Adi Rabinovich

I am excited, awestruck, humbled and overall happy and serene, all at once! What brought on these emotions is my first interaction with newest version of Google’s amazing Picasa product. But of course, it’s years of photos in my collection that bring on these wonderful memories, and combined with amazing new technology to present and organize them, is where Picasa really shines.

Word gets around on Internet quickly, but apparently not quickly enough for me. I do recall noticing somewhere a word about small security breach in WordPress 2.8.2 few days ago, but it wasn’t clear to me that all earlier WordPress versions were affected, so I did not rush and act right away.

Yes, there, I am out in the open now, ready to admit it. For the longest time I’ve been watching Netbooks, saying to myself – it’s really a useless toy, why spend money even?

I am posting this courtesy of my good neighbor, who willfully provided a password to his wireless network to save us from going completely crazy and self-destructing as a family. You see, we are over a week now without Internet!!!! It feels that almost every aspect of our family life is crippled, and thus far Comcast seem to have done little to resolve our issue. After their tech didn’t show up for an appointment (which we already waited almost a week for), they said that all they can do is schedule us for Next Saturday….. All our pleas on the phone and even via twitter, didn’t help the situation thus far. Worse yet, it is pretty clear that outage is outside our home, and most likely affecting other houses. But onto the main topic — Is Internet a Luxury or basic utility of our times? From school assignments even for our youngest new K student, everyone expects use of Internet on daily basis. Without going too much into longest list, it feels like every other moment we are reminded that something cannot be accomplished because there is NO INTERNET! I ask myself — Is Internet really a Luxury and our family is just spoiled here and too centered around it? Or are we the new norm, where most activities, whether for school/study/work/shopping or after-hours gaming and video viewing, require fast Internet connection? If Internet indeed such an integral part of life and such a basic utility, should any self-respecting provider allow themselves outages for weeks at a time? Would you agree to live without Water for a week? Or Electricity? Of course I would understand if there were a major storm and some serious damage that took time to repair, but this feels like simple incompetence where overloaded lines caused entire neighborhoods to loose signal, and no-one cares… There, rant done! Weigh in on how you see things and whether I should seek immediate “Internet Rehab” for entire family or instead consider switching to new provider (which may be available all over town!).

I am back from vacation, and it was very rejuvenating. To totally relax this time I spent few free minutes between activities on some casual gaming, mostly on Facebook and Steam. I have been a long fan of Steam, but the improvements in Facebook games were a surprise for me. I love how Steam lets you purchase digitally and then just install and play on your different computers, as much as needed, with no discs to store or find.