Three boys were in the schoolyard bragging about how fast their fathers were.
The first one said, “My father is the fastest. He can fire an arrow, start to run, then he gets there before the arrow!”
The second one replied “Ha! My father can shoot his gun and be there before the bullet.”
The third one listened to the other two and shook his head, “That’s nothing! My father works for the government. He stops working at 5 o’clock and gets home by 3:45!”
Back in the Soviet Union, an old woman was riding a crowded bus. There were no empty seats so she had to stand with her heavy packages. Finally, someone got off the bus, so she grabbed their seat. “Thank God,” she said, as she sat down.
The man in the seat behind her said, “Excuse me comrade, but we are in an atheist society. You should say ‘Thank Stalin,’ not ‘Thank God.'”
“Of course you are right,” the old woman said. “Thank Stalin.”
The old woman sat quietly for a moment then turned to the man and said, “Comrade, I just had a terrible thought. What shall we say when Stalin dies?”
Without hesitation the man said, “In that case, we will say, ‘Thank God.'”
Jim came back from lunch and called his senior employees into a meeting. To start off on a light note, Jim told a couple of jokes he’d recently picked up. (From Flush Twice of course.)
Everyone laughed at their boss’s jokes… Everyone that is but Rachael, who sat there with a slightly annoyed look on her face.
“Why aren’t you laughing?” asked Jim. “Don’t you have a sense of humor?”
“I don’t have to laugh,” replied Rachael. “My last day is Friday.”
Getting by on Two 10Gb/month SIM Cards
Mobile carriers hate people who tether. If they know in advance that you’re planning on tethering, they will put heavy restrictions on your ability to use that feature. Of course if you’re paying them a shit-ton of money through a four line family plan with a 2 year contract and all the latest phones, they’ll give you all the internet you can eat… But if you’re on a budget, you ain’t gonna like what they do to you.
Now I’m not shilling for my mobile provider, but Mint Mobile has this deal where you pay $300 and you get unlimited calls and text, plus 10Gb of tetherable 4g/LTE data per month for 12 months. That comes to $25/month, and I bought two of them. I also bought the $240 5Gb/month for my actual cell phone, so that’s actually 25Gb/month on 3 SIM cards, and yeah, that was a lot of money up front, but I don’t have to worry about anymore internet or cell phone charges for the rest of the year.
Twice a month, I unplug my modem and swap out the SIM. The removed SIM goes into a $50 Android phone. If I budget the data plan over the next 15 days, it comes to about 680Mb per day. The modem is actually quite good at keeping track of my usage, so I can easily check it from a bookmarked webpage. I turn on the WiFi hotspot on the cheap Android phone with the spent SIM card and connect it to my Windows 10 computer. Even when the 10Gb is used up, it can still get unlimited 2g internet speeds until the monthly reset.
Of course most people would feel utterly suffocated by such a paltry constraint. I have to admit, it’s not always easy to keep within those parameters. If I find that I’m going over budget at the house: I tether my phone (which gets 5Gb/month) to my desktop for a few evenings. It gets me back on track, and the performance isn’t any different than using the main system. I just have to remember to plug my ethernet cable back in when I’m done.
Of course if I use up all my SIM cards, then I’m only almost fucked. The SIM cards are staggered so I’m only at most about two weeks away from getting another 10Gb, but more importantly all three SIMs get unlimited 2g data. Thats about twice the speed of a 56K dial-up modem and can limp me to my next refill date, so it’s not like I’m ever disconnected.
In the end I’m paying about the same amount that Spectrum wanted to charge me, but my internet is being metered and of course a little slower. On the other hand, my connection is no longer randomly cutting out 5 times an hour, and I don’t have to worry about sudden rate increases or bullshit charges on my bill.
In a perfect world, some benevolent soul would guide me to a SIM card that would provide me with unlimited internet that is capable of streaming decent video for less than $50/month. Hint, hint, nudge, nudge! I’m still waiting!
Oh well… At least I can watch YouTube videos at 240p for about 5 hours every day. No really… It’s about 2.16Mb per minute which is 130Mb per hour which means I’ll only use 650Mb after 5 hours! But while the video quality isn’t terrible, it is a little rough looking at times.
In contrast, Netflix will eat 600Mb every 2 hours on it’s low bandwidth setting. This is not ideal. I really wish they would have an even lower setting, so I could use it at home. Right now I only watch Netflix when I visit my dad and we watch a movie together at his house. You know what’s strange? Even though I have his system set up so he can watch NetFlix and Amazon videos, he still ends up using Kodi most of the time. But I digress.
I have to be wary of any background services that could suck down my data plan without my realizing it. It’s why my Windows 10 machine is only allowed to connect to the “spent” SIM card.
So before I go, a big “fuck you” to all the autoplay videos on news sites. You guys suck. I also want to wish a pox on all the advertisers who autoplay video ads in hi def. I hope you all rot in hell. Special thanks to uBlock Origin, Chrome, and Linux for making it possible to bring my data usage down to within my pathetic monthly allotment. And I’d also like to thank you, my internet viewers for whom I have never seen or met. It’s like you’re not even there.
Pax,
-f2x
Oh, thank you random internet ghost!
Within only a couple of hours of posting this, I have gotten word from one of my “non-existent” viewers that I can watch Netflix with even lower bandwidth usage on Linux by installing “wondershaper”.
sudo apt-get install wondershaper
You then enter the magic phrase,
sudo wondershaper [interface] 200 200
This will give you extra slow internet. Now Netflix almost looks like shit, but only uses about 90Mb/hour, which is even less than 240P YouTube.
Of course this really slows all of your internet down, so it’s important to know how to reverse the spell:
sudo wondershaper clear [interface]
Keep in mind that [interface] is something like eth0 or wan0 or even usb0, whichever the case may be.
Thanks for that tip, my friend. Now I can watch awesome stuff every day after work.
The Major spoke to the Sergeant before the morning formation, “Sarge, I just got a telegram that Private Jones’ mother died yesterday. Better go tell him and send him in to see me.”
So the Sergeant went before his morning formation and said, “Listen up, men, Johnson, report to the mess hall for KP. Smith, report to Personnel to sign some papers. The rest of you men report to the Motor Pool for maintenance. Oh and by the way, Jones, your mother died, report to the commander.”
Later that day the Major called the Sergeant into his office. “Hey, Sarge, that was a pretty cold way to inform Jones his mother died. Couldn’t you be a bit more tactful, next time?”
“Yes, sir,” answered the Sergeant
A few months later, the Major was speaking to the Sergeant before the formation again, “Sarge, I just got a telegram that Private Mullin’s mother died. You’d better go tell him and send him in to see me. This time be more tactful.”
So the Sergeant went before his troops and said, “Ok, men, fall in and listen up. Everybody with a mother, take two steps forward. NOT SO FAST, MULLINS!”
A rather prominent physician died and went to heaven. Unfortunately, there was a very long line at the Pearly Gates. The doctor went to the front of the line and said to St. Peter, “I’m a very important doctor. Shouldn’t I be allowed to bypass this line and go right in?
St. Peter scowled upon the doctor and said, “Up here, everyone is equal. Now, please go to the end of the line and wait your turn.”
The doctor grumbled but did as he was told.
A moment later, someone with a white coat and stethoscope dashed past the line and went straight into heaven.
The doctor ran back up to St. Peter and said, “Hey, how come you let that doctor in and not me?”
St. Peter replied, “That was no doctor, that was God. From time to time he likes to play doctor.”
An Irishman, a Mexican and a redneck were at work on the scaffolding on the 20th floor of a building.
As they ate their lunches, the Irishman said, “Corned beef and cabbage! If I get corned beef one more time for lunch, I’m going to jump off this building.”
The Mexican opened his lunch box and exclaimed, “Burritos again! If I get burritos one more time for lunch, I am going to jump off too.”
The redneck opened his lunch and said, “Bologna again. If I get a bologna sandwich one more time I’m jumping off too!”
The next day the Irishman opened his lunchbox, saw the corned beef and cabbage, and jumped off the building.
The Mexican opened his lunch box, saw the burritos, and jumped off too.
The redneck opened his lunchbox and saw bologna, so he jumped to his death as well.
At the funeral, the Irishman’s wife wept and said, “If I had known he was tired of corned beef and cabbage I would have never given it to him again!”.
The Mexican’s wife also cried and said, “I could have given him tacos or enchiladas! I didn’t realize he hated burritos so much.”
Just then, everyone turned and stared at the redneck’s wife.
“Hey, don’t look at me” she said, “He made his own lunch!”
A man walked into an ice cream parlor and asked the attendant for a half-gallon of vanilla, a half-gallon of strawberry and a half-gallon of chocolate ice cream.
“Sorry” said the attendant, “we’re all out of chocolate ice cream.”
“In that case” said the man, “I’ll have a pint of vanilla, a pint of strawberry and a pint of chocolate.”
“I told you we don’t have any chocolate ice cream, buddy” said the attendant, becoming slightly annoyed.
“OK, in that case” said the man, “I’ll have a scoop of vanilla, a scoop of strawberry and a scoop of chocolate.”
“Look, mister, what does the V-A-N in vanilla spell?”
“Van” he replied, “But what does that have to do with ice cream?”
“Never mind, what does the S-T-R-A-W in strawberry spell?”
“Straw” he answered, “But I still don’t understand what this has got to do with my getting the ice cream I want?”
“What does the F-U-C-K in chocolate spell?” asked the attendant.
“Wait a minute” said the man, “there’s no fuck in chocolate!”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you, dick brain. Now get out of my store!”
The man walked up to the counter and said, “Let me have some grits and an RC.”
“You must be from Georgia,” said the guy behind the counter.
“What the hell kinda stereotypical remark is that?” remarked the man. “If I walked in here and asked for a sausage, would you think I was Polish?”
“No,” replied the guy.
“If I walked in here and asked for some Chow Mein, would you think I was Chinese?”
“No.”
“If I walked in here and asked for some pizza, would you think I was Italian?”
“No,” said the guy with a heavy sigh.
“Then why in the hell do you think I’m from Georgia?” said man in an irritated tone.
The guy behind the counter just shook his head and said, “Because this is a hardware store.”
