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I have the best wife ever.  Have I mentioned that before?

My wishlist was pretty short this year and few electronics made the list.  So Heidi decided to get me something way better than anything on my list…..a 16 GB iPod Touch.  I love it already.

My old iPod is a 6 GB Mini, 2nd generation.  I got it FREE from an online bank by opening up a checking account for a year.  Pretty sweet deal.  And this old iPod has served me well.  4 half marathons, countless hours at work.  But it’s a joke compared to these new iPods like the Touch.

Now I’ve got 10 GB more space not only for music but for apps, videos, and photos.  There are so many cool applications available online, many for free.  Here are just a few that I already installed:

• Facebook
• Twitterrific
• Google Earth
• GPS Tracker
• iSports
• Lose It!
• SpeedTest
• UrbanSpoon
• WiFinder
• WordPress

The only bad thing about iPods is having to use iTunes.  I still hate iTunes.  It’s slow, hogs memory, and stupid about importing music.

My beautiful wife has finally come around to the idea of Facebook. Last night she created her profile and now we’re friends! It will be interesting to see how much she uses it. Ironically she will probably end up using more than I do….which isn’t a lot.

Wait a second! Now I’ll have to start monitoring who is trying to poke her! Not cool.

For those of you who hate Charter Communications as much as I do, you might not want to keep reading.

Disclaimer aside, I fell off the broadband wagon, again.  It’s been a couple of years since I cheerfully called Charter to inform them I would not stand paying them money every month for their underachieving bandwidth and horrible customer service.  Since then I’ve used Clearwire and presently Qwest for all my surfing, torrenting, and every blue moon–a blog post.

I ended up terminating my Clearwire contract because the signal was really bad at our house in Sauk Rapids.  I felt bad about leaving them at first, but after 3 months of arguing about a sneaky clause buried in the Term & Conditions (which I digitally signed; which means there was probably a 5 row tall textarea with monster scrollbar action needed to read everything; which means I probably didn’t want to read through it with a creepy install tech at my place watching me over my shoulder).  Where was I going with this?  Oh, buried in the T/Cs it states you have to give 90 days notice before your 1 year contract expires to terminate the contract.  I specifically asked their sales guy termination of contract when he was pitching it to me.   He lied and I didn’t bust him on it. 

On to Qwest.  I figured I’d give Qwest a try for a few simple reasons.  1) Qwest was the only major telecom to NOT sell out customers to government spying.  2) DSL has always been a favorite acronym of mine…no idea why.  3) They were basically my last option.

To give you a perspective of how bad I hated Charter bad then, here is the deal I signed up for with Qwest: 30$/month for 1.5 Mbs  Say WHAT?  Yes, it was about half the bandwidth Charter offered in lowest package but the same price.

Last month I found out my Qwest price was a 9 month promotional price.  So the rate is now 50$/month for 1.5Mbs.  Bullocks!

So I put my tail between my legs while I called Charter to try out their service again.  Tonight I have Qwest and Charter both hooked up to the internets and the bandwidth tests have been nice to see.

Here is Qwest:

Here is Charter:

I ran this test 3 times on each connection with fairly consistent results.  Charter’s 5MB broadband is about 4.75 mb/s down, 500 kb/s up.  Qwest’s 1.5MB is barely 1 mb/s down but 500-600 kb/s up.  But the kicker is Charter is cheaper (even after promotion ends).

Why does Qwest not even attempt to be competitive with Charter?  Qwest has slower internet, phone, and offers satellite packages from DIRECTV.  Charter has way faster internet, phone and mega cable.  It’s no wonder why everyone has bundle packages with them.  There is no suitable alternative in our area.

Well, the quality is up to the viewer, but here’s my take on the Sunday morning TV shows.

I’m not a huge TV guy at all. But I’m a big fan of Sunday morning TV and news reading via internet. I usually drink half a pot of coffee while doing this. Back in my single days it was a bigger event where I had the luxury of investing even more time.

Meet the press with Tim Russert – MUST SEE. This show is a great way to start of the week. Tim usually has extremely knowledgeable guests and interesting questions to ask him. This morning Hillary Clinton has bombarded with questions regarding her flip-flopping on the Iraq war. Tim pwned her with a few video clips and quotes showing her change in stance. Not 5 minutes after Hillary was off the show, Alan Greenspan was talking about his new book “The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World”. A co-worker of mine is having issues getting through this book because it was “boring”. I guess thinking about Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve, it does seem like that book would be a snooze-fest, but after his interview I might pick up a copy. Russert pointed to a recent quote of Greenspan: “I think Bill Clinton was the best Republican president we’ve had in a while.” Greenspan responded by saying many of his stances on free trade, globalization, welfare reform and fiscal restraint coincided with Republican values versus Democratic. On a side note, Greenspan is married to Adrian Mitchell, a NBC reporter. They joked about the first date in which Greenspan brought Mitchell back to his apartment to read an essay he wrote about monopolies. Not a move i’ve ever heard about….

C-SPAN – Washington Journal. this show is too cool to miss out on. Always interesting debates, add live callers with stupid or smart comments, you have an entertaining show. Pretty much anything C-SPAN rocks though, not just WJ. Steve, you’ll understand some day.

Evangelical Religious Shows. How does this carry the quality theme? Entertainment, not content. I can’t help NOT to watch these shows. Today I was lucky enough to catch a local ministry hosted by Mac Hammond. This was spectacular. Mac and his wife Lynne seem to be 2 down to earth faithful folks trying to guide people in the right direction. While watching the show I googled “Mac Hammond” to find many, many accusations of IRS related issues. According to City Page the Living Word Christian Center’s annual report states the church collected $24,047,130 in contributions in 2005. I can’t seem to find the report anywhere on the internets. But, WOW, I’m in the wrong industry. This horse’s ass babbles on for an hour on Sundays and brings in $450,000. Dang G.

So morale of the story…check out TV on Sunday mornings next week with a tall cup of coffee and a computer. You’re missing out on some good stuff.

[tags] Tim Russert, Meet The Press, Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, Alan Greenspan, Mac Hammond, Living Word Christian Center[/tags]

Some friends of mine made a pretty funny video.

Check it out