This past weekend in Columbus was a blast as I had one of my friends from undergrad visiting, braving the cold coming up from Atlanta. Showing him around campus and the city was a great time. Columbus makes it easy for me to be a great host and show a guest an action packed weekend. … Continue reading "Weekend Adventures in Columbus"

One of the biggest questions many of my non-Ohioan classmates had when they were considering Fisher for their MBA was “What is there to do in Columbus?”  The answer to that question reveals that Columbus is a vibrant and thriving city with something for everyone.  But don’t take my word for it, why not come … Continue reading "Fisher Red Carpet Weekend: Tour de Columbus"

President Donald Trump maintained over the weekend that it’s safe for states to reopen during the pandemic and voiced support for anti-lockdown protesters that have rallied at statehouses in Ohio and Michigan. Former Vice President Joe Biden breaks weeks of silence and flatly denied the sexual assault allegation brought against him by former Senate aide Tara Reade, telling MSNBC “it never, never happened.”

According to Ken Murray, Sr. Landscape Architect, California Department of Transportation "TRB allows for expanding your influence and connections throughout the transportation world nationally. You're able to connect with fellow peers from different states and share experiences, discuss strategies for difficult situations, and solutions to issues that others may have already handled that you personally are dealing with. It expands your network that allows for more diverse information for other areas tha...

According to Ken Murray, Sr. Landscape Architect, California Department of Transportation "TRB allows for expanding your influence and connections throughout the transportation world nationally. You're able to connect with fellow peers from different states and share experiences, discuss strategies for difficult situations, and solutions to issues that others may have already handled that you personally are dealing with. It expands your network that allows for more diverse information for other areas tha...

Will Smith, Will Ferrell, Wanda Sykes, Stephen Colbert and Colin Quinn are among the latest additions.

COVID-19 has shone a very bright light on the importance of widely available, affordable broadband. Nearly 42 million Americans lack access to any broadband whatsoever--double FCC estimates. And millions more can't afford service thanks to a lack of competition among very powerful, government pampered telecom monopolies.

As usual, with political pressure mounting to "do something," DC's solution is going to be to throw more money at the problem:

"The plan unveiled Thursday would inject $80 billion over five years into expansion of broadband infrastructure into neglected rural, suburban and urban areas, with an emphasis on communities with high levels of poverty. It includes measures to promote rapid building of internet systems, such as low-interest financing for infrastructure projects."

To be clear, subsidies often do help shore up broadband availability at coverage. The problem is that the United States government, largely captured by telecom giants with a vested interest in protecting regional monopolies, utterly sucks at it.

Despite ample pretense to the contrary, nobody in the US government actually knows where broadband is currently available. Data supplied by ISPs has never been rigorously fact-checked by a government fearful of upsetting deep-pocketed campaign contributors (and valued NSA partners). As a result, our very expensive ($350 million at last count) FCC broadband coverage map creates a picture of availability and speed that's complete fantasy. It's theater designed to disguise the fact that US broadband is mediocre on every broadband metric that matters. Especially cost.

While there has been some effort to fix the mapping problem via recent legislation, the FCC still needs several years (and more money) to do so. And while you'd think this would be more obvious, you can't fix a problem you can't even effectively measure. There's also not much indication that the $80 billion, while potentially well intentioned, would actually get where it needs to go. Especially right now, when federal oversight is effectively nonexistent.

You may or may not have noticed this, but US telecom is a corrupt, monopolized mess. Giants like AT&T and Comcast all but own state and federal legislatures and, in many instances, literally write the law. Feckless regulators bend over backward to avoid upsetting deep-pocketed campaign contributors. So when subsidies are doled out, they very often don't end up where regulators and lawmakers intended. There's an endless ocean of examples where these giants took billions in taxpayer subsidies to deploy fiber networks that are never fully delivered.

If you were to do meaningful audit (which we've never done because again we're not willing to adequately track the problem or stand up to dominant incumbent corporations) you'd very likely find that American taxpayers already paid for fiber to every home several times over.

That's not to say is that there aren't things Congress could do to help the disconnected during COVID-19. Libraries for example have been begging the FCC for the ability to offer expanded WiFi hotspot access (via mobile school buses) to disconnected communities without running afoul of FCC ERate rules. But while the FCC said libraries can leave existing WiFi on without penalty, it has been mute about whether they can extend coverage outside of library property. Why? As a captured agency, the FCC doesn't like anything that could potentially result in Comcast or AT&T making less money.

None of this is to say that we shouldn't subsidize broadband deployment once we get a handle on the mapping problem. But it's a fantasy to think we're going to immediately fix a 30 year old problem with an additional $80 billion in a mad dash during a pandemic. US broadband dysfunction was built up over decades. It's the product of corruption and rot that COVID-19 is exposing at every level of the US government. The only way to fix it is to stand up to industry, initiate meaningful reform, adopt policies that drive competition to market, and jettison feckless lawmakers and regulators whose dominant motivation is in protecting AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, and Spectrum revenues.

Maybe the pandemic finally provides the incentive to actually do that, but until the US does, these subsidization efforts are largely theater.

This buffalo chicken wings recipe is truly delicious fried chicken coated with panko breadcrumbs, deep-fried to a golden brown, and tossed with homemade buffalo sauce easy and crowd-pleasing recipe!

craving more? check out TasteSpotting

Baked Monterey Chicken [recipe]

craving more? check out TasteSpotting

Problems aside, no one is sure how useful phone-based tracking will be

The NHSX, a technology group within the UK government's National Health Service, has released the source code for its Android and iOS COVID-19 coronavirus contact-tracing apps in an effort to allay privacy concerns and improve the code.…

-Album Details- Title: The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening Original Soundtrack Publisher: Nippon Columbia Catalog Number: COCX-41117~20 Release Date: March 18th, 2020 Ripped by: Razakin -Info- Soundtracks to the new Switch and the way better Game Boy versions of Link’s Awakening. Enjoy. Purchase Link(s) CDJapan

What's the Beat staff reading this weekend? Let's find out!

The post SHUT IN THEATER: Weekend Reading 7 appeared first on The Beat.

The war is over and Ginny returns to school, but it isn't easy to pretend like everything is the same as before.

[sequel to 'all your fumble words']

In the latest episode of their improvisatory, highly customizable podcast, Ken and Robin talk Armitage Files and Dracula Dossier for Fall of Delta Green, Chicago film fest, James Damato, and Cornelius Agrippa.

In the latest episode of their thoroughly vetted podcast, Ken and Robin talk converting standard GUMSHOE scenarios to QuickShock, a Ukraine mole, QuestWorlds with Ian Cooper, and moving Lovecraft to Chicago.

USA Badminton has been taken off probation by the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee, which tried to decertify the organization for noncompliance to protect athletes from sexual abuse.

Laundry. Built deer protection for my garden. Purchased materials for deer protection for my apple trees. Dishes. Mended one sweater and one pair of jeans. Reinforced neckline on another sweater in an attempt to have it fit better. Culled my wardrobe. Verified that garden deer protection withstands wind warning type winds.

Well, not that much to say about October. This is the busiest time of the year at work, and this year for some reason particularly so, and I don't get much time to do anything but that.

Two running-related things. The Shadyside (that's my neighborhood in Pittsburgh) 5k was earlier this month, and I finished with a time of 20m21s, which is pretty good for a 40 year-old (6m33s/mile). This continues the recent theme of coming close to PRs I set as a 30 year-old, with some dubious excuse (in this case, I "felt sick that morning") to explain the gap, and to motivate myself to keep trying to match/beat those old times and "just lose 15 pounds" etc.. We also traveled to Kentucky, my first time there, for the Ragnar "Bourbon Chase", which event is a relay race from Louisville to Lexington, which route passes through the sites of various bourbon whiskey distilleries. William calls it the "Kentucky Bourby," which IMO should be canonical. Ragnars sound like a lot when you say it's a 200 mile relay, but that's split over 12 people, and honestly the running is not really the hard part (it's all the sleep deprivation and van logistics). Two of my legs were kind of monotonous but one was very scenic, almost "Kentucky" pastiche, with the rolling hills and perfect fences and horses and grasses. It was also cool to visit these distilleries (and e.g. Four Roses was moderately open for us at 3am), but this kind of running and sleep deprivation doesn't really set the best mood for drinking whiskey and touring the grounds (e.g. in the dark), so maybe it is not the best way to visit Kentucky's whiskey scene. Still, was a good trip.

Games-wise, I finished RAGE 2 (IMO a fine game as far as dumb shooters go, I think underrated even) and a little bullet hell roguelike called "Monolith," which I liked. This weekend I unwisely installed Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (distinct from "Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare" and "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered"; cf. related joke) and have been saving America over and over. It's exactly what you'd expect.

I've found some time to spend on my ongoing engineering project, and made some impossible-to-undo steps (e.g. cuts into irreplaceable pieces), which is an unarguable sign of progress. This weekend I finally did one of those integration steps where I first tested a bunch of things together, and unnervingly it worked on the first try. I still have one mechanical part that I think has a pretty good chance of not working due to my naivety, in which case I will have to get creative, which is part of the fun!

Happy halloween! see you soon!

I had a small dip in productivity this week. I think I mentioned that at the end of last summer I had shingles. It was a super mild case, but I wound up with something called “post-herpetic neuralgia” which is basically nerve pain. It’s super well-controlled with gabapentin, which also has some positive effects on […]