on "High Speed"

(screen shot of hotel connection speed)

It has become painfully clear that the meaning of "high speed" with respect to internet connection is being co-opted by hotel franchises as a marketing tool and as a result is fast being cleansed of any valuable meaning. Case in point, I'm in Kansas this weekend for business, but it turns out that Kansas State and U. Kansas both have home football games this weekend and they're both less than an hour's drive of where I am, so the hotels around the area have all been booked solid. Hence, I was forced to take a room at a modest priced hotel (with a poor reputation) but at least they had "high speed internet" so I could get work done, right? This is a business trip, remember.

Not so fast (literally): I'll spare you the rant about the many other issues with this hotel and point you to the screen shot above which shows the speed of my connection (when it actually worked, that is). How does 305kbs download speed count as "high speed"? I hereby call upon the ISO to determine a minimum speed that shall henceforth be the standard for determining whether a connection is "high speed" or not...pretty please?

It will surely embiggen the hearts of my more gentle readers to know that I convinced my company to waive their per diem and find me more suitable lodgings for the remainder of the trip.

NOTE: This is another good example of the commercialization of Google's search engine. Any query with "high speed internet" in it will be riddled with advertisements for service, not discussions about. Yet another reason Google is not a good linguistics research tool. See more discussion here.

Fuck The Bills!!!

A rare (but much deserved) non-linguistics rant:

The Bills suck ass. Deal with it. How can that moron run it back? What's he thinking? Why? What value is there to a run back? This reminds me of the game against Dallas when they led by 8 and all they had to do was position for a field goal and they would have had the greatest upset in NFL history. But no, those fucking morons throw and it and it gets intercepted and they lose the fucking game.

Fuck the Bills. Fuck 'em.

Don't watch their games. Don't buy their merchandise. Let them move to Toronto. They don't deserve fans. Fuck the Bills. Fuck 'em.

The Buffalo Bills are like the worst relationship anyone has ever been in. The one you're totally, blindly in love with but who just keeps fucking you over and you let them because you're so fucking deep you're willing to be shit on just to be in the same room with them and you'll never be the one to cut the chord. Until the day they just stop being interested in toying with you and they just go away, and it's the best thing in the world for you, but you don't get that right away, you’re crushed until years later you get it. They sucked. They sucked ass and they should die, but they’re gone now and that’s good. Fuck ‘em. Fuck the Bills. Go to Toronto and stop fucking us over. We’ll fall in love with the Steelers soon anyway, because they actually win shit! That’s right, I said it. Fuck the Bills because they lose a lot and the Steelers actually win.