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When Melissa and I picked August 27, 2005 as our wedding date, we had no idea our first few days of marriage would be impacted by one of the most destructive natural disasters in American history.

We were set to depart from Solon, IA on Monday, August 29, 2005. Destination: Disney World. The route included stops in St. Louis, Memphis, and New Orleans. Hurricane Katrina had other plans for us.

Hurricane Katrina made landfall in Slidell, LA on the very same day we were set to head south. As a result, I spent Sunday afternoon canceling hotels and looking for a new route.

The new route included stops in St Louis, Lexington, and Charleston. Ironically, despite the new route, we did end up drive through the remains of Katrina in Kentucky. But, it was nothing more than a moderate rain storm.

It’s an interesting way to start off a new marriage, but perhaps an appropriate metaphor: Sometimes in life if you are headed down a path where troubles lie ahead, you need to change paths.

Happy 5th Anniversary to my absolutely wonderful wife Melissa. Here’s to 45 more!

PS: The Cornfield Mafia shall rise again.

I am officially very excited about NBA Jam for Wii!

Rest in Peace LOST, thank you for a wonderful mind-bending ride.

By the end of the year, Verizon Wireless will begin rolling out it’s new LTE based network. For those who dont know what LTE is, it’s the next high speed wireless data network with crazy fast connection speeds.

As it stands today, if you buy a smart phone you can pay upwards of $40-60 a month for just the right to TALK and another $30-60 a month if you want to have a data plan. In the future, this needs to change. We are moving into a culture where data and voice connectivity is almost mandatory to function in today’s society. E-mail, Facebook, Twitter, GPS, and basic web browsing is needed on the go. But seriously, who wants to pay $120 a month for a cell phone!?

The new model should be simply this: Buy a “bucket of megabytes” (as Verizon Chief Executive Lowell McAdam calls it). Included in that bucket is all voice and data transmissions. Yes, this bucket would include all text messages as well. Since LTE is an all IP network, you dont need a cell phone number through Verizon unless you choose to. If I like, my cell can be linked to a Skype number, or Google Voice number.

That my rant, now I am done.

Text messages is a money making machine for cell phone companies. It’s an absolute cash cow. At 160 characters, a single message would be 1280 bits. Therefore, 6553.6 text messages equals one megabyte of data. At 20 cents a message on Verizon (assuming you don’t have a text plan), that would cost $1,497.97…. per megabyte of data. As a simple comparison: If I use data on my “feature phone”, it’s $1.99 per megabyte of data.

Here is the math for those who are interested:
1 character = 8 bits of data
140 characters = 1120 bits
1 megabyte = 8,388,608 bits
8,388,608 bits/1120 bits = 7489.8285 messages
7489.8285 messages * $0.20 = $1,497.97 per megabyte of data

In another example: my wife has 250 text messages a month for $5. Sounds like a great deal, right? umm… not really. That’s 2 cents per message. That doesn’t look too bad really. It’s significantly cheaper than then 20 cents per message fee when you don’t have a texting plan. But, let’s break this down again…

250 messages * 1120 bits= 280,000 bits of data
$5/280,000 bits = $0.000017857 per bit of data
1 megabyte = 8,388,608 bits
8,388,608 bits * $0.000017857 = $149.80 per megabyte of data

Text Message cost prices are from Verizon Wireless as of May 10th, 2010.
All computer unit conversions were made by using the simple conversion tool over at unit-conversion.info