Not the most ideal circumstances for Easter, for Easter dinner, probably anywhere. Didn’t have enough garlic powder and was not about to go out and get any. Mac and cheese didn’t come out as well as it normally does on like Thanksgiving or Christmas. I forgot a couple of ingredients in the meatloaf and had to add them, mix it all together, and re-form the loaf in the pan.
But in the end, I’m still really grateful. I had food to cook and eat and it still came out well, even if it wasn’t my best. I’ve seen so many tweets from people saying a parent or another relative had passed away due to the virus and I have not had that happen. For what it’s worth, I’m able to communicate with people on social media and this website. Next time, I’ll express more of my gratitude by going and getting a proper light before taking any food pics.
When I do feel a need to reply to a YouTube video, I usually do so in the comments section. But this time, with a subject that’s near and dear to me, AOL, I felt I would have more to say than one should put into the comments section of a video, so I decided to make a blog post.
First, a link to the video so you can watch and I’ll summarize the video’s thesis below.
The video’s thesis is that what ultimately doomed AOL was the company’s inflated stock price during the 2000s .com bubble, combined with its ill-fated merger with Time Warner.
I agree that this is the case, that once it became clear that AOL wasn’t going to be the sort of partner, or player, that Time Warner thought they’d be, that was it for AOL as it had been. However, I want go to into why this happened. I’ve long thought that the main reason that AOL went “away” –and was always going to go “away”– was that its business model was unsustainable in the long run. People talk now about Apple’s walled garden of services. If Apple of today is a walled garden, AOL was a fortress.
The early 90’s weren’t necessarily the earliest days of the Internet, but compared to now, they might as well be. In those days, the Internet was a great mystery outside of the smaller number of techies and geeks and nerds. There was content, but the “World Wide Web,” websites reachable through a browser, e.g. NCSA Mosaic or Netscape, was significantly much smaller than today. In fact, when I started to get online, at school, USENET, an online system that probably most people online these days seldom ever hear about, seemed to be as big and important as the “World Wide Web.”
To get to this information, you needed to have an early dial-up ISP, a role AOL would play for its own service and later on, for access to the Internet, but then you needed a web browser and know how to use it and where to go to get this information. In those days, you’d also need a USENET (news) reader to help you access any information (content) contained in that system, if you wanted it. For techies, geeks, nerds, etc., these weren’t necessarily huge hurdles to overcome.
However, to the average person, the kind of person who nowadays probably uses Facebook as their main portal to the online world, these hurdles may have been untenable. For reference, even the major search engines weren’t around. Google didn’t exist until 1998. Yahoo didn’t exist until 1994. Alta Vista until 1995. Lycos, 1994. Who else remembers Excite and Webcrawler?
The best we had before then were Gopher and Archie. You may not have ever heard of them.
Step in, AOL. AOL did three things greatly that the Internet of the time did not:
1. Make access easy
2. Organize and develop content
3. Facilitate communication
Where the Internet as a whole might have been spooky and intimidating to a lot of people, AOL was the exact opposite. The software was readily available to you as AOL put their discs literally everywhere. And you didn’t have to know how to fire up a modem. All you had to do was click on AOL and off you went. Whenever you had an issue, you could call them on the phone or, if I remember correctly, chat with them within the system.
Once you were logged in, everything was laid out and presented to you. Instead of having to use an search engine to find what you were looking for, AOL made it super simple to find. Entertainment, news, family stuff, all there, within one click. Yes, none of it was available beyond AOL, but for your average user, it didn’t need to be. AOL developed a lot of content, but as time moved forward, one thing AOL did really well was invite companies to establish online presences on AOL. So, the sorts of things that probably most people wanted to see were all right there. You weren’t going to find as much entertainment news or shopping outside of AOL in 1992 or 1993. And definitely not kids stuff. The web had a lot of seedy stuff back in those days, way before parental controls.
There’s a reason why “You’ve got mail” became such an iconic phrase. Email was not nearly as ubiquitous then as it was now. Web communications in general were not. When the Chris of today, with a smartphone, email accounts, social media accounts, SMS, and on and on, thinks back to the Chris of the early 90s with just an AOL account to send and receive email and chat some, it’s so quaint. But getting just email back in the day was certainly not as easy as it is now, not since the invention of Yahoo mail in 1997. Back then, if you worked somewhere with email, and at that, an email system open to the web, you could have email. Or if you were a school or college student, you could get email. Or if you owned your own domain, there you go. If I remember correctly, some, but not all ISPs offered email addresses as an enticement to sign up, but webmail was not a thing then and obviously, neither were smart phones. I didn’t mind using a text based system for email nor setting up an email client. But I can’t think of too many others in my life who were interested.
But when you logged into AOL, you had email. It literally would tell you the moment you logged in, if you had email. And you could chat directly with other users, just by knowing their name. You could participate in message boards too. Even though you were confined to the AOL service, all of the sorts of communication you could engage in on the larger web, were available to you.
But, as the online world grew and more and more people and companies and services decided to move to the larger Internet, AOL faced a huge problem. While, to many people, AOL *was* the Internet^, more and more people, while still desiring to be part of AOL’s walled garden, wanted a back door to the actual Internet *through* AOL. AOL did not consider themselves to be an ISP, but purely an online service. They wanted you in their system where you would do all of your stuff, not the larger internet, because once you were on the larger, and growing internet, you might one day decide that you didn’t necessarily need AOL to find what you were looking for.
By the late 90’s, AOL had opened up to the larger Internet. You could go into AOL and fire up a web browser and get to WWW sites through a browser inside of the window. By this time, you could access both AOL’s content as well as whatever was on the web. This had to be a major blow because, from the user perspective, this was indeed the first step to no longer needing AOL. They also allowed email from outside of AOL to reach their users.
Even so, one of the bigger changes was the company made was AOL Instant Messenger, or, AIM. At first, the service allowed AOL users to chat with other users from an app outside of the main AOL software. Eventually, due to pressure from competing products like Yahoo Messenger, and eventually, MSN Messenger, AOL opened up AIM to anybody who wanted an account and you could chat with both AOL users and non-AOL users. AIM would outlive AOL’s dominance, but AIM was never something outside users paid for.
My perspective has always been that by the time of the AOL/Time Warner merger announcement in 2000, the writing was on the wall for AOL. The larger Internet was growing. The dot com bubble would later on erase quite a few names from the Internet landscape, but that was a financial concern, not a technological one, nor a social one, and the appetite for more on the Internet was not slaked when the bubble would eventually burst. The bubble hit AOL yes, but by the time that this happened, their earlier business model, under which they’d had their largest successes was already becoming outdated. AOL might not have wanted to, but they were rapidly becoming just an ISP and no more. It was becoming impossible to wall off data and content. There was so much more coming to the web. Even the other conveniences AOL sold were no longer unique. For instance, email. As webmail started to come into its own, average users could get email very easily from Yahoo. Hotmail was bought by Microsoft in 1997.
The stock market only revealed, in its way, what was true: that AOL was not, and would not, be the behemoth many thought it was. AOL may have understood the attention economy long before anybody else, but the way they crafted their company around it didn’t change with the times. And as AOL became no longer “the Internet” for more and more people, the game was surely going to be up.
I’m reminded of the scene in Matrix Revolutions when the machines’ drill finally pierces through the Zion dome and the humans inside their mechs are shooting at the initial waves of sentinels. Sentinels fall and fall but eventually, a huge mass of sentinels breaches Zion, overwhelming the fire coming from the mechs. And once the sentinels are in, they overwhelm human forces.
That’s how I think about the growth of content and communication on the Internet, the first couple of waves with AOL valiantly fighting them off. But the explosion surely came once broadband Internet started to pop up. At that point, aside from habit or the inability to have access to broadband, there was no reason to use AOL as a service. You didn’t have to dial up to get anywhere online anymore. You didn’t need AOL to curate your online experience anymore. And you could stay in contact with friends, family, and others with other apps.
As is widely considered, the AOL/Time Warner merger is still one of the worst ever in corporate history. And yes, as Company Man says in the video, the stock took an historic hit alongside other online companies. But I think AOL, as a company, was pretty well doomed already. Just like other .com companies whose value wasn’t tied to anything but investors’ unchecked optimism about the coming Internet era, AOL was a company whose business was sure to be gutted in the upcoming years. I really wonder what kinds of forecasts they were writing for their financials by 2000.
What’s really sad is that it didn’t see the winds blowing and pivot towards social media once Twitter and Facebook started to emerge on the scene. I’ll be always forced to wonder if, by its name alone, it could have become an early force in social networking, especially since, in some ways, it laid the groundwork for social media today. What happened to AOL might not have had to happen.
^ I can not tell you the number of times I got frustrated and tired of explaining to people that AOL wasn’t synonymous with the Internet, but that it was strictly a self-contained service with its own existence apart from the Internet, whether you could access the Internet through it or not.
I’d been wanting to upgrade to mesh WiFi at home since installing a few wireless mesh access points a couple of years ago at work. In one of our locations, before the wireless was mesh, it was a mess. I cobbled together a solution using two ISP-supplied wireless routers —one on the second floor, one on the first— with an off-the-shelf router also on the second. This one, I located along a wing of offices, which, probably because of the building’s construction, wasn’t able to get a wireless signal from anywhere else in the building.
The router on the first floor was older and prone to dropping signals, and needed frequent reboots. The SSIDs (network names) were all different. Staff didn’t configure their devices to use all of them at once. They weren’t happy and I wasn’t happy getting calls about the wireless not working in some way.
Eventually, we got through to someone above, who had some money in their budget and we got a mesh system. All the issues went away. I knew the mesh was a hit, judging by the traffic volume.
When it came time to switch providers at home, mesh was what I wanted. We had to give back our ISP-provided router anyway, so this was my chance.
Planning
I’d done a ton of research as consumer technology companies made more options available and prices went down. The move to mesh became part of the cost-savings strategy behind the decision to cut the cord.
As is usually the case when ditching cable, the fee to rent a set-top-box was going away. One of our TVs was a smart TV and we use a Roku and an older Chromecast on the older, regular TV. So, our TVs would be fine in the new environment. Even better, no set-top-box meant we could live without an ISP-owned router and get rid of that fee, too. I’d learned in my research that the mesh systems I was most interested in, worked well in place of ISP’s routers, when used for Internet only.
In the days leading up to the big change, I went back and looked at all the different choices, weighing features, ratings, and price. I decided I needed just two nodes. There was coaxial going into every room, so I went and got a MoCA adapter to pair with one I already had, to get the signal upstairs and blanket the whole house.
The Big Day
On the big day, when the installer for our new ISP came, he ended up not having to do much. Since we were getting only Internet, he just had to make sure the signal reached inside the house from the outside. Once he did that, I explained my upstairs plan in detail. He offered to run an Ethernet cable up to where I’d planned to install the MoCA adapter to the coax. Gratefully, I accepted and he ran the cable upstairs.
Since we had not accepted their router, everything else was my responsibility.
I’d settled on the TP-Link Deco system with two nodes, one up, one down. The biggest factor for the purchase was price. I’d looked at a bunch of other systems and while they offered features that I liked (OpenVPN client), but in the end, went with the least expensive option.
Still, I was pretty blown away by how easy the Deco was to set up. One of the messages I saw about these home mesh systems was how easy they were to set up because they’re aimed at consumers, not people with technical backgrounds. All I had to do was plug the Ethernet cable carrying the outside connection into one of the device’s two ports, then download and open their app. It found the Deco then asked me what I wanted to call my network and what password I wanted to use. Once it finished the first node, it asked if I had any more units to set up. The second node only needed to be turned on. The app and the first node found the second node and configured it and there, I had a wireless mesh network.
One thing I made sure to do, to make the process go the most smoothly, I used the same wireless credentials from the previous router. As soon as the main node went online, my devices were all able to jump straight on as well, as the username and password was already stored. No fuss, no muss.
Ironically, wired
When I first connected the nodes, they communicated and worked together wirelessly. When I moved the second node upstairs, I plugged the Ethernet cable the installer had run, into one of the device’s two Ethernet ports. At that point, they stopped communicating over wireless and instead, used the faster Ethernet connection between the two, as Deco supports Ethernet backhaul. The Deco app verified this.
In addition to connecting the two nodes via cable, I also used switches, one at each device to connect other devices. I connected my smart TV to the network via a wired connection, alongside my PS4. Upstairs, I have my PC and Synology NAS connected via cable.
So far, so good
Wireless has been working as I expected. I can move around the house with a usually strong, fast signal. Exactly what you’re looking for, out of the box. I haven’t gone into any of the more advanced settings like QOS or VLAN. Unfortunately, these devices do not support VPNs, either as client or server, unlike some of the others I looked at.
Setting up a guest network was as simple as turning it on inside of the app and providing a password.
I did run into one hiccup when I was fooling around with the settings and ended up knocking the units offline. I was unable to use the app to get the devices back online. During the app setup, I had to set up an account with TP-Link before proceeding. It seems the configuration work is done remotely and changes are sent back to the units from TP-Link. When the units could not communicate across the Internet, there was no way to log in and make any configuration changes.
The browser-accessible configuration didn’t allow me to make any changes; I was only able to view settings. Non-technical users may not even know or want to log into the devices; technical users may be disappointed by the inability to make changes this way.
I was able to quickly reset the units (using the little tool that came with my cell phone to add or remove SD and SIM cards) and get them back online, using the same process as the initial setup, which was again, quick and painless.
Takeaways
If you’re planning on making the switch from a single router to a mesh wifi system, do your research first. There are a bunch of products to choose from. Find out which equipment you need aside from the nodes themselves. You may need a standalone modem, for example.
Once you’ve decided to switch
Change your current WiFi credentials and reconfigure your devices beforehand, then use your same credentials for your new network.
Identify places where you might want to place your mesh nodes and whether you have coaxial located nearby.
Decide which devices you may want to attach wired like smart TVs and game consoles and prepare to buy switches, if necessary.
If you’re planning to keep your current router and run the mesh system behind it, learn how to turn your current router’s wireless off. You may be able to use an app for this —check your device’s manual or search online.
When you’re making your switch
Talk to the ISP installer about MoCA or running one or more cables for you, if your chosen solution supports Ethernet backhaul and you want to use it.
Configure your mesh system with your current wireless name and password.
If you run your mesh behind your previously owned router, turn your older router’s radio off, if you have no reason to run both wireless networks simultaneously.
As murder, violence, and corruption continue to define the city’s image, it’s been important to many locals to hold on to the Preakness as another counterpoint to all the negativity in the city. Baltimore has a growing restaurant culture. A fun, quirky arts scene. Fascinating and informative museums. Even a burgeoning theatre scene. But to outsiders, and even some locals, who might not always afford to participate, those are less material than say, the Ravens or the Orioles. Just like those teams, you can turn on the TV and watch the Preakness, even if you can’t go. Another answer to the question of “what’s good about Baltimore?” But now that a dollar amount is being attached to that part of the city’s image, we will find out how much the city’s neighbors in the state agree with the importance as well.
Yesterday, I was out taking a few pictures and decided to drop by RD Seafood for a fish sandwich. RD, located in Elkridge, looks like a food truck, but it’s a trailer and it’s in the same exact place every day. The food is pretty good, especially the aforementioned fish sandwiches, even if their default bread choice seems to be a bun and not white bread. They must be good, as they’re always sold out of whiting when I show up.
After I placed my order, I went back to the car and grabbed my camera. The order was going to take 5-10 minutes, so I figured I’d get a few shots of Washington Blvd and Troy Hill while I waited. I’m still getting back into the swing of shooting again and it felt good to just have the camera in my hand again. I walked over to the edge of the property. As I did, a small car turned onto the property and did a circle, ending up facing me. The driver didn’t stop too close, but I could see him looking at me the whole time. As he got out, he said something inaudible. “Excuse me,” I said as he approached me.
“May I help you?” he asked.
“I just ordered some food, may I help you?” I asked him back.
That was the planned answer. I’m long used to being asked by a certain type of person why I’m in any particular place. I’ve experienced that many times in my life, especially in and around Baltimore. Plus, this was in Howard County. Some might scoff at the notion because it’s Elkridge, but it’s still Howard County and my presence has certainly been questioned more than a few times in Howard. It’s perhaps not as bad as White Marsh or Essex over in Eastern Baltimore County, but I did notice the one or two houses on Loudon Ave where the Confederate battle flag and the Gadsdon Flag both fly from time to time.
“Oh, no. It’s just that I get photographers in here taking pictures of my trailer,” he said, “from Grubhub and places like that, taking pictures, then they want to charge me $200 and stuff.”
“Ohhhhhh, I’m not here for that,” I said, gesturing as if to throw away that idea. “Just taking a couple of pictures of Troy Hill while I’m waiting for my food.” Which I was. I’d been looking catty corner down Washington Blvd. as he approached me.
He walked back towards his car. I only noticed only as he walked away that his shirt had a logo with the name of the place printed on it.
In the end, I’m glad it was just a minor misunderstanding. I didn’t see the store’s logo on the front of his shirt. I don’t think there was one. He also didn’t specifically identify himself as the owner, or a manager, perhaps thinking that just asking if he could help me would be enough for me to have figured out who he was. Still, with my order having already been taken, a guy walking up to me not appearing to be with the restaurant, and having lived in a “Permit Patty” world, long before there ever was a name for it, I wasn’t sure what was going on. So far as I knew, he was some guy from the area who didn’t approve of my presence there for one reason or another. Thankfully his concern was just the camera and not wanting to deal with somebody looking to out him a couple bills. I get that. Many folks in this area are out here hustling hard.
After I snapped a few pictures, my sandwich was done. I picked it up and went around the corner to Troy Hill Park to eat it. Snapped a few pictures around there, too. My only regret was not using my telephoto lens when I was shooting in front of DR. I could have gotten a closer pic of this plane on approach to BWI-TM.
A few days ago, the folks at Screencraft sent word via email that because of the intense competition among the submissions received, they’d need another couple of days to decide, and then announce, the semifinalists in their 2018 Stage Play Contest.
Like it probably is for many writers, once the decision on the submission is imminent, excitement and anxiety go up. The rest of Wednesday and Thursday weren’t so bad, but I woke up yesterday morning thinking about it. Fortunately, I had more than enough to keep myself occupied and by late morning, I just went about my day. Did some work. Went to the grocery store in the late afternoon so I could beat any after-5 crowds. Messed around with some video I took with my GoPro mounted in the windshield while I went to the grocery store.
After I ate, I had the urge to check my email. Nothing. Since it was after 5 out west, I figured I’d check on social media and their blog to see if they’d posted about it. And they had. I was a semifinalist. I was relieved to know. Just like any other time I go into my Submittable account and see whether a work has been accepted or rejected. And after a couple of other rejections recently, it’s good to see that I’m still … in the running for another acceptance. A really good one to have, should I receive it. It’s a good note to get right before Christmas.
As I’ve said on Twitter and Instagram, congratulations and good luck to my fellow semifinalists.
I’m honored and thrilled to be a semifinalist. Congratulations and good luck to all of my fellow semifinalists.
I was happy to receive a couple of notes in my email yesterday, informing me that I was a semifinalist in the 2018 ScreenCraft Play contest. I’ve been sending out my latest full length play, North Avenue, to most places that I can find that are accepting full length scripts (the numerous submission calls I’m seeing for science-themed plays, I’m unfortunately having to pass up at this time). Suffice it to say, I’m excited and grateful for the acknowledgment and the opportunity for my play to go on to the next round.
My only regret is that I didn’t send more than one play, as I saw at least one other quarter finalist had.
Thank you for selecting my play to go forward in this competition.
Also, congratulations and good luck to all of my fellow quarterfinalists.
Definitely not used to it snowing this early in the season in Baltimore. As I always tell people, I’m not used to the first snow of the season coming until after the first of the calendar year. As it turns out, my gut feeling matches the reality behind early snow in this part of the world.
Thursday's snow is Baltimore's earliest in 22 years, and heaviest for November since 1989, @ssdance reports. https://t.co/xz44RHkhLD
UPDATE: On Baltimore's snowiest November day in nearly three decades, the region has unofficially broken a record for its wettest year in the books, which date to 1871. https://t.co/YEWOayTVCP
The storm wasn’t a Nor’easter, but it’s set records and we took a good shot with snow (amounts varied around Maryland) and the other elements of the dreaded “wintry mix” as well as plain old rain and wind. I stepped out for a little while during the rain to get my yak trax out of the car. Rain was nice and cold and raw. I was very happy to get back inside. Felt like January. I’ll be glad when it gets back into the 50’s next week.
Still, things could have been worse.
NJTransit buses delayed. Port authority bus terminal flooded with waiting for buses on the first snow day of the season. pic.twitter.com/dRPgFzk8l4
Hopefully, this will be a wake-up call for the Port Authority Board in their study of an expanded Port Authority Bus Terminal within NYC, especially at the current location. Increased space wouldn’t have helped on a day like today, as the traffic was so bad in New Jersey. The Port Authority, MTA, and New Jersey Transit really need to consider another rail link, possibly an already discussed expansion of the #7 NYC Subway line, somewhere in New Jersey, along with a bus terminal there. I know one of the considerations is that quite a few commuters have one- or two-seat commutes and a solution that ends up with adding another seat, are less than ideal. However, on days like today, I imagine folks would rather have another viable way home, whether there are a couple of transfers or not, rather than being stuck inside the terminal and told to find another way home.
A total mess.
It’s approaching 8pm and the Port Authority is still turning people away due to overcrowding. Second and third floors are closed because of crowds. PA announcements say it’s unlikely many buses will reach the terminal tonight. A mob scene. pic.twitter.com/WaStFScGX3
As usual, I have a long story about the subject, but the condensed version is that I have been given a challenge, a mandate to share more of my work, just for the sake of doing so. I’m exploring my creativity again, for its own sake, ars gratia artis, and just putting it out there. Hence, I posted a few poems.
Most wouldn’t know it from this site or any of my social media accounts, but there was a time when I was a true and confirmed poet. Poetry is how I first fell in love with language. Long before I loved drama. Way long before I loved the essay. At some point, I fell out of love with poetry. For numerous reasons. I’ll explore those one day. But I did. I stopped writing poems for years. Earlier this year, I decided to give my poetry another chance and started writing again. I’ve been sending some out, looking for publication.
But, I accepted a challenge to put work out, even if I felt self-conscious, anxious, whatever. So, I’m putting more poems out these days, most likely right here. The few that I’ve posted tonight are a bit older and have already been published. A colleague of mine, when he was running a literary magazine, published them. The journal and its site are long gone from the web, so I figured I’d put them up again.
I’d learned a ton about my mother’s side of my family growing up as I spent the majority of my time around them. While there were mysteries and gaps and tales that more properly should be known as legend than history, I at least knew about it. All I knew about my father’s family was about our specific branch starting with my grandparents. My father and his numerous stories (he should have been a writer. His Baltimore stories were awesome). My uncles and their love of boxing. And obviously, family drama. But not much more. Even as I developed a deep love and study of Black history while I was in high school, my own origins were still vague and even more mysterious.
Some time around 1997-1998, I received an email from someone claiming to be a relative. He’d been online looking for other Kesses and had come across my then-website. We struck up a conversation over email and as it turned out, he was indeed a relative, part of the extended Kess family that I knew pretty much nothing about. Kevin shared information with me about the larger family, our origins, how many of us there were. What seemed like a smallish family, centered around Yale Heights where my grandparents lived, was just a small part of a much larger family with a rich history.
This eventually lead to a meeting.
I was able to convince my grandfather to go down to Glen Burnie with me to see Kevin’s immediate folks. PaPa, one of my uncles, and I piled into my grandfather’s minivan and made the trip where we met Kevin and his father. The two older men were cousins who had not seen each other in a very long time. They talked about so many things — our history, our ancestors. We made plans to get them back together at some point, but unfortunately, we never did that. I fell out of touch with Kevin. His father passed. My grandfather did.
Fortunately, the family history hasn’t. If anything, it’s spread more. A lot of the extended Kess family is online. I don’t know them well, but I’m at a time in my life where I can change that. I plan to. And not on online, but in showing my face some down Route 100 soon and wherever else we may be.
