22, 2009

When You Mess With A Bull…

…the bull will always win. Always. Otherwise you’ll end up showing your personal parts for the whole world to see.

September 22, 2009

Looking Back, The Legend Of Zelda Seemed Like a Bad Acid Trip

I mentioned before that I’ve a bit of an old-school Zelda geek who worked my butt off to finish both quests of the original Zelda. I haven’t touched the game since I was a kid, but it’s fun to look back and remember how hilariously odd some of the items, bosses, characters, and enemies were.

September 22, 2009

What if Video Games Were Realistic?

Reality and video games don’t always mix. As an old Zelda fan, number 18 is probably my favorite.

September 21, 2009

Disappearing

I’m heading out of town on a last-minute mini-trip to the coast, visiting some family over there who I rarely see and may not have many more chances to see. Will be mostly offline until Sunday. Everybody play nice.

September 17, 2009

Remember “Rudy”?

We all loved the movie, based on the story of Daniel Ruettiger. If you’re a high school football fan, and know somebody who is Rudy-esque, nominate him (or her) for the Rudy Awards. Quoting the site:

The High School Football Rudy Awards honor high school football players who demonstrate the exemplary values of inspirational football legend Daniel ‘Rudy’ Ruettiger, the subject of the beloved and inspirational film RUDY. The award will not be won by the most talented players with the best stats, but rather the Rudy Awards measure the size of a player’s heart. We are searching for high school football players who demonstrate what Rudy calls “The Four C’s”: Character, Courage, Contribution and Commitment.

There a decent chunk of college scholarship change available for the winners as well as for the runners-up. Based on the contact info on the site, there are some locals behind it, which is why it’s being mentioned here (Jon can’t have all the fun stuff).

September 17, 2009

Time Killer For The Evening

Time Fcuk is a great low-res platformer that not only has a ton of great levels of its own, but has a ton of great user-created levels.

September 17, 2009

Anybody Know How To Find A Property Manager For A Specific Home in Bend?

Or, does anybody in the City of Bend PD who’s reading this have nothing to do tonight?

I know the Sunriver police department maintains a list of which homes are managed by which company in Sunriver (a list that property management companies in Sunriver also have copies of). Anybody have any idea if the City of Bend and/or property managers in Bend have such a list? I won’t get into why, but let’s just say that I think a property management company would want to know what kind of folks they’re renting to in a neighboring house that does nothing by keep us up nearly every night (and while I’ve called the non-emergency police line a couple times, it hasn’t done any good). As we speak, they’re in their backyard (about five or six of them with several more inside) about 20 feet from where I’m sitting in my living room having a drunken discussion about something that involves throwing around the F-Bomb as much as humanly possible. And I’d like to go to bed at some point here in the near future.

These guys have parties like this at least 3 or 4 times a week and have all summer. Then during the day, they’ve got a crappy garage band that pounds away on the drums and guitars in their garage. Their drummer can’t play, either, and I know a thing or two about music and I know bad music when I hear it. The guy can’t even keep any sort of resemblance of tempo, and that’s the drummer’s most important job.

I never thought I’d say this, but I pray for the cold weather to come so the idiots will go inside.

September 15, 2009

Videos Games Aren’t Like The Real Thing

This is pure comedy gold. A few gamers at the Dirt 2 launch party went from driving fast off-road rally cars in a video game to riding in the real thing. I think some of these guys messed their pants.

(more…)

September 15, 2009