I like to shop around before making a purchase.

Yet another MoJF. But today is special since I'm on dial-up. While I write this, I'm downloading the March 10th Off the Hook at 3.4 kBps. That translates to 27.2 kbps, which is half of my possible 56 kbps. How is a person able to survive on dial-up? It's a mixture of patience, hope, and a large archive of the stuff I got while I was on broadband.

The patience is simply ingrained in my soul. I understand that Javantea's Fate and Hack Mars will happen in their time. I will work and I will slack and it will get done eventually. This is the price one pays and the benefit one recieves being independent. If I wasn't working on Hack Mars and Javantea's Fate, I wouldn't be doing much else. So here I am doing what I can at a slow rate. I may look back on these past two or three years as waste, but I feel that I've been having a good time. There's nothing wrong with using short amount of time to find out what to do in the future. Just make sure it stays short. One thing that I have learned is that a person should always decide which direction to go, how to go, and then go. This past Saturday, I learned the hard way that patience is a virtue always and everywhere. I walked 8 miles in suburban hell of Lynwood (north of Seattle, WA, USA) because I didn't have a good plan.

The hope I have is for 1 Mbps up/ 1.5 Mbps down DSL which will bless me at a very decent price. That will be 4x the speed at which I was previously uploading and 6x the speed at which I was previously downloading. You can probably imagine all the Slackware and Monotonik I will be uploading day and night, right? I'm going to download a good portion of Archive.org and other free/legal stuff. The dial-up is a requirement of the new DSL. I hope and thus I am willing to suffer a minor setback in speed. At least I have access to mail, web, and Off the Hook.

The thing that is really keeping me happy is the stuff I downloaded before the DSL shut off. I'm listening to S.T. - Downtown from the Monotonik 4 which I downloaded on BitTorrent. The scene is very cool about free download. I won't be downloading much more than Off the Hook today, though.

So what does the picture have to do with my journey on dial-up? Well, I wanted to explain technology and I found someone who wants to know about my relationship with technology. Harris Polls offered me 350 HL points to waste ~30 minutes of my time answering questions less philosophical than the ones I show above. What are HL points? Well 1000 of them will buy me a Popular Science magazine subscription or a poster of an anarchy symbol. So 350 was worth my time, I would say... But the points weren't as juicy as the questions. These questions were loaded completely to ask me a simple question: "Are you a hacker or are you a consumer?" I chose hacker because I can see no other way. Rate yourself on the Harris Points Hacker Poll and see if you are a hacker, too. By the way, this Harris Poll was bought to you by Best Buy.

I like to shop around before making a purchase.
I would like to upgrade my technology products.
I'm always willing to try or do new things.
I'm happy with the selection of stores out there to buy technology and entertainment products.
Price is more important to me than brand names.
Technology can be very confusing at times.
Technology has made my life easier.
Technology is more trouble than its worth.

Having fun is the whole point of life.
I always have the latest gadgets.
I buy technology & entertainment products that make my life more fun.
I love the idea of having a "networked home" where all the systems of my home - heating, security, appliances and electronics - are connected and working together.
I play sports or work out more often than other people do.
I research technology products before I buy.
I spend too much money on technology and entertainment products.