Tobino

“Sometimes a slow gradual approach does more good than a large gesture.”

Craig Newmark, Keynote Speech, SXSW 2006
Founder of Craigslist.org (1952 - )

Well, not a lot to say beyond “It’s in and it works”.

The install went very well. Verizon’s installers did a very good job and I’m really happy with the service we’re getting. Some pictures are currently in the SmugMug feed on the side of the page if you’re interested in seeing some of the equipment.

The Internet service is very fast and has been 100% reliable. The Actiontec router is fine tho I may try to convert it to a bridge. However it appears that any on demand video content may actually have to be pushed through my own firewall if I do that. I’m not sure if my firewall can handle it.

I had to put in a separate order to get CableCARDS for the TiVoHD which they brought out today (just needed two days to get an appointment). There were a few hangups getting the cards initialized properly so the install which takes about 30 minutes if all goes well took about 2.5 hours. I can’t complain as it’s very new technology (at least in deployment).

I didn’t get to watch it much before heading in to work but what I did see looks really good.

Overall the FiOS installation process has been very smooth and I’m really happy with it.

This afternoon I signed up for a Verizon FIOS Internet and TV installation which is tentatively scheduled for 9/24/2007.

As I just recently purchased a TiVoHD which I am very happy with I’ll be getting Cable Cards for it to receive the digital channnels. This will be small test of Verizon’s support. You don’t get the option to request cards when placing the order online so I’ll have get them added once the order is solidified in their system.

Comcast must be taking on the chin pretty hard. It seems like everybody I know is switching to FIOS as soon as they have the opportunity.

I checked again this afternoon and Best Buy had one!!! I bought it and have it setup and working now.

It was very easy to setup although it wasn’t able to use the wireless network adapter my old Series 2 TiVo was able to use. To do the initial setup I had to run a patch to my home network via ethernet. Luckily I just recently terminated a few more Cat5 runs which made this possible.

So far it’s great. I don’t have CableCards yet so we’re still not getting Digital Cable. Basic Analog cable signal is still viewable with a dual tuner however. This allows us to record two shows or watch one and record a different one.

Now to re-enter all of our Season Passes…

Well, in Richmond, Best Buy never got any and Circuit City either ran out or didn’t get any. So, I’ll have to order one online and have it shipped.

I actually ordered one from Circuit City’s website as they indicated it was available for In-Store pickup. Unfortunately there was some sort of inventory error (or else they sold the last one to one of their friends…). To their credit, they say i’ll get a $24 gift card because of their mistake.

Oh well. I’ll just have to wait a little longer.

As many people know, I watch way too much TV. Admittedly, a lot less now that we have two kids, but still a lot. TiVo helps to feed my habit by allowing me to record whatever show I like to watch and view it when the time is right.

Or, if a baby starts crying or barfs on you or a toddler is about to pull your laptop off a table it’s easy to pause what you’re watching and deal with the situation. When I’m away from a TiVo enabled TV the pause/rewind feature is probably the one I miss the most.

Back when we had DirecTV with TiVo it was easy to record a show while watching another. Since moving to Comcast this hasn’t been an option. We also haven’t had the option of using the TiVo with Comcast’s digital cable so as of a month ago we can’t even record HBO on our TiVo at all. Both of these challenges now have an affordable solution.

TiVo has relased a new version of their High Definition TiVo for only $299. It has dual tuner capability to allow recording two shows at once and allows the use of Cable Cards so this can replace the Comcast Digital Cable set top box.

I’ll be plunking down some money to get one of these in the next few days. Stay tuned as I provide updates.

Kristen gave birth to a baby girl, Margaret Grace, on 5/31/2007 at 2:23pm. She weighed 8 pounds 4 ounces and measured 21 inches.

All are doing well.

Pictures on SmugMug, http://tobino.smugmug.com/

One requirement I have for my personal email is that I can save as much as I want and get to it from anywhere, anytime I have an Internet connection.

To meet this requirement, one option is to host at home using dynamic DNS and my Cable connection but that’s not as reliable as I’d like. For the past several years I’ve been using a FreeBSD jail out on the Internet which has worked well. However, for various reasons that won’t be an option for a while.

So, I’ve moved my domains back to a shared hosting provider and decided to look at hosted email options. What I’ve settled on, and I’m very happy with so far, is Fastmail.

They have a pretty good webmail interface (more functional than attractive but I like the features after some adjustment) and allow full IMAP and POP access. For $20 a year I can keep up to 600MB of mail. There is an option to have your domains pointed directly there which I haven’t taken to doing yet but I’m considering it.

The bottom line is that I highly recommend you look into using Fastmail if you’re looking for email hosting.

I host email for my family as well and right now Fastmail doesn’t make it easy to manage email accounts for other folks. I’m hoping they add some sort of Family account or small business account soon as that would solve a number of my challenges.

Here we are moving hosting companies again.

In a follow-up to the TiVo story, figured we might as well cancel the Digital Cable subscription since it was costing us $15/month and we didn’t really use it.

So we called up Comcast to cancel it and they gave us a $10/month discount on our bill. Mighty nice of them huh? We took the deal but that may only be temporary. You see, they gave us this discount shortly after they notified us that all of their monthly rates were going up $5/month at the beginning of 2006.

I really hope we get another cable choice soon.