And yet another open letter to Click! Network management:

One of your people called me a few days ago to talk about DOCSIS 3.0

I'm sorry, I don't recall his name.

He was under the strong impression Comcast just rolled out DOCSIS 3.0 here in Tacoma in December 2009.

WRONG.

As I told the guy, Comcast rolled out DOCSIS 3.0 here in the Seattle Tacoma area slightly over a year ago - mid-December 2008. Check out this thread on dslreports.com and please note the posts' date: DOCSIS 3.0 available in Tacoma

Yes, that's right: Comcast rolled out DOCSIS 3.0 in Tacoma in mid-December, 2008. The first post in the thread is dated 12-19-2008.

And you guys thought the roll-out had just happened? Seriously? And according to what the guy told me, you're just now getting ready to ask the city council for money to build-out a DOCSIS 3.0 system?

This really disturbs me.

How on earth could you people have missed a major market event such as that?

The guy I talked to told me that the vast majority of your customers are at the Res 1 level, so that was another reason Click saw no real incentive to upgrade. Well duh! You ever suppose the reason all your customers are at Res 1 is because the other products are so inferior that anyone interested in real bandwidth and real value will go to Comcast?

Take another look:

Current Comcast prices:
1 Mbps down and 384 Kbps up - $24.95 per month
15 Mbps down and 3 Mbps up - $19.99 for 6 months then $42.95 per month
20 Mbps down and 4 Mbps up - $52.95 per month
30 Mbps down and 7 Mbps up - $62.95 per month
50 Mbps down and 10 Mbps up - $99.95 per month

Click packages:

3 Mbps down and 256 Kbps up - $32.95 per month - "Res 1"
10 Mbps down and 768 Kbps up - $42.95 per month - "Res 2"
15 Mbps down and 768 Kbps up - $62.95 per month - "Res 3"

With price and speed differences as shown above, what incentive exists for the discerning customer to choose Click? Hometown loyalty? You offer BAD deals. Not even mediocre, but actually bad. Click is a terrible value. A vastly inferior and over-priced product.

What you have remaining - the core Res 1 subscribers are obviously the people who don't care. And you still have no $24.95 price point package to compete with Comcast.

But by ignoring the market and allowing yourself to be non-competitive, you've driven away many other people who would otherwise subscribe.

I'm really concerned that your current management is running Click into the ground, and squandering the investment made by the people of this city.

Things must change, and quickly.

Like I said in the last post, I don't usually read the Tacoma News Tribune. It's a scandal rag, owned by the McClatchy organization.

Last week, I couldn't help looking at their story on the Port of Tacoma - a copy was lying there on a table at work, open to the story, Port of Tacoma's Blair Development: Millions to nowhere. So reluctantly - knowing that with a title like that, it couldn't be a good story - I read on.

In the article, they tell the story of the development of the proposed new container terminal for NYK.

Briefly, in 2007, the Port of Tacoma signed a deal with the shipping line NYK, to provide them a new dedicated 168 acre container terminal in Tacoma, located on the tip of the Blair Peninsula. Integral to building the new terminal was relocating an existing terminal, Totem Ocean Trailer Express (TOTE), and the demolition of existing buildings, as well as the cleanup of some toxic waste sites.

Because the Port didn't own all the property necessary for the project, it spent some $146 million on property acquisition and demolition.

In 2007 when the deal with NYK was inked, the economy was going great guns. All the projections - which were accepted pretty much universally - held that Chinese imports would explode in the coming years, with cargo growth rates reaching as much as 25% a year. The big fear, up and down the West Coast, was that we would not have enough dock space or the infrastructure available to handle the glut of Chinese cargo coming in.

As late as January 2008, I can remember maritime industry executives publicly berating the West Coast ports that they were derelict in their duty for not preparing for the onslaught of Chinese imports. The specter of newly developing ports in Mexico and Canada was dangled as a probable outcome if the West Coast ports didn't act quickly to provide additional capacity.

At that time, Port of Tacoma, and Tim Farrell, the Port's Executive Director, were hailed as visionary and forward-thinking for making the NYK deal. Bold leaders cited as examples of what other West Coast ports should do.

Also worth mentioning is the fact that Tacoma enjoys an almost unique place among West Coast ports - of all the major US ports on this coast, Tacoma is the only location with large amounts of suitable land adjacent to navigable waterways that could be developed into marine terminals. LA and Long Beach are pretty well built-out. San Francisco and Oakland are mostly built out, as is Seattle. Portland has the bar on the river and can only accommodate smaller ships.

Tacoma is really the only major West Coast US port with a good amount of room left for expansion.

The only serious competition is in Canada - in Vancouver and the new port at Prince Rupert - both of which are marketing themselves very aggressively.

So the Port of Tacoma signing a deal for a new terminal for NYK in 2007 was a no-brainer. It was a deal designed to ace out our Canadian competition. And it would set up Tacoma for the future.

That's the climate of when the NYK deal came about. We were in a highly competitive situation. No one ever thought the economy would tank.

But stuff does happen.

The TNT's article cited cost over-runs as another major problem with the NYK project. Cost over-runs in any kind of large project like this are inevitable. If you look at 10 similar sized projects, public or private, I suspect you'd see similar escalations in costs. So this really isn't out of the ordinary.

The fact that NYK backed out of the deal is only reasonable. West Coast ports right now are way under capacity, and will likely remain that way for some time. Conditions change. Deciding not to finish building the terminal now with the current prevailing world economic climate is only reasonable. It's an appropriate response to changing conditions.

But that in no way invalidates the initial decision to build the terminal.

As to the $190 million already spent by the port:

• $146 million to acquire the property and demolish vacant buildings.
• $35 million on design and planning.
• $6 million on environmental cleanup and permitting.
• $3 million in staff resources to support the development.

That sounds like a whole lot of money but in the long term, the only money potentially wasted is probably the $35 million on design and planning, and the $3 million in staff resources. But even so, I wouldn't write it off just yet - some of the effort may yet pay off in future projects.

If the port spent $146 million in buying property and demolition, and $6 million in environmental cleanup, that's likely money well spent - and an investment that will see a very good return in the future.

The real estate market may be flat right now but that won't last. Commercial land that has the potential to be developed into a marine terminal is extraordinarily valuable. When the global economy does recover - and it will, it's just a matter of time - then developments will again take off.

Chinese imports will take off again. It may be one year or even 2-3 years or longer, but the world economy will heal and when it does, Tacoma will again have to look at building new dock space.

If the Port bought that land at 2007-2008 prices, then in the long run it'll be a bargain. Real estate is almost always a good investment. It'll payoff handsomely. The costs of the inevitable environmental cleanups now are probably less than it would cost later, so that also is a wise investment.

The land they bought is a great investment for the Port.

So what do we have in the final analysis? The Port spent maybe under $40 million on a well-conceived deal to gain a major new customer. A move which everyone at the time - up and down the coast - hailed as a bold, visionary move.

So now the News Tribune conducts a sensationalistic, witch hunt and assigns "blame" for the supposed "fiasco" - which they largely they invented - onto Tim Farrell.

This is asinine. If any one single person is to blame, they might single out George W. Bush for destroying the world economy (and that probably isn't totally fair because he had a lot of help in the matter).

But Tim Farrell isn't to be blamed for anything at all. He did his job well. The project was a victim of circumstances, pure and simple. No one in their wildest imaginations would have thought shipping or the economy generally would decline like it has.

Let's face it, the whole thing is about selling newspapers - messy scandals are great fodder for the presses.

It's not what the TNT reported - I'm sure their facts are all correct. It's what they left out of the story that gives it their trademark bias. By failing to report the whole story, they've made Farrell look like a bad guy - when he wasn't at all. They've damaged an innocent person, possibly cost him his job. All to sell newspapers.

And that's why I don't read the Tacoma News Tribune.

Perhaps if they'd just stick with stories about women impregnated by space aliens? That works well for their competition (the National Enquirer).

I don't generally read the Tacoma News Tribune. It's a McClatchy "newspaper" - and I use that term loosely. McClatchy rags all seem to tout the McClatchy line - they're anti-labor, right-wing, rags with a very specific, narrow agenda. I guess you could say they're the print equivalent of Fox News.

When McClatchy bought the TNT from the Baker family years ago, one of the first things they did was engineer the breaking of the newspaper's union - pretty much just as they've done at most all the other McClatchy rags. That kinda set the tone for everything else.

I stopped reading the TNT - cancelled my subscription - when they came out with a story about longshore workers in Tacoma, about the longshore casual selection process. The story was quite biased and the editorial that followed was a sniveling, whiny piece of drivel - motivated by what was obviously the fact that the editor's kid must not have gotten a casual card and the editor was pissed.

When you intimately know a subject - I am a longshoreman in Tacoma - then it's easy to separate fact from fiction. The story about ILWU Local 23 was severely biased. And if the TNT promotes lies about that, then I have to figure the rest of their coverage is similarly biased.

So like I said, I quit subscribing.

I did pick up an occasional Sunday paper - mostly for the ads. And I continued to read the online version - for the local news.

Then a few months ago, the paper published yet another whiny, anti-labor editorial that was blatantly untrue and biased - and since then, I quit reading the online version.

At that time, I sent the following letter to the editors of the TNT which (not surprisingly) they refused to publish.

Editors:

I read with interest your recent op-ed piece titled, State employees finding out how other half lives.
It was a great reminder of the McClatchy organization's anti-union, anti employee bias.

I haven't paid to read the TNT in quite some time; but after reading this recent story, I've decided to quit reading even the free online version. The bias is just too much to take. I've got my gag reflex to consider.

It's not a big deal giving up the TNT.

Aside from the ad inserts, the only thing you really had going for you was the local news coverage.

But Tacoma Weekly actually does local news better, now - online and in print. Sad but true. They've got a nice website, and it doesn't have all those nasty, annoying pop-ups like your site does.

As to national and international news: better, more authoritative sources for national and foreign news are a dime a dozen, online - the New York Times, Washington Post, Jerusalem Post, London Daily Mail, on and on... the list is endless.

Your paper, sir, has become superfluous.

This is a sad event.

I recall the glory days of the TNT when the Baker family still held forth - I suspect that period will be viewed as the golden age of newspaper journalism in Tacoma.

But that business model has become outmoded. Print journalism is in its death throes.

It's not going to be long till the TNT folds, just like the PI - and who would have thought that would ever happen?

When the end does come, I will shed a tear - one - for that which was once an honest newspaper. And I will miss the ads...

As an aside to Mr. Zeeck, after the dust settles, may I suggest you contact Karl Rove - I've heard he's looking for a new PR flak - that oughta be right up your alley.

Have a great day,

Mike Pellegrini
Tacoma

Editor's note: We came within about an inch of this actually happening. Let's not forget!

We’re lucky to have secured a pre-release excerpt from the new Time Magazine issue set to be on newsstands the week of December 21, 2009 – Time’s Person of the Year edition.

2009 Person of the Year

Selecting the Person of The Year is always a tough call, but given the recent political developments in the United States and the world generally, this year was somewhat easier and we were unanimous in picking George W, Bush as our 2009 Person of the Year.

It’s easily demonstratable that George W, Bush has made life much safer for God fearing Christians the world over, and on that basis alone, our choice for Person of the Year was easy.

In the turmoil following the terrorist bombing of the 2008 Democratic National Convention – which precipitated the loss of all the top Democratic Party leadership including nominee Senator Barack Obama – George W. Bush boldly took charge, suspending the presidential elections, declaring martial law.

By immediately rounding up all the godless heathen terrorists – Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, homosexuals, anarchists, liberals and the like – the United States is now finally enjoying the peace and safety we deserve.

Similarly, the purification of Iran with the neutron bombs was also a stroke of genius. By killing all the godless heathen terrorists and leaving the infrastructure intact, George Bush made it possible for American public to have cheap gasoline once again.

Our hats are off to George W, Bush!

Continuing coverage:

George W. Bush and Faith – page 24
Our Mission to China: converting godless heathens is fun and rewarding – page 25
My Legacy: By George W. Bush – page 26
Osama bin Laden sighted again – capture imminent – page 26
The First Lady’s perspective – by Laura Bush – page 27

Sirs:

I'm a regular KPIG listener. I live in Tacoma, WA, and listen to the internet stream. I've been a regular listener pretty much since KPIG went live online. In the 70's, I lived in the Santa Cruz area and was a big fan of KFAT.

I'd like to register a protest concerning Mapleton's decision to do away with live DJ's at KPIG on the overnight shift.

KPIG is the last of what sadly is a dying breed - a radio station run by actual human beings, rather than programmed by computer-generated playlists with voice-over's from talent located on the East Coast or wherever.

The reason KPIG has been so successful is that it fills a unique niche - there really aren't any other stations where the DJ's actually choose much of what gets played. This is the last living remnant of "Free-Form FM" radio, a style popularized in the 60's and 70's which has since faded.

I particularly like the fact that the DJ's often play a lot of cross-genre music, not always sticking to a pure Americana format. Perhaps Laura Ellen deliberately designed the Americana genre loose to accommodate DJ choices? If so, that was a brilliant stroke.

But the balance of radio is a ClearChannel wasteland.

It seems the majority of radio today is mainly of the "satellite radio," variety - which is sanitized, homogenized, filtered, and re-packaged - to the point where every station, regardless of genre, sounds almost completely the same. All playing the same 40 songs (of whatever genre) over and over and over and over...

I abhor that kind of radio. I refuse to listen.

If you do away with live DJ's, then you've destroyed the one element that makes KPIG unique. KPIG would become just another radio station. It would lose that quirky, eccentric, unpredictable goodness that makes KPIG what it is.

I am aware of the realities of running a business. Perhaps you could cut executive/clerical/administrative staff, instead? Have everyone in management tighten their belts?

Or, another possibility might be offering a live, CD quality stream on a subscription basis. NOT Real Player. If that venture failed in the past, it was because of the bloatware/spyware/malware that Real builds into all their products - I refuse to install any Real product on all of my computers. The period when the internet stream was offered only on Real was the only time I have stopped listening to KPIG.

But surely there are other stream-casters that you could work with? Put up a CD quality stream with a company other than Real and I'll buy a monthly subscription - and I'm sure many others will as well.

Thanks for bringing KPIG to the world. Please don't tear down what Laura built!

Sincerely,

Mike Pellegrini
Tacoma, WA