I just found out my Internet Service Provider (ISP) called WOW Internet and Cable has been monitoring our web traffic since March of 2008 for profit. The monitoring takes place by installing hardware made by NebuAds within the ISP’s network, WOW Internet in my case. Web traffic from WOW Internet customers (like me) is routed through these hardware devices for tracking. The data (html, javascript, images, etc…) that customers like myself request from web sites such as Google could be modified in order to display targeted advertising. According to DSLReports, WOW cable (and other NebuAds clients) can make at least $2.50 a month per customer.

I was made aware of this by a local TV station here in Columbus, Ohio.

When I spoke with WOW today, they informed me that I was recently made aware of this change when they sent me a notice in the mail of recent change in the terms of service. Like any trusting customer, I did not read the fine print. The notice did not come with a cover letter explaining what part of the notice changed and/or why. See Third Party Advertisers section of WOW Internet Terms.

Notice that in the WOW Internet Terms they created an acronym for “Personally Identifiable Information” as “PII”. The way the acronym is written in the sentence it implies that it encompasses other items. Make no mistake, they clearly state that PII is your name, address and phone number and nothing else. They do not state that IP addresses are PII. In my opinion, your IP address on the Internet is just as personally identifiable as your telephone number or street address. An IP address identifies you on the Internet so data knows where to be directed over the entire World Wide Web. The same can be said about telephone calls and snail mail. Apparently WOW does not believe that your IP address on the Internet is considered “personally identifiable information” even though IP addresses have been continually used to identify individuals and is commonly added to header information of many Internet protocols such as email and web browsing.

Users may opt out of the service on a per browser bases using cookies. This means that anytime I decide to switch from Internet Explorer to Firefox, Opera, Safari or another computer for that matter, I have to remember to follow a procedure (that I currently do not know) to add a cookie to each browser I use to turn this tracking off. Further more, I now have to do this for every computer in my home and for anyone who visits who uses my Internet. This means that browsers used in my home must support cookie handling, removing my choice (or anyone else in my home’s choice) of turning off cookies in web browsers. For 3rd party applications (Non web browsers) that use the Internet (such as to download or check for product updates) will continue to be tracked by WOW.

WOW Internet is the 12th largest Cable provider in the United States. WOW has been using NebuAds to profit from its customers since March/April of 2008. For the past three months, WOW has made more than $7 from myself alone. I have yet to see any savings passed onto my bill. It appears this $2.50 is an additional revenue stream for WOW and is not something they are using to pass savings to their customers in exchange for invading their privacy.

The 3rd largest cable provider, Charter Communications, recently decided not to use the NebuAds service to make money from its customers. Charter decided to abandon the practice following the release of a report that caught the interest of the United States Congress into the legalities of the adveritsing targeting mechanisms.

The most upsetting aspect of this whole thing for me personally, is that I’ve discovered that this tracking is known to cause problems with Google Gmail. I use Gmail and Gmail for my domains and have come to rely heavily on Google’s Gmail service. Since March I have experienced issues with Gmail and for the longest time have presumed Gmail was the problem. Now that I know that my ISP, that I’ve been paying over $100 a month to provide me reliable access to the Internet, may have been the cause of the problems I’ve been experiencing with Gmail frustrates me greatly. I’ve lost a lot of time and productivity with the problems I have had with Gmail. Email is a vital service, especially for someone who requires not only for tracking and paying bills but for employment and work as well.

I’ve called and notified WOW that they will have to contact me in 7 days to let me know that they will no longer be tracking my Internet and have stopped modifying my Internet traffic. Otherwise I will switch to another ISP. They have until July 7th to resolve this issue, or they will loose me as a customer. If after July 7th, they do not rectify this problem with their service, I will contact federal, state and local government representatives in my area of WOW’s shady practices, notify my neighbors what WOW is doing with their Internet usage, and make it a point to NOT recommend WOW for Internet services.

WOW, you have 168 hours. What is your answer?

UPDATE (GREAT NEWS)

WOW cable called me today (Thursday) at about 4pm to let me know that they are removing the NebuAds for all of their customers! I no longer need to switch ISPs! What an emotional roller coaster but unlike some businesses apparently WOW does listen to its customers. I’m going to stick with WOW now that they will no longer deploy this questionable intrusion of advertising in my web surfing.

As soon as I have a press release to link to I’ll create a new blog post about it.

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The fence is finished! What an experience. Today I put together the gates and replaced a couple damaged pickets. The fence was pretty much done last weekend aside from the gates.

This was a true learning experience. For those thinking about putting up your own fence, I recommend putting the project into prospective. How ever long you think the project will take, quadruple that number. I thought the fence could be put up over a 2 day weekend, it’s taken one 3 day weekend and two and a half 2 day weekends to get the fence done. Granted, I spent a lot of time leveling each picket and using screws instead of nails. I think a nail gun would have shaved 1 day off the project. Had we not run into WOW’s cable line a number of times while digging, I think we would have saved 1/2 a day digging holes too.

Anyway, fence is up and it looks great!

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Last week Heather and I received our Federal tax incentive check and decided to go ahead with getting a fence for the backyard. We wanted a dog eared 4′ wood fence to match our neighbors which we plan to connect our fence to.

So here’s the story. We got a quote from Lowes a little over a month ago to have the fence installed. They quoted us about $1,200 for treated pine lumber plus labor, roughly $2,500. So moving forward with the idea that materials would be about $1,200, we decided to install the fence ourselves.

As the process moved forward, I did some research on some home improvement web sites and found that the treated pine tended to warp, split, crack, etc.. over time. From observing our 15 year old treated pine deck, I do believe these home improvement web sites are right. So I decided to go with red cedar since it has a better reputation for holding up with minimal shrinking, cracking, cracking, etc… So now the material expenses are up near $1,600.

We wanted to match our neighbors fence as closely as possible. Both Home Depot and Lowes only sell 6″ dog ear pickets, which doesn’t match our neighbors 4″. After making some calls, I was recommended to call Sutherlands. After a quick call with them, I found that all for the materials for the project were priced competitively and they have 4″ red cedar dog ear pickets too. So I ordered all the materials on Wednesday, everything arrived that Friday.

The first step in installing the fence was to dig the post holes. I called 811 on Wednesday afternoon to get the utilities marked in the back yard. On Friday, I rented an auger from Home Depot with a 10″ bit to drill 10-12″ post holes. It took my brother-n-law and I about an hour to drill one 30″ hole with the 10″ bit. We kept hitting rocks in the ground which made the process take a lot longer than it otherwise would have. The whole was between 12-15″ wide. We decided to get a 6″ bit for the auger after starting hole number 2. An hour later, we got the smaller bit in, and started drilling the holes faster, though by hole 4, we didn’t just have rocks to deal with. We hit an unmarked coax cable in the ground. After further examining ,we determined the cable was for Time Warner Cable to my house. I’m currently a WOW customer, so we decided to just keep going on our path.

We then started drilling our holes across the back of the property. This is where the real fun started. At our 4th of 9 holes, we hit the main WOW cable. It was marked about 2 feet from where the cable was actually in the ground! Needless to say, we knocked out cable service for the rest of the neighborhood. In the process of waiting for WOW to come fix their cable, we started remarking the fence 3 feet from the back of the property line since we no longer trusted the markings. As the WOW repairmen came to fix the line, we started drilling our remaining posts on the new 3 foot back line. Just as the WOW folks left, we were finishing the last hole and discovered their line again. This time, we were 5 feet away from the closest marking on the ground. luckily we caught it before the auger tore through the cable.

The rest of the weekend Heather’s dad, my dad set posts and mixed concrete. On Sunday we only got 2 posts completed mixing the concrete by hand. On Monday, we rented a concrete mixer, thankfully Home Depot Rents was open that day! If you have more than 4 bags of Quikrete to mix, I highly suggest renting a mixer. It cost about $45 and was worth every penny.

On Monday, Heather’s dad and I got the remaining posts set and concrete poured, except for the remaining hole where we discovered the WOW cable a second time. Heather’s dad did a great job setting the posts, they are very level and plumb with each other.

On Tuesday afternoon, the WOW folks returned, tested their line and decided to replace the portion of the line where I found their main cable. Once the guy left, I hand digged another foot beyond the cable line to reach 30″ for the last post. This manual digging was a pain and I believe resulted in seriously hurting my back. Then I plumbed up the post, mixed the concrete and set the post just before the sun came down.

On Wednesday, I returned the extra materials (3 posts, 8 bags gravel, 4 bags Quickrete) I purchased as well as exchanged 20+ pickets that I discovered were damaged from the original delivery. That evening, Heather and I returned the truck (we’re on our own now).

This morning I did some clean up and removed the remaining braces holding up the posts. Phase 1 complete!

Next weekend my dad and I will be working on phase 2, which includes installing the runners and the pickets. Dad has a pretty nice wireless drill, so this process should go rather quickly. The red cedar pickets are rather fragile though, I am planning on pre-drilling the holes for the screws, but besides that the picket installation should go as quick as any other picket fence.

Materials

• 19 4×4x8′ red cedar posts
• 32 2×4x8′ red cedar rails
• 6 2×4x12′ red cedar rails
• 310 4″x4′ red cedar dog ear pickets
• 2 self closing spring hinge gate kits
• 2 5lb boxes 1-5/8″ cedar screws
• 1 5lb box 3″ cedar screws
• 24 80lb Quickrete
• $10 scrap lumber for plumbing up posts
• 36 lawn stakes
• 2 day Auger rental from Home Depot
• 1 day concrete mix rental from Home Depot
• A lot of patience

Conclusion

I’m never installing a fence myself again. Installing a fence is a lot of work and full of obstacles that cannot be foreseen. Looking back, it may have been worth $2,500 to have someone else do it, though I will have to say that I don’t think the installers would have put this much care for quality as we are.

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Happy Earth Day everyone!

Heather and I didn’t time our tree planting around Earth Day, but that’s ok because we do care about the earth. This weekend we planted 3 new trees in our yard. This is significant because our yard doesn’t have a single tree in it. Reminds me of the house/yard I grew up in which also had no trees.

In the front yard between the sidewalk and street we planted a RedPink Flowering Dogwood. In the back yard, we planted a RedSilver Maple and a Colorado PineBlue Spruce (pictured).

So what did you plant for earth day?

CORRECTIONS

I had the tree names wrong. We purchased a Pink Dogwood, Silver Maple and a Colorado Blue Spruce.

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We had someone come out and measure our yard this past weekend to see how much a new fence for the yard would cost. There are a lot of home improvements I would like to make to our home but the fence, oddly enough, is becoming 1# on the list. My sister told me about her fence quote, so I’m a little nervous. I priced out the materials, that part of the job isn’t that expensive.

We currently walk Ty 2+ times a day and walk him around the yard 1+ times a day. Both Heather and I are starting to feel like we’re holding him back on the leash though. He can really run if you let him. So a fenced in yard will really help him out.

I’ve been thinking about a lot of home improvements we can make. The HGTV improvement shows really put ideas in your head, one week I want to re-do the kitchen, the next week I want to redo the bathrooms. In reality, we really don’t have any pressing home improvements to make. But it is fun to think about them.

Here’s my dream list:

• Ceiling lights for the 2 smaller bedrooms and in deep closet over the stairs.
• Finish the basement - This is one that we may want to do once we have kids.
• Redo the deck - The decking on the deck is in pretty bad shape. luckily the under framing is in good shape, this should be a project we can do this year, if we have the funds of course.
• 1/2 bath - The sink drain needs some TLC. I got the replacement drain last weekend, I just have to find the time to replace it. We also purchased a new faucet for that sink.
• Master bath - The master shower needs some TLC, and the 2 sink counter us ugly.
• Garage - Insulate, drywall, add electrical outlets on west wall and add shelving.

I can always dream right? What sorts of home improvements do you want to do to your home and why?

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I’ve been doing a variety of small home improvements over the past few months. Okay, you got me, I didn’t install the new dishwasher, but I did let the guy in!

Computer Desk Completed!
Back in November, I made my own computer desk from white laminated lumber from Home Depot. My original intent was to buy regular lumber with specific dimensions. When I arrived, the salesman showed me the laminated lumber, which had the benefit of having a finished edge, something I was worried about where the keyboard would be resting.

So, the story. I had measurements all figured out from a 4′ x 8′ sheet of 5/8″ lumber. The laminated wood was not sold in that size. The biggest size was 8′ x 30″, which is the pefect depth for the desk, but meant I would not have enough material on the sides. I made a decision to have the 8′ length cut into one 4′ long section and two 2′ long sections. I also purchased a 4′ x 10″ sheet to use as a vertical support for the top of the desk. I walked out the store spending less than $30. So I got home, put the desk together, and it looked great. (see photo)

Just like a little kid, I rushed the desk up the stairs, cleared a spot for it in the office and started setting up the computer. I got everything situated on the desk, fired up the computer, lined up the keyboard then came to the quickest realization that something was wrong. Yes, something was really wrong! I couldn’t place my feed under the desk, the table was so low my knee was pressinng against the table top! So I looked at my design work, and discovered that I originally planned on the sides of the desk being 30″, but now they were 24″ from my last minute change at the home improvement store.

So the first month, I lifted the desk up about 3″ with some blocks of wood, which was all it needed. A week went by, and finally one of the blocks popped out from under the desk and man did I have a bad day. First I went to both Home Depot and Lowes to see if I could find caster wheels or small desk legs to try to raise the desk up slightly. No such luck. Finally, the day ended with a trip to Bestbuy and an investment in a $80 computer desk.

So last week, I was at Home Depot picking up supplies for the kitty litter gate and guess what I found, caster wheels for the desk! I’ve installed the wheels and the home made desk now has a 29″ clearance for leg/knee room!

Kitchen Faucet
Heather and I picked out a new Kitchen faucet in February. It’s a Delta, made in U.S.A. and has a chrome finish. Our main goal was to find a nice looking one handle faucet.

It took a month before I finally made the time to install it. Installation was easy. The salesman did not tell me I should use a special silicone to seal the faucet against the sink. Hopefully I’ll get that taken care of this Easter weekend.

Kitty Litter Gate
This is sad to say, but our dog will get into our cat’s kitty litter box. We’ve come up with a lot of creative locations for the litter box so Ty can’t get to it. But recently we decided to keep the litter box in the bathroom. We have a double sized vanity with one sink, so the other side has a nice opening for a trash can, laundry basket or in our case, kitty litter box.

So last weekend I created a gate using outdoor lattice. When I went into Home Depot, I was planning on purchasing wood lattice. To my luck, they sell vinyl with framing trim that’s easy to cut to size! Plus, the vinyl was easy to roll and pack into my car. Putting the gate together was pretty easy, as you can see it’s not too complicated.

Once we put it in place, we were worried the cat wouldn’t like the gate or worse, would not fit through the opening. Luckily, the cat slips through the opening like it’s her special door and the litter box is getting plenty of use!

Dish Washer
Last month we bought a new dishwasher. It’s working pretty well and we’re pretty happy with it, but it does have one engineering flaw. I’m going to wait till we’ve had the dishwasher for 2 full months before giving it a complete review, but expect a blog post in the near future on the subject.

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Anyone in the Central Ohio area who is a blogger, podcaster or social networking enthusiast/expert should be aware that there is a potential meetup group organizing called the Columbus Social Media Cafe. Yesterday was the 4th SMC meetup and I gathered that they are just now working on defining what the goals are of the group and plan on forming a mission statement. You can read more about the last meetup at Elephants on Bicycles and This Woman’s Work blogs.

When I arrived, I found myself briefly explaining what PodCamp and PodCamp Ohio is. I was not prepared to make any sort of presentation at the meetup but I did my best. This was a learning experience for myself, as I found myself speaking to a crowd of bloggers who are aware that podcasting should be included in their space but don’t exactly have a grasp on what exactly podcasting is. I also mentioned briefly some of the viral networking techniques that PodCamp Ohio is using in order to market the event to bloggers, podcasters and social networking enthusiasts.

I learned a lot from the meetup. What I found the most interesting was what they are envisioning; a social networking web site that pulls in feeds of blogs and podcasts and provides social networking features such as tags and comments. The group would be the perfect customer for the RawVoice Generator, which does pretty much what they want. One of the organizers mentioned someone who is in the process of developing such a tool that the group could use, so I didn’t quite feel comfortable mentioning that my company already has such a product on the market for more than 2 years now. The process they are undertaking made me feel vindicated that the past 3 years of my life that I’ve spent developing such tools is of real importance, not just globally but also for the local community. There is real potential for blogging and podcasting to connect with its local communities, and I for sure want to be involved in helping that happen here in Central Ohio.

I hope they can create a brand/logo soon and put in place a scheduled meeting time using not just meeting spaces in the public but also utilizing those social media tools that are so important such as TalkShoe/BlogTalkRadio for on-line recorded phone meetings and Google Group public mailing lists. At the moment the only way anyone can participate is by attending the public meetings, which may limit the audience size of participants. The more opportunity to let someone be herd, the more opportunities that will be used by those with the means. I’m pretty confident they will pick up on these other tools soon.

I am a little concerned that some of the founders organizing the Columbus SMC group found PodCamp Ohio somewhat threatening. I hope they did not get that impression cause it is definitely not something meant to compete with other groups with similar goals. PodCamp is a social event with the primary goal to bring bloggers and podcasters together to share knowledge and network with each other. I hope the Columbus SMC organizers don’t feel threatened by the event, that’s certainly not the events goal and I am confident that’s not what Chris Brogan or Christopher Penn intended when they created PodCamp.

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Last summer, I purchased a new computer, right away I had to swap the new keyboard that came with it (HP Pavilion) with my previous worn down IBM keyboard. Well in October, the keyboard wasn’t working so well so I hunted through the house till I found a keyboard I could live with. Oddly, it’s a HP corporate keyboard from about 10 years ago. It works ok, I am typing on it as we speak, but a couple keys aren’t as reliable as they should be. So last week I went to Microcenter and purchased a $30 Microsoft Keyboard. It was the cheapest keyboard that had a normal keyboard layout with the 2 key wide backspace key. It also had the normal 6 keys between the mail keys and the numeric pad. Many keyboards are starting to re-engineer the 6 keys (insert, home, page up, delete, end and page down) in non standard ways. If you’re a programmer like me, that completely sucks. Some of the keyboards have a 2 key sized delete key and have removed the insert button completely. I don’t know what keyboard designers are thinking lately!

I used to always buy IBM brand keyboards but since they left the desktop/laptop computer market, they no longer sell keyboards. Oh how does that suck! In my opinion, IBM made the best keyboards.

So I’ve been trying out a Microsoft keyboard out for about 5 days and quickly came to hate it. I finally disconnected it and plan on returning it. It did have softer key action, which was keeping my wrists from getting tired. Now I am using this old HP keyboard, my wrists feel like someone stuffed rocks in them.

So the last keyboard I used that I really liked was the Dell Multimedia Keyboard pictured. This and its non multimedia variant were pretty well designed keyboards, the keys were where they should be and the space in front of the keyboard allowed you to add your own wrist pad.

There’s a few other little things about this keyboard I like. First, the mute button is on the right hand side. The Microsoft keyboard had the mute button on the left, which doesn’t help me at all. The volume control is an actual dial on the Dell, which doesn’t matter for me because I usually use the windows controls for that anyway. It makes a nice holder for my wedding ring when I feel the need to take the ring off while working.

So today, I ordered a new Dell USB Multimedia Keyboard. With shipping it was about $33.

What kind of keyboard are you using? Are you as picky as me as far as key placement?

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It’s been a while since I blogged anything. I’ve been very busy. Here is my update of what is going on in my life.

RawVoice
Been very busy working on a number of projects as usual. We are about to launch a new web site on Monday, January 14, 2008. If things go well, we’ll be launching some new service each Monday for the rest of the month. We’ll see if I can keep up.
http://www.rawvoice.com/

Spaceblue
I reprovisioned the server the day after Christmas, I am happy to report that I finally have everything on-line and running strong. I quickly got the crucial items on-line. I mainly had to get web stats and a few other little things setup after the new year. Setting up the new server took much longer that I anticipated since I switched from using Apache to Lighty web servers. It is paying off though, the server is handling the same amount of traffic without using all of the system resources.
http://www.spaceblue.com

PodCamp Ohio
I’ve been leading up the charge to organize PodCamp Ohio. Over the past month, we’ve secured a venue location and launched the web site. I am pretty happy with the core podcasters participating, they are really on the ball and have no problem taking charge of items they are good at. PodCamp Ohio will be on Saturday, June 28, 2008 from 9am to 5pm at the ITT Technical Institute in Hilliard (just west of Columbus), Ohio. More details are available on the web site.
http://www.podcampohio.com/

Association for Downloadable Media
Last fall I was elected Chair of the Measurement Committee of the Association for Downloadable Media. The entire process is exciting. I purchased a copy of Roberts Rules and have been slowly coordinating all of the members of the committee. After 12 people joined the committee, I was looking for the board members to set a limit to the size of the committee so it would not become too large to manage. The consensus of the board is to allow as many ADM members to join the committees as possible. I understand the motives, as the podcasting community is oriented in a way that encourages participation, it just makes managing the committee that much harder. I am up for the challenge and started devising ideas how to manage the situation. My position as Chair of the Measurement Committee could not be more perfect for the Association since I have both a technical background with Internet Engineering and vast experience with measuring podcast downloads.
http://www.downloadablemedia.org/

The House
Dad was in town two weeks ago when I was about to fix a shower leak. The work started with Dad reminding me to buy the tool recommended to remove the faucet cartridge in the documentation I printed out. A couple of minutes later, I broke the cartridge trying to remove it with pliers. Lesson learned, still listen to your parents! At this point I think Dad was convinced we would have to call a plumber, but my plan was to buy the removal tool and a screw tap. My plan worked luckily, with the help with an extra long screw replaced in the recommended tool. The rest of the process of installing the new cartridge went smoothly. I am happy to report the shower no longer leaks! If any family or friends need to fix a Moen shower/bath leak, let me know cause I have the recommended tool to remove the cartridge. Definitely don’t try to remove it with pliers!

San Giorgio Pasta Choo Choo Wheels
I told Heather a long time ago about Choo Choo Wheels Pasta and she looked at me rather strange. Two weeks ago I came across a package of San Giorgio brand Choo Choo Wheels and snagged a box. Sam Giorgio is my preferred pasta brand. The back of the box has a recipe for spaghetti meat sauce, so I thought I’d give it a try. I don’t have all of the details here, but the main ingredient are 2 large cans of whole pealed tomatoes, 2 small cans of tomato paste, 2 teaspoons of sugar, 1/2 cup of Parmesan cheese, graded and 1 pound of ground beef or sausage. I used a 1 pound roll of Bob Evans Italian Sausage. Cook the sausage, then mix everything except the Parmesan, bring to a boil then cook on a medium/low heat for 30+ minutes. When you are ready to serve, add the Parmesan, which will thicken the sauce. I like thick sauce, so stumbling upon this tip has revolutionized my spaghetti sauce making abilities!

Anyway, the sauce on the back of the Choo Choo Wheels box was awesome and so far is the closest thing I’ve been able to get to taste like real home made spaghetti sauce the way Grandma would make. She would cook the sauce for hours and have 3 different types of meats in the sauce. It is the standard which I use to judge all other sauces. Funny how that works.

What’s Next
I’m going to restart my Compiled Weekly podcast. The recent work I’ve been doing moving blogs around for RawVoice and reconfiguring the Spaceblue server with Lighty has given me a lot of content ideas for the show. I got a lot of knowledge to share about Lighty and tips with server management. I got just about everything automated so I don’t have to manage anything now.

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I’ve been doing some small home improvements the past few days.

Earlier in the week I installed a mop organizer in the pantry. The organizer works great so far and it freed up a lot of space.

Mop Organizer:

Yesterday I finally got around to replacing the broken drainage pipe for the sump pump on the side of the house. What a pain that was. I had to go to both Home Depot and Lowes and I still couldn’t just get 2 feet of pipe. I did get a deal at Lowes though, I got an 8 foot 3.25 OD drainage pipe for $3, since it was mostly damaged. Sadly, I’ve only used 8 inches of the pipe, so if you know anyone in need of some 3.25 OD drainage pipes about 1-3 feet long, let me know.

Before:

After:

And we’re ready for Halloween!

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