Good grief! I drink, smoke, inhale that stuff Bill Clinton denied
taking.

Don't you have any vices at all?

Hello, Bill:

Don't drink or smoke. I do enjoy coffee, about once a week...and even
then, nothing fancy.

Colombian, all the way, baby! :-J

Cordially,
          John Turco <jtur@concentric.net>

The email thing is easily fixed, with a one-time change: get your own
domain, and for as little as $60/year or less, have the domain hosted.
You'll have your own email you can keep forever, no matter who your
ISP is.
As for ther $60/year, most spend that much on their coffee (err, laté)
and/or drinks each month. Not to mention those who smoke.

<edited, for brevity>

Hello, Ron:

Oh, I've seen those types of offers, from Cox cable, here. I simply
don't like the idea they'll raise their subscription rates, after so
many months of service.

Obviously, Concentric won't do that, because dial-up's only present
advantage over broadband, is its significantly lower cost. Plus, I'm
reluctant to change my e-mail address, which I'd be forced to do, if I
switched ISP's.

Hence, Concentric may be excruciatingly slow, but it's cheap and
reliable, which isn't a bad combination, at that. <g>

Cordially,
          John Turco <jtur@concentric.net>

There are some options that come close.  The local cable provider
(Charter) offers a $29.95 (regular price) connection that is
384kbpz/128kbps.  It also offers this package for $19.95 for the first
three months.  As always, cable is month-to-month, so if you don't like
(or can afford) it, you can cancel.  WARNING once you use broadband
internet, you will probably never want to use dialup again!
With the always on connection, the internet becomes a quick, immediate,
way to get information.  I can watch 'Who Wants to be a Millionaire',
and get answers from Google before the contestant comes up with an
answer.  Try that on dialup.

<edited, for brevity>

Hello, Ron:

I'm "ready," certainly; "willing," there's no doubt; it's the "able"
part, that's still hanging me up. :-P

Honestly, if broadband ever approaches the price of dial-up, I'll
probably give it a go.

Cordially,  
          John Turco <jtur@concentric.net>

Aren't you about ready to move up to broadband?  It lends a whole new
meaning to 'connected'.  If you can, give it a try.

<edited, foe brevity>

<edited>

Hello, Ken:

I first "connected," in January of 1996, using the "Prodigy" free-trial
software that had come installed on my original PC (a Pionex 486DX2
66MHz). The computer's generic modem was only 2400kbps, but I replaced
it with a Cardinal MVP144 (14.4kbps), within a couple of months; it was
one of several such upgrades, intended to improve my online speed.

Soon, I would discover various BBSes (bulletin board systems) and
inadvertently rack up some hefty long-distance phone charges. In
February of '96, I stumbled upon my current ISP (Concentric). Since
then, I've received unlimited Internet access for $19.95 USD a month,
and have been extremely satisfied with its dial-up service, overall.

Cardinal and Pionex both folded (in '99 and '00, respectively), alas.

Cordially,
          John Turco <jtur@concentric.net>

<snippage of much irrelvant stuff, something many posters need to learn>

Yeah, I saw that.  I was hoping a single nudge might teach him to look
at the dates of stuff before just hitting "Reply".   Sometimes it's not
the browser, though - some weird things can happen to newsspools on the
server, it dishing up old articles that have long expired as if they
were new if another server offers it to it after it's expired locally.
I've seen it happen on my own news servers back when I was admining
one.

Heh.  I always look at the date (original, and any quotes), the
newsgroups (to see if they need trimming, too), and I also usually try
to read several replies into the thread to see if the answer I'm about
to give has already been given, so as to not repeat the same thing that
three or four others have already written.

Guess some of that comes from habit of being online back when a 300
baud Hayes Smartcom modem over a dialup phone line [with LD charges
racking up by the full minute] were standard.  I found this cute site
that I could relate to a while back:
http://dir.salon.com/story/tech/feature/2002/05/31/back_in_the_day/index.
html

Hello, Ken:

That's not the only ancient article that "nascar20fan@nascar.com"
has dug up, lately, either. His news browser needs to "catch up,"
it seems. <g>

Cordially,
          John Turco <jtur@concentric.net>

    ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Uhm, any particular reason why you are replying to a 11-month old post?

While I agree this ounds like a SPAM post, there are many major
colleges hat give credirs for military experience. I went through a
major university, and after 17 years in the military (I did do the
other 3 and retire) I only had to do 9 courses for my associates. They
give credits for the schools done in the military, which are a lot
harder then regular courses are in college, due to the technical level
they get into. But then there are also schools that get no credits,
due to the classification level.

Should we care because you are an idiot? If you hired him without checking
his resume you deserve whatever you get. Aholes like you are the reason why
4 out of 5 businesses go under quite rapidly and you are so stupid you'll
never figure out why.

Hey guys, I posted this on another board and the verdict I got was to
fire him. Since I've been lurking here for a while I thought I'd post
it here for some more advice.

A couple years ago I hired a guy named Thomas as a senior tech for a
small data center I run in California. He always seemed like a pretty
competent worker. Thomas had great personal skills, came into work
on-time, and pretty much completed projects better than any of the
other techs in our facility. He seemed like a pretty intelligent guy,
actually. On occasion I've even had dinner with his wife and young
daughter who's going through chemo. I generally consider Thomas a
friend.

The other day I invited him to my house to hang out and have a few
drinks. At one point in the evening we were shooting the sh.t and
talking about the worst things we've ever done in our lives. I
regaled him with a tale about how I stole expensive clothes from
department stores as a teenager and he told me about how he once sent
explicit pictures of his cheating ex-girlfriend sodomizing a toothbrush
to her parents. I laughed and passed him another drink.

I guess he was getting a little too tipsy because a little later he
related a story about how he got his college degree in philosophy. We
don't require college degrees, but we generally hire and give greater
pay to candidates with the degree over the candidate without one.
Thomas said that he bought it off the internet for $450 from some
website called "The Transnational Council" for something something. He
wrote the domain http://www.tcge.org on a napkin and said that he had
listed the degree he got through them on the resume he sent my
secretary two years ago. I've heard this website discussed on some
other message boards before. Apparently they represent universities who
grant degrees based on previous college credits, work history, and
military/life experience. Now I don't know what to do. Company policy
is to terminate people who lie on their resumes, but he doesn't seem
like that bad of a guy. The website he got his degree from looks like
what they're doing is pretty unethical since there's no coursework
involved. But I guess the degree is technically legal. Should I fire
him because he bought his degree from the internet instead of attending
a regular university?

What he did was pretty crooked. I think I'll decide to go ahead and
fire him over this. If you were his employer what would you do?