Well, we finally have FiOS at the house, not without a lack of trying. I think the honeymoon period is officially over.

If you aren’t up to speed, the deal was that a new work crew would replace the main fiber optic cable supplying connectivity to my side of the lot during the day, my tech would confirm everything was okay, and he’d show up after I got home from work.  I called twice in the afternoon to Verizon’s FiOS “Solutions Support Center”, and they had no clue what was going on, and only relayed my messages to dispatch, with a promise to call me.  5:30pm rolls around, and still no one has called me.  If I told you it was a cable company, you wouldn’t be surprised.  I like competition in the marketplace, but I’m wondering/realizing that telecom or cable, it’s the confused big company mentality.

The FiOS Optical Network Terminal

I showed up at home around 6:45, and the tech was sitting in his van surfing the web.  I asked if he was ready, and he was.  I let him in, and lo and behold, connection problems still remain.  After some troubleshooting, he discovered that now the underground cable from the junction box to my house was bad.  As a temporary solution, he laid down a temporary cable above ground, snaking along the grass and over the sidewalk into my house.  At some point, Verizon will have to come back when we’re home, and rewire our house. The tech finally left around 8:30pm, after setting up the modem/router and the HD DVR.

So what’s the verdict?

TV: My wife and I certainly noticed an improvement in the picture quality, even though we are looking at digital channels on a standard definition TV. The DVR is decent, but my wife says it is not as intuitive as our Tivo.

Internet: I’ve tweaked the router, which replaced my rented cable modem and my trusty Linksys 802.11g router.  I’ve changed the password, set up encryption, added my devices, and poked around.  I haven’t tried the signal strength all around the house yet, but David you’re right, so far it’s decent.

I did a speed test on dslreports.com, and the results are posted below. We signed up for 10 Mbps downstream, 2 Mbps upstream, so download is about right, but upload is a little low.  Eh, why quibble? Close enough. Overall browsing and downloading the new Firefox 3.5 were fast, but not noticeably faster. I think it is speed can only be noticeable when it is slower.

Phone: It works, since I heard a dial tone.

That’s about it, I guess.  I’m not a fan of their ugly-as-heck Verizon-Yahoo! co-branded home page.  We tried setting up email sub-accounts, but we keep getting some odd error message, and there’s no technical support live chat that I can find.

[shrugs shoulders] Surprisingly, I’m not ecstatic or overwhelmed with joy.  Maybe I’m preoccupied.  I’m glad it’s all up and running. Maybe it’ll sink in later about how supposedly “cooler” my life is now.  It’s all under-the-hood, so to speak, so you aren’t going to feel a revolution.  I’m sure I’d be more awestruck if we had the big screen HDTV to enjoy all the HDTV channels.  Maybe next year if the stars align…..

I did note that although we have 300 channels, nothing is really on.  Bruce Springsteen was right.

EDIT: Added photo of the Optical Network Terminal that Verizon installed in our laundry room.

Oye. My Verizon installer and his backup crew finally left a little after 9pm. We’re still noti n business yet. They have to replace a 1000-foot underground fiber optic cable, and after trying in the dark, finally gave up.

A different work crew with that experience will return tomorrow, my presence is not required. After I get back from work tomorrow (sometime around 6pm), my installer will meet me at the house to finish the job, if everything goes okay in the afternoon.

Although Verizon didn’t complete the install, I’m somewhat intrigued by them. Granted, I think this was certainly their problem, and think they could have identified this flooded box issue more timely. Although the installer showed up a bit later than expected, he never left the area from 1pm to 9pm, except for a late lunch. Verizon brought out additional people in the late evening to try to resolve this issue for both myself and my neighbor sharing that junction box.

The dynamic in play here is that Verizon is trying to make a good impression on new customers. My neighbor has the service for a week, and now he has an outage. I can’t get my new service installed. Verizon is making a big push to supplant Comcast cable in this area. If we, as new cuatomers, got fed up with Verizon, we would switch back to the warm arms of cable with no chance of returning to Verizon again. Bad word of mouth would certainly take place.

Based on past experiences, unfortunately, Comcast would not have done the same level of effort if I was a regular customer.  They would have sent out crew after crew for days, fixing one piece at a time.  Then again, once I’m a regularly-paying Verizon customer, and this kind of outage happens again, I wouldn’t be surprised if Verizon behaves likes the cable company too.  It’s the nature for companies to get lackadaisical about their customers.  Only now at the end of my tenure with them has Comcast unfortunately shown any interest in offering me any deals to save me money, even when I called months ago to inquire.

I hope my Verizon service is up and running tomorrow night. For now, my wife is watching cable tv, and I’m online using my cable internet.

There’s gonna be a Verizon party at my house tonight. Here’s the scoop.  The neighbors I’ve spoken to, and the discussion posted online, prepared me for one possibility. I didn’t expect the troubles. To prep, we cleaned up the basement in various spaces, I took a vacation day, and dropped off the kids early to school

Here’s what I expected:  The 8am on-time arrival of a Verizon technician.  I expected the tech to be here for approximately 6 hours, considering that we only have one TV and one PC to hook up.  Done by 2pm, I could take my daughter to her 15-month well-child visit @ the pediatrician.

Here’s what I got:  The tech never showed up at 8am.  I called around 9am, and received a new (“updated”) expected arrival time of 12pm.  Um, 4-8 hours of install means you are eating dinner with us?  The tech finally showed up at 1pm, and started to work. 

About 3 hours later, he shows me that the central box in the yard that has the connections for our entire row of townhouses is filled with rainwater, and that’s why my neighbor is having issues, and why I won’t be working. 

Uh huh. Riiiiiiiiight. 

The latest update is that they have called back some guys from North Brunswick to do some emergency work, and may be here working outside and in my house even after 8pm. 

I’m glad I haven’t cancelled my cable service.  This should be interesting.  More later.

Yup, they’re coming on Monday, 8am, and we’re ready.  I’m taking a vacation day, as I asssume I won’t have any internet access for most of the day.  Of course, I copied a lot of files over to my laptop so I can do work while the Verizon installer is puttering around in my house for the day.

I’ve been reading up on what to expect.  From what most people have experienced, the guy shows up around 8am, for 4-8 hours, installing the Optical Network Terminal (ONT) and possibly even replacing the coax in the house.  We had no idea where this guy was going to be installing and working in the basement, so we spent time cleaning up the basement in various locations.  I happened by chance to speak to one of my neighbors on the way to the recycling corner, and he just switched to FiOS a week ago.  He took me on an imprompto tour of his basement, where they installed it in his laundry room.  I dunno at this point.  I suppose I’ll just point him to the basement, and keep him off of my couch, and drinking my beer.

I’m not thrilled by being forced to use their stupid wireless router. I’m a geek.  I like to use my own stuff.

In 1984, my family and another went on a 3-car road trip to Florida.  In hindsight, I’m not sure how we accomplished it all — Walt Disney World in Orlando (when it was just the Magic Kingdom and EPCOT Center), Busch Gardens Tampa, Seaworld in Orlando.  It was way back in the day, so my parents never booked rooms in advance. They drove from Days Inn to Days Inn (they really liked Days Inn) looking for vacancy.

I remember one night we drove in the rain, and checked into a Days Inn somewhere in FL.  The kids and everyone were tired, and it was late.  Someone flipped on the TV to MTV, and Thriller came on.  That was the first time that I ever saw MTV, even though we had just gotten cable TV back home that year. I was young, so I had never beforehand watched Michael Jackson, MTV, etc.  Wow, what a cool video.

Until this week, I had never watched Michael’s performance of Billie Jean at the Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever show in 1983, but it’s what I like to remember about MJ.  The energy in his dancing, the earnestness of his singing, and the great music of his early career.

I love the Terminator movie franchise, but uh, these are all good points.

5 Reasons The Terminator Franchise Makes No Goddamn Sense | Cracked.com

In this clip from this new ABC network reality show The Superstars, model Joanna Krupa and Terrell Owens were paired up to compete in some stupid games.  I don’t know much about Joanna Krupa (except that she is a model), but I know all about T.O. and his need for an attitude adjustment.  From what I’ve seen here, Joanna Krupa is as much a tool as T.O.

I must be getting older. I used to have the energy of a bull. Most nights, I’d be up until 3am, yet still ready for work the next morning. Any regular night that I drank caffeinated soda, fuggedaboudit. I’d be up the whole night.

These days, not so much. My limitless energy reserves must be drained. By 8:30pm, I’m starting to drag. By 10pm, I’m starting to nod off. Caffeinated soda isn’t working anymore. Sheer willpower isn’t working either.

I was never the coffee-drinking type. I usually drink one bottle of Diet Coke at lunch these days to get me through the afternoon. This week, I’ve started drinking coffee.

What has happened to me?

A happy announcement — as of Monday afternoon, we had our cable tv and hi-speed internet back.  Cause for celebration? Yes.  Could it have been fixed sooner?  You betcha.  Let me explain.

Last Thursday, a Comcast technician was supposedly dispatched to our house to check the lines outside to find out what happened to our service, assuming something happened to the connections outside.  Lo and behold that night, we still have no tv or internet.  All the Comcast Live Chat rep can tell me from the details in the service record is that the technician noted that our lines were damaged.  Okay, but did they do anything to fix it?  No info.

So we waited for our service appointment until Monday. I got to the office super early, so that I could leave at 2pm to get home for the appointment.  Just before 3pm, I arrive home to find the Comcast van in our parking spot, and the technician snoozing in the van. I wake him up, and he tells me that he fixed the problem already.  Turns out, the cables outside our house were damaged, so he fixed them.

Uh……….

I told him that we had someone out here last Thursday who reported that.  Why wasn’t it fixed then?  Get this: this technician tells me that he doesn’t know, and “maybe he was a moron.”  We go inside, and verify that our service has been installed.  Can you believe that we could have been fine last Thursday, and I wouldn’t have had to jump through hoops on Monday for a job I didn’t have to be home for?

Unbelievable.

This past Saturday, we left ab round 9:30am for Maryland.  Our friend Barb was to be a guest at her own supposed-to-be-a-surprise baby shower, but she found out somehow.  No matter.  The plan was for the girls to go the baby shower, and I would take Josh to the National Aquarium in  Baltimore. After driving through the rain on our way down south (again!), we made it down to the Maryland area.  Since we hadn’t had any time to pick up the baby shower gift, we ended up hitting a Babies “R” Us in the immediate area, buying and wrapping the gift in record time.

After I dropped off the girls, Josh and I got some quick lunch, and then we were off to Baltimore.  I haven’t been to Baltimore in many years, but I didn’t remember the harbor area being all that built up the last time.  There were so many restaurants and big box retailers in the area.  It appeared to be a pretty happening place now.

National Aquarium in Baltimore

First off, my goodness, the aquarium is very popular and very expensive.  It was 2:30 by the time we had parked the car, and made it to the ticket window area.  There was a long line to buy tickets, and it took some time to make it to the window.  Due to the crowds, they were staggering entrance, so even if we bought tickets, we couldn’t enter until 4:30pm.  Two hours! I was worried that after spending $40 on tickets, we’d make it 5 mins into the aquarium, the baby shower would be over, and we’d have to leave.  For some reason, the ticket window agent gave us a 2:30pm entrance time, and I didn’t ask questions as I bolted with Josh to the entrance before they figured it out.

We spent about 3 hours in the aquarium, taking in and absorbing all the different exhibits, and seeing all the marine wildlife.  It’s a pretty cool aquarium, I must say. You can learn a lot, as there is much to see.  There was no way we could hit everything, so we missed events like the puffin feeding time, and definitely no time for the dolphin show.  In the middle, I decided Josh and I could use an ice cream break, and we sat and watched the boats in the harbor.

Nums & Barb after the baby shower

We left around 5:30pm, and picked up the girls.  They had a good time at the baby shower, and Lily was her usual life of the party.  We hit a Waffle House on the way back for dinner, and got home around 11pm.

Truly, a spur-of-the-moment Maryland Adventure Day.  Photos are already posted, so enjoy.