I’m Still Here
I always seem to be coming up with excuses for not posting to my blog. Now, I have an excuse for posting in my blog. I am currently in my 4th week of Concepts of Family Nursing Theory. Theory classes in general are not my favorite type of class, but I guess it is a requirement. I am currently working on a paper that is due Monday on a cultural interview and assessment. It really sucks that I have an attention deficit. I’m currently in a writers’ block for my paper, so I figured I’d write something completely unrelated to satisfy my brain’s need for something different. A few people from my class now know about this blog, so I should probably not give any self-incriminating comments.
As of the last time I posted, I was about to have SureWest fiber-optic service installed. They did arrive on July 24th, but they didn’t arrive when they were supposed to. I was given a 4-hour window for when they should show up… 8AM-noon. Around 1:30PM, I was getting concerned… I had earlier verified they were coming. I called in again. The customer service representative made a call to the installers’ dispatch and they mentioned they’d have an installer there within the hour. While I was on the schedule, I was not assigned to any of the installers. The first installer arrived in less than 30 minutes from that phone call. He did not have a service ticket for me, as they don’t have a printer in their trucks, so he called to verify that I was to have Internet and two TVs installed. Another installer was sent to try to speed up the process. It turned out to not be necessary, because this was the easiest install they had probably ever done, or ever will do. The physical labor portion took less than 30 minutes, but because neither TV set-top-box were previously provisioned for me, it took nearly 2 hours for him to make phone calls and wait for the head-end to activate the boxes. He left once they were provisioned.
Internet has been excellent so far. I am maintaining the speeds they advertise for the most part. I am supposed to get 20 Mbps both up and down. I am getting just small tad shy of 20 Mbps for download but actually exceed 20 Mbps by a tad on upload. I know this from when I sent a 6 GB compressed file, I tracked the speed. As far as TV signal goes, there is no comparison to Comcast. SureWest provides a much better signal on every channel in a head-to-head challenge. I currently miss having a high-definition DVR, but that will be available this fall. When it comes to a high-definition picture, SureWest blows away Comcast in picture quality. Nothing shows this difference better than Discovery HD Theater. When there is fast action, like when an alligator snaps, there is visible pixilation around the fast moving alligator on Comcast. There is no pixilation around the alligator on SureWest. The reason for these differences is because SureWest does not compress the signal from what is sent from the original broadcast. Comcast compresses the picture so they can try to get more channels available. If action is fairly slow, the difference is not as visible. Other HD channels are compressed more by the original broadcaster, so pixilation cannot be blamed on SureWest for that. As I mentioned, SureWest does not have a HD-DVR yet, but when they do, it should be very nice. Whether all the functions work as they could or not, I do not know, but supposedly it will have the capability of recording up to 3 HD or 5 non-HD programs at a time. Also, I will be able to watch programming from the DVR set-top-box from a non-DVR set-top-box, so I can record in the living room and watch in the bedroom. I just hope that they activate external storage so I can put a huge hard-drive on it to extend the amount of programming I can record. Maybe I’ll finally be able to catch Hogan’s Heros in high-definition, as it comes on at 5AM. That is the time I’m getting up and getting ready for work… I can’t be watching TV then. Mark Cuban purchased the rights to the original film used to make the TV show, which was actually in the wider-screen ratio that HDTV is today. He paid for the film to be re-scanned in high-definition.
In regards to my internal network in the house, I have upgraded SmoothWall router/firewall to the latest version… Sammy or SmoothWall 3.0 Release Candidate 1. I really like it, especially since there are now some modifications becoming available. Most of the mods aren’t extremely useful to me now, but I’ve installed a few none-the-less. I can now monitor how many packets are blocked by the firewall per minute. As you can see in the image below, it is low most of the time. For some reason though, it spiked this afternoon. Does it mean much? Not really. It is just interesting to see.
I can also see how much memory is being used or how taxed the CPU in the machine is. I guess it helps to justify how much memory is placed in the machine or know if your CPU is powerful enough. The lower the load on the CPU, the less heat it should generate.
I’m sure this is just about as exciting to you as it is to me. Anyway, I have been having fun playing with it. Well, I guess I better get some sleep, so I can start working on my paper again in the morning.