10-30-2012, 01:41 PM
Quote:It's sort of like watching a blender filled with glow-sticks, Neon CGI sets + Sgt. Pepper costumes + Salvador Dali plots edited by an ADD monkey on mushrooms which results in a mind-melting WTF session that makes a Residents video look like the evening news
Nope. Doesn't sound like anything Cranefly would be interested in.
All kidding aside, Cranefly would love to check this out, but has diminished his capacity to do so by declaring war on AT&T.
The ensuing battles have left him cowed and humiliated and in need of using third person to distance himself from himself while describing the fiasco.
The conflict began when Cranefly called AT&T to cancel all services but naked DSL. He had bought a VOIP device enabling phone over internet, so he no longer had need of local or long distance phone and all the additional charges that go with them. The AT&T rep then informed Cranefly that this would require switching to UVerse, and that there would be a $150 installation charge. Cranefly begged to differ, wanting the phone services dropped and just keep the DSL. The rep said sorry, but we don't offer that service option anymore. Cranefly hung up in a huff, not about to pay for an upgrade of AT&T equipment that he had no need for. Battles ensued over the next six months, some of which Cranefly marginally won, most of which AT&T won by slaughter. After the last slaughter some weeks back, Cranefly went insane.
That's when he started building his Tower of Babel.
It consists of 1.5", 1" and 1/2" diameter electrical conduit tubing rigged in telescoping fashion that now stands 30' in the air. Fastened to the top of this is a transceiver, with CAT-5e cabling running down and into the garage, where it connects into the router. The transceiver is aimed at one of Google's access points for Mountain View's Google-supported wifi.
Cranefly recently enjoyed calling up AT&T to cancel all service. The rep offered Cranefly a very good deal at that point, with an upgrade in speed tossed in, but it was only good for a year, and Cranefly has no desire to ever again call AT&T, so he declined the deal and canceled.
The victory is somewhat Phyrrhic, as Googlewifi is flaky and intermittent. Cranefly's receiver needs line-of-sight to the access point for reliable service, and there are trees, houses and who knows what in the way. Cranefly will be destroying these obstacles in the coming months, but for now he has to deal with less-than-optimal internet. Worst of all, streaming is dead. So even though some episodes are available on youtube, they cannot be played, and downloading would take a long while.
The 30-foot tower and transceiver has been a wonderful if painful and tedious learning experience. In the process, Cranefly has discovered that it wouldn't require much of an upgrade to start broadcasting his own radio station to Mountain View and beyond. This is under serious consideration right now.
Just a heads up for it in the near future. The call letters will be RANT.
I'm nobody's pony.