Actually from Wednesday night - and it’s really more a “fest” than a “barrage”, but “linkfest” is taken

• Top trends from top investors, live from the Churchill Club (Barron’s)
• Comcast buys Plaxo, and Marshall Kirkpatrick nails the worldview on this development (ReadWriteWeb)
• Carl Icahn knocking on your door? You need help, fast! Or do you? (Wall Street Journal)
• Affluent investors say it’s time to buy equities, but mostly from someplace other than the US (Bloomberg)

It’s going to be a hot one, so I got up pretty early.

Went out front just to make sure my lawn wasn’t littered with a free newspaper, then made some coffee and turned on the tube for the first time in almost two weeks. Since my programming guide is pretty much limited to SciFi and Discovery Channel, I was disappointed to find that Comcast has now moved the latter into the premium category - I’m not as happy with them as I thought I was last week now that half the value of my meager $14 price tag has disappeared.

Off to the net, where I found these tidbits:

• Nobody explained Twitter to me, but that may be a non-issue as the service is supposedly getting “Pownced.” Meanwhile, it is now quite easy to get an invite to Pownce as long as you don’t mind coughing up your email address. Now someone please explain Pownce to me?
• People still aren’t watching what they write in their blogs. A Google rep subtlely attacked Michael Moore’s new movie “Sicko”, the blogosphere (and/or someone’s corporate superiors) didn’t like it, and further explanation was required. Meanwhile, a journalist for Business 2.0 took a sneaky shot at Apple’s iPhone with a headline poo-pooing first day sales figures - the resulting comments called out the shoddy reporting and the writer weakly changed the headline.
• It is getting harder to buy a drink without “Big Brother” watching - I’m neither surprised nor will I be surprised when the governments instituting these types of policies find out the procedures create a monster identity theft hole.

No fun. Aw, Sunday is “fight the crowds at Home Depot” day anyway.

Today must be National Bash Comcast Day.

Someone started a rant about Comcast’s poor service. Glenn Reynolds picked up on it and is now running a poll asking his readers to help him decide which service to switch to. Others are piling on.

How about turning off the TV for a bit and getting outside, eh?

I am a Comcast subscriber. A happy Comcast subscriber. I have the minimum cable TV subscription possible, and the only reason I turn on the TV is to keep the dog company when I’m out. Even that has competition, since the neighbors love taking him, and…

I keep a Mac Mini around as a backup computer, which also serves duty as a nightly server backup machine (with a neat little AppleScript/cron job combination) and as a stereo system (married to Bose Companions, all sitting on the fireplace mantle). I’m now piping Minnesota Public Radio through it during the day - that has elevated my already stupendous canine friend into the intellectual elite, with a combination of classical music and mixed talk (although frankly, my dog would probably bite me if he knew I was comparing him to the “intellectual elite”).

I find it hilarious that people are squawking about the fact that kids aren’t too keen on the outdoors anymore while simultaneously pissing and moaning about their cable service.

By the way, I also have a Comcast internet connection, and it screams. I’ve moved twice with it and always found the techs courteous and willing to work with someone who possesses a bit of technical know-how (like understanding how to get a connection through the modem without having to install software). They are always cool as cats as far as I’m concerned.

Maybe I get treated well by them because I loved getting dirty as a kid (and still do)?

I didn’t get any spam until I started Spamroll. I got very little until just a few months ago. Now I get plenty.

Bill Gates said the problem would be solved within two years, and as of this week, time’s up. Of course, the powers that be in Redmond say it depends on where your email box is, purporting to have solved “95%” of the problem with Hotmail.

I can’t even get a POP email through to Hotmail, while sitting on a Comcast line. I guess I’m getting all this spam because I’m not using the right service.

Everyone is paying very close attention to Vonage nowadays. If some ISP isn’t flat out blocking the service (see Vonage Says ISP Blocked Its Calls), someone is pissing and moaning at the latest outage (see Vonage Internet phone service suffers outage - 03/07/05).

That tells me that Vonage is positioned to kick everyone’s behind, and “everyone” is worried.

Unless you are a die hard reader of Broadband Reports, you probably don’t hear about all the speedy ISPs crashing and burning on a daily basis. Even the big guys, like Road Runner and Comcast, suffer daily trials and tribulations - the difference is, nobody pays much attention.

No, I don’t read Broadband Reports every hour on the hour. But, I do know this:

On the same day Vonage suffered this outage, I lost my Comcast connection for an entire working day. Calls to Comcast High-Speed were met with a fast-busy until after 5pm. I went down to the local java hut to check my email, and decided to see what was up. The Comcast subscriber site noted major outages in the Washington, D.C. metro area, resulting from system upgrades earlier that morning. Well, I am in Denver, and the service was for crap. At roughly 5:30pm, I got a rep on the line, who explained to me that there were no outages in my area. Bull! My second call was a little more informative. A rep asked me what kind of modem I had - when I told him the brand, he then asked if it was a PC2100. I said yep. He then explained that Comcast was having a lot of trouble with those modems, post-network maintenance, and that the problem should be fixed soon.

Now, the point of the matter is, why wasn’t there some big press release about Comcast’s issues, while the Vonage outage was front page news.

Maybe because someone is worried about the competition Jeff Citron and his little crew of bandwidth bandits are brewing up.