New Internets

Time to vent.  Bare with me. :)

It was time for a change.  The old Droid4's were dying in a very ungraceful manner.  The MiFi hotspot had developed a real attitude and liked to reboot and turn itself off randomly (thankfully never during a battle in EVE).  So off to the Verizon store we go.

I hate the Verizon store.  We've been happy Verizon customers for many years now, but I hate the store experience.  I always feel like I'm getting screwed.  Numbers are flying, data plans are changing, promises are made without much in writing to back it up (we were literally showed numbers on a post-it note).  When the final screens flash and signatures are made, it's a quick flash of the data pad, several walls of text to absorb, and a "click here to accept."

We can, of course, get online and check the accounty things over to our heart's content, but I'd rather shop for a used car than deal with the store.  That being said, other than having to repeatedly decline the overpriced accessories, I think we did ok tonight.  It wasn't what I wanted to spend my Friday night doing, but as I said, it was time for a change.

We also got a new Internet connection, which I am currently typing on.  We live in the country. Our entire household internet is a 4G hotspot.  We have an outrageous data plan.  Our other choices are 56.6k dialup (welcome to 1995) or Satellite (welcome to ugly ping times).  This time of year, with the leaves down, I can see the Verizon 4G tower from our back yard.  Our connection is always max bars and rock solid. The hotspot has generally served us well other than the constant sucking sound I hear coming from the bank account.

The local telecom has supposedly installed Fibre in the neighborhood and we're waiting for the monumental first activation (which I picture as a big Frankenstein style switch in a dusty warehouse). We'll dump DirecTV and crank our cellular data plan down in the same month and save oodles of cash (we'll get TV+Internet for $15/mo more than I currently pay for TV today).

The good news is that our new phones seem to work.  They are fast and responsive. They are sexy.  The new replacement hotspot has ethernet jacks in the back and won't require a separate little NetGear adapter (which never really worked right) to hook up our (non-wifi) work laptops.

It should be a net gain (pun intended).