Lawrence "The Dreamer" Chen's Blog

It was last week that I ordered the upgrade of my 1.5m/384k DSL service to the next tier. Even though two tiers up were offered.

I was previously only getting a sync rate of 768k/384k for the 1.5m/384k service that I have been paying for about the last 22 months. For a few days when I first got the service, I was getting the full speed....but then it went away, and numerous calls (and various changes in my condo) didn't yield any improvement.

But, in the 3-5 business days for the upgrade...they now have me at (a sync rate of) 3.0m/512k, as ordered. Perhaps next year when get my annual increase, I'll consider pulling the trigger on trying to get 6.0m/768k. Should be able to get the upstream rate, and hopefully there'll be some further improvement on downstream.

Here are the DSL modem graphs for the last week:

Starting to look like 6.0/768 might be a real possibility for my DSL connection.

This morning (around 3am) another bump in speed. Sync rate is now 3008/512. No noticeable change in SN Margin, but Line Attenuation has gone up by another db.

DSLReport's Spectrum Tool shows an estimated downstream rate of 4660 now.

I may really look at moving more over to it now. Think I'll move the TiVo HD....though now that Amazon Unbox is going to have HD content, that might mean that I really should be looking at the 6.0/768 tier.

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Link: http://laptoping.com/hp-2133-mini-note-windows-xp-professional-for-businesses.html

Well, XP is finally an option for the HP 2133 Mini-Note. But, it isn't for everybody

But, it you can customize now....except you can't customize everything, and not all options are available. IE: you can only select Vista or Vista downgrade as your OS options. No customizing for a 1.6GHz with Linux. For some reason Windows users get 1.2 or 1.6 GHz CPUs, while Linux users can only get 1.0 or 1.2 GHz (and only preconfigured choices). Like no bluetooth for them.

I was kind of hoping to be able to get a fully loaded HP 2133 Mini-Note with Linux, not sure I want to get one when I'm being forced to get the unnecessary Vista part. Especially since I don't really want the Linux that comes with it either.

Word is that Dell will have something next month, hopefully they'll have a nice preloaded Ubuntu version....

Since it is still within the 3-5 business days for upgrade order completion, I guess they will continue to slowly inch up my speed and improve my line. Starting to make me really think that I should've gone for the 6.0/768 tier, since it looks like they might even be able to achieve acceptable levels for that.

This morning, the sync speed jumped to 2496/512 (from 1984/512). The latest DMT Spectrum plot gives an estimated downstream of 4044 (with estimated upstream at 818). And, cacti shows a slight improvement in SN margin, with no change in line attenuation.

Perhaps I'll revisit 6.0/768 in a couple of months.

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Link: http://lawrencechen.net/index.php/2008/03/30/today_might_be_a_good_day_to_upgrade_to

Thought I should mention the latest in start times for MS Money.

Now that some time has past, and I have all my bills reentered again.... I've found that the slow start and it taking 100% of my CPU for a long time when starting problem has returned.

The normal repair of the file didn't yield any problems or do any help. And, I wasn't going to delete all my bills again.

So, figuring it was something related to my upcoming bills, I made a guess that it might be the bills that are estimates of previous bills. Like having it estimate my electric bill (or natural gas) based on the previous 12. Or other bills that vary. I tried reducing the windows on these to see if it would help.

Didn't notice any help.

Recalling that budget was attributed to a slow down...and that the old budget was pretty much meaningless, since it was largely based on a previous life where I had much more means than I do now. I decided to nuke the budget (and try the saving and spending budget)....

There's still a spike in CPU and some lag at start...but it doesn't drag on as long. But, it might be too early to tell if this is the 'fix'.

Now the problem is sticking to this budget.....

Link: http://forums.b2evolution.net/viewtopic.php?p=75053#75053

I discovered that I couldn't send trackbacks from my blog.

I had previously turned it off, because I was getting too much trackback spam...but the new version of b2evolution offers more control to reduce trackback spamming, so I thought I would give it a try.

So far since my site's upgrade, no trackback spam....actually no trackbacks at all.

It did make me wonder if there was a problem with my site accepting trackbacks, but that seemed to work. Eventually, I found that the trackback sending code using fopen(), which is disabled on Dreamhost. Then I had better keywords to search b2evolution forum...and found a post on the subject.

I found a simple class that encapsulated curl, and used that to fix the part of the sending of trackbacks that wasn't working for me.

See my reply to the forum post for details....

I didn't touch the other part (POST method), because I hadn't encountered it yet....so I didn't have a simple test case to play with.

I have previous noted that the reason my Brookstone Weather Forecaster had stopped working was because of this:

I've just received word from our tower providers that the signal coverage in your area has shifted slightly. This change was made by our wireless provider in order to improve signal coverage for the majority of our customers, but unfortunately, this has left you further away from the nearest point of transmission. This means that the device will most likely not receive a stronger signal than it is currently. I'm so sorry for the disappointing news; it is never our intention to inconvenience our customers.

Last weekend, I popped batteries into the Forecaster in the grim hope that it would start working. It didn't. I decided that I would take it into work (Kansas State University), wondering if their idea of majority of customers in my area would be the University.

Well, not there either. Guess what they really mean is Manhattan, KS is not considered of any concern to them.

Guess I'll put searching for some other weather gadget back on my list....

This morning I woke to find my DSL modem reporting a speed of 1984/512. Reran the spectrum analysis tool at DSLreports. I shows a theoretical 35xx/818....wonder if I could've really gotten the 6.0/768 tier to at least get the much higher upsteam speed. It would've only been $5 more per month. (The tiers were 1.5/384, 3.0/512, 6.0/768 and the prices were $25/$30/$35).

I graph the SN margin/Line Attenuation along with up/down speed from the modem in cacti....so I see that my SN margin has dropped quite a bit, and Line Attenuation has gone up a little. So I see it started shifting gears around 5:20am.

Using the speed tool, I still can't get the reported speed. But, there is a proportional improvement. But, latency has dropped quite significantly. Better than cable now. Well under 100ms.

Don't know when the current DHCP leases expire, but I reconfigured DHCP to tell my Broadvoice VoIP service to use DSL as its gateway now. Wonder if there's anything else I want shift around....

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Back when I first moved here, I wanted to get DSL.... they offered 3 tiers (that I knew of...) 1.5/384, 3.0/512, 6.0/768. Of course, I wanted the top one. But, they said for my area they could only offer me the lowest. But, it was better than dialup (and, I was using AT&T BusinessNet service, at the time). So, I pursued getting Cox HSI at first....because I wanted cable TV more than I wanted a landline. But, I was having trouble getting Cox at the time (though I have it now). So, I did order the DSL.

But, once I did get it...they locked me at 768/384 (for a week I did get 1.5/384, but then there was a storm and service became slow and unreliable...I called in for service and the phone tech. said nothing was wrong at their end, must be my side. During that trouble shooting they lowered locked me at 768k down. Moments before the field tech. showed up service started working again. He said something about replacing a line card or something just before coming over....I tried to get the 768k lock removed, but I couldn't convince anybody by email or phone that they had done this....and kept saying that I should get 1.5 and that it must be my line)....and efforts to upgrade weren't available. Even though DSLreports technician report tool said I could do ~2.0M down (and 690k for up).

More recently there had been upgrades in my area...and technician report had been reporting that I could get better downstream rates. Suggesting the next tier could be fully achieved. This mornings quick check say 3.1M.

So, once again I was browsing the AT&T site to see if I could order an upgrade in my speed. And, this time they showed offers of the 3.0/512 and 6.0/768 upgrade options. I wasn't that daring...I ordered the 3.0/512 tier.

Wonder how long the upgrade will take, and whether it'll mean that I can finally do VoIP over DSL (it works good now over Cox). But, the for consistency in speed and reliability...DSL has been the winner.

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Not sure who did it, but I'm mad

A long time ago, when I owned the REB1200 eBook Reader from Gemstar....I bought stock in this company called Gemstar. Which then merging with TV Guide and among other things came crashing down. They also eventually got out of the eBook Reader business. Probably because they charge the list price of a hardcover book for the electronic version. And, you can't share the electronic version at all, where as the printed version you got something physical that could be (or at least I could show off on my bookshelf [where I never have people over], and then many years later try to donate to my local library.) Worse was the magazine subscriptions on eBook. Even though they had all the same content....you paid full price, as opposed to the substantially lower news stand or print subscription price for these.

And, then the plan that Barnes & Noble would be the online seller of content and the wide selection of titles not happening, just made things worse. There was pretty much very little out there for it, and there was no supported way of adding your own content to it. Plus I could get a laptop for less than what I paid for it now.

Part of them held out though...because I thought the Gemstar eBook Reader and TV Guide combination might be a good thing....though they never offered TV Guide as a publication for the eBook Reader, and even if they did...they would probably have charged some price 100x more than newsstand price or something.

I really haven't looked at e-book devices much since...though the Kindle seems neat, but I'd have to research it more before I decide if I want to use it to launch myself back into reading books again (that is other than technical work-related books, where I want the physical book for reference and office collaboration, etc.) But, being Amazon.com probably gives them the edge over other e-book devices. If it had looked cooler, I'd probably have taken a closer look right away

Anyhoo....along comes Macrovision to acquire Gemstar. It is fast becoming not the company that I had original become a shareholder in. I had hung on this long because my cost basis for the company was about 11.50 a share, and I was in some kind of hope that I could at least get out even.

Well, Macrovision offered to acquire Gemstar stock at either 0.2548 shares of their stock (MVSN) for Gemstar stock (GMST), or $6.35 in cash.

I received a letter from TD Ameritrade saying that (by the time I received it) I needed to call them within the next two days to make my election...for either cash or stock for my 50 shares.

I elected for cash. Which would've meant that I should've received $6.35x50 - $30 (reorg fee) = $287.50 for my stock.

What TD Ameritrade did instead was they converted my 50 shares of GMST to some other less quantity of stock 28.651 shares, and sold that at 6.35. Result $6.35x28.651 - $30 = $151.93

That is $135.57 less than what I had agreed to.

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