projects

It's been over a week since I posted my initial FIOS TV experience - time for an update. A Verizon technician (not a contractor) was scheduled to arrive on Sunday afternoon, after 1 p.m. I arrived home at 12:30 to discover that he'd already been at the house and left. A quick call to his cell phone uncovered that he'd been told that the work needed to be done before 1 p.m. By 2 p.m. he was back at the house and began investigating our non-functional TV service.

There were several calls to the a center where they can perform remote diagnostics on the Set Top Boxes (STB) attached to the televisions. They were unable to get a consistent reading from the boxes. Several resets were attempted, renewal of the service, but nothing seemed to work. The technician them placed one of his diagnostic tools on the cable from the FIOS box that is attached to the side of the house. He discovered that the box wasn't sending a proper signal. It seems that after one day of service, the TV module in the box had failed. The technician then replaced the entire box - having to disconnect and reconnect our phones, Internet, and TV services.

We've been using FIOS TV for one week since the fix.

I have the following observations:

1) Good: The picture is better than Comcast. It appears to have more detail, contrast, with less pixelation.

2) Bad: The picture sometimes stutters. I'm not sure what causes this, but sometimes the picture will freeze (about every 10 to 15 seconds) for about a second. It seems to be in this mode until the channel is somehow refreshed. It's incredibly irritating - not sure what is happening there.

3) Good: The phone and Internet services appear to be running quite well. The Internet package we have currently is 20/5 mbps and it consistently maintains this speed.

4) Undecided: The on-screen guide is more difficult for me to read than the old Comcast guide. It might be the number of available channels (much more now), the intermingling of free / pay channels, the font size... I'm not exactly sure, but I have been trying to use a "favorites" list to reduce the noise. Still, it is more difficult to navigate, even if it is only because I had become used to the Comcast guide.

So, is it better than Comcast? Usually. Was it worth the switch? For me, "Yes." However, I'm a nerd and there's a certain "coolness" to having a high speed digital fiber connected to the side of the house... even if it's just a subject evaluation...

"Man World" was the name imparted upon our garage by my team at Starbucks after they learned of my plans for the garage. So far the development has been slow going, but with some extra time on my hands I've decided to get after it. The first phase included the implementation of the pegboard and two hanging shelves. In phase two I have added six-foot garage shelves (with modular tubs) and two additional hanging shelves. All of the old boxes of books (which we don't have shelves for inside the house) have been stored on hanging shelves and project supplies have been stored in tubs.
Today I began painting the wall where a bench will be built with drywall primer. It will take a couple of coats to seal the drywall properly, but then I'll be ready to begin building the work bench. I hope to include an 8-foot counter top, on two base cabinets, with an isolated 20-amp electrical circuit, gigabit network connection, cable tv outlet, and phone outlet. Should be a great workspace for my computer work and provide a good resale benefit for the house.

Absolute Auto Body has returned my car! It's been in the shop since the beginning of July, after being rear-ended by a rather large pick-up truck. To my untrained eye, the everything looks first-rate. I recognize that my eyes are untrained, so I asked Ken to take a look at it also. Since Ken has been doing light auto body work as part of his job these past few years, I suspected he might notice things that I would miss; I was right.

Ken determined that the repair was done well. The parts fit well - it all looked great. The masking and painting was clean and professional. Ken has done quite a few paint touch-ups in his job, so he has a real eye for it. He discovered that the final buffing (which removes swirls and results in a mirror finish) was incomplete. I brought the car into Absolute Auto Body today for review. Sunny conditions made the swirls much more visible. Chris, the assistant manager, totally agreed with Ken's assessment and immediately requested that I return the car for additional attention. I'll have the car back to them on Monday for a half-day of buffing.

I must give Absolute Auto Body 9 out of 10 stars. They have provided regular updates and their work has been good. I'm very satisfied with the transparency and respect delivered by the assistant manager, Chris Cheuvront. If they had managed to deliver without the light paint swirls, I would have given them 10 stars.

Today I helped my friend John with a wiring challenge in his home. He wanted to run various cables (telephone, television, sound, network) through several walls to a central location. The challenge was getting into the wall - it was covered with wood paneling. We thought we could just pop a few finishing nails and get access to the wall - not so easy! It turns out the that top and bottom of the panels were glued to the studs, plus the top of each panel extended past the ceiling drywall! Ack!

I discovered last year that my car performed very badly in snowy, or icy, weather. At the time I blamed the width of the tires installed by Nissan. The car performed great on the Florida asphalt - but was nearly useless in Seattle when it snowed. This year I've had the same problems; the car stays in the garage when the roads are icy. However, the story gets more interesting.

I think I discovered a potential cause - the OEM tires are not rated for winter. In fact, they are a high performance, summer-time tire. ACK! This came to light as I have begun my search to replace the original tires, since they're wearing out.