Under Construction

After some delays, today marks a new milestone in the building process.  The foundation is finally being poured and with this significant milestone, the next stages such as framing can commence.  Unfortunately I got news this morning that the foundation pour was delayed due to the contractor showing up 2.5hrs late.  For some reason, this seems to be such a common theme amongst contractors be it highly regarded ones or not.  You would think during the harsher economic climate that they would be hustling more to get things done.  I’m interested to see how they handle the foundation process as I’ve been well versed in that part of construction from being on several job sites in the past with work.

Definitely great to see this moving ahead again.

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While temporarily setting up base camp in our rental home, I decided to try out Verizon FIOS both for the broadband experience as well as the cable option.  It was getting quite frustrating with constant disconnections with Time Warner and digital artifacts in the cable service.  Seems to me they just don’t have the capacity to offer quality service.  So when a Verizon FIOS salesman came to our home, I decided to try it out.  Afterall, last year they tore up the streets in our neighborhood and installed fiber.

So here are the results of a bandwidth test.

Bandwidth Test HB

Completely dumbfounded when I saw the results.  I never thought in my wildest dreams that I would see the day when a fiber connection would be made available in a place I was living.  Other countries are far more advanced as far as internet connections are concerned.  Japan, south korea, even the state of Utah has faster speeds then the average US home.

Not only that, I have been pleasantly surprised with the quality and efficiency of the set top box and cable service.  Quick response from the remote.  No digital artifacts or loss of signal with the cable service.  More channels than I could ever think about browsing through.

As you can probably tell, I’m a huge fan of Verizon FIOS.  But the real reason to switch?  It costs nothing more than our service with Time Warner.  For 5 times the bandwidth and 5 times the number of channels and the better quality… there’s no real decision to make.

Project was delayed due to city inspection items and various other details.  Such is the life of such projects.  But good news is, foundation is ready to be poured whenever they get the go ahead.

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The future is almost here. This was too good not to post about.  So Intel has on display at IDF (Intel Developer Forum) a DVR Server that has 3 built in TV tuners.  And since it’s a DVR, it can support multiple streams as well to other devices.  Not only other media set top boxes but also to DLNA devices (like laptops and game consoles).  Better yet, it can do this via your home network or via coax to your other set top boxes.  Pretty amazing.  And I though getting Verizon FIOS at the house would be awesome.  Similar concept I guess, but being able to have a single box that can provide the TV tuner to other devices at home and stream recorded video to a laptop is just amazing.  Well at least to me it is.  This coming from someone who signed up and was approved for Microsoft’s Windows 7 Global Launch Party… such a nerd.

Engadget has some photo shots and a more complete description… and video. 

http://www.engadget.com/2009/09/23/video-intel-tru2way-server-streams-cable-all-over-your-house/