Thanks for listening and downloading our podcast.  As the name of this episode says:  We are a podcast in transition.  I just want to let you know here and now that we are not going away anytime soon.

Currently our website is being re-done.  Everything there right now is functional if not cutting edge pretty.  We are getting there.  At least we have our episodes up and you can download and/or listen to them and the links are functioning.  Because I am doing so many things at once, it may take a couple more weeks to get the website to where I am happy with it.

I’ll explain why we are changing WordPress themes in my blog “Gary’s Blog†later this week.  You can find my blog on our website at IT Solutions-mi.com.  I also want to redo that website eventually.  We are also in the process of making “How-to†videos for that website.

I want to shout out a Happy Birthday to fellow Detroit area podcaster Tony Bemus.  Tony is one of three hosts (with Mary T. and Matt Enders) of the Sunday Morning Linux Review podcast.  They talk about Linux and Open Source News.

On Twitter we are being followed by Social In Detroit @SocialINDetroit.  They seem to be a Social News outlet.  I would also like to thank J Wolfgang Goerlich @jwgoerlich, Brian (The Shadow) @iamtherealbrian of the podcast Profitcast, photosbylyla @photosbylyla, Nick Touzeau @NickTouzeau of Melbourne, Australia and International Podcast Day @intlpodcastday for following us on Twitter.

Just a thought here, I was tempted to include in this episode last year’s (well deserved) rant (or maybe rail) against the winter and the cold.  We may not be getting the snow we had last year but last I checked we were exceeding last year’s cold temps for at least February. I’m going to be at the Brainstorm IT Conference in Wisconsin Dells in a couple of days and once again, I predict, it will not get warmer than 10 degrees below zero (like last year).

So speaking of Brainstorm, this weekend Ed and I will be at the 16.0 version of Brainstorm K20 IT Conference.  We hope to get a ton of vendor interviews while we are there (in addition to learning new and neat stuff).  So I am getting crunched for time here.  I want to publish at least one more podcast this week (hoping for two but will take one).  It has been so long since we released a new podcast.  I feel compelled to try to make up for that.  We are going to get back to weekly podcasts.

So the FCC has made their decision on Net Neutrality and they have seemed to have sided with President Obama and against the evil empires of Comcast and Time Warner.  Admittedly it seemed to take personal nudging from the President to force Chairman Turner to take the side that he eventually took.

We are not going to debate the pros and cons of this issue.  We have covered that nearly to death up to now.  We are going to acknowledge the decision and take yet another slap at Comcast.

They starting to look like a company that is circling its wagons.  They are being universally lambasted by the media for their despicable customer relations record.  They seem to have lost this decision.  They are going to lose the fight they have been waging behind the scenes (they and Verizon are heavily funding this) to prohibit local municipalities from setting up their own fiber networks. And then finally the takeover of Time Warner (at least to me) seems to be losing some momentum.

As well it should.  I can’t believe how a thinking, sane politician (yes politician) would be able to say there is no danger of creating a harmful monopoly with this takeover.  Let’s see a show of hands out there…..how many people think it’s a good idea to give the company with the worst customer service record in the history of business in America over 85% of the cable industry. How’s that for hyperbole?

There are two issues there.  The putrid customer service record and controlling 85% of the market.  Either issue there should (in a sane environment) enough to deny this takeover from occurring.  Just my opinion.

In this podcast Ed and I are first going to take one last slap at Comcast and the Net Neutrality thing and then we are going to talk about autonomous cars on our roads and Raspberry Pi: (just a programming note: we will be covering the Raspberry Pi movement on an upcoming episode probably THDP39 or 40).  Thanks and let’s get on with it.