Kirk 1, Verizon 0 (or maybe the other way around)

Well, the great verizon debacle finally came to an end yesterday after three more tries and denials. I got through to an incredibly unpleasant woman who told me that it would be $80 a month for DSL + one static IP. That seemed steep, especially considering I had just gotten off the phone with a pleasant fellow from RCN (on the first try no less) who had informed me that through RCN I could get Broadband for $20 and a static IP for $20. When asked what made Verizon's IP address twice as good as RCN's, the lady said "That's just what it costs. If you don't want it you don't have to get it." While I admire her honesty, one would think that they would want my money. Apparently not the case. I have to say that I don't look forward to the rigmarole that will be canceling Verizon DSL, but I will be happy to give them less money each month. And, I won't have to pay some incompetent hosting company for a sliver of a crappy server.

For the record, finding a decent hosting setup is incredibly painful. To get a decent heap on a server, you have to pay more than $80/month. How many servers can you buy for that over time?? And if you do the shared hosting options, it costs $20/mo and you get 96-160MB of dedicated heap. That's a pittance. Ridiculous. There has to be a better way. At any rate, hopefully configuring things on my server with a static IP address won't be a gigantic nightmare!