E-mail and Me and Time-Warner too.

The thing about getting older is that my tolerance level isn't what it used to be. Just as teenage males sometimes take into their mid-20's to have a part of their brains fuse (or whatever it does) and let them realize there are often dangerous consequences to their actions, I also read that a part of the brain unfuses (or whatever it does) in older people and drops the filtering mechanism that formerly prevented us from just saying whatever we want. That said, I find myself growing more and more impatient with the way things are.

For quite a while I've enjoyed "high-speed" Internet through Adelphia. I have no idea how the company compares to others because like so many other areas up here, it's the only game in town. All I know is that it was fine enough to keep me from going back to my dial-up provider (great folks but too slow). Well, as Frost wrote, way leads on to way, and Adelphia sold out to Time-Warner (T-W). I didn't notice any real difference... until a few weeks ago. I began getting "High Water Mark Notification" notices (I have to check the wording on that) which warned me that my e-mail inbox was filling up (something I used to do painlessly with my car, but that's another story for another time). They send the notice when there is 10Meg in the inbox (I am guessing that's where the measurement is taken); when the box reaches 20Meg, messages are bounced back to the sender. Either I never exceeded the limits before or since the new company took over they came up with a way to squeeze customers to spend more for more space. With my typical e-mail w/video attachment coming in at 5 or 6 Meg, the space gets used up pretty fast.

As I feel I am already paying them enough for what I am getting (cable TV as well), I checked out G-mail. It's free and allows 6522 Meg of free e-mail (as a T-W rep told me if I use G-mail, I have to look at ads [there are ads but I don't have to look at them] - they're down the right side of the screen). So, let's see; I can pay for a service where if a friend sends me three video e-mails, anything after those gets bounced (returned to sender), or I can have a service for free (paid for by advertisers) that will allow me to receive 1,087 6-Meg videos before I run out of space. I'd ask you to do the math, but I just did.

Anyhow, maybe T-W will see this and upgrade its service, but it's a large company and it doesn't have to. Fortunately, it's not totally the only game in town when my town now includes the rest of the world (via the web).

Later.