Mixed bag

[mdlbear]

Colleen's TPN is getting more routine, but it's still nerve-wracking. My energy level is low, and even a walk this afternoon didn't help much. Working from home helps a lot, but my entire afternoon was burned up running errands. Mostly dealing with AT&T.

Last month's cell phone bill was astronomical, due to Colleen's being in the hospital. They couldn't fix that in the store -- it'll require a call to customer service. They could sell me a new phone to replace the ancient one that believes it has a headset attached.

The new phone is one of their cheapest: a Samsung SGH-a737 slider. I don't like the icon-based menu system as well as I liked the Nokia's text-based one, and it doesn't have a standard USB port or charge from USB. No headphone jack either -- you have to use bluetooth. It does have a micro-SD card, but no documentation on how to use it except with their own USB cable and Windows app. :-P

There are a couple of choices: I can take it back and trade up to something like a Motorola, or I can treat it as a stopgap until somebody -- probably Moto, since they've announced it -- comes out with an Android phone for AT&T and pass the Samsung on to Colleen.

I also signed up for fiber for TV and internet. A bit over $100/month for 100 channels of video and 10/1.5 Mb/sec networking. That's almost double my current download speed, and triple the upload (which is what I'm really after).

After that gets installed, early February, I'll cancel the old second line and its associated, ancient DSL, drop or vastly decrease the ISP service I'm getting from rahul.net (and which I haven't used for a year except for being too lazy to move my email), and then drop my newer DSL service from Sonic.net. I think it comes to a net gain of about $50/month.