Photos: Today in History: Nov. 11 | Photo Galleries | High Speed Winding & Braiding Machine

Blue Cross NC’s Hike NC program. All hikes are free and led by a trained guide or park ranger. gohikenc.com.

Zapped: A man and woman are charged over an incident where a University of Wollongong student is hit with a stun gun while parking his car at Keiraville. 

Jokic turned in another impressive stat line, also adding six assists, three steals and one blocked shot. He was 16 of 29 from the floor and 4 of 5 from the line.

Happy New Year! This new year brings the opportunity to refresh, renew, purify, and transform your energetic body through healing qigong.

But this is America, so there’s rarely any accommodation for the pedestrian along the Interstate complex, nary a sidewalk to be found. So even though theoretically the restaurants are within walking distance you risk your life getting there, walking the shoulder of a 50 mph road, hopping over ditches, crossing unlit parking lots. I drew the line at walking over the Interstate overpass that had a mere 18” high wall instead of a sturdy fence. I’m getting shivers just remembering it.

NEWS … CROWLEY ESTABLISHES NEW YORK STATE COMMITTEE … House Democratic Caucus Chairman JOE CROWLEY’s team sent out a letter to general-election donors this morning notifying them they would be receiving a refund check, but they added this: “We would like to ask you to please re-write the check to ‘Joe for NY,’ a NYS committee that the Congressman has established to position himself for future opportunities.”

Celebrate Recovery: 7 p.m. Thursdays, West Market Street UMC, 302 W. Market St., GB. Bill Ellison, 336-275-4587, Ext. 17, bellison@wmsumc.org.

Jay Mathahs, of Pro Ag Solutions LLC in Ventura, was recently recognized as a Master Seed Representative for Wyffels Hybrids at the company’s regional sales meeting. The gathering also includes training and discussions on corn seed sales.

Stephen F. Sisolak, Nevada’s first Democratic governor in two decades, was elected on Nov. 6, 2018. He will take the oath of office on the front steps of the Capitol Monday at 11:30 a.m., according to his inauguration web site.

2020 WATCH — “Dem Rep. Swalwell eyeing presidential run in 2020,” by CNN’s Lindsey Ellefson: CNN

THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION — “Trump hits corporate violators — with a feather,” NBC’s Suzy Khimm: “Across the federal government, the Trump administration is emphasizing the less-punitive approach to combat white-collar crime and civil violations by expanding its efforts to reward companies that come forward to report violations and take steps to fix them, based on an NBC News analysis of enforcement actions at multiple key agencies since the president took office.

One recurring theme we noticed: new customers are getting better packages, for less money, than existing customers. When pricing out comparable bundles for the bill guides, we generally saw that new customers were being offered the same or better service for $10-$20 less than our current customer. We even found one ten-year Charter customer, whose bill we did not publish, paying roughly $75 per month more than a brand-new customer, getting similar service, in their neighborhood would. Customers who do happen to live in competitive markets might as well shop around, check with other businesses, and see who’s offering the best deal. Competition has this way of dropping prices and improving available service, after all. Unfortunately, a huge percentage of us live in markets where we are stuck with a cable/broadband monopoly, so switching is off the table. The conventional wisdom says that if you can’t quit, you may as well negotiate. And for a long time, that was good advice. As recently as 2014, our siblings at Consumer Reports put together a handy list of tips for negotiating a better deal with your cable company. Even in a 2015 survey Consumer Reports still found that by and large, the 42% of customers who tried to negotiate were able either to reduce their bills or to get more services included for the prices they were paying. Anecdotally, however, it appears that the big companies — especially Comcast — aren’t as interested in negotiating with you as they used to be. Consumerist readers who have tried to negotiate better TV or triple-play rates with Comcast in recent months tell Consumerist that the company is simply not playing anymore, and the calls are ending either with rates unchanged or with Comcast calling a would-be cord-cutter’s bluff, and cheerfully snipping their service. Why the turn-around from extreme efforts at retention to a “don’t let the door hit’cha on the way out” attitude? Perhaps the wave of high profile, awkward, painful, retention-related PR disasters the company endured in 2014 and early 2015 has finally pushed it in that direction. Or maybe they’re just reading the writing on the wall: pay-TV has been losing customers for a while, after all, while broadband subscriptions are going up, up, up. And pay TV costs a lot more to provide, and has much thinner profit margins on it, than broadband service does. So, friends and readers, we leave you with a parting curiosity. We want to know: if you think your bills are too dang high, have you tried negotiating, and how has that worked out for you? [polldaddy type=”iframe” survey=”B107034769717C73″ height=”auto” domain=”kcoxconsumer” id=”cable-negotiation-1″]