Adam Byram

Thoughts on the 13" MacBook Air

2012-01-05T21:53:00-08:00

I’ve had my 13” MacBook Air (mid-2011 model) for a few weeks now and thought it’d be a good idea to share my impressions. I originally moved to Apple on a black MacBook, then switched to a top end 17” MacBook Pro, and now I’m on an Air.

What’s Good?

Weight

It’s fantastically light. My MacBook Pro feels like a brick after using the MBA for a while.

Size

Not only is it light, it’s thin. Like, really thin. It’s not really that much thicker than my iPad and that’s impressive when you consider it’s a full featured computer.

Battery Life

I haven’t used it for photo/video editing nor have I used it for games, so my usage is pretty moderate, but still, the battery life is excellent. My MacBook Pro has a good battery life for its size, but the Air has been really impressive. I haven’t timed the battery life, but I can say that I frequently use it for extended periods of time without even thinking about the power cable. That hasn’t been my experience with other laptops (Apple or otherwise).

Solid State Drive

It’s amazing how much of a difference a solid state drive makes. Startup is extremely fast, launching apps is even faster, and even development in a virtual machine is faster.

What’s Bad?

Screen Size

It’s totally usable for most of my everyday tasks, but for things like development, it’s a bit small. The good news is that it powers an external monitor just fine. If you’re on the go and need to do certain kinds of tasks, it’ll feel a bit cramped. I can’t imagine the MacBook Airs line won’t merge with the MacBook Pro line to provide the larger screen sizes in the future.

Other Thoughts

That’s actually the only negative thing I’ve noticed. I happen to have the 4GB RAM/256GB SSD model, so it’s maxed out on the basic specs. It’d be nice if the RAM went up to 8GB, but honestly, 4GB has been plenty (even with large-ish databases loaded) due to the SSD. The storage space may end up being a problem for me down the road if I started storing my main photo library, but I’m undecided how I want to handle that. Overall, the MacBook Air is the best laptop I’ve used for my everyday tasks. I’m sure I’ll find a few things where I miss the power of my PC workstation or my MacBook Pro, but so far, I’ve really impressed.

Goals for 2012

2012-01-01T00:00:00-08:00

It’s that time of year again. These goals will change over the course of the year, but today, my goals for 2012 are to:

Pay off cat medical debt
Sell (or rent) house
Launch at least one new iOS game or app
Get involved with open source

Of course, the standard goals of lose weight, eat better, save more, and the like are all things I plan to work on as well. The goals above are specific to 2012. It should be a fun & exciting year.

Switching to Octopress

2011-12-31T19:08:00-08:00

I’ve been looking into Octopress for a month or so now and I finally decided to take the plunge. As of now, this blog is now powered by Octopress (more or less out of the box) instead of WordPress. I’d like to change the theme a bit, but it’s good enough that I’ll leave it for now.

WordPress -> Octopress

Nothing was wrong with WordPress itself, but I just didn’t use any of the features it offered. I’d rather just type the blog posts in a regular editor instead of a textbox on a webpage. There are some great tools out there that help with that of course, but I just don’t need the features there either. In addition, maintaining WordPress means logging in pretty often to check for updates, apply them, make sure the database is backed up, etc. All of that would be just fine if I received enough benefit to offset the time there, but I just didn’t.

Enter Heroku

In addition to switching the blogging engine, I moved the physical blog from Linode over to Heroku + Amazon S3. My blog is very low traffic, so I don’t need a high powered VPS host that I have to maintain & patch. Heroku offers a free account if you don’t need much power and can live without a database (well, effectively without a DB - a 5MB one is included). I decided to go ahead and put any post specific images/files onto S3 since Heroku offers a limited amount of local storage and I can also redeploy back to Linode if something doesn’t work out at Heroku. For the record though, I love Linode for a Linux VPS host. I highly recommend them as long as you’re comfortable dealing with Linux via the command line.

Simplicity

As I get older, the technology side of things appeals to me less and less. I still love technology in general, but the nitty gritty details of what platform/framework/OS/whatever is the best is less and less interesting to me. I’m more interested in the best way to deliver a solution in a way that is as simple as possible. That doesn’t mean I’m adverse to complexity under the hood though. It means I value the experience, productivity, and the ability to simply get things done over the technical aspects of a solution.

Looking Back on 2011

2011-12-31T19:08:00-08:00

2011 was a crazy year for me. It was a year full of change. This year I:

Started dating my beautiful girlfriend
Watched the last launch of Space Shuttle Discovery from the NASA press site thanks to the STS-133 NASATweetup
Took a great vacation to Charleston, SC
Turned 30
Moved 2200 miles from the East Coast to the West Coast for a new job
Began working a dream job in the space industry

There were some low points in 2011, but overall, it’s been a good year. In a lot of ways, I feel like 2011 was a transitional year. All of the change is mostly finished at this point, so it feels like it’s time for the good stuff to begin. I’m really excited about 2012 - I think like it’s going to be an amazing year.

Blog Block

2011-11-26T01:28:06-08:00

I really thought I’d have a lot to blog about since this whole week was a pretty crazy cross country adventure…but I can’t seem to focus on blogging at the moment. I don’t know if it’s just a writer’s block thing or what. Whenever I sit down to write, I keep thinking I’m writing out some formal document and that ends up causing me to keep thinking about it and then I just stop. My goal is to blog more now that I’m out in LA and I have lots of friends around the country that will probably be interested in updates. At this point, I’m not sure what I’m going to do. I thought about just using Tumblr instead of my own custom WordPress install or I may simply start fresh with this domain. I’ll definitely find a way to send out updates on my LA adventure, but it looks like it’ll be a little bit longer.

One quick update though - I did make it to LA just fine and both kitties made it smoothly. My furniture isn’t here yet, so my apartment is basically empty at the moment, but at least I’m here. I’ll post more in the near future, but so far, so good.

T-0

2011-10-28T21:09:47-07:00

Today is my last day of work on the East Coast. It’s a sad day since I’m leaving a stable company full of good people and interesting opportunities. At the same time, it’s an exciting day since I’m leaving so I can prepare myself for the 2200 mile move to Los Angeles before I start my dream job of building spaceships. I never thought I’d be trading my reasonably large house in Tennessee and basically all of my stuff for a tiny one bedroom apartment in LA, but I never thought I’d be able to work on spaceships either.

I got a great send off from my coworkers. A few of them decided to do a little decorating to my cube…

…and my car…

…but the best part was the cupcake. :)

Alter Oculos - Project #1

2011-04-14T22:23:01-07:00

A few guys I know decided to start a photo group on Flickr called Alter Oculos. It’s a group for sharing photowalk images and trying out some photo projects as a group. This week, we decided to all use the same set of shots, but then we’ll all process them and compare our take on the post processing. These are my two finished images. I think the first turned out ok, but I really like the second image quite a lot.

The photos were taken by Matthew Osborne - you can see more of his images here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/matthewosbornephotography/

Goals - 2011 Edition

2011-01-03T20:07:08-08:00

This year, I’m setting 5 major goals for myself. I have several other behaviors to change/actions to take this year, but I’m only considering these five items my goals since they are realistic, actionable, and measurable.

Release a new app or website

I’ve been working on several ideas over the last year or so and I’m going to really push to get at least one new project released publicly. I’m not going to be more specific other than the new “thing” will must be something anyone can sign up for or download. Open source, closed source, free, or paid - doesn’t matter - I just want to complete v1.0 of a new project.

Max out 401K & Roth IRA

Pretty simple - $16,500 pre-tax dollars into the 401K and $5,000 of after-tax dollars into a Roth IRA.

Lose weight

Nothing special about this goal. I’m targeting 35 pounds lost by the end of the year. I’ve had this one on my goal list for a while, so it’s time to finally knock this one off.

Write a journal entry a day

This is a new one for me. I wanted to do a 365 photo project, but I’d really like to do more writing…so a 365 writing project it is. I won’t be publishing these, but I’m really enjoying it so far (even though I’m only 3 days in).

2011 feels different from years past, so I have pretty high hopes for accomplishing these goals (as well as several other things).

Looking Back on 2010

2010-12-28T23:57:51-08:00

Back in January, I posted my [top three goals for 2010.](http://www.adambyram.com/2010/01/10/my-goals-the-2010-edition/

)

So how did I do? Well…

Goal: Get Healthy
Result: Failed - I totally bombed this one. A lot of changes happened in 2010 that distracted me from this goal. This WILL be happening in 2011.

Goal: Side Income to Livable Levels
Result: Success / Not Applicable - This originally came about because I wanted to leave me previous job and work for myself. I did end up working for myself anyway, but I didn’t get my side income to livable levels. Having said that, I did start a new job which negated this goal (and resulted in an even better outcome in a lot of ways). I still love the idea of running my own business and maybe it’ll happen when it’s time. I tried to force it this time and that wasn’t the right way to do it. In the meantime, everything is working out pretty awesomely.

Goal: See a Space Shuttle Launch (in person)
Result: Success - I hit a home run on this one. I watched the next to last launch of Atlantis in May (from Titusville) and then I won the lottery by being selected for the NASA Tweetup for Discovery’s final flight. While I didn’t see Discovery launch (yet - 2011 goal now), I did get an amazing experience at NASA including standing just a few hundred yards from Discovery on the launchpad.

Overall, I’m OK with my progress (all things considered). I’m disappointed in myself for not making progress on my “Get Healthy” goal, but it was a bit of a crazy year. I’m happy with my direction heading into 2011 so 2010 was definitely not a waste. While I may not have accomplished all of the goals I wanted, 2011 is looking to be the best year yet.

NASA Tweetup Preview

2010-11-07T22:19:05-08:00

Most of you probably know I just spent a week down at NASA for the STS-133 Tweetup. 150 of us were down there to watch Discovery lift off for her final flight. It was an amazing trip even though we didn’t get to see Discovery launch (we may get a chance later). I’m going to post lots of info about the trip and my thoughts about it, but I need a bit of time to catch up on things, process my photos, and generally relax a bit. I’ll try to have some info up late this week, but in the meantime, here are some things to check out:

We have a group setup on Flickr where lots of people are sending Tweetup photos. If you’re curious about the things we saw, take a look here:

http://www.flickr.com/groups/sts133tweetup/pool/

If you want to see exactly what we saw, you get watch the Justin.tv stream of pretty much the whole tweetup right here (note - lots of videos here…not official NASA videos and lots of them are from the parties. I know the actual tweetup content is in here somewhere though):

http://www.justin.tv/nasatweetup/videos

That’s all for now. More to come in a couple of days.

Camping at Elkmont

2010-10-24T21:47:44-07:00

This weekend was my first time camping at Elkmont. My Dad & I used to go camping a good bit when I was little, so I thought he would like going camping in the Smokies. I heard good things about Elkmont and they happened to have a creekside site available for the weekend, so that’s what I reserved.

We arrived around 3pm on Saturday and got checked in pretty fast. Our campsite was G11 which was just a quick trip down the road from the ranger station. We had one of the small sites - just a tent pad, fire ring, a picnic table, and a single parking spot. The tent went up pretty quickly, so we got small fire going early in the evening and just sat around the campsite. We ended up cooking some steaks and potatoes for dinner - the cooking part went fine, but we didn’t bring quite enough light for the picnic table. We had plenty of flashlights, but we didn’t think we’d need a big lantern…turns out, the potatoes & steak took longer than we expected and it gets dark early…so we basically ate in the dark. We stayed up pretty late (11:30-ish) and then turned in for the night. We decided to cook some eggs & bacon the following morning, walked a good bit of the Elkmont site, and then headed out. A few photos from the trip are here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/adambyram/sets/72157625235026618/

So what did I think? Well…

Proximity to other campers

I was surprised how close we were to other campers. Some of the areas seem to be spaced out a bit more, but the “G” section was pretty packed. If you’re wanting to get away from everything, Elkmont may not do it for you. I think I’d like it more with a camper so some of the sounds are muffled. In a tent, every foot step, car, motorcycle, kid’s bike, etc makes quite a bit of noise and you can’t really escape it. Section “G” also allows generators during the day, so quite a few sites had those going during the day.

Pay attention to the rules (i.e. keep food safe)

We didn’t have this problem, but some of our nearby campers did… The rules you agree to when you reserve a spot state that you’ll keep your food locked in your car at all times unless you’re physically with the food at the site. Some guys a couple of sites over from us didn’t do this and left their cooler our while they went for a motorcycle ride. Shortly after they left, the rangers came by and confiscated all of their food (including the cooler itself). On top of that, anyone caught breaking the rules is fined $75. So if you camp at Elkmont, read & follow by the rules…they are serious about them and they really do patrol frequently to verify compliance.

Jerks nearby

So being in close proximity to other campers isn’t bad normally - it’s a little noisier as I mentioned, but nothing too bad…unless you’re camping next to jerks. I don’t know what was up with the people that were right next to us at G9, but their freaking car alarm went on for minutes at a time FOUR times during the night. Not right next to each other either - the first time was around midnight and they seemed to happen nearly once an hour all the way up to 3am. At that point, my Dad went over to talk to them and one of the campers was out trying to quite the truck. I have no idea what was going on, but a truck alarm blaring at 3am about 100 ft from your head is not awesome. Another nearby camper told us the following morning that these people had the alarm go off EIGHT times the night before! If you have great campers nearby, this will be ok, but since you have no control over who camps next to you, you should be aware that you too could have a jerk camper during your relaxing camping experience.

Overall

It was a good trip and we’ll probably be back to Elkmont in the future. I didn’t really sleep at all due to cars going by (G11 is just across the Little River from the entrance road to the campground and cars sound pretty loud), some animal(s) around the campsite overnight (no idea what it was…but something was walking around outside for a while late in the night), and the freaking car alarm. The site was nice in general though and my Dad really enjoyed it. I think my ideal wilderness retreat would be to go to a secluded cabin with a great mountain view & an internet connection…but I can certainly deal with a regular camping trip every now and then.

Back to Basics

2010-10-22T22:29:16-07:00

If you read my blog in the browser and not via RSS, you may notice the look has changed a bit. Everything is streamlined and I have a more minimalist style. The blog is back to nice looking, easy to read text with minimal distractions. I’ve decided a lot of things in my life are too cluttered these days, so I’m starting my decluttering right here on the web. In addition to the style, I’ve also simplified the categories on the blog to focus on the things I really care about - life, money (personal finance), photography, and tech. I’ll expand those if the need arises, but having the categories this way seems to give me a little more mental clarity. The RSS feed is also going through FeedBurner now - your feed should have automatically swapped over, so hopefully that won’t cause any issues.

I’m also going to start blogging more. I know I’ve said that before, but I mean it this time. I need to work on my writing and now I have more incentive than normal since I do a good bit of tech writing at work. I can’t promise the topics will always be interesting, but I have a lot of things I want to talk about. I have quite a few folders of ideas to post, but I have been holding them because I originally thought I’d have a different site for each topic, but I’ve decided against that. It’s easier to keep all of the content in one place and I’m more likely to write this way, so we’ll see how it goes. More to come in the near future…stay tuned.

iPhone 4 - Early Thoughts

2010-06-28T11:19:07-07:00

The main reasons I upgraded from my 3GS to iPhone 4:

Retina display
Better battery life
Better camera

Retina

The display is stunning - it is crystal clear and the colors are beautiful. Most apps simply become more crisp (assuming they don’t use a lot of low-res images). I don’t think you’ll see a ton of difference in the way you use apps due to the display, but you’ll enjoy the experience much more and it’ll feel less like a computer screen. This is one of those things where the old technology got the job done just fine, but man, after using this display for a few days now, I can’t wait to see it come to iPad and to traditional computer monitors. Once you get used to retina, all other displays start looking really blurry.

Battery Life

It’s excellent. It still isn’t going to last nearly as long as the iPad, but it seems to last significantly longer than my 3GS did while performing the same tasks.

Camera

For still photography, the camera seems to be improved, but it’s significantly better at low light photography. This is partly due to the new sensor technology, but it’s also due to the inclusion of a small LED flash. Don’t get me wrong, the low light photos are terrible compared to a DSLR or even a mid- range Point & Shoot…but it’s a huge step up from the camera in the 3GS that was barely usable in lower light conditions. Daylight photos (particularly macro type shots) range from good to excellent. If you want proof, check out this shot by a friend of mine. I’d say that under optimal conditions, the iPhone 4’s still camera is very competitive with mid-range Point & Shoot cameras. As for video, it’s 720p in size, but don’t expect anything close to Bluray quality. I put a couple of videos on my Vimeo account…these are “worst case” shots - indoors with low light shooting a dark subject with some fast movement. Quality wise, the video function alone is right there with my Creative Vado…there is absolutely no reason to use a Vado, Flip, etc. if you have an iPhone 4. In fact, when you add on the software (iMovie or otherwise), the iPhone 4 blows those devices out of the water.

Overall Feel

Compared to my 3GS, the iPhone 4 feels better & worse. I love the new design - it’s more sleek and feels even more solid. The downside is I feel more paranoid that I’m going to drop it. With the 3GS, you could drop it and have a pretty good chance of only minor scratches or maybe a small crack in the plastic back. With the iPhone 4, you’re either going to damage the glass on the front or back (and the camera is integrated into that back glass as well) or you’re going to bang up the antennas (since they form the metal band around the outside). In theory, the glass is super strong and not easy to break, but something about it just feels a little more fragile. Speed wise, everything feels fast. If you’ve used an iPad, it’s pretty much the same. I really don’t notice a ton of speed increase over my 3GS for day to day activities - I do know it’s much more powerful though, so I’m sure future apps will widen this gap.

FaceTime

FaceTime is the video calling feature built-in to each iPhone 4. I tried it out with a friend from Twitter and it’s certainly a nifty feature. It works as easily as Apple advertises…call someone, touch a button, and boom - video call. The big gotcha (for now) is that both parties must have iPhone 4s AND be on a WiFi network. I’m not sure I’ll be using this feature all that much, but I also prefer e-mail/twitter/IM to phone calls anyway. I can see it being pretty popular for some people and I do see a few use cases for myself.

iBooks

iBooks is an app I use a ton on my iPad. I was hoping the retina display would make it more readable to me on the iPhone 4. Text & images looks absolutely fantastic - but at the end of the day, I just can’t read on such a tiny screen. It’s not that the font is too small - I can see it fine - I just can’t fit enough content on the screen for my tastes. I read mostly technical (or at least non-fiction books) though, so books with less structured content may be a bit better. Imagine reading the tiny bibles you used to find in hotels - that’s what it’s like reading on the iPhone 4…super crisp text, but a little bitty reading surface. I do like having the ability to look up something in iBooks in an emergency though - so I’ll keep it installed just in case.

Multitasking

A lot of people have been anxiously awaiting multitasking on iPhone. I’m not one of them. I would like a few apps to be able to update in the background (Twitter for example) and I’d like to have a live IM client, but that’s about it. I don’t use Skype or Pandora on the phone, but if I did, I’d be happy. For me, this is a nice feature, but the only real benefit I get is that it’s slightly faster to switch between applications. Maybe I’ll be wow’d with what people are able to do with this in the future, but for now, I just don’t see much benefit for the tasks I do today…but I was never the target of this feature in the first place.

Reception

You’ve probably heard about the reception issues with iPhone 4. Steve Jobs said they don’t exist, but if they did, it’s because you’re holding it the wrong way. Apple corporate said they exist on all phones and you should buy a case. Well, they definitely do exist and I’m holding my phone the same way I’ve held every Apple iPhone. I’m going to end up buying a case I’m sure, but I’m really disappointed in Apple over this one. If you hold the phone in your left hand, you’ll connect two of the antennas with your finger or palm. By doing this, your 5 bars of full signal will drop to “No Service” within 30 seconds or so unless you happen to be very close to a cell tower. At home, I can do this easily every time I try. In West Knoxville, I had a harder time getting the signal to drop…so it seems to be partially dependent on your proximity to cell towers. I have yet to have a call drop due to this, but I have had SMS messages and data downloads stop/fail due to it…so it isn’t just a display issue - it really is losing the signal. Apple says some type of fix is on the way and if that’s the case, then maybe this won’t be a problem much longer. I expected I would get better reception than my 3GS due to the larger exposed antenna, but so far, my 3GS had a more stable signal. Call quality is as good or better on the iPhone 4 though. I haven’t tried making a call from a noisy area yet, but all of the calls I’ve made have sounded very clear on my end and no complaints from those that I’ve called.

Giving Tumblr a Try

2010-03-14T06:41:47-07:00

I know I don’t post very much to this blog…I never have really. I can’t quite figure out a good use for my domain. I post a reasonable amount on Twitter these days, so I thought I’d give Tumblr a try. It’s a microblogging site - there is no 140 character limit like there is on Twitter, but it’s setup in a way that encourages quick, focused posts. I don’t know if I’ll stay active with it or not, but since I don’t have a good way to integrate my Tumblr posts into this blog, I wanted to give you guys the direct link for any that are interested in follow me there. Here’s the URL:

http://adambyram.tumblr.com

FTL is spooled. Jumping in 3... 2... 1...

2010-02-12T09:23:10-08:00

JUMP!

Today I resigned from my job at the small software startup. I’m not going to go into the details as to why I left, but I’ll just say that I don’t regret joining the company, but I feel I may have regretted it if I stayed any longer due to various things (including some opportunities outside of the company).

I’ll be posting more about my future plans over at my company blog - http://www.cogitu.com/blog/ - so if you’re interested, be sure to check that out for more details (a post will be up by Monday at the latest).

My Goals - The 2010 Edition

2010-01-10T00:55:06-08:00

Over the last year, I’ve been making a list of things I want to accomplish (or at least think about accomplishing) in 2010. Now that 2010 is finally here, it’s time to define my final list of goals. I ended up with 24 goals. It’s unreasonable to think that I could focus on all 24 goals (plus any new ones that come up during the year), so I’m only going to focus on three main goals. I’m not going to ignore my other goals by any means, but these three items are the places I’m going to focus 95% of my energy this year:

Get healthy

I’ve learned a lot about healthier eating and exercise over the last year, but I’ve failed at putting it into practice for an extended period of time. I want to be healthier for quite a few good reasons and it’s time I step up and do it. For this goal, my criteria are that I must be able to sustain the lifestyle changes and my target weight is 175 (with a stretch goal of 150) by the end of the year. (I know weight isn’t the only thing that makes one “healthy”, but I’m going to use it as the measurable part of this goal anyway.)

Side income to livable levels

I already make money on the side of my day job, but it’s not much…certainly nowhere close to anything I can live off. For 2010, my goal is to find a sustainable way to bring in $2500/mo after taxes. This goal isn’t to make that much on the side each month this year, it’s to start doing it so I could support myself fully in 2011…a proof of concept essentially. If I can hit this amount, that works out to around $30K/yr which is all I need to live very comfortably at this point in my life.

See a Space Shuttle launch (in person)

I went to space camp and I love NASA (and space exploration in general), but I have yet to see a shuttle launch. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do, but I’ve never made the time. There are only 5 shuttle launches left (as of right now) and they all happen in 2010. I don’t care which launch I see, but I’m going to see one in person (hopefully from the VIP area so I can get a good view).

My AT&T U-verse Experience in Knoxville

2009-10-28T13:01:25-07:00

I’ve had quite a few people ask about my recent AT&T U-verse install, so I thought a quick blog post was in order. Keep in mind, my install happened during the first week of the Knoxville, TN U-verse rollout - so I’m sure things will go faster (as far as the installation goes) as they do more and more installs in this area.

I chose to go with U-verse because I live in an older neighborhood in Knoxville and my high speed internet choices are fairly limited. I’ve had 3Mbps DSL from AT&T for the last 3 years and it’s been decent, but I really needed more upload speed. I’m a software developer so I usually have lots of large software updates I need to download quite often and I frequently have fairly large chunks of data I need to upload to a server on a regular basis (Dropbox, Subversion, etc.). I ended up going with AT&T U-verse since they offer a package with 18Mbps download and 2Mbps upload…this was my main consideration for choosing U-verse, not the VoIP service nor the TV service. I want to make it clear that I didn’t compare the TV and phone services to other providers…so if that is your main focus, this writeup may not be useful to you.

Speed Test - Before & After All tests were performed with www.speedtest.net on a MacBook running Snow Leopard connected to my wireless LAN - this is my most common usage scenario, so it’s what I decided to test with. Also, ignore the “distance” in these speed tests…all were performed in Knoxville at the same location.

Before U-verse - Speed Test

After U-verse - Speed Test

From this quick test, you can see my download rate is much higher, but my upload rate also got a massive improvement. The ping time got cut in half as well - so it’s a win-win-win with the U-verse upgrade. The thing is, the download rate isn’t anywhere near the max rate of 18Mbps, so I decided to try a speed test against the Atlanta, GA data center since I would assume they have more capacity than Morristown…

Speed Test - Atlanta

Nice huh? That’s quite close to the max download rate and a very respectable upload speed…and the ping is lower still. So the bottom line is U-verse blows regular DSL out of the water and it is generally better than cable or at least very comparable. One of the things I don’t like about cable internet is they use different methods to boost your speeds for short periods of time. So you may have a 12Mbps package and for 30 secs - 2 minutes, you may get that speed when starting a download, but if you’re downloading something large, you will usually notice your download speed dialing back pretty drastically…whereas I should (in theory) have these U-verse speeds throughout the whole download. Realistically though, you’re going to be very unlikely to find a single server that can provide you with a download at these rates, so the only way you would be able to get this much data flowing would be to have quite a few downloads going on simultaneously.

The Installation
Now that the speed test is out of the way, you may want to know about the installation process. When I signed up for the install, I was told the install takes between 4 to 6 hours depending on the services I wanted installed and the specifics of my house/neighborhood. The U-verse install requires two different groups - one is an external group that hooks up your new equipment on the outside of your house and the other group does everything inside the house. In my case, I heard from both groups at 9am - both called to confirm the appointment and to let me know they were on the way. The external guy got here around 9:30am and he started checking the lines outside my house. The internal guys got here around 9:45am and I gave them a quick tour of the places I wanted U-verse. The external guy worked until 11 or a little after getting everything prepped and getting some electronics added on to my house that connect back up to the utility pole. While he was doing that, the internal guys explored the attic and crawlspace to determine the best way to run my new wires.

I have an older house and even though I did have coax cables in most of the rooms, the cables were always on the opposite wall from my TVs (I have not had cable for over 3 years…so placement in relation to the cables wasn’t exactly important prior to today). After talking to the U-verse guys about this, they agreed they should go ahead and run new wires to all of my TVs…but here’s the awesome part: they ran Cat 5e cables to all my rooms for free instead of coax! That was a HUGE win for me…why? Because now I can add a network switch in any room with one of the new network jacks and I’ve got a way to hardwire in my other goodies…specifically, my Xbox 360 and my Blu-ray players. If you already had coax cable that was close to your TVs, I don’t think they would run anything for you since they prefer to use existing wiring. Even if they do run new stuff for your install, you must ask for Cat 5e instead of coax if that is what you want. They can install either one usually unless there are specific environmental conditions at your location - in which case they may not give you a choice. Anyway, it took them maybe an hour to hour and a half to run the network drops (I had four sets total in my case…all from the crawlspace).

By this time, the outside stuff was done and tested. Both teams must test the line once it’s ready to go - until that point, you don’t really know whether you can actually get U-verse service or not. If you can’t, I don’t know what happens…in my case, both teams agreed that I had an excellent signal here so we could proceed with installation of the Residential Gateway (the “RG”). So, they finished up all of the network jacks (adding faceplates, etc.) and then connected up the RG and the backup battery (a small Belkin UPS…keeps the net and VoIP up for 4 hours if the power goes out). The RG essentially IS the U-verse service…it controls everything. It has a router (wired and wireless…b/g only), the VoIP system, and the TV connections. So if this box isn’t happy, nothing is going to work. It’s important to note that this RG box needs a true, three prong grounded electrical outlet…I have a 50 year old home, but luckily a handful of my outlets were updated to be grounded just before I bought this house. If you’re thinking about U-verse and you have an older house, make sure you have one of these outlets or you won’t be able to install…you can’t use an adapter for this part, you must have a real grounded outlet near the RG.

As luck would have it, my RG was not happy. No matter what they did, it just wouldn’t connect to the network. The techs tried everything they could think of, but after about 2 hours of troubleshooting it, they decided it we should try another RG. At this point, the installation was crossing the 7 hour mark (the guys didn’t even take a lunch break…). This time, the RG connected properly. Even when the RG works, the initial setup still takes about 15 minutes while it configures itself. Once that was done, I had to connect to the RG from my MacBook and finish a few last steps on the AT&T website. Once all of that was out of the way, the techs connected up all of my TV boxes and let them sync. All of them had to perform an automatic update that took another 10-15 minutes to complete. Finally, we did a quick test of my phone system, finished porting my number to the new system, and then they gave me a quick tour of the U-verse software on the DVR. It was 6:30pm and the installation was completed.

So, was it worth it?
I’ve had the service for less than a day as I write this, but I can say that this was 110% worth it for my purposes. Heck, just getting these great upload and download rates makes it worth it for me, but getting my house wired with a wired gigabit network was an unbelievable bonus. Will I watch all 450+ TV channels? No, I’ll probably watch 20 or less any given week. If you like TV though, this package has as much as any of them. I don’t use the landline phone much, so I’m not sure how useful the VoIP upgrade will be…call quality sounds much better (I had some noise prior to this upgrade), but I wanted to keep my Knoxville number, so I kept the phone service for the moment. I think a typical install in a newer home that already had existing coax (or ethernet) cable in all the right places would be much, much shorter than my install…maybe 2-4 hours. So if you’re thinking about getting U-verse, don’t let the length of my install deter you - it’s very unlikely it’ll take longer than 6 hours max. All of the guys I dealt with during the install were a pleasure to work with - other than the technical issues with the bad RG hardware, everything went as smoothly as one would want. The real question is the long term support - will AT&T keep up the great customer service I experienced or will they drop the ball now that I’m committed to U-verse? Only time will tell, but I can certainly recommend U-verse at this point.

UPDATE (10/30/2009): It’s been a couple of days now and I’m still very happy with the service. The only “issue” I’ve found is that I misunderstood the stream limit with U-verse as far as TV programming. I thought all boxes would be able to watch any channel (HD or SD) and the DVR box could do 4 channels (all recording or watching 1 and recording 3). What I didn’t realize was that your entire U-verse system can only support 4 channels simultaneously and of those 4, only 2 can be HD. So if you have three boxes like I do, you can’t watch live HD content on all three boxes at the same time unless you’re watching the same show(s) on two or more of the boxes. If you have lots of TVs in your house, you may hit this issue pretty quickly. In my case, I hit the issue because three of the shows I like to watch come on at the same time on the same day of the week…when I tried to set the DVR to record all of them in HD, it told me I couldn’t. I can drop one of the shows down to SD and it’s fine, but while the recording is going on, I won’t be able to watch any other channels in HD (it gives you a blue screen and tells you no more HD channels can be used until the recording has stopped). For me, this isn’t a deal breaker, but I thought I should put a note on here since this limit wasn’t clear to me…I knew the limit of 4 streams on the DVR box, I just didn’t realize that was a limit on the whole U-verse install.

Important Life Truths

2009-09-16T20:27:08-07:00

I ran across an article the other day that I thought would be worth sharing - it’s called “88 Important Truths I’ve Learned About Life”. I don’t necessarily think 100% of these items are “truths” in my life, but I’d say I can certainly agree with the vast majority of them. You should read the whole article - but here were my top favorites (with my thoughts in italics):

You can’t change other people, and it’s rude to try.

I learned this one pretty early on - it has proven very true in my experience. The key is that you can’t change other people, but they can change…they just have to do the changing themselves.

Every problem you have is your responsibility, regardless of who caused it.

I like this one a lot because too many people have a victim mentality. In the end though, your problems are just that…your problems. You don’t have to solve them if you don’t want to, but don’t forget that they are yours to solve and yours alone.

Credit card debt devours souls.

Ok - this one is a little over the top for me, but I agree in general. Credit card debt (or any kind of debt for that matter) will almost always detract from you achieving your goals. If you manage it correctly, it may only have a negligible impact on your life, but if you don’t, it can easily destroy it. So while I wouldn’t go so far as credit card debt “devours souls”, I do believe that having it will, at some point, have a net negative impact on your life.

Most of what we see is only what we think about what we see.

Out of all 88 items in the article, this is my favorite. Essentially, everything you see is based around perception which means you’ll color everything you see with your own beliefs, assumptions, and knowledge. Sometimes things will actually be what you perceived, but most than likely, you only have a portion of the total picture.

Even if it costs no money, nothing is free if it takes time.

I don’t have anything special to add to this one - but I totally agree…nothing is truly free.

Finished Mass Effect

2009-07-03T00:06:37-07:00

I finally finished the main story in Mass Effect just a couple of days ago. I think I have about 15 hours of game time in…which is pretty short, but I didn’t do all that many of the side missions. The story was really excellent. There were quite a few surprises along the way that really made things move along nicely.

I think Final Fantasy 7 is still the best RPG I’ve played, but I would say Mass Effect is in my overall top 10 games list. The only thing that never really clicked for me was all of the equipment. Sure, you can buy fancy weapons and and all kinds of upgrades, but I barely did any of that and the game wasn’t that hard to beat. I suppose I could up the difficulty level and maybe all of the equipment would matter more.

In any event, it’s a fun game if you like more action oriented RPGs. Depending on your choices, it may feel a little too much like a FPS for some people, but the balance seemed just about right to me. Now I can start watching for Mass Effect 2 information…I’ve been trying to avoid it until I finished this just to make sure I didn’t see any of the ending before it was time.

Mid-2009 Goal Update

2009-07-01T00:01:50-07:00

So I thought it would be good to post an update on the ol’ blog here and since it’s the middle of the year, it seems fitting that the post should be an update on my 2009 goals….so here goes…

Financial

Fully fund 2008 & 2009 Roth IRAs [2008 fully funded; 2009 money saved, but not in Roth account yet]
Pay off second mortgage OR refinance into single mortgage (with much lower rate and no PMI) [I’ve been thinking about this and I’m not sure I want to go ahead with this right now. The total cost to ReFi was higher than I expected for the great rates and the reality is that my second mortgage isn’t hurting that much. Given certain things going on in my career right now, holding on to the money seems like a wise thing to do for the moment. At present, about 1/2 of this is already in savings.]
Get my side income up to the point I could live off of it if the need arose (NOT trying to get this to replace my actual income level…although that would be fantastic if it did) [This is about the same or lower than it was at the start of the year - I’m still trying to hit this goal though.]
Maintain at least a 3 month emergency fund (currently at 12 months, but expect some of this to use used for other financial goals) [I’ve got around 6-8 months still hanging around at the moment, so even if I reallocate some of this for the mortgage payoff or towards investments, I’ll still be able to reach this goal just fine.]

Health

Get weight to 190 or lower and keep it there (~25 lbs to lose) [Yeah…still um, working on this one. Good news is I didn’t gain much weight…but I also didn’t exactly lose any either. This one is still doable though…]
Decrease caffeine intake - and keep it down (target is around 1 12oz can of soda per day or less) [I did this one for a couple of months and now I’m back to drinking more soda than I should be. I’ve done a decent job of keeping it out of the fridge at home, but at work, that’s a different story. Going to refocus on this one.]
Drink more water (no particular amount - just when I’m thirsty, grab a water instead of a soda) [I’ve been drinking a moderate amount of water, but I’m still prone to grab a soda…so I need to focus more on this one as well. It’s perfectly doable, but still on the ToDo list.]
Cook (healthly-ish) meals at home more than I eat out (including lunch) [Um, yeah….gotta get the ball rolling on this one too. The biggest problem here is going to lunch with the guys at work. I have to stop that - it’ll help save a bit of money and be a bit healthier.]

Personal & Professional Development / Other

Read at least 1 non-fiction (but not computer related) book a month [I’m going to miss this goal - with everything else going on, I just can’t do this. I do have a couple of new books to read - but not 12.]
Read at least 1 fiction book a month [Same as the non-fiction goal…I’d like to read a couple, but I don’t think I’ll get more than that in this year.]
Attend WWDC 2009 (contingent on other financial goals being met/on track in May) [This one is completed. I went to WWDC a few weeks ago…that reminds me, I need to blog about that…]
Get my passport [Still need to do this one…I’m not in a rush for it though, I’d just like to get it done so I have it for the future.]
Write at least one blog post per week on this blog - just to start writing more [If you’ve checked this blog much you know I haven’t been anywhere close to successful on this one. I need to make time for this, just for my own sake, but I’m not sure if I can do that. I’ll probably put a preference to posting on my business blog over this one and still only post on this one when I have something in general that I want to share.] So how do I feel about my progress? Financially, I feel really good. While all of the goals aren’t completed just yet, I’m nearly there number wise…and that’s after taking into account the WWDC trip and a trip to Las Vegas. Health wise, I really dropped the ball. I got distracted with too many other things and this set of goals really suffered. I’m slightly disappointed with my progress on the personal/professional goals, but at the same time, I’ve had a heck of a lot happen and learned a lot over the last 6 months. While I may not have accomplished the specific goals I outlined at the beginning of the year, I think I’ve still grown quite a lot in this area so at least progress is being made.