Rat thoughts

Any other Yelp users out there I can add as friends?

I've been using the Yelp app on my Evo a lot lately.  I'm on a quest to add photos to everything that hasn't been photographed yet.  :)

http://captpackrat.yelp.com

My roommate has started working from home, which meant a tremendous increase in cellphone calls.  He nearly exceeded our 700 minute limit last month, so I started looking at new plans.  I came to discover that I could change plans and get 1500 minutes for $25 less each month, so I jumped at it.  Unfortunately, what they didn't tell me was that $15 of that was because the new plan didn't support my tethering plan, and there was no way to get it back.

Our primary ISP is often flaky, and with my roommate needing more bandwidth while working at home, I needed to find a new cellular broadband provider.  Cricket is cheap, but they don't offer service in this area, nor does AT&T or T-Mobile.  Sprint and Verizon have service here, but both have a 5 Gig bandwidth cap.  Only Alltel offers service here and unlimited bandwidth.  Alltel is in the process of being swallowed by Verizon, but you can still get a 2 year Alltel contract, so I signed up.  I'll have unlimited cellular data for 2 years, for about $55 more per month than I was paying for my old tethering plan.  Feh.

So far it's been pretty decent.  Ping rates are atrocious, around 100-200 ms, but the bandwidth is extremely good, about 1.5 Mbit down and 350 Kbit up.  The bandwidth is about on par with our primary ISP, though the ping rates are higher. 

http://hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com/

Be sure to check it often to see if the world has been destroyed yet.

For $15 a month, Sprint offers unlimited Internet access on a Sprint phone/PDA.  For another $25 a month, you can tether the phone/PDA to a computer and use it as a broadband modem, with unlimited data.  Without an appropriate data plan, Sprint normally charges 3 cents per kilobyte.

I figure that if I didn't have the unlimited tethering plan, my next phone bill would be in excess of $100,000!

After much deliberation, and seeing just how fast my brokerage accounts were outpacing my money markets, I moved most of my inheritance money into the brokerage account.  I've now got about 10% in cash instead of the 50% I had before.  It's riskier, but I made as much in 6 weeks in stocks and mutual funds than my money market would make in a whole year!

I sold off most of my porn stocks on Thursday, except for Penthouse International (PTHL.PK), which I was still in the negative.  Unfortunately, my 45 day free trading period expired Friday.  I thought I was going to be stuck with the stock, but luckily, it shot up to $0.0065 a share Monday, so I was able to unload all 16,000 shares, pay the commission and still make a (small) profit!  Whoot!

While driving into Omaha on Saturday, Animale's car started overheating really bad.  We pulled off the road and checked under the hood.  Coolant had started spraying from under the radiator cap and I could see steam coming from a couple spots on the front.  Fortunately we were only a mile or so from a Chevy dealer, so we were able to limp in.  We had to stop twice more on the way because the engine kept heating up so quickly.  Apparently the radiator was both clogged and leaking.  That's another $500 expense we weren't ready for.  I had been worried about living out in the boonies and the fact that taxi service would probably be insanely expensive, but I learned there was a local cab company and it only cost about $30 (with tip) to go 15 miles.  I paid $25 to go 3 miles in San Diego!

We saw Spiderman 3 on Saturday.  Ho-hum.  I think Stan Lee's mind is no longer in mint condition.

Huge storms on Saturday, but for some strange reason, they all passed right to the east and west of us.  There were tornadoes reported in Glenwood, IA, a few miles away on the other side of the Missouri.  There were also a lot of flooded rivers, including the Platte.  Here, we got a lot of rain, and one VERY close lightning strike (when the flash and the sound occur at the same time, it's hit less than 100 yards away), but no apparent damage.

Our ISP wasn't so lucky.  Lightning hit the tower housing their wireless transmitter, knocking them offline for a good while.  Service wasn't restored fully until this afternoon.

I've been running a fever since at least Thursday.  It got up to 100.8ºF (38.2ºC) Sunday night.  I'm not sure what the problem is, I don't really feel ill, other than a headache and a bit of fatigue.  I was coughing a bit last night, but I haven't today.  I've increased my intake of Vitamin C and garlic and started taking myrrh (nasty tasting stuff!), hoping to beat down whatever infection I might have.  I still need to rebuild my herbal medicine chest, just for these kind of situations.