House of Wonder

Earth • Beer • Music

Atlanta Hotoberfest 2009
World MKT (Free) Public Area: 12pm – 7pm
Craft Beer Tasting (Gen. Adm. & VIP):  1pm – 6pm

On the grounds of Glenwood Park community, exit 59-B off I-20 east

HOTOBERFEST.NET

I’ve had AT&T u-Verse for a couple of months now. My impressions…

1. Pricey. Not entirely AT&T’s fault, since I did opt for the  AT&T u-Verse u200 Double Pack. Comes with (1) DVR unit and broadband. I upgraded the broadband to ELITE 6mbps downstream ($10/upgrade from standard) + (1) extra non-DVR unit ($7). That brings the grand total to $114. HD is another $10/mo. so I skimped on that. My total bill with taxes and such is $119 — more than I was paying with Comcast.
2. Fast. I haven’t had a problem running 2 laptops over the WiFi. Even when streaming a movie from Netflix. Mind you, I haven’t done any diagnostics…this is just my impression.
3. Wifi died on AT&T router. After a month, the radio on the router took a dump. Fortunately, I had another WiFi router to pick up the slack. It’s worked just fine with the other router broadcasting the WiFi. I did have to change some settings on the routers, but that wasn’t too difficult.
4. Broadband tech service sucks. My mistake in dealing with the router problem mentioned above, was in calling AT&T’s customer service to help me with the problem. I explained the problem to the support guy over and over again and he just didn’t get it. He wasted a good hour of my time, after which I told him I’d fix it myself. I would advise checking the forums for any problems before calling tech support.
5. DVR accessible by other receivers. I like that I can watch my recorded shows on the other TV that doesn’t have a DVR.
6. No down time. Other than the WiFi problem, AT&T broadband has been stable at all times of the day. This helps because I work from home and telecommute often, and when I had Comcast it was always dropping out.

The reason I have AT&T is because Comcast could not/would not keep a consistent broadband connection. That’s it. I hate Comcast because customer service is the worst I’ve ever experienced and it dropped out ALL THE TIME. It’s understandable for the service to be out once or twice a year (or if there is a major storm or something), but unforgiveable for it to happen several times a month.

So, all in all, I recommend using AT&T over Comcast (if you’re in Atlanta and AT&T u-Verse is available). If you’re in Cincinnati or Cleveland, get the best deal you can from Time Warner or Cox. I had no problems with either service, tech support actually knew what they were doing and they fixed any problem I had. Those 2 are probably offering cheaper deals than AT&T, so tell them you’re considering AT&T u-Verse and they’ll give you a good rate.

I got the Roku Netflix player today, plugged it in, configured it and within a couple of minutes was watching an episode of The Office via Netflix instant play. It comes with the option of hooking it up via ethernet cable or over your wireless connection (it’s wireless g). Simply put, it’s awesome and works great. I’m not sure how to shut it off…maybe it doesn’t shut off…but the stream was very acceptable. Not the kind of quality you’d expect with DVD or cable but sufficient for watching TV show and movies. I’m not a quality purist, so don’t take my word for it, but I’m very happy. I had been streaming films through my Macbook Pro and the quality is equivalent. Well worth the $100 IMO…

We wanted to see Shane. I think that was the case with most everybody at the show. And the man came through! I was surprised…McGowan made it through the set and sounded amazing. He’s still got the pipes. Of course, he was sloshing beer around a bit towards the end of the show, but I was impressed and it was one of the best shows I’ve seen. The Tabernacle was packed. So much so, that it was difficult to find a place to stand without security asking you to move. Which they asked us on several occasions. Mik and I ended up going to the floor and though it was sweaty, at least no one was asking us to move. Just slamming into us…but that’s fun.

The Tabernacle ran out of Guinness not long into the show. Maybe there was a bar somewhere in the joint that still had the black brew, but I didn’t see any. This is the second time I’ve been to a show where the venue has run out of beer. That’s a crime and, really, who the hell is in charge of stocking the booze at these joints? It would seem pretty simple to me: the Pogues are playing, stock shitloads of Guinness.

I can’t complain too much about the Tabernacle though. Lines for booze were long but the staff got through the crowd quickly. Unlike The Fox Theater where both shows I went to this summer had horrible lines at the bars and I missed a lot of both shows waiting in line for drinks. I suppose I could quit drinking…

The Pogues were tight. A closeup of the band would show their age, but they nailed every song. McGowan is the wildcard with this band and the key. Fortunately for us, the whole thing came together and it was a blast.

I got up early on the day they went on sale, was logged in to Ticketmaster with my account, refreshing the page as the seconds ticked up to 10am and still couldn’t get pavillion tix to this show!! WTF? They must have sold out in less than 2 min. since that was the wait time I got from Ticketmaster…oh well, at least I got lawn tix.

I’ve managed to get my iCal and Google calendars merged. In some respects it’s unnecessary to use both Calendars but I like using iCal when I’m at home on my Mac. It looks much nicer than Google Calendar and I don’t have to log-in to Google.

The major advantage of using Google Calendar (IMO) is that it’s online so it’s accessible from any computer on the Internet (well, assuming it’s not blocked by your company…). The big drawback is that it is ugly. The problem with using iCal exclusively is that to publish it online you need a .Mac account or some other way to serve it that seems to be a pain in the ass. I hope Leopard addresses this issue. And if not, when I get some free time I may figure out how to use OSX’s Apache server to get this thing working…

Anyway, if you log-in to your Google Calendar you can get the RSS feeds for the calendars—personal and/or public—then subcribe to those calendars in iCal. That’s it.

After much ado, I’ve officially moved my blog. Just over to www.house-of-wonder.com/blog. I’m back in the game now…

One of the things I’ve been working on is installing multiple blogs within a single database. That was the reason for the move. I have a couple of other blogs—somewhat off topic—that I’d like to get moved from their present locations onto my server within my site. My plan is to create several subdirectories then install WordPress into those directories. The other part of this is directing the domain names that I have registered to those subdirectories. It’s something I haven’t done…one of these days!!

Hi, I’m updating my site so things may not look quite right for the next few days. If you’d like you can view my old site here.

I’ll be back soon!