Off topic: Two rants..........

First, forget dial-up. I was with AOL for 10 years , but we noticed how overpriced it was when we saw we could get Qwest base DSL for $33/month, a mere $8 more a month, including modem rental. We made the switch in May and it's been great. Quick, decent tech support, low down time, built-in wireless. I'll also say that we got damn tired of everyone yelling at us for our phone line being busy all the time.

As for the postal service, we've encountered equally lousy service as of late. For example, my parents sent us a bunch of baby stuff for baby 'buddha via USPS. We wait 2 weeks and then have my parents inquire. They tell us all the weather problems in Florida had stuff screwed up (this was before the huricanes too ). Well, we waited 4 weeks and inquire again. This time they tell us it should be here and we might check with our local post office. I drive over and find out it's been sitting on a shelf there for 3 freaking weeks! No delivery attempts, no notice to pick up, nothing! We also had numerous problems with missing mail even though we've got locked secured mailboxes at our condo, so we know it isn't getting stolen. USPS sucks.

i use netzero high speed for my dial up service. cant get cable or dsl in teh national park i work in so that is out. $14.95 a month for netzero high speed. you do have to pay for tech support though, BUT they have a decent help file that you can use to figure out any problems you might have.

USPS sucks.

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If you only knew how much...

Juno Gold; $9.95/month. Tech support???? Beats the heck outta me! My modem dials in, I open IE6; call it good.

Buddha: $33/month??? Holy crap!!! I hope that's for 1.0/1.5 Mbps plus MSN Premium (MSN 9 for those in the rest of the world)! Around this corner of the land of the big blue Q, that runs $31..... of course, I live in a "cheap" state. IF I CAN EVER GET TIME, I'm gonna get the wiring done to set myself up as a guinea pig for the 256/256 kbps service in my 'hood. Ain't gonna happen with meg/meg-and-a-half; too far from the C.O. and my company is too cheap to spring for an ASAM in this area. $26/month without MSN 9; 'cause I gotta work with that all day; and frankly I find it just as intrusive and irritating as AOL!


Still Dreamin'

StangDreamin' said:

Buddha: $33/month??? Holy crap!!! I hope that's for 1.0/1.5 Mbps plus MSN Premium (MSN 9 for those in the rest of the world)! Around this corner of the land of the big blue Q, that runs $31..... of course, I live in a "cheap" state.

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See, it's kinda tricky... Qwest markets their basic DSL (256K, which is what I think we've got) as costing something like $26/month, but that's only if you get one of their "qualifying" long distance plans too. Otherwise it's like $30/month. We decided against buying the $70 modem and just rent the modem, which adds $3/month. That's the reality of it... total: $33/month. They were also the only ones who offered DSL in our area. We actually did pretty good considering we were paying like $25/month for AOL, and that was a super sucky dial-up. I do have free dial-up through the university (as a student), but they get kinda touchy if you're online too much.

BTW, it seems certain regions get better package deals than other regions. For example, my parents were able to bundle their local and long distance, 1mb DSL, and 2 cell phones (with 1000 anytime minutes and free in network, etc.) with Verizon, all for $90/month in Tampa. That's damn reasonable considering we're paying something like $60/month just for our 2 cells with Verizon, plus another $65 for our local & long distance and DSL.

Of all the monthly bills we pay, I'm just happy to have super basic cable for $15/month. I was spending more than an hour every month adjusting rabbit ears... I figure I'm breaking even at $15/hour of my life, and I'm finally getting clear picture too!

DarkBuddha said:

See, it's kinda tricky...

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Yeah, I know the game. Since they're already carrying my local and LD, I was quoting the prices based on that package. Oh, by the way, my bill will actually go down just a little bit because I'll go off the "Two-Line Custom Choice" package (dropping the 2nd line for DSL when I get the chance to get it wired) and go to the "Total Choice PAckage" with DSL. And then when my contract on the three cellphones matures, I'll dump AT&T and go to the company's cell package. This will actually get me a little more money back, 'cause they don't charge for calls between our cells and from the cells to our house. Since about 60% of our cell calls are to the house or each others' cells; that should blow a big hole in the "You used up your free minutes" charges on THAT bill! Of course, I also look at the "Pay those bills to the people that write my paycheck" factor....


Cable??? Oh, maybe someday; I wouldn't mind ESPN and the Discovery Channel. Write now, we have as many over-the-air channels as we have TV's (3). And 2nd Mustang is right, don't use the TV as a sitter
Although, I think we have the most extensive collection of Disney movies in town........



Still Dreamin'

2nd Mustang said:

I don't have that problem with a $1200 TV and a $9 rabbit ears.......I just don't watch TV and no cable either! Too many things to do and not enough time, including the Stang. Hope you're open to some advice, but don't let the TV be a baby sitter for baby Buddha. I didn't let my son watch TV during the school week and to this day (26 years old) he really doesn't miss watching TV.

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I hear ya... TV won't be baby sitting for us, don't worry. My wife and I are being vigilant about it. We spend a lot of time with him reading and listening to music (we're both classically trained musicians). In general, we're not huge TV watchers (maybe 6-8 hours a week), but my wife has a few favorite shows every week and generally likes to have it on as background noise while we're doing other stuff. Still, I was spending over an hour just adjusting the antenna just enough to get a lousy fuzzy picture for her favorite shows. It's kinda sad really, since we still only get like a 30 channels, half of which are home shopping and community "public access" channels that broadcast city council meetings and the like. I do get to watch some Discovery channel every once in a while and get my "car/bike" fix since the Mustang is still in Tampa until December.