Dufresne (Dufrane) Search Party of Four

As if I didn't need another reason to love the new P.O.S. album 'Never Better' - the first track 'Let it Rattle' pays homage to the late St. Paul born comic, Mitch Hedberg.

...Look at how they hate, pilled out.  Bounce they liver off they top eight, who got a fix for the fix?  Bush no more.  Nobodys like "Dufrane, search party of four"...

A misquoted reference to Mitch Hedberg's sketch as follows:

When you go to a restaurant on the weekends and it's busy so they start a waiting list, they say, "DuFresnes, party of two, table ready for DuFresnes, party of two." And if no one answers they'll say the name again: "DuFresnes, party of two." But then if no one answers, they'll move on to the next name. "Bush, party of three." Yeah, but what happened to the DuFresnes!? No one seems to care! Who can eat at a time like this!? People are missing. You people are selfish. The DuFresnes are in someone's trunk right now, with duct tape over their mouths. And they're hungry. That's a double whammy. We need help. "Bush, search party of three." You can eat once you find the DuFresnes." 

USI Wireless: Minneapolis Internet via WiFi

It was with much trepidation and primarily an eye towards saving some money that I decided to give the Minneapolis WiFi network a try instead of Comcast.  I have long been disgusted with the rates that cable companies charge for providing an Internet "dial tone."   Hopefully, someday we will have that type of service available from a wide variety of providers over a variety of delivery channels, but for now there just is not a reasonable service for those of us who care primarily about a good broadband connection and not so much about television (Comcast) or having a telephone land line (Qwest DSL). 

I just want a solid Internet connection and I don't think $50+ per month is a reasonable cost for providing that.  Don't even get me started on what sort of speeds you can buy for $50/month in the European countries who leapfrogged us by skipping the copper crapwork and leaping both feet into fiber optic backbones.

In Minneapolis we have the option of joining and extended WiFi network that covers the 60 square mile city.  The speeds are slower, but the cost is lower.  For the 3Mps service, an annual contract brings the price into the $20/month range (6Mps for about $25).

I did some research regarding the networks and discovered two things:

1. The Minneapolis network is regarded nationally as the poster child for successful integration of this type of service.
2. Some people have had some really bad experiences with it and hate it.

There weren't a great deal of comments to be had and to some extend I attribute #2 to the premise that dissatisfied customers are nine fold more vocal about their experience than are satisfied customers.  So I signed up for the month by month service to evaluate the service.

USI does not allow you to self-install and charges you $25 for the professional installation.  As a techie I tend to recoil over paying for "professional" installation - I don't like paying for it because I know I can do it myself, but more so I hate having to wait around.  The attempted selling point for this installation is that the tech would need to identify the optimal location for the WiFi router by testing the signal strength in various areas of my house with his wifi divining rod.  In my case, I knew the location of the nearest broadcast antenna which happened to be more or less 1 block away in line of sight of a 2nd floor window.  I lobbied unsuccessfully to skip the installation...

On a -20 degree morning the technician was a no-show and I can't say I blame him.  Customer service actually called me proactively after 90 minutes of the 3 hour time window had elapsed.  They agreed to just drop off the router and antenna and waive the install fee.  Score!

The setup was easy - if you have installed a wireless router before, you will be able to install this just fine.

My signal strength was about 75%.  It is currently winter and there are no leaves on the trees, but I suspect even come spring summer, I should get a pretty strong signal.  Again, I am approximately 1 block away from the nearest re-broadcast node and am using a 7db antenna to boost the standard reception of the router.

On to the service...  I have had the USI Wireless provided WiFi for a little over a month.  I am a heavy internet user and uptime for me has been fantastic.  Not 100% - but any "outages" have amounted to the duration of a page click and a refresh.  No Internet?  Refresh - Yes, Internet.

The speed is acceptable.  For surfing the web, watching a YouTube video, or uploading some photos to flickr, it is just fine.  I am on the 3Mps service and have run speed tests and consistently get between 2-4Mps download and 1.5-3Mps upload.

The disparity between 3Mps and the 15Mps I had with Comcast becomes apparent when downloading a movie rental from iTunes.  When I cued up The Dark Knight, my progress bar showed that it would take 5 hours to download.  Ughh....  At that time I still had Comcast redundantly so I switched over to my Comcast network and the movie downloaded in 18 minutes.  So, if NetFlix or iTunes downloads are a big deal for you - you will at least have to step up to the 6Mps service or stick with Comcast (boo).

I am not going to go so far as give any kind of rating for the Internet service because I think your experience will vary greatly depending upon your distance and line of sight to the nearest broadcast point.  If you are not a big TV watcher, I think the price savings between Comcast and USI Wireless justify giving it a shot.    I don't know if the architecture of the network supports higher speeds, but if the speeds were bumped up to maybe 6Mps and 10Mps for the same price - it would really make the Minneapolis USI WiFi network tough to compete with.

If it works, I promise the satisfaction of telling Comcast to take a hike will be equally as awesome as the monetary savings :)

I am an elite runner...

I am a competitive runner.  An elite athlete.  Scratch that.  An elite athlete would run in  $80 new balance shoes from The Runners Store.   I run in $135 Zoot Ultra Race 2.0s that I paid $200 for at this tiny little running boutique that I am certainly not going to tell you about - (I don't want a whole bunch of other wannabes finding out about it).  Come to think of it, that is also the place where I got my coordinating Pearl iZumi skin tight jacket and pants.  They are so sick, the jacket is totally this like web 2.0 orange and has this stripe that runs down the side and continues on the pants.  I even have this sweet little beanie with a tiny little rain brim that I wear sideways, like I just threw it on!  I dropped like 8 stacks on my outfit, but seriously it looks so sick.  When I am running down the middle of the street and holding up traffic, you can tell I am in a different class all together.  I am an uber athlete and I am a total douchebag.

You have probably seen me running in South Minneapolis.  You might think I live there, but for all you know I live in Kenya.  I mean really, have you seen my outfit - you know I mean business.  

I run down the middle of the street because sidewalks are for powerwalking old ladies and lets face it, if I ran in the shoulder you wouldn't be able to see my whole outfit.  

I hear you driving slowly behind me, you are probably soooo pissed right now and think I can't hear you because I have my iPod totally cranked.  Jokes on you, pal, I don't even have any music playing.  I just wear the head phones because the white cord really matches the racing stripe on my running pants and I think it completes the look you know?  Plus it totally coordinates with my white C230k coupe.

Anyways, it was cool talking to you, but I gotta jet - I am coming up on 3 miles and about to 'hit the wall'.  That is a term us runners use.  Time to duck into Caribou to let everyone check out my outfit.  I need to grab a glass of water I won't drink and a large triple Mocha that I will.

Peace...

Welcome back....

Welcome back to Mental Kindling.  Most of you have never been here before, so for you, just a plain old welcome.

Mental Kindling was a site I used to host that served as a hub for people with entrepreneurial ideas to help each other get past the 'hey I have a great idea' stage.  It was brilliant and beautiful, and it failed miserably.  Probably in large part because when it didn't just take off after 2 months I got bored and moved onto something else.

As of late I have wanted an outlet for things that weren't applicable for my primary blog over at www.scotthayne.com.  In other words a place to rant and rave like a lunatic.  I came up with some new ideas for domain names that accurately described my intent, and had a couple in the old GoDaddy shopping cart, and then I remembered this domain.  I have always loved it and I think it is perfect for what this blog will be.

So again, welcome to Mental Kindling, the place for sh*t that is burning up my brain.