The subject of my coffee on 2011-12-31 was a note from my sweetheart lamenting the lack of New Year's Eve kisses we would be sharing. Fortunately, she included a chili pepper with the note so that I could have a hot New Year. Challenge Accepted.

12AM January 1st

New Year's Eve was celebrated at my buddy Joe's place with his family and a bunch of close friends. As the moment approached, I read the note to everyone present; and at the proper time, the chili was chomped and eaten. I think it was a serrano and it set my mouth ablaze.

When eating chilis, make sure your friends are there to share the laughs.

6PM January 1st

16 hours into 2012, I went to the hospital due to a broken collar bone. Bummer. Wow, look at that swelling... and the terrible haircut that I gave myself.

Eventually the bone will heal, and my hair will grow out. In the mean time, there is code to hack and chilis to chomp.

Happy New Year

It started with a brief conversation with my buddy regarding my desire to de-clutter my abode. You see, some might say I'm a bit of a hoarder; to which I typically reply "I'm not a hoarder, I'm a pack-rat who happens to be a slob". Yea, that's how it started.

Anyway, I decided that it would be really good to do a few of the following things:

• get rid of some stuff
• clean up a bit
• make a place for stuff that doesn't have a place
• put stuff where it belongs

In this regard, I felt it would be a really good thing if my musical instruments could be put in a place that would keep them out of the way, but still make it really easy to pick up an instrument for playing.

One Man's Trash

Me: I really need to make a wall mount for my bagpipes
Buddy: you can use the drop bars I ran over with a lawn mower
Me: shit yea!
Buddy: reduce, reuse, recycle
(events may not have been exactly as described)

...and after today's coffee, armed with a few brackets and screws that were lying about, I soon had a nice wall mounted bagpipe holder. aaaaaalright!

Next up, a banjo holder.

Now quit reading, and go put stuff out of the way.

In my mail recently was a flyer from a local internet service provider. The first thing that caught my eye on the flyer was the asterisk next to the price. $39.95*, and I assumed that after 6 months, the price would go up. Then I actually read what the asterisk represented: *NOT an intro price!

Wait...what? seriously? Yea, go read that again.

Who is that honest when dealing with customers? Sonic.net, that's who.

In order to quell my disbelief, I called sonic.net customer service to ask a few questions. Mostly, I wanted to know if the service would require me to still pay AT&T a monthly bill. As soon as the service rep said "no", I was sold.

Previously, I was paying $35 a month for slow internet access with terrible support and I needed to pay another $20 for the required phone line through AT&T. Now that it is possible to not pay any money to AT&T for phone service, I switched over right away.

So?

Now, for about $15 less than I was paying before, I have internet access that is 10X faster, and I don't have to give any money to those law breaking AT&t bastards, and my money is staying in the local economy. Booyah!

If I need tech support, I pick up my phone and dial 611 and I talk to someone 20 miles away from me. Now that is what I call a local company. My only complaint is that I didn't switch sooner.

Note: I do not work for or represent sonic.net in any way. Simply put, I am a very satisfied customer. If you live in the North Bay, you owe it to yourself and your community to switch to a Sonic.net, and if you live elsewhere, you should switch to a local provider.