Demonoid is back online!

After months (early September) of being down due to a hardware failure that caused data loss, the Demonoid torrent tracker is finally back on line. Welcome Back!

For all things ClimateGate

To keep up with all of the latest developments on ClimateGate, Watts Up With That is the place to be!

DVD drive stopped working on Gateway laptop...it wasn't hardware!

A friend of mine gave me his Gateway laptop to fix because the CD/DVD drive had stopped working. Naturally I assumed it was a bad drive, but I checked it out first by inserting a disk, which did not autorun. Then I realized, as I tried to navigate to the drive in Explorer, that it wasn't even present on the system.

A trip into the Device Manager showed that the device had a caution mark on it. I deinstalled the drive, rebooted, and reinstalled the drive, but it still was no good.

Yep, must be a bad drive right? It isn't even recognized by the system! But then I found this Microsoft document, which talked about removing the UpperFilter and LowerFilter for the drive in the registry.

I did that, and poof, the drive magically started working again. I wish I could remember the entire model number of the drive, but all I can seem to recall is that it was some variant of a TSSTcorp CD/DVD TS drive. I also don't know the model of the Gateway laptop...but it did have a 1.7Mhz processor, 1Gb of memory, and ran Vista so slow that I thought I would pull my hair out waiting on that thing to do any mundane task!!!

I hate Vista and have been using Windows 7 since it was released in January. I have 2 official copies pre-ordered from newegg for the Oct 22 release.

My son's 1986 Merkur XR4Ti is for sale

Well, the time has come, after 23 years in the family, for our 1986 Merkur XR4Ti to leave the family. My dad bought the car new in '86, after some positive reviews and much prodding by ...ME... He enjoyed it for several years, and then it started having some issues, not the least of which was a leaking steering rack, so he parked it and only drove it around the yard a bit to excercise it. In about 2005, my son saw it in the garage and decided he had to have it, so my dad sold it to him for about $1000 after getting the rack and the rear brake cylinders replaced. If that's where the saga ended, it wouldn't be quite as interesting, would it? Didn't think so. We've had numerous issues with the car (which I won't detail here), and it just isn't a reliable, every day driver type of car. So, we are going to sell it. I think, given the amount of work that we've put into it, we should be able to get $1000, but that remains to be seen in these tough times. It has just under 110,000 miles, and lots of new parts, including tires. There is ZERO rust, but the original paint it fading. If someone knows how to work on these cars, this one is a great project car, because it does run, but could use some fine-tuning to get it in good enough shape to be that reliable, every day driver that we hoped it would be.

I'll probably list it in the Merkur Club forums.

Peter Cetera was AWESOME!

The wife and I took in a Peter Cetera concert at The Fred in Peachtree City, GA on Saturday night. What a show! Peter was absolutely fantastic! We had front row seats (just behind the section of tables that front the stage), so the view and sound were both amazing. My only regret is that I don't own some sort of recording device that would have allowed me to secretly record the show....Yes! It was that good!

Maybe next time :-)

Dell laptop sound issues....IDT High Definition Audio

A friend of mine brought me her computer to fix. She had recently contracted a few viruses and/or spyware intrusions, and the morons that she took it to fix it ended up losing all of her data (except for her music) and reinstalling the OS (Windows XP MCE). However, now the sound doesn't work (I would have thought they would have made sure the thing was working before giving it back, but like I said, they are morons). The laptop is Dell Inspiron E1505. When you bring up the Device Manager, you see a "!" next to IDT High Definition Audio Codec. I found this document which explains that we simply need to install the SigmaTel drivers from the Dell site (I had already tried the Creative Labs drivers, but they didn't work). So I downloaded the SigmaTel drivers, uninstalled the current IDT drivers (right click, Uninstall), rebooted, ran the downloaded driver file, and all is fine now.

I personally don't buy Dell (for reasons which are more than obvious to those who know me), but my brother has a Dell. I've already yelled at him about it....

Firefox 3.5 has a memory leak....

I'm now running Firefox 3.5 on my Windows 7 64-bit RC1 (7100) release. Last night I had iconified Firefox to the taskbar, with only a single tab open (my home page, which is nothing more than file on my system with a list of favorite sites), and when I tried to open it this morning, it would not open. This is the 2nd time this has happened since my 3.5 upgrade last week, so I brought up the Task Manager and found that Firefox indeed has a memory leak. This single instance of Firefox had consumed over 1.2Gb of memory. Not only could I not bring up the old window, I could also not launch a new instance of Firefox.

I was able to kill Firefox with the task manager, but this is truly disappointing behavior from such a long-running product as Firefox.

I have monitored it throughout the day so far, and my current instance with 4 tabs open has grown to nearly 132Mb of memory. I will continue to monitor and report back here, but will also check for a bug report on mozilla's site.

Easy as 1..2..3...WRT54G wireless router now working as an access point

Well, that was much easier than I thought. It took just a couple of minutes to get my old WRT54G Linksys wireless router up and running as an access point, thereby allowing me to disable the somewhat unreliable wireless access through my AT&T RG. Here's how I did it:

1. I disabled wireless on the RG
2. I plugged my WRT54G (port 1) into a free port on my Linksys Workgroup Switch.
3. Since my WRT54G was already set up as 192.168.1.1, I didn't have to modify that, but I did have to disabled DHCP on the Basic Setup screen.
3. The "Internet Connection Type" was set to "Automatic Configuration - DHCP", so I left it there (later I actually tried setting it to "Disabled", and that broke the wireless connections, so I put it back).
4. Since this router had been set up prior with all the wireless security and features, I didn't have to monkey around with any more settings.

It just works! Hopefully my son won't have wireless disconnects during his marathon WoW sessions now. The only other tidbit of data is that I'm running firmware v4.71.1 Hpyerwrt 2.1b1 + Thibor15c [May 12 2006]. I installed that some time ago for my torrent activity, and see no reason to change.

Linksys WRT54G router as an access point

Well, the wireless on my AT&T U-verse RG (Residential Gateway) has flaked out a few times lately, and I don't recall nearly that many issues with my old, reliable Linksys WRT54G, so I'm gonna attempt to utilize the Linksys router as an Access Point, thereby allowing me to disable the wireless on the RG. Hopefully it'll work. I found a guide here, and some suggestions here as well. It doesn't sound too hard, and since the kids are away and Mandy is sleeping off a headache, I'm gonna give it a shot.

I upgraded my iPhone to the .... new iPhone 3G S

I was a good little boy and stuck with my first gen iPhone 2G from day 1, 2 years ago. On launch day of the 3G S though, I lucked out when my local AT&T store had a few 32Gb models still in stock. It's black...who cares! I put it in a case anyway. They also really pushed screen protectors, which made me think that Apple had maybe degraded the quality of the screen since the original model. After 2 years, my original iPhone has exactly ZERO scratches on it. It's in an Incase leather sleeve, and I usually carry it in a pocket by itself (no keys!). I checked, but I could not, however, find any reference that Apple had moved away from the cz (cubic zirconia) screen from the gen 1 phone. I did buy a pack of screen protectors, and they are damn near impossible to install. It's so flippin' hard to get it lined up, that by the time you do finally get it lined up correctly, there's now dust and junk on the screen, which makes it impossible to get all the bubbles out. What a pain. So far, discussions on the Apple forums seem to indicate that the screens are the same, so I should be safe w/o the protector. I hope so!

Is my AT&T U-verse RG flaking out on the wireless end?

My son has reported that his gaming will occasionally hang for 20-30 seconds, which is long enough for the WOW server to boot him out. He said this never happened when we had the Linksys router and has only started since the switch to AT&T U-verse from Comcast. He is on the 2nd floor, which is 2 floors above the RG/router. His signal strength is excellent, so it's very likely a product of the wireless fuctionality of the Residential Gateway (RG). He is the only heavy user of the wireless network (I have several devices, but he gives it the biggest workout...BY FAR). In any case, my old Linksys router is just sitting in a box, so I found this site that explains how to use a Linksys WRT54G as an access point instead of a router. I changed the channel the RG wireless is using to see if that helps, but if the hangs continue, I will put the Linksys back into service, utilizing my WRT54G as an access point (and disable wireless on the RG).

HP Solution Center 64-bit woes

I tried scanning in several documents on my Windows 7 RC 64-bit machine using the HP Solution Center for my OfficeJet 5600 AIO, and even though it looks like I have OCR disabled, the scans were pathetic. There were several places where the written numbers were totally obliterated, and the original typed text looked like it was in shadow mode, or 3-D mode. It was horrible. I thought I had executed this properly on an earlier version of Win7 w/o issue, but not this time. I had to resort to scanning on my XP Pro system, which worked flawlessly.

I compared the "Scan Document" settings between the 2 systems and they were identical, and on Win7 it says it was NON OCR mode, but it sure was acting like OCR was stepping all over the document when scanned. I will tinker with it some more, and possibly reinstall the SW to see if that fixes it.

Probably (hopefully) something simple....

Spyware Protect 2009 hit my brother

I was telling my brother about torrent site mininova.org, so he went there (on his work system, no less) in IE, and immediately after typing in his search criteria ("Johnny Cash"), he got the big Spyware Protect 2009 window. I knew at once we were in trouble, and sure enough, pretty soon his system stopped responding. He had been able to close windows for a few minutes, but they would always relaunch, and eventually, he was unable to do anything.

He rebooted (bad idea), but his system would never reach a point where he could use the mouse or keyboard once the OS loaded. I did some research to see how to remove it, and while we downloaded "Malwarebytes" tool to remove it, it wouldn't install in safe mode. So basically we were left to do it manually.

In a nutshell, here is what we had to do:

DO NOT LAUNCH INTERNET EXPLORER WHILE DOING THIS!!!
Boot INTO SAFE MODE WITH NETWORKING.

1. TASK MANAGER (right click task bar, select Task Manager)
KILL SYSGUARD.EXE

2. Regedit
DELETE FOLDER HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\AvScan
DELETE FOLDER HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\SYSTEM PROTECT 2009
(didn't exist)
DELETE ENTRY HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run "system tool" C:\WINDOWS\sysguard.exe
DELETE FOLDER HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Ext\Stats\{bbd4551A-9b23-41cd-9bcd-818aa2da7b63}
DELETE FOLDER HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Browser Helper Objects\{bbd4551A-9b23-41cd-9bcd-818aa2da7b63}
DELETE FOLDER HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{bbd4551A-9b23-41cd-9bcd-818aa2da7b63}

3. Windows Explorer
DELETE C:\WINDOWS\sysguard.exe
DELETE C:\WINDOES\system32\mcenspc.dll (didn't exist)
DELETE C:\WINDOWS\system32\iehelper.dll
DELETE C:\WINDOWS\Prefetch\[all files]
SEARCH ALL FILES in the WINDOWS folder:
- CREATE DATE of yesterday through today (looking for .exe and .dll files)
- MODIFIEd DATE of yesterday through today (looking for .exe and .dll files)
.exe and .dll files are program files, so they should ONLY be created or
modified when something is installed....normal use does NOT modify or create
executables! There will be lots of files and folders listed in this search,
but we are specifically interested in .exe and .dll files.
You can sort the list by clicking on the column header "Type". The types we
are interested in are "Application" (.exe) and "Application Extention" (.dll).

DELETE C:\Documents and Settings\[UserName]\Local Settings\Temp\[all files]

DELETE C:\PROGRAM FILES\AVSCAN (did not exist)
DELETE c:\PROGRAM FILES\SYSTEM PROTECT (did not exist)

modify C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\ETC\HOSTS to remove all but 1st line
The latest variants of this thing modify the hosts file to redirect you to their
sites (94.232.248.66), so you keep getting infected....pretty clever really.

In doing the SEARCH of WINDOWS for any .exe or .dll files that had been created in the last 2 days, we found 3 additional files. I thought I wrote them down, but apparently I didn't (I just typed them into the Google search as he read them off, and I've since closed the tabs and cleared private data). Anyway, all of 3 of them (2 dll's and 1 exe) pulled up via Google as being bad guys, so we deleted them as well.

Once all of this had been done, we rebooted into normal mode, and his system came up normally. If we had been able to install Malwarebytes removal tool, it would have made things so much easier. Oh well. In any case, I suggested he move to Firefox with add-on Noscript, to disable java unless specifically allowed.

uTorrent gives user-mapped file error during download...why?

I just reinstalled Windows 7 RC this week and am running uTorrent version 1.8.2. I started getting the user-mapped error on some downloading torrents. I thought I had fixed it before by going into Power Options and disabling the option for Windows to turn off the disk drive, but that didn't fix it this time (so it probably didn't fix it last time either).

Thanks to this tread I hopefully have prevented the error.

I run AVG, so I went into the Resident Shield and added my download directory to the exceptions list. I also disabled windows indexing for the download directory as well. That should do it. I don't know which one was the offender, but now I'm covered in either case.

Up and running on Windows 7 RC

Well it only took about 8 hours total for me to get totally up and running on the RC for Windows 7. Using the Windows Easy File Transfer to "backup" my data and settings proved to be a real time saver. It saved all of the normal stuff like Firefox and IE settings, as well as Outlook calendar/contacts. It did not, however, save my Thunderbird settings. I suppose if I knew how to tweak it better I could have managed that, too, but it sure was cool to get all My Documents and many settings back w/o any effort. I made normal backups just in case, but didn't need them as the Easy File Transfer came off w/o a hitch.

Firefox is behaving a little slowly tonight. I did some "peformance tweaking" as described on TechRepublic, but it seems I'm getting a lot of spinning. I don't know if it's because these new settings are butting heads with uTorrent or if it just happens to be the sites I'm visiting tonight. I'll monitor, and if it continues, I'll probably revert to more normal settings to see if it makes a difference.

It's been pretty slim pickings on DIME and Demonoid this week....very few items I actually cared about. I did find the soundtrack for "O Brother, Where Art Thou", which is currently playing in Winamp.

On a different note, Sharon Corr (violinist and backup vocalist for The Corrs) has been hard at work on her new solo album. Since the group is on an extended hiatus, she decided to put out some solo stuff. Per her new website the first single will be released in early June, and she is scheduled to appear at many summer festivals across Europe. No release date on the album, but I'll post it here as soon as I see one.

The Earth stood still today...did you feel it?

I received a customer survey today....from Comcast...my former ISP. I decided to take it, and I'm sooooo glad I did. They asked my why I no longer had Comcast internet service. Here is what I wrote:

----------------------------
The 250Gb monthly bandwidth limitation...period!!! The ONLY reason I changed to AT&T U-verse was because of the monthly limit. It wasn't price, it wasn't service, it wasn't speed, it was ONE THING!!!! The monthly bandwidth limit. There are 5 people and 8 computers in my home, and I work from home, so the potential of waking up one day and suddenly having no internet service (that was disconnected because of exceeding some arbitrary limit) was wholly unacceptable. I asked if there was an unlimited usage plan, or at least a tiered usage option (I knew there wasn't, as I was already paying FOR THE HIGHEST LEVEL OF CONSUMER SERVCE, but asked anyway), and was told no, other than an expensive dedicated business line (similar to a T1). Obviously I passed on that option. To say I was disappointed at having to go to all the trouble of changing email addresses for the entire family is an understatement. Is AT&T U-verse any better speed-wise? NO. Is the TV signal any better? NO. Is the channel selection better? Not really. But I was left with no choice since the arbitrary 250Gb limit was imposed. I exceeded it the first month it was in place, so I knew I would exceed it again, so I was left with no choice. Sad really that Comcast took such action. We were pefectly happy with our Comcast TV and internet service....reliable and fast. But we were unwilling to live within the strict limitation set forth by the bandwidth policy.

One of the WORST things about the 250Gb limitation is that no one at Comcast could tell me my usage pattern for the past 3 years when I talked to them after exceeding the limit in March. Nor could they provide me with my current usage. Nor could they provide me with an official way to check my usage. All they could offer was to download a bandwidth monitor and install it on all of my PC's, and then manually do the math each day to check my bandwidth. That would be like AT&T to tell me to take each of my cell phones at the end of the day to check their usage minutes so I could track how much of my monthly limit I still had available. VERY AMATEUR!!!! AND VERY DISAPPOINTING!!!!

After that conversation (about how to track my usage), the decision to go with AT&T U-verse was EASY!!!!! NO limits! Same channels! Very similar price! Did I mention NO bandwidth limits? Yeah, thought so...!!!!

There you have it...my Comcast flame. I'm so glad I was chosen for this survey. You know? If I had been offered a tiered usage plan that covered what I believed my usage to be, I probably would have taken it (as long as it wasn't outrageous). And if I had been allowed a higher bandwidth plan, and could monitor my usage, receive email warnings when usage hit a user defined level, and then was only charged ($$) when I went over, it would have been a better option. Facing disconnection for a year for exceeding the arbitrary limit is simply poor business. Would AT&T disconnect my cell phone service if I exceeded the limit? Hell NO! They would charge me for it. I don't understand the moronic decisions made by Comcast, but now I don't have to! Why, you ask? Because I'm no longer a customer, and probably never will be again.
-------------------------

Do you ever get a chance like that to vent, even if it may never be read? Not as often as I would like (or have the guts to do).

I'll install Windows 7 RC this week....hopefully

Well, I downloaded the RC for Windows 7 the first morning it was available, but time has prevented me from installing it. It requires (well, it's strongly recommended!) a fresh install, so I need to pretty much give myself a full day to do it. I have so many apps to install to get things up and running that I really need to be ready when it's time to do the install. I have a few torrents that will take another day or so (and those that won't, like the Keane Live 2006 torrent that's been working for 2 months) I can just restart once I've got utorrent reinstalled.

I haven't even had time to read reviews of the RC, although I can't see it being THAT different than the betas I've been running.

I really need the install, too. For some reason, my HP Solution Center software does not recognize the installed OfficeJet 5610 after I did my beta version update (7000 > 7067). Printing works fine, but no other functions like scanning or faxing work, since they rely on the solution center sw (at least how I use them they do). If I try to reinstall it, it can't find the device. I can't delete the device and readd it....nothing. Something about updating from one beta release to the other must have fouled something, so hopefully a new install will fix it (after all, the initial beta install posed no problems, other than having to run the installation file in Vista compatibility mode).

AT&T U-verse is a go

Well, it looks like we're gonna stick with AT&T U-verse. It's been as stable as cable was, even during the storm that rolled through yesterday. That was a really good test because my DSL line used to drop out at the first sign of lightening, but U-verse stayed up and just kept on ticking.

I'm still not convinced I'm getting the full load of speed I'm paying for, but I'll monitor that.

Now all that's left is to call Comcast and cancel my service, and take my box converter box back to the local office....that's getting done today.

How goes the AT&T U-verse?

Well, here is my first impression of the new AT&T U-verse I had installed to replace Comcast. Setting up the TV converter boxes has been quite frustrating. All of the old wiring (that I installed 15 years ago when I was young(er) and dumb(er)) does not seem to work very well. That means 2 of the TV's were rather spotty with coverage. I fixed one of them by running a length of CAT5 cable to it. The other simply required rearranging the living room to take advantage of a better connection I had installed a few years back. Now all 5 TV's are working well.

There are occasional hangs or stutters, but my wife assures me it's not more than what we saw with Comcast Digital cable. The DVR works wonderfully. I haven't tried watching on a different box, but I will soon. The 2 recorded shows we watched were of very good recorded quality.

I'm a little bummed that the U200 package does not include any real movie channels. At least Comcast's digital basic included the Encore movie channels. It's also taking some time getting used to the locations of all the channels, but all-in-all, it's looking acceptable.

The internet connection is also pretty stable. I don't think it's quite as fast as it should be, as I still usually max out at around 1Mb downloading on torrents, and i'm paying for the highest speed. I may try dropping that if the future to a lower level and saving a few bucks, as we are only 1700 feet from the drop box and should be getting as good a connection as is possible.

I abhor changing email addresses (I'm seriously considering moving everything to my google mail account so I don't have to do it anymore), so I'm certainly going to make sure we keep this service before changing everything and canceling the comcast service.

How to replace the heating element on a Frigidaire dryer, model AEQ7000EE0

Well, my Frigidaire dryer in only 2 years old, and the heating element has burned out. Our previous dryer was made in the early 90's, so it was designed differently and it was VERY easy to change the heating element. However, this Frigidaire is a different story...so after NOT finding the answer via google, I will document it here:

To replace the heating element, you must remove the front of the dryer and extract the drum. Here's how:
1. Remove the top panel, held on by 2 screws in the back. It is not necessary to remove the silver bracket that the top panel mounts to. This will give you unfettered access to the inside of the dryer.
2. Remove the rear access panel in the lower left hand corner, held on by 2 screws. This will allow you to remove the belt from the motor pulley.
3. Remove the drive belt from the pulley (take a picture first so you know how to put it back correctly) by pushing the tensor arm to the right. This will create slack in the belt and all you to remove it from the pulley.
4. Time to remove the front of the unit. There are 4 screws on the top, 2 on either side of the control panel. Be careful with the 2 that go into plastic, as you don't want to crack the plastic by overtightening during reassembly.
5. There are 2 screws inside the unit holding the front panel to the side panels, one on either side of the drum, about 8 inches down from the top.
6. The last 2 screws to remove are the bottom screws. I found it easier to prop the dryer up by putting something (my cordless drill actually) under it, so it was easier to get my screwdriver on the screws. They are about 6-8 inches in from the side.
7. On the top right there are 2 electrical connectors (possibly held up by a zip tie) that need to be disconnected (all other electrical connections are to the front panel itself, so nothing else to disconnect there). I found it easier to clip the zip tie (and replace it with a new one later on during reassembly)
8. Once those 8 screws have been removed and connectors released, the front panel will come off. There are some clips that will release as you pull the panel off from the sides (2 on each side). It's not easy to grasp, but you can open the door and reach inside for a little more leverage.
9. Once the front panel is off, set it aside.
10. Next, there is a small, white plastic retainer on the top that keeps the drum from moving too far forward (and adds support to the top panel as well). Remove it.
11. Everything is now out of the way of the drum. The back of the drum has a ball-joint assembly, kinda like your hip, that it sets down in. To remove the drum from that joint, you need to lift it up. It might be called a jerk. Grasp the drum at the back, under the lip, and give it a good yank. You should feel it lift out of the joint. Now just slide the drum straight out the front of the dryer.
12. The heating element and it's casing are now exposed. On top of the elements housing, there is a high limit thermostat, held on by 2 small screws. Remove them.
13. The housing itself is held on by 4 screws from the back of the dryer. Remove them, being careful to hold it as you remove the final screw to keep it from falling.
14. There are still 2 leads connected to the heater coil, so disconnect them, being sure to note which is connected where. Now you can either restring a new coil, or buy the entire housing for $20 more.

While you have it apart, take a minute to vacuum it out, cleaning out all that nastly lint.

Reassembly is the opposite. When I did mine, I connected the wires to the heater element housing and held it in place with only 2 of the 4 screws (from the back), just in case it needed a little wiggle room when I put the drum in. The drum needs to be lifted a little and set down into the ball joint fitting. The trick to reisntalling the front panel is do it top down. If you look at it, you will see that the there is small tab on each upper corner of the panel, and that tab fits into the long slot on the top rail, so if you lift the front panel up, and tilt it so the tabs can fit into the slots (not the small slot at the front edge, but the bigger, longer slot behind the small one), then when you lower the panel, the locking tabs will line up perfectly and you can press them to snap them into place (I learned this easy way of reattaching the front panel because I had to do it 4 times because I kept dropping screws or drivers inside, thereby having to remove it again).

There you have it. I read somewhere that you should run a dryer on AIR only for 10 minutes after replacing the heating element. And then run it on a medium heat for 10 minutes after that...I think.

U-verse on the way!

I did it. I ordered AT&T U-verse. I ran into a AT&T field tech guy at Arby's while I was eating lunch. He looked up my address in his computer and found that I am only 2500 feet from the nearest fiber box, so I should get exceptional service. That was the clincher. Even though it will cost about $30 more per month than my current Comcast cable/internet combined, I think it will be worth it for a few reasons:
1) NFL network (BOO-YAH!)
2) ESPN Classic
3) No usage limits, so no fear of waking up to find that my service has been disconnected because I used my internet too much last month
4) Total home DVR...record once, watch anywhere (my wife pointed out that we could have paid for more converters from Comcast and gotten the same feature..true)
5) 18Mbps download - I went for the whole enchilada in terms of speed, so the U-verse speed will be double what I was getting from Comcast.

Installation is less than a week way...more to come!

Well, AT&T U-verse may not be a go!

Well, the AT&T U-verse requires a converter box for each TV, and the package only includes a single DVR, so I would have to pony up $7/mo for each additional TV in the house....which at this point is 4, so another $28/mo. I'm not sure that's gonna be worth the cost, not to mention the hassle of changing email addresses (I guess I could have the kids chip in, since 2 of those TV's are in their rooms).

However, this 250Gb monthly limit imposed by Comcast is driving me crazy. I've reduced uTorrent to only 50Kpbs, and its uploading just under 3Gb a day,which is doable, I guess, but it leaves very little room for downloads....1 4Gb DVD, like the Phil Collins live in Tel Aviv I found today, and that day's 8Gb limit is wiped out...on just this PC....that doesn't count the other 4 that are running in the house. This is gonna kill my sharing ratios!!!

I did call AT&T to see if I could get just the U-verse internet w/o the cable....I can't. If I want JUST internet, I have to go with DSL (yuk! although from what I've read, there are no artificially imposed limits, but I'm very used to cable speed now, so going back to DSL would be pretty tough.

More to come...

Could AT&T U-verse by in my future?

Well, as I just found out this week, my penchant for downloading and sharing live concerts is pushing me perilously close to the 250Gb monthly limit as outlined by my ISP, Comcast. Combine that with 5 or 6 other PC's in the house, including my work from home office, and it's pretty easy to see that it's gonna be painful to try and stay below the threshold.

Enter AT&T U-verse. I've heard really good things about it, and apparently it's available in my area. If I combine the price for the 200 channel package and the fastest internet connection (18Mbps), it's about the same as my Comcast monthly cost. The AT&T channel package has ALL the same channels we get now, but it also has a few more that I would like to have (NFL network and ESPN Classic). The internet rated d/l speed, assuming it's available, is nearly twice as fast as the fastest offering by Comcast, and even if i have to step down to the 10Mbps, that still faster than the 8Mbps I'm paying for now. The best part is that there don't appear to be any usage limits associated with the service (unless you an abhorrent abuser to the tune of TB's per month), so it will allow me to continue sharing my stuff w/o fear of getting dropped for exceeding some arbitrary limit. Sounds like a winner!

Throw in a super cool DVR that lets you playback on any TV in the house, and it's really a convincing offer....more to come!

First post!

I've just created a new blog, and this is my first entry just to see how things look. My eventual objective is to have a place outside of the traditional personal networking sites (facebook, myspace, etc) that allows me to have a web presence where I can share my growing collection of music, post personal opinions about various subjects, and keep my family current on the happenings in the household.

Let's just see how it goes for now.