On Saturday we drove around a bit through Elmira and some of the usual spots first. My brother's house doesn't have any service (maybe 1 bar of roaming). But that's OK when you have wifi calling. They're really just on the edge of service from Elmira - so as it all expands a bit more, they might get lucky anyway.

Also no service inside Target. This is likely a band issue though. As T-Mobile's service improves, that will probably change and improve as well. I'm not sure which band would be needed to reach a bit deeper inside the building but I'm led to believe band 12 will fix all the things!

I have to say that overall I think TMo has come a LONG way from just 6 months ago. There was previously zero coverage around here (OK, so maybe they had actual 2G/Edge service... but come on, that doesn't count these days) and now there's LTE nearly everywhere. Still lots of room for improvement (and a few places to light up coverage) but it's coming. And the results are there so far.

Another interesting difference is just in support. TMo's social media team is relentless - they're even surprisingly active on Google+. Hopefully these people are well paid because they seem to be pretty good at their job. As I told my wife, they appear to actually give a shit. Try to find anyone at Verizon or AT&T that seems to give a shit about their customers... I can't recall anything that would illustrate that.

If in the whole process there was one thing that put me off a little bit, it was the in-store experience. When I went to drop the phone off (because you must physically return the phone to an actual TMo store), there were 3 employees working and they were each helping someone when I walked in. We waited 25 minutes before someone could finally help us. I don't know if these 3 customers in front of us had the most complicated processes ever - but it felt like forever for what I thought (based on nothing at all) should be fairly simple transactions. I guess not.

Another thing I'd consider odd about the return process - at least given all of my interaction with them thus far - was that even though I was returning their Test Drive device, no one even asked me how it was. Nothing about what I thought of the service or the device... or least of all if I wanted to sign up for service! I had no intention of signing up that day (network isn't ready yet around here) but it was surprising to me that they didn't even ask. Isn't that what the Test Drive is for??

Oh well. I don't intend on having to visit any TMo store even if we do sign up for service. It's far easier to do most business online.

One of the things we will still have to figure out is what to do about the switch. All 4 lines are under contract and thus will have ETFs. I'm not sure yet if it would be worth trading in our devices to get TMo to pay the ETFs. It seems to me that it might work out better if we sell each of our devices outright to cover the ETFs - as I'm pretty sure we'll get more money that way to help cover the cost of new devices. Why new devices if all of ours will work on TMo out of the box? Wifi calling.

I hadn't mentioned it here yet but T-Mobile vastly improved their coverage of upstate NY some time recently. I figurd this was a great time to start seriously considering switching away from AT&T. Luckily, TMo has a program setup for exactly this kind of thing. It's their Test Drive. And they'll send you a phone to use on their network for a full week, for free. So I got my iPhone 5S in the mail last night for my free 7 day Test Drive...

AT&T vs T-Mobile Speed Test at Home

Pretty easily forwarded my AT&T number calls, swapped the TMo SIM into my Z3 Compact, updated APN settings, and was on my way with my own phone for the Test Drive. Service at home was decent. Only had one or sometimes 2 bars in the house - but this isn't really that different from my usual AT&T service. Speed test was a bit slower than AT&T but still acceptable.

Today is more of a real test. According to their map, once I get outside of Montour/Watkins area and head towards work, I'd pretty much lose service and have to deal with it. I expected this for the Test Drive. Surely I wouldn't bother actually switching carriers if both work and home were not covered. Elmira/Horseheads area appears to be covered well (according to their coverage map anyway) but I'll verify this tonight when I head that way to get a haircut.

I was kind of hoping that their map may just not be updated yet for the Corning area and I'd have regular service. Nope.

Once I got a few miles down 414 away from home, I lost LTE completely and it switched over to Roaming. Wasn't quite sure what to expect in this area, but it turns out that it was connected to AT&T's HSPA+ network - which is not awful around here.

It stayed in Roaming until somewhere on 86 in Corning or heading up the hill to work - where it changed back to TMo's network but only Edge (2G) coverage. This is fine if you want to make calls and such... but don't count on anything other than maybe some emails or something for data.

The start of my morning commute with T-Mobile, with their map.

And really, I'd say their map is fairly accurate - if you consider where I lost LTE and the colors on the map. It likely dropped a little earlier than when I spotted it on my phone, but it's still pretty close.

Really though, 414 should be covered before I make the switch as well. I need it at home and work for sure, but if I'm going to take advantage of their Music Freedom arrangement (streaming music doesn't count against your data), it cannot be Roaming. Has to be using the TMo network for that. And pretty much the only thing I listen to in the car is streaming music from Google Play Music - I subscribe to their All Access service for $10/mo.

As I said, tonight I venture more towards Elmira/Horseheads area and check out by the mall. According to the map, all of this should be covered, so I have fairly high expectations. All I'm really doing though is leaving Waze running for maps/navigation so that I can watch my signal along the way. I'll try to remember to do a speed test when I get out there to maybe compare later.

So far so good...

On the phone I go.

After speaking with the TWC lady (who was very nice about the whole thing, at least, and didn't try to get me to sign back up even), it turns out that even though my account noted that I canceled on the 11th, the billing was never stopped when I called. In fact, it didn't stop until almost 2 weeks later on the 23rd! I suspect this is the day that a tech finally made it out to my house to physically disconnect/turn off my service at the pole or at the house.

And that is bullshit.

I canceled on the 11th because I stopped using it on the 11th. On what planet does that mean it's OK to continue billing me? These things, Time Warner Cable, are why you are rated one of the most hated companies in America. This shit happens ALL of the time.

The final "bill" I received today was for service dates of 12/16 to 1/15. They credited me the days from 12/23 to 1/15 and said I still owe'd $9 and some change. In addition to the 5 days from the previous billing period that I should have been credited.

Thanks to the nice lady on the phone today, the recent bill should be wiped out and I should be credited back the 5 days in December from the previous billing period (12/11 to 12/15). So we'll see what happens in a couple weeks when I actually receive that in the mail. According to her I should be receiving a little over $9 in credit.

And THAT, finally, should be my last dealings with Time Warner Cable for as long as I can manage.

By the way... my 100 mbit fiber service from Empire Access is fantastic...

TWC Speedtest "Before"

More important than the the cord we cut though, is the cord we had installed! It's a very small, glass cord that carries LOTS of data. A while back we found out that Empire Access offers fiber in our area (yes, Montour Falls, of all places). I pretty much called up immediately and ordered service.

What did we get? While they also offer TV and phone service, we got the 100/20 internet only package (they also offer a full gigabit option). That's 100 mbps down and 20 mbps up. All for just $50.

If you compare that to the Time Warner Cable I was paying for, it's just absurd. I had the standard TWC package (15 down/1 up) and was paying them $48/mo for that privilege. And that was after saving the $6 or $7 a month with my own cable modem. So it would probably be $55/mo normally. If you sign up for the standard package now, it's only $35. So I have basically been paying the price for Turbo but only getting Standard.

Fiber Speedtest "After"

When I called to cancel TWC the lady tried to offer me an upgrade to their Ultimate package - which is 50 down and 5 up - for $35/mo. Regretfully, I didn't ask how long that price would be good for. But honestly, I didn't care. There was no way in hell I was going to actually keep TWC. And frankly, to offer me still half of what Empire offers - even for less money is just insulting.

Canceling DirecTV was surprisingly easy. The guy on the phone just kind of asked up front if there was anything they could offer to keep me. Of course there isn't. So they're sending a box for me to send back the equipment in a couple days and then I'll be done. This will straight up save us $108/mo.

To make up for the lack of TV, we've got the usuals: Netflix and Hulu+. And I've also got Amazon Prime, but at the moment it's not too simple to stream that to either TV - but I have a Fire TV stick on the way to settle that. As long as the price is reasonable, I'll plan on picking up HBO Go in the spring when it's offered as a standalone service. Gotta have that Game of Thrones!

Empire's fiber service is available in a bunch of small towns right now (Bath, Odessa, Sayre, etc) and is coming to more later this year (Big Flats for sure, likely Elmira). No love for Corning yet though - apparently there are some political issues involved.

Oh... small bonus with the fiber install: it's all Corning fiber. ClearCurve, specifically. Have to support my own job when I can!

The Super Trofeo North America series has never (that I'm aware) run at WGI. So it was pretty unique to see a 17 car field of Lamborghinis run in what I consider to be my back yard. This might have been one of my favorite parts of the whole 6 Hour weekend.

These cars are based on the Lamborghini Gallardo LP570-4... meaning they're  roughly 570 HP and have all wheel drive. And those V10s make a pretty amazing sound running around that track.

Being one of the smaller, support series races, they didn't get a ton of track time. But I was able to catch them finishing up one practice session and then qualifying. And then they actually had two of their own races.

In a weekend with more than a couple little issues (parking, ticket prices, etc), this was definitely one of the highlights. Plus, it would be cool enough to see one Lamborghini running at The Glen... but a whole herd of them is another thing entirely.

Many more photos of the Super Trofeo cars here.

The 6 Hrs is always a great event, really. But with the change to the new combined series, ticket prices skyrocketed. I've already discussed this at length. It's not even really my only issue with this event though...

Let's look at the classes: P, PC, GTLM, GTD. Surprisingly I think they've done a fairly good job at integrating to two main Prototype classes. It's a shame that P1 was dropped and only the P2 cars remain from ALMS, but I guess it's OK. PC is... well... it's there. The GT classes are really the biggest thing.

It feel like they just said "screw it" and kept both GT classes (dropped GTC though) and figured that would be good enough. It's not a big deal I guess, but I feel like it's confusing. You see practically the same cars in both classes that seem to have a performance difference for no reason other than having different classes.

If they found a way to combine the Prototype classes, surely they can make the GT classes work, right? Obviously there's more to it than that. But I think as it is right now, the United SportsCar Series will still need a little work. They probably know that. It's really only a year old anyway.

Here's to hoping that next year will be different (and cheaper!). And in then end, it's still some great racing.

Make sure you check out the full gallery from the 6 Hour race.

You need a special plugin for Aperture and it's a separate process with what I feel is an unneccessarily difficult batch processing... process. And the particular plugin I was using resaved the photos as TIFF files for whatever reason.

I realize this isn't really relevant to the Vintage Festival or anything, but I'm getting to a point, trust me. Anyway, at work I use Adobe Lightroom to process RAW photos. And in doing this I realized it has a much better way to correct the lens distortion - a checkbox! BUILT-IN!

What happened along the way of shooting my own photos though, was that even though I knew it was a PITA to process the photos shot with the 16-50mm lens, I kept using it. And the photos just sat there, unseen. I'd just get frustrated at the thought of attempting to process them in Aperture... so I wouldn't bother.

The sad part, I think, is that no one got to see some of the awesome shots I had (like this one), which I feel is likely one of my best photos of all of last year.

So long story shorter... I use Lightroom at home now too! And now I have a whole new gallery from last year that I never shared anything from because I forgot about it!

If you want to see the rest of that gallery (you should), you can check that out right here!

But there's something about the rumble from the unequal length headers on a flat four that perks me up a bit.

Wicked Big Meet seems to thankfully have quite a variety. Both in cars and people. There are plenty of trite stereotypes wandering around. Also plenty more of them parked on the Stafford Motor Speedway grounds! But in reality everyone is really there for the same purpose... FREE STUFF! OK, well, that and maybe to buy some stuff or look at some stuff... and just generally be car people hanging out with other car people for the day.

Honestly, I didn't know what to expect for WBM... I didn't have any idea how things were setup or what would even be happening. And I don't think it was really at all how I thought it might be.

I guess I thought maybe it would just be a big open thing where people and their cars would be intermixed with the vendors and everyone kind of everywhere doing things. It really wasn't like that at all. I mean, sure, there were people who ventured out to all of the attendee cars and I'm sure saw as much as they could see... but really everything was inside the fenced paddock area of the speedway.

Once you got in, the big vendors and their cars lined a main midway area that stretched the length of the paddock. That all leads to the food! But then there were even more vendors out back. Inside the speedway (on the track) was the autocross event (which after seeing them setup a 4 cone slalom RIGHT NEXT TO a row of jersey barriers, I was glad I did not sign up for).

Most of the day then was spent wandering this midway. Checking out parts offered for sale. Looking at the vendor cars. And trying to find water. There wasn't really a shortage or anything, but it was HOT. It was about 85 deg and sunny ALL DAY. Hydration was key... but it was exhausting. Thankfully a second night at the hotel and some beers made up for that though.

Would I do it again? Ya, probably. Though there's talk of possibly Ocean City next year... so who knows!

If you want to see some more photos from Wicked Big Meet, check out the full gallery over here.

The second year (2013) was really similar to the first but I tried to throw in one more stage on Saturday morning. This only seemed to reinforce how difficult it really was to travel between stages in the middle of the day. You seriously need to plan well ahead.

The one thing about the first two years though was that aside from the early one Saturday morning, I went to the same stages (9 & 12) both times. While these were cool to see, I really needed something different this year. So I did the VIP thing again - even though it went up $10 to $60. That was still fun, but I'm not so sure about next year.

In previous years there was only one way to see any stages on Friday - VIP. This year they added a new spectator area (for $5) with - what looks to me like - an even better jump than the VIP area gets. Next year, I think $5 will sound a lot better than $60.

Another fun thing this year was trying to actually shoot some photos at night at the final stage at the fairgrounds. I probably don't have a lot of variety in my photos - but I do like to try new things. I was actually fairly pleased with the results for what I was working with (not a great lens, no flash, dust, etc).

I will definitely be attending next year too. And if anyone is interested in joining me, I'm all for it. Who doesn't like to spend a few hours sitting in the woods waiting for a few cars to drive by really fast?

Make sure you check out the full gallery (of 250+ photos) and see all of the awesome cars. You'll find everything from the usual Subarus and a couple Evos to a Ford Ranger, a Porsche 944, and even a Ford Aspire. Lots of variety.