Recently, my Internet connection here at the house started dropping roughly every 90 seconds or so, quite annoying as you can imagine. I started trying to debug the problem doing the typical unplug & cabling song and dance but that didn’t work. I have a Motorola SurfBoard 5201 cable modem and the send/receive lights on it were constantly pulsing no, not good. I headed to Best Buy, plopped down $86, picked up a new Motorola SB5101, brought it home, called Comcast and added it to my account and after testing it several but no dice so the rep scheduled a visit the next day. The following day the tech calls to let me know he’s on the way me so I hop in the car, head back to the house and call my wife to let her know. She then informs me she’s been surfing the web and “everything’s fixed”. I pull up to the house and the tech hasn’t found anything wrong with our connection and as my wife indicated everything is fine. Thanks Murphy.

Anyway, back to my point, since Best Buy was convenient I bought a modem there thinking I’d return it if that wasn’t the problem. At this point, it appears that the modem was the problem so I get online and start looking for a better deal. Kind of funny, the Best Buy modem helps me replace itself. :-) I was a bit surprised to that Amazon had the same modem for nearly half the price ($45.93) with free shipping, it arrives in a few days at which point I’ll return the one from “Best Buy”.

[Update: April 6, 2009] Amazon price has dropped another $2.20. I don't see any way Best Buy can compete with that.

Last Thursday I called ComCast regarding an issue with our Internet access and subsequently ended up asking about their Triple Play plan combining TV, Internet and Phone service. The rep gladly quoted me $99 for 12 months which I accepted and scheduled a tech for today (Saturday) between 12-4pm. The rep mentioned he’d call me back within 20 minutes to confirm a smaller time window but that call never happened but I thought “no big deal”. Well, I decided double check this morning that, in fact, someone was coming today and found ComCast had no record of my call nor any order for new service. The new rep apologized and offered to schedule a new appointment and set me up for $115/month! Rather puzzled, I explained my previous call and basically all i got was an apology. He went on to inform me the $99 price expired last November and he wasn’t authorized to give me that “deal” to which I said, “no thanks”.

Suffice it to say, not a good experience. Perhaps it’s called Triple Play because it’s just that, over quickly.

Celebrating the Great American Backyard Campout!

• 4:45pm Tents up and full of "gear"
• ...
• 6:20am We made it! Kids loved it and Alexis want's to roast marshmellows for breakfast.

Who knows it could be over in a few short hours.  :-)

The other day I mentioned our Mac Mini had died after just 18 short months of little use. I’d done some digging around on the web and found good reviews of a company called DT&T Computer Services and after describing the problem they quoted me $245 to replace the main logic board and $15 for shipping and handling. I filled out their online form and printed out my RMA information and sent the machine in last Friday. We got it back today and fortunately, it’s working once again. DT&T has a 6 month warranty which is nice although I hope we don’t have to use it.

I’ll add that my experience with DT&T was very good. They answered the phone immediately when I called, no waiting, hold, etc. answered my questions and once the repairs were done they called to complete payment and confirm shipping. It all went off without a hitch.

Now, of course, the thing I’m happiest about is my wife has her own machine back.

 

Awhile ago I blogged about looking for a mini-van, either a Honda or a Toyota. After a lot of research, largely by my wife since it’s her car, asking friends and neighbors regarding their choices we decided on a 2007 Honda Odyssey EX-L. We purchased it using a broker located in Seaside and believe it or not it was an enjoyable experience, a first for my car buying career. It was delivered on time to our house where we filled out all paper work at our kitchen table in about 35 minutes at a significant savings over all of the dealers we talked to. The delivery driver was very knowledgeable and took us through a tour of all the available features which, btw, was about our third such tour having been to several dealerships. My wife, once very skeptical about becoming a mini-van driver is now asking why we didn’t do it sooner.

The Odyssey drives nicely and the interior is very roomy. The turning radius is very good turning much tighter than our Toyota Highlander. For me the only real bummer is that lack of memory seats especially considering my wife and I differ in height by slightly over a foot. That option is only available with the higher end Touring Edition but we felt it wasn’t worth the multi-thousand dollar price difference for that feature alone. I find it odd Honda excludes this feature on the EX-L since it’s actual cost must be pretty small considering all of the mechanical equipment is in place. One of the dealers told us that the Odyssey is the only Honda vehicle where that feature is missing in all but the most high end car. Apparently, several other lines offer it below to top end.

Another one of the major reasons we decided not to go with the Toyota was the cost was significantly higher for what we considered the same features.

Now, I just need to get a for sale sign on my '97 BMW 318is. It’s in good shape and has only 80K miles on it.

I recently purchased a LinkSys Wireless-N router ($99 on sale at Radio Shack) so I can roam around the house with my laptop. As a result I decided to do some bandwidth testing using broadbandreports.com's speed test as there is a server in Palo Alto, ~26 miles from my home, and it seemed like the results I was getting from Firefox were a bit slow. I started up IE to do some comparisons and found a not insignificant difference. As you can see on the graphic ComCast is my ISP which is easily three to four times as fast as what I was getting with my old DSL connection.

Results Using Internet Explorer 7.0.6000.16473

Results Using Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.6

These results have been fairly consistent across a number of tests. I'm wondering if there is perhaps a performance penalty for running Firefox from a USB drive? All of these tests were conducted on my laptop.

I'll have test again at the office (also wireless) tomorrow and see how things compare. Of course, I'll probably install Firefox for a true apples-to-apples comparison.