karniv0re's Journal: Cox Can Throttle My Cock

I'm not sure exactly what that means, but Cox has been throttling me. These motherfuckers. I've been noticing some horrible network performance every now and then so I busted out WireShark to see what the deal was. I was seeing an extraordinary amount of RSTs and out of order data. I had just bought a new router too, so I confirmed that wasn't the problem and pinged my gateway server. That was fine too. Eventually, I tried resetting my modem and that seemed to fix the problem temporarily, but all the signs were pointing to network congestion with Cox.

Then I got an email from the assholes:

Thank you for choosing Cox, we appreciate your business!

Cox offers several levels of High Speed Internet that feature varying speeds, features and data allowance. Your Cox High Speed Internet package includes 300 Gigabytes of data allowance. As of March 22, 2013, your household has used 602 Gigabytes of data in the current billing cycle, which exceeds your plan amount for the current month. Data usage is the amount of data, sometimes referred to as bandwidth that you consume when sending, receiving, downloading, or uploading information through your Internet service. While you are not billed for going over your plan, your online experience may be improved by moving to a package featuring faster downloads and a larger data usage allowance.

300GB is my limit?! Seriously?! In this age of streaming Netflix and Hulu, you're going to cap me at 300 GB? GFYS. And their little hint at my "online experience" improving if I pay them more, basically, they're saying, "Feel free to go over, but we're going to throttle the shit out of you every now and then. P.S. You have no other options, suck it." And they're right. What, am I going to go to aDSL or 4G tethering? I looked into it. It's cheaper. But I bet the speed isn't there. I dunno, it's a possibility. I hate changing things that are working, but if they are going to throttle me, that isn't working. I just did a Glasnost test, but it came back negative, so I dunno. I'm still pretty sure that's the problem though.

In other news, I have lots of other news. Started getting into a site called Code School (http://codeschool.com). Learning a ton of stuff about modern web development that I should know by now. Like Chrome DevTools, and jQuery and CSS3 and HTML5. Shit I should know by now. Ah well, better late than never. I feel so much more powerful with that shit under my belt.

I got an account with Simple (http://simple.com). I love love love it. It is going to save my life, no joke. Using Goals I'm actually SAVING up for something. I've never done that before. I've always just waited until I got a paycheck, bought it, then lived like a poor person for the rest of the month. Using goals, I set aside all of my bills at the beginning of the month and I'm done with it. I see my real after-bills balance and I know what I really have to spend. It's going to make me a more conscientious spender. And I think it's also my ticket out of debt. I'm now able to see how much I'm spending every month in each category. This type of B.I. is going to allow me to hone in on where my money actually goes and how much of it is wasted. Using those facts, I can cut the fat and trim my budget.

So I started thinking, with no debt, I could easily buy a pretty nice condo. I looked into what's available in the downtown area and some are as cheap as $60k, but others go up to the millions. I'm thinking of something in the $200k range. If I can get rid of all my debt, I'd be able to make payments, no problem. I guess if I'm going to be stuck in this city, I might as well live nicely. We'll see. That won't be for a year or two. But in the mean time, I'm using Simple to pay down debt and save up for things I need. Like weddings. Fucking weddings. Bleck.