MINIsOnTop 2010

Posted on by Ian C.

This year MINIsOnTop has a new organizational crew, so expect some exciting changes – the first, announced today, is that when registration opens soon, it will be “online”; no more printing and mailing of forms!
Don’t fret – MINIsOnTop is happening again this year! We’re just moving a bit slower than our predecessors Ian, Theo and Michael did.
Registration will be online this year and will open soon. As always, it will be first-come, first-served. We recommend signing up for the MOT announcements list so you’ll be notified when it opens.
After rave reviews last year, the Attitash Grand Summit Hotel will be our base hotel again this year. The Attitash is a luxury resort, centrally located in Bartlett, NH between the Kancamagus Highway and the Mount Washington Auto Road. Please call (800) 233-7699 to book your room and be sure to ask for the MINIsOnTop special rate! Please note: the special rate is not available for booking online.

Personally, I haven’t figured what to do with MINIsOnTop this year, as GPMINI will likely remain in Florida, and showing up in an “SUV” Q5 might be un-popular 😉

Comcast data usage

Posted on by Ian C.

So, Comcast has introduced a “data usage meter”, and I find it rather suspicious!

Their FAQ makes such statements as:
The vast majority – more than 99% – of our customers will not be impacted by a 250 GB monthly bandwidth or data usage threshold … 250GB is far beyond the current median of data usage for a typical residential Internet customer in a month … median data usage by Comcast High-Speed Internet customers is approximately 2 – 4GB each month … 95% of service customers could increase their data usage many times over and still not be considered an excessive user …

But then their chart claims my January usage to be well past 50% of their limit! I wouldn’t mind if I torrent’ed heaps of movies, and ran SlingPlayer every day – but I don’t … of course Comcast provide no data statistics to back up their single number, so there’s no way to draw any conclusions from what they claim; I suppose I’ll need to look at traffic monitoring!

Anyone else with experience of this new Comcast feature?

“Second Wednesday”

Posted on by Ian C.

Winter storms in New England cancelled our flight back home today, so we’re “suffering” for a couple extra days in Florida – with the benefit that Margaret & I were able to join James & Steve and others at the George & Dragon pub for Sunshine MINIs of Orlando’s “Second Wednesday” get-together.
It’s lighter longer down here than back in Boston – but still it was dark by 7pm, so these pics are poor even by iPhone standards; though like they say “the best camera is the one you have with you”, so these pics will have to do!

Outside the George & Dragon was a London bus, so I lined up GPMINI for a picture – and the other MINIs lined up there too 🙂

I also learned from James of his Library Of Motoring blog, which he’s regularly posting to at the moment; I added it to the Google Reader feed list.