“There will be someone that will win more, but it is great to be the first one to 1,000 wins.”
Author Archives: D.B. Riego
Fiber Optimism
A few weeks ago, my Internet Service Provider sent me a letter informing me that the special price I was paying for 50 megabit per second download speed was about to expire. Not to worry, the letter went on, because even though I would be paying $30 per month more for service unless I downgraded, I was still saving $9/month … off the regular price1 of service. What a gift.
This morning, Google officially unveiled plans to bring their fiber-optic gigabit internet service to the Raleigh-Durham metropolitan area, as well as a few other cities. The announcement comes just shy of one year after announcing their selection of Raleigh-Durham as a target city, proving that as exciting as the news is, change is not going to happen quickly. In other words, I’m stuck with my scumbag of an ISP for a while yet, but I can at least be optimistic about the future of this first world problem2. And I don’t have to put all of my eggs3 in the Google basket, as AT&T and Frontier are making moves in the area as well.
It goes without saying that this is great for the area and it certainly can’t hurt our chances for continued growth. The build-out will be slow, but the reward should be great. It’s easy to overstate, but I think there is substance here – this has the potential to impact and transform the Triangle in many positive ways. Be excited, Triangle, this is a big win for Tobacco Road.
Photo Credit: Google Fiber
- Good luck finding the “regular” price of their service anywhere on their website or even if you call and talk to a representative.↩
- Indeed it is a first-world problem, but it’s worth noting here that the US is way way way behind in broadband speeds.↩
- Hatching personal information and browsing habits.↩
Pleated
“I like pleated pants. The flat fronts just don’t do it for me. The pleats are going to come back in a few years.”
The Power and the Steer
After watching yesterday’s Packers-Seahawks game, I found this observation from Grantland’s Robert Mays to be quite apt:
Wilson may steer the Seahawks, but Lynch is their power source.
I know Wilson’s great tosses to Baldwin and Kearse ultimately delivered the overtime win, but Marshawn Lynch was the only thing Seattle had on offense going into the 4th quarter. And the threat of Lynch is probably what gave Wilson the opportunity to check to that winning play at the line of scrimmage.
Hey, Marshawn. Thanks for playing. You’re pretty good.Yeah.
Persistent Inquiry
“Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?’”
Model in My Dreams
I’m not really a car guy, but I’ve recently become obsessed with Tesla’s Model S. It all started a few months ago with my first in-the-wild sighting. It was sitting in front of me at a traffic light and I just couldn’t stop staring. I love the back, face and profile. I’ve never had the privilege of sitting inside one, but the pictures make it look pretty all right. Throw in the all-electric engine with options for no-compromise performance and you’ve got quite a package … at quite a price. Oh well, a man can dream, can’t he?
Photo Credit: Maurizio Pesce via Flickr
Optimistic
“To say that there are so many worse things to be doing right now would be a bit of a sad attempt at optimism. But an attempt is better than no attempt at all.”
Every Day
“If you laugh, you think, and you cry, that’s a full day. That’s a heck of a day. You do that seven days a week, you’re going to have something special.”
Favorite Band in Raleigh
“I guess everything does change except what we choose to recall”.
Tonight I’m heading out to ring in the new year with the Avett Brothers and a few thousand of my closest friends1. Buckle your seatbelt, this is going to go from zero to ridiculous quickly.
Out of three Avett Brothers concerts I’ve attended in my life, two were NYE shows (Charlotte in 2013; Greenville, SC in 2011). This year they come to Raleigh, my hometown, and just too much for me to pass up even though I pledged to give my wife a reprieve after dragging her to three AB shows in two years. My ticket for this year was punched before we even stepped foot in Charlotte last year.
Though my sample size is small, I have never come away disappointed from an Avett Brothers show. This is notable because before each show I walk in with the perfect setlist in mind – a sure prelude for disappointment. The catalog, to my ears, is deep; the stage presence and performance dynamic in a way that breathes new life into songs that long since eluded my attention.
In short, setlists fascinate me, especially the setlist for a show put on by the same group on the same day in the same state2 every year. I don’t know if Scott, Seth, et al consider it carefully or if they just go with what they want to play and let it ride. I thought it might be fun to go a little FiveThirtyEight on this, but I don’t want to take it too far. I decided that counting album tracks per show would be as far as I would take it, and include any other kind of stat that falls below that on the minutia scale. That leaves me with notes like: most played song (‘Go to Sleep’, all seven shows); best represented album (Emotionalism); most show opens (seven tied at 1); longest dormancy for a song (‘Pretty Girl from Chile’, 2008–2013); most encore appearances (‘I and Love and You’, ‘Salvation Song’ tied at 2); biggest spread of setlist position (‘Talk on Indolence’, #4 in 2008, to #30 – last song of the encore of the longest show so far – in 2011).
I’m shocked that ‘Go to Sleep’ is the song that made every show, mostly because it’s one of those songs that flies below my radar. I listened to it to refresh my memory and immediately thought, “Ahh yes, that one!”. Emotionalism is my favorite album, though I find it interesting how well represented I and Love and You is … or do I? Last year, I correctly predicted3 that ‘Open-Ended Life’ would open the show. This year I have no similar such predictions or other setlist premonitions. If there’s one thing that I’ve gleaned from looking at all of these setlists4, it’s that I’m in for a great show no matter what.
- I feel comfortable calling my fellow concertgoers close because I can’t imagine a better filtering criteria if I ever really did have to identify my closest few thousand friends.↩
- For simplicity’s sake, we’ll either choose to ignore 2011’s Greenville, SC show or, since I actually attended that one, we’ll just merge North Carolina and South Carolina and call it Carolinas because, let’s be honest, that’s how most of the country sees us anyway, isn’t it?↩
- Lucky guess. It’s an obvious opener from an album they released that year. I think they could sell pretty much any song in their live catalog as an opener.↩
- Setlists sourced primarily from Setlist.fm: 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008 (reddit), 2007. Setlist.fm data stops at 2007. I turned to reddit for continuity for 2008 which was missing from Setlist.fm, but laziness prevented me from using it for everything prior to 2007.↩
Slingshot
It’s unfortunate (mostly for Polaris) the manner in which I came to know about the Polaris Slingshot, being that it was a story about another regulatory hurdle Polaris faces in getting the three-wheeled rig on the road. Nonetheless, I am glad I now know that such a thing exists to improve upon the already revolutionary three-wheeler segment.
Or am I?
Truth be told, I have no idea what fun can be derived from either of these seemingly amorphous transporter pods, though in no way do I wish to begrudge the creative individual who can. It is for purely time and financial frugality reasons that I nominate the Polaris Slingshot for this week’s installment of #TIDNTKIL.