Verizon rocks.
With one call to the billing department I was able to reduce my monthly DSL service rate and almost double my downstream bandwidth from 768/128 to 1500/128. My line qualified for the speed bump and will be reprovisioned on 5/7. I still am blown away at how much easier they are to deal with compared to my old telco (Ameritech) or DSL provider ( the late Telocity / DirecTV DSL).
I caught over @ DSLR that effective today Verizon is going to be upgrading their consumer DSL service from 768/128 to 1500/128 and lowering the monthly charge for $34.95. Assuming this actually happens in my area I’ll be happy - it is not every day you end up getting more from less especially from your local Telco.
Granted to take advantage of this offer I need to call them and request that they stop charging me my current higher rate for less bandwidth. I didn’t get a chance to call today since their offices are currently closed. Hopefully tomorrow when I call their CSRs will have a clue.
Heather and I met with our builder today to finalize the details of our new home. It amazes me the sheer number of things that you have to consider when building a new home. We probably spent about three hours making decisions about everything from what colors to paint the exterior of our house, to what style / color / texture of carpet we want, down to what color grout we want for our tile countertops. Hell I didn’t know grout came in different colors!
Read the rest of this entry »
Last night we ended up watching Whore of the Rings which was a poor attempt to create an adult movie in the vein of Lord of the Rings. It tells the tale of Gancock the wizard and group of heroes who try to save “Central Earth” from an evil sorceress. It was pretty weak as both an adult film and as a Lord of the Rings parody. At least the sheer absurdity of it made it amusing.
Today Heather and I spent the afternoon bowling.
The last time either of us bowled was back when we had visited Japan in the summer of 2000. Needless to say my bowling technique hasn’t improved with time. The years I spent watching Bowling With the Champs as a kid didn’t seem to help either. A 7 or 8 year old kid on the lane next to us ended up with a better score than either one of us. At least I ended up winning 3 out of 4 games we played.
I was listening to the radio today (technically it was Friday but I haven’t gone to bed yet) and I heard an advertisement for Dish Network satellite television. The ad featured a supposed digital cable customer complaining about how her current service wasn’t entirely digital. The insinuation was that the cable company was ripping her off by passing off some analog signals in her digital package.
The sure absurdity of this made me laugh.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tonight Heather and I attended a book signing for Kushiel’s Avatar which is a novel Heather recently read and enjoyed. The turn out was pretty low with only about 15 people attending. I felt a bit out of place since I was probably the only person in the audience who didn’t have a clue what the book was about (it is the third in a series). Jacqueline Carey, the author, gave a reading and even afterwards I still don’t have a clue what the book is about. Since the audience was so small and we were sitting right in front I did my best to pose as an interested fan.
A new Terminator 3 trailer was released today. This trailer does make the movie look much more promising than the last trailer. Even so my expectations are pretty low. Creatively I am not sure how much ground there is left to cover with the Terminator story. I have a bad feeling this will end up being an inferior retread.
I finally got sick of all the cruft that has accumulated on my personal PC at home and I decided to format and re-install Windows XP today. It seems like over time Windows self destructs in a phenomena I have dubbed Windows Atrophy. I was a bit concerned that re-activation would be a pain but fortunately it went smoothly. Now Windows is running snappy again.
