NA6C-Guy

iTrader: (1)

Talk about a boring day. It's been cold and rainy ALL day, and I have yet to actually leave sleep mode. I've got a major case of chair ***.

TurboTim

iTrader: (9)

Direct tv is much, much better than comcast.

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

That's an interesting observation. I assume that picture quality and reliability of service are not primary factors in your decision-making.

NA6C-Guy

iTrader: (1)

This **** is never going to get better. Unfortunately, I have no other decent options. AT&T is overpriced and sucks ***, and the other cable providers are probably even more sketchy. Can't even watch youtube or stream hulu at these ridiculous speeds. Dat ******* ping! I could record that **** on a stopwatch!

TurboTim

iTrader: (9)

Picture quality seems slightly in comcast favor on the 1080i channels. But I don't sit a foot away so that doesn't matter much. (Side note, hdmi on comcast HD receiver was noticeably worse picture than component) There's 1080p channels, I haven't checked those out yet. Cinemax I think, maybe others. I will probably loose those after the all-premium 3 month intro.

12 month rate is much less $ for many more channels that I care to watch (military, science, nat geo, NASA) none of which I got on comcast. Those are all in hd except NASA. The only "good" channels we had with comcast was discovery & both histories. After 12 month rate still cheaper than comcast.

The guide/menus are instant. Comcast was...slow. Change the channel & wait. Page down on the guide & wait 2 seconds. I HATED that. Comcast very low resolution guide, 4 shows shown, always a banner ad on the bottom. Direct tv has a pretty guide & menus, fast. Instant.

Guide greys out the channels you do not get. Comcast teased you with what you would get if you paid more, or if you switched to a different provider.

HD receiver is about the size of a wii. Whatever, wife liked that. Comcast boxes were VCR sized.

Comcast boxes had optical audio so now I have to run another audio wire to my receiver.

3 hd receivers instead of 1 again for less money cause of the Verizon triple play. We now have caller id for the two people who actually call our land line. My wife needs the land line for work. DSL seems perfectly adequate for our use: amazon & Netflix wireless stream. Miataturbo.

Our net gear wireless router was flaking out, the dsl modem has wireless built in, that was nice, so now I no longer have to reset the router every other day.

I have to run a phone jack to our computer room for the dsl modem, that is a pain.

We were getting pixily screen on our HD comcast receiver the past month too. I am sure that would be fixed with a service call.

It did the three scheduled days for us to finally get direct tv though.

Comcast did have on demand which I would use to watch AMC shows that I missed. I will have to watch those online now, or upgrade to direct tvs dvr box which include their version of on demand.

hustler

iTrader: (6)

Anderson Silva's broken leg = OMFG, so sad, the pain, that poor bastard wah wah wah.
Trey's broken arm = STFU and go back to work after two weeks, stop crying, you're milking it.

NA6C-Guy

iTrader: (1)

and 8 hours later, I wake up to



At some point throughout the day or tonight, it'll be back to slow **** again.

EO2K

iTrader: (37)

I forget, is this cable or DSL?

NA6C-Guy

iTrader: (1)

"Meine dispatcher says there's something wrong with deine kabel."

Cable

EO2K

iTrader: (37)

"Zats vhy dey sent me, I ahm deh expurt"

Welcome to cable. Its like a big pot of bandwidth and everyone gets a bite. More people eating and everyone gets smaller portions. Check it at 3am and see what you get.

NA6C-Guy

iTrader: (1)

Well that's the thing, it seems to get far far far worse at low traffic hours. It's usually fine during the day between 6am and 6pm, but usually by late night and early morning it goes to ****. The hours when I'm actually wanting to be on the computer and watch shows on hulu. For years I have been blaming it on temperature because it always seems to coincide with high temps and low temps. In the summer it seems worse on really hot days, and in the winter, it seems worse on cold nights. Which makes me think it's something on the pole. I also have heard from neighbors that they have equally sketchy internet and cable. They need to come out and revamp our whole block. Infrastructure around here is falling apart.

Godless Commie

iTrader: (2)

This is an actual brochure from a hotel in Beijing.

Obviously, it has been translated directly, word for word from Mandarin to English.


Getting There:
Our representative will make you wait at the airport. The bus to the hotel runs along the lake shore. Soon you will feel pleasure in passing water. You will know that you are getting near the hotel, because you will go round the bend. The manager will await you in the entrance hall. He always tries to have intercourse with all new guests.

The Hotel:
This is a family hotel, so children are very welcome. We of course are always pleased to accept adultery. Highly skilled nurses are available in the evenings to put down your children. Guests are invited to conjugate in the bar and expose themselves to others. But please note that ladies are not allowed to have babies in the bar. We organize social games, so no guest is ever left alone to play with them self.

The Restaurant:
Our menus have been carefully chosen to be ordinary and unexciting. At dinner, our quartet will circulate from table to table, and fiddle with you.

Your Room:
Every room has excellent facilities for your private parts. In winter, every room is on heat. Each room has a balcony offering views of outstanding obscenity! .. You will not be disturbed by traffic noise, since the road between the hotel and the lake is used only by pederasts.

Bed
Your bed has been made in accordance with local tradition. If you have any other ideas please ring for the chambermaid. Please take advantage of her. She will be very pleased to squash your shirts, blouses and underwear. If asked, she will also squeeze your trousers.

Above All:
When you leave us at the end of your holiday, you will have no hope. You will struggle to forget it

NA6C-Guy

iTrader: (1)

So my aunt is the executor on my grandfathers will, and she is being a greedy, money hungry ***** and is not distributing the money like she should. She has already kept and spent the 30k that was supposed to be divided between her, my father and my 4 cousins and me (Not a lot I know, but still, it's wrong). Now she is saying whether we (myself and my cousins) know it or not, she is getting a cut from a rental property that is just supposed to be divided between me and my cousins. Isn't that illegal? Not sure what to do other than be extremely pissed about it. We have always been pretty close and gotten along, so I don't want to have to take her to court over it. Sucks that money can do these things to a family, but right is right, and what she is doing is fucked up. She knows and everyone else in my family knows that he would have wanted his wishes upheld, and for the correct money to go to his grandchildren. I was already pissed about the earlier money being withheld, but now hearing this I'm sitting here fuming. She is taking care of her finances while my debts pile up and overflow, and my credit score is probably taking a ****. All of my cousins are too young to really need the money, but I could actually use it. I feel like I need to stand up for them too, since they probably don't know what is actually going on. They might not even know that they are supposed to be getting anything out of it.

Anyone dealt with legal issues about wills and estates? What should I, or can I do about this to force her to distribute the money as the will states?

bahurd

iTrader: (8)

I'm not a lawyer, but the following web page pretty well describes what the 'executor' needs to do. What Does an Executor Do? | Nolo.com

As for "forcing her to distribute the money as the will states" I'm not sure how you do that without spending money on an attorney.

NA6C-Guy

iTrader: (1)

Thanks for the link. Reading now.

That is what sucks. Can't do anything about getting money without spending money. I guess I'll just have to let her know she is in the wrong, and needs to pay out according to the will. If it ruins our relationship, so be it.

bahurd

iTrader: (8)

Well before you do that consider that all debts need to be cleared before any remaining monies can be paid to heirs. Sometimes this takes time to resolve and the executor has the fiduciary duty to see this is done first.

If your grandfather just passed I would give it time to play out before I decided to ruin the family relationship.

In short.... The interests of the heirs come second to any creditors including the federal and state governments.

NA6C-Guy

iTrader: (1)

Yeah, I'm fully aware of that fact. He had no outstanding debts to creditors to take care of. All that needed to be handled as far as I know was taxes on property and his income tax. He received a pension from the FAA, and from his USAF career, and he was always pretty cheap, and never bought anything that he couldn't pay for with cash. I think I'm just most pissed that I know she has already spent some of the money from his bank account on things not related to his estate, being her own property taxes, and a medical bill. Which I guess is legal as I now remember that her name was put on his bank account after he started to become more feeble in old age. So that is one loophole I guess. Now the fact that she flat out told me that she is going to get a cut of the rental property money has pissed me off. It's not on the will, she doesn't get a cut. I guess she thinks just because she is the executor she is owned some of it. And she is acting like she is getting shafted and that me and my cousins are getting the good deal. She got his big *** 5br/3bath house, which was paid for, and she gets to sell her old house. Yeah, it's tough for her...

I hate to sound like a whiny, greedy ****, only worried about my grandfathers money, but I'm just trying to assure that she respects his wishes through his will and pays out to all of the grandchildren like she should. If I didn't get anything I wouldn't care, but the fact that there is money there to be distributed, and the fact that she is trying to grab at money that isn't hers is so wrong.

I shouldn't have said anything here anyway. I have little posting self control. I felt like venting before I punched a hole in a wall. Don't want to go all vash.

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

Interesting.

It's been about five years since I've had any kind of cable or satellite service of my own, though as it happens I'm visiting my mother down in FL right now, and they have Comcast at this house.

The on-screen guide does suck. Sluggish to respond to keypresses, and two-thirds of the screen is take up with ads and other non-guide material. The OnDemand interface is no better.

The image quality is excellent on the HD channels, and adequate on the SD channels. Much better than what I've seen of DirecTV, at any rate. Any DBS satellite service suffers from too little bandwidth relative to the amount of programming that they carry. If you only ever watch football then it's great, but the second-tier channels really get squeezed all to hell in order to fit everything else in.

Interesting comment about the boxes. The "big" one in the living room (the one with HDMI and component out, which supports OnDemand and all the other options, made by Cisco) is about the size of a hard-backed novel. The other ones, which don't have all the fancy features, are somewhat smaller:




It's tough to make broad generalizations about companies like Comcast and Time Warner, who replace their equipment on very long cycles and typically inherited a lot of infrastructure from whatever small local/regional provider they purchased.

NA6C-Guy

iTrader: (1)

It's baaaacccckkkk!



Just moments ago, it started up again. Right around 6PM.

Joe Perez

iTrader: (8)

"I think mom's dead. She's stiff and cold."
- text message from your son that ruins your whole evening.



Meanwhile, I've gotten my 97 year old great grandmother hooked on the Kindle. I'm going to have to buy her one for herself, or else I don't think she's going to let me have mine back.