RIP DSL?

Something like 8 years ago, I made the plunge and upgraded my dial up service to "high speed". This was my first foray into high speed internet access.
I'd heard a number of bad experiences from friends and co-workers with cable modem service and at the time it required you to also pay for basic cable TV service as well... I couldn't afford both.
That left DSL. After a little delay waiting for DSL service to be available in my fairly new neighborhood, I signed up for DSL service through Southwestern Bell ( now AT&T...again). There were a few hiccups in the beginning due to heat frying out components in SBC's "C.O." boxes. But those were all resolved and the service has been reliable pretty much ever since
Then about 5 years ago, AT&T started to experiment with a new high speed service called U-verse that combined TV, phone and Internet all in to one cable. Just so happened to be that they were testing it in my area. I researched a little on it and was considering trying it out. I was already a Dish Network customer for TV and obligated to a contract, I didn't need the TV part of U-verse. Much to my dismay, I discovered that they didn't offer just internet access by itself. So I ultimately decided against it.
Few years later U-verse was released to a wider public. I started getting, 3 or 4 pieces or more of junk mail a week from AT&T encouraging me to switch over to U-verse. Everything from postcards, catalogs, brochures, letters, sneaky letters with "important information" or mysterious no-name return addresses. And that's in addition to phone calls and emails. All of which point me to distrust the service. Now almost out of principles, I've been avoiding U-verse. They must be pushing their service so hard because it is advantages to them and not necessarily me. Otherwise, why all the sneaky techniques and barrage of collateral material?
So that brings me to today. AT&T just sent me an email regarding updates to their Internet Terms of Service. If you've been reading tech blogs lately or seen Sprint's latest TV ads, you may know that AT&T and other internet service providers are adding provisions to throttle internet access for abnormally high usage. They claim this only affects 1% of their subscribers. Curious for the details, I read through this email to find this: Conversion from DSL to U-verse High Speed Internet
I quickly pull up the referenced Terms of Service on AT&T's site:

Conversion from DSL to U-verse High Speed Internet. When AT&T is able to provision Service to you via our U-verse High Speed Internet at your location, we may, in our discretion, discontinue your DSL service and make available to you AT&T U-verse High Speed Internet at the then applicable rates, terms and conditions, which may differ from your previous DSL Service rates, terms and conditions (including bundle discounts). If you are on a term plan and your price will increase as a result of this conversion, you will not have to pay any applicable ETF if you elect to cancel service. Your new AT&T U-verse High Speed Internet will require different customer premises equipment ("CPE"). When you are selected for conversion, we will provide at least thirty days' notice of the discontinuation of your service via e-mail. Thirty days after such notice, we may at our sole discretion, either disconnect your service or temporarily suspend your service for up to fifteen days before we permanently discontinue service.

In other words, they are reserving the right to forcible switch me over to U-verse, whether I like it or not since U-verse is available in my area. I'm assuming that maintaining the older DSL technology is too costly for them so the are phasing out DSL in favor of a cheaper for them U-verse. And this is their way of saying "we asked you nicely to switch...you didn't so now we're forcing you to."
I don't think any consumer likes to be told what choices to make..or in this case, not being given a real choice at all.
The irony is that I've been considering switching since they now offer just an internet service and offer speeds of up to 24Mb/s (my dsl is capped at 6). Another advantage is that they will allow me to keep my current "sbc" email address. Less hassle for me.
At this point I'm not sure what to do. Wait it out and wait to be forced to switch, which could be inconvenient for me. Switch now so that I have some semblance of control over the situation. Or go a different direction and try a completely different ISP. Unfortunately, there are not a lot of other choices.
Anyone else been through a conversion from DSL to U-verse? Do you currently have U-verse high speed? Got any other suggestions?

Machete coming to Blu-ray and DVD, Jan 4 2011

Robert Rodriguez's "Machete", which Meredith did the special FX make-up for, will be released on Blu-ray and DVD January 4, 2011.
It's a fun action noir "grindhouse" style film starring a ridiculously cool cast of Danny Trejo, Jessica Alba, Robert De Niro, Jeff Fahey, Steven Seagal, Michelle Rodriguez, Cheech Marin, Don Johnson...and for that wow factor Lindsay Lohan.
So pre-order today!


     Blu-ray              DVD

2010 Emmy Award Nominations

One of Meredith's many make-up friends called her up yesterday. She said "Congratulations!". Meredith said "for what?". To which her friend replied "for your Emmy Nomination!"
Sure enough, she's been nominated for an Emmy for her work on the HBO bio-pic "Temple Grandin".
"Temple Grandin" was shot around Austin over a few months a few summer's ago.
It was a pretty stressful shoot for her. She'd come home crying almost every night as the department head seemed to really ride her hard. But she stuck it out.
So it's nice that she's being rewarded and recognized for her hard work. Hopefully she'll win, but even if she doesn't, it's a great resume builder just to be able to say she's been nominated. I'm pretty proud of her.
She's come a long way from slinging java in a coffee shop and picking up make up jobs for no budget film projects on the weekends.
Though for a true showcase of her creative talents, we'll have to wait for Robert Rodriguez's "Machete" to be released in September.
Now I have to find a tux somewhere...

Grandpa "Tip" Going Home

Very early Friday morning the phone rang. I answered it to find my mother sobbing on the other end. I knew that this couldn't be good.
My Grandfather had just passed away.
My Grandpa "Tip" has been in the nursing home for the past year or two. With Alzheimer's, diabetes, a pacemaker with a battery in need of a charge and a perhaps sprinkling of  undiagnosed Parkinson's this wasn't totally unexpected. You never want to ever let your loved ones go so it is always tough when they do leave.
I think my Grandfather lead a good life. He may of not been a rich,wealthy man, but what he lacked in riches he made up with in heart. Always the friendly guy who made his rounds around the small town of Baudette, MN, going to the gas station just to have conversation and check in on how people were doing. An avid hunter and fisherman. Always willing to lend a hand. The guy everyone knew and loved.
I doubt that life was always easy for him. He was a World War II Navy veteran. Was a recovering alcoholic for many many years, probably long before I was ever born. He'd grown up poor and had an alcoholic for a father.
The good and the bad shape how we are. And in Grandpa's case, I think every thing worked to make him a great Grandfather.
This coming Saturday is his funeral. I'm leaving Austin early on Friday to fly to Bemidji, MN, the closest big airport to Baudette. It's then a 2 hour drive to Baudette. Funerals aren't my favorite thing to attend. I think mostly because so much of the emphasis is on mourning the loss and not enough about celebrating the life that it was.
Hopefully this will be different, as Grandpa Tip had a great life.

My mother sent me a link to this video. Thought it might have been something her Daddy would have said as he went home:

iPad Hype

Good thing that Steve Jobs is not in the business of selling Snake Oil and Moon real estate, or we'd all be buying some. He must have an incredible propaganda machine. Looking at the front page of CNN.com you'd think for sure that the entire CNN staff got their payroll from Cupertino.
Don't get me wrong. While I'm not a Mac fan boy by any means, I do admire Apple's design, ergonomics and simplicity (though the dirty secret about Macs is that they actually have their share of problems too). Though I think the thing I admire the most out of  Apple is their ability to create hoards of raving fans that will buy anything they produce...no matter what it is...sight unseen.
The iPod and iPhone were certainly revolutionary, even though portable music players and smart phones had essentially existed long before either iDevice was a glimmer in Steve Job's eye. So what made it different when Apple produced them? A heck of a lot of spin for one thing... But they did spend a lot of time looking at what other products weren't and baking that into their products. Couple that with the more less proprietary service of iTunes to get your music and apps transferred. It's pure genius and an act that apparently only Steve can get away with.
So that brings me to the iPad. It's no secret that I'm a fan of the Kindle. While I don't think that the iPad is really a Kindle killer (though the iPad does come with an eReader), since it lacks a lot of the real benefits of the Kindle, such as free 3G connectivity, worldwide with the new models, and really, really long battery life. The CNN article on the 12 Things to Know about the iPad had some misinformation and glossed over a lot of the limitations of the iPad. Somethings I noted:

• No mention of battery life.
• You can choose not to sign up with AT&T for service...which puts you at the mercy of wireless hot spots...which while becoming more common in public spaces, still aren't everywhere.
• The neglected to mention that the Kindle reading app is available for the iPad. Still a win/win for Amazon.
• The article made it seem as though the only place you could get content for the kindle was Amazon. The kindle supports unprotected content from Mobipocket books and text files. You can also send documents like Word files and PDFs to your kindle either by copying the files over by standard universal USB port or sending to your Amazon kindle email address where they are then converted and sent to your Kindle wirelessly.
• The Kindle DX supports landscape mode. I'm not sure I've ever read two pages of the same book at the same time. Seems like touting this as an amazing feature of the iPad is a bit of a non-item. Printed books have two pages, otherwise they would be twice as thick and twice as expensive to produce...

Oh yeah...that whole USB thing. Apple seems to have taken a step back in time and decided to do away with a standard universally compatible USB port in favor of their proprietary dock thing... need to snag some power while you are on the go? Now where did I leave that dock thing? Any one have a dock thing I can borrow? Anyone?
But could be that Apple is trying to change the world one standard at a time. Perhaps they have something else cooked up.
I'm more interested in seeing what the PC companies have lined up for slates with some real computing power. One of the biggest negatives so far with the iPad is its inability to multi-task. While I'm sure that some propeller head in Cupertino is already working on that for the 2nd gen iPad, which will be released shortly after all the early adopters have camped out for days in front of the Apple Store to buy the first generation. Nothing like a little double-dipping to squeeze more cash from your droves of ravenous fans. Keep your eye on Ebay in about 6-8 months.
We'll see...I don't think it's going to be a crazy success at least not in its first incarnation, but if it spurns development in creating the paper thin portable computers of the future I'm all for it.

Heavy Rain Update

I finished Heavy Rain about two days after I started playing it. Not a very long game at all. From what I've been seeing around the web, it is intended to be played several times since the outcome of the game can vary slightly depending on what choices you make throughout the game and who lives, who dies. There is a huge list of trophies that you can obtain from doing these elaborate sequences of movements accurately. Such as the "Baby Master" trophy (shown in the video below) in which you gain a trophy for changing a diaper, feeding a bottle and burping a baby.

As I wrote in my previous post, the control system was what really drew me to the game. I wouldn't doubt it if we see similar things in the future in other titles. It really brings you into the game making you feel more connected.
I didn't have any other glitches pop up in about the last half of the game. There were some instances where you would pop out of an animated mini-cut scene only to get stuck where you couldn't move or some things wouldn't render completely. Restarting the game would resolve it. Maybe they'll fix some of these things in an update at some point.
The graphics were a stunning. As you work through the game you unlock some videos a few that deal with the making of the game. They spent a lot of time capturing expression and facial detail.



Overall, Heavy Rain was an enjoyable experience. I'm very tempted to go back through it again to try to get more trophies and see what other paths I can follow.....but I've been a little distracted working on a huge complicated project for work with a very short deadline (which also explains the tardiness of this post).
I picked up God of War III. Actually, I pre-ordered it from Amazon so that I wouldn't have to scramble to try to find a copy locally. Plus I could choose a gift wrap option (my present wrapping skills suck) as this was more a gift for Meredith than it was for me.
God of War III is the 3rd installment of a game that Meredith and I have really enjoyed playing. It's a hack 'n slash dungeon crawler with some amazing animation and a variety of weapons, magic and special moves. Some really cool animated final kills that would put Mortal Kombat to shame.
Figured Meredith would wear the buttons out on the controllers so I bought her a new one in her favorite color.

Heavy Rain

I picked up Heavy Rain for the Playstation 3 the other day. It's kind of mix between Memento, Seven, The Cell, Minority Report, Zodiac and Thirteenth Floor. The graphics are phenomenal. The developers took a lot of time tweaking the faces of the characters making them look extremely realistic.
The gameplay is more like following a "choose your own adventure" graphic novel. You follow several different characters as each is trying to solve a bit of the mystery. You switch between characters as the story moves from chapter to chapter.
In some cases, two characters may be in the same scene and you may pick up control of one character as the first leaves the scene. Choices and actions you make throughout the game alter the outcome in subtle ways.

Even more fascinating to me than the graphics was the control system. I'd read an article in Wired magazine discussing this revolutionary new context sensitive control system. So when presented with different choices and actions, images of the button action appears. So in contrast to traditional control systems where each button is assigned to a specific action, there are endless possibilities as that same button may do a completely different thing faced with a different obstacle.
When conversing with other characters you have different topics or ways in which to say things (persistent, sympathy, etc...) illustrated by a button symbol and keyword that floats around your head. This allows you to have an influence on how the scene plays out.
Timing is critical, if you neglect to hit a button fast enough (or slow enough) there is a consequence. Sometimes you are also required to press and hold down a series of buttons, sometimes making for an interesting game of finger twister as you attempt to hold down a number of buttons on the controller. 
It also makes use of the accelerometer in the controller, allowing you to steer vehicles, push and slide objects, all by tilting and moving the controller up, down, left , right.
Things aren't all rosy though. Several times there have been glitches in the game that wouldn't allow the character to move until restarted the game. Realtime rendering glitches, like background characters gliding along the ground instead of walking. Even the very opening intro animation had the character floating 8 inches off the bed frame because the mattress didn't render. 
I've just started working through the game and overall, with the exception of the random glitches, has been very immersive and enjoyable. Later I'll post a follow up to this post with some further thoughts as I get farther into the story.
Here's a clip of actual Heavy Rain gameplay.