DSL vs. AT&T Wireless

We have a DSL line from our local telco for internet access. We pay $45 a month for 10 megabits download speed (never get more than 8) and less than 1 megabit upload speed. Not great but all that’s available where we live.

Been having problems for the last couple of weeks with technicians coming up to check lines, etc. Keep thinking they have it fixed but the problem persists so we’ve been using the hotspot feature on our iPhones. Yesterday I stopped by the local AT&T store to talk about our data plan to avoid getting surprised by a huge bill.

We’re currently paying $130 a months for 15gb that Barb and I share. Historically, we use very little of this but if we start making heavy use of the hotspot feature that could change. Without getting any further into the weeds here, I upgraded to an “unlimited” data plan for $150 a month. But the plan lets us stop paying for HBO and we get some other discounts so the faster service winds up costing me less than I was paying.

I’d never checked to see what kind of speeds I get from our AT&T wireless so I figured this was a good time to take a look. We’re getting 18 mbs down and 5.6 mbs up. More than twice as fast as the DSL line!

We don’t stream a lot of movies but do have Netflix, Amazon Prime and Apple TV. I’ll keep the DSL service for a few months while we monitor our wireless data use, but I’m thinking I can adios the DSL.

This is might be more noteworthy to me because I remember the dial-up modem days. 2400, 14,400, 56K. Dark days? An exciting time? Could never have imagined I’d be able to connect to the internet with a mobile phone. Could never have imagined a mobile phone.

Renz Prison Farm

You can see what’s left of the Renz Prison Farm just across the river from Jefferson City, Missouri. I’ve been meaning to take a closer look for years and yesterday my friend George poked around for a a few minutes but there wasn’t much left to see. (There’s a bit of the history in this Vox article from 2015.)

The building is too far gone to get much of an idea what it was once like. I didn’t see many individual cells and assume the large open rooms were dormitories. This four minute video (not mine!) offers some different views:

Land Rover: The Home Stretch

Mr. Wolf has been working the phones, looking for a good carrier to transport the Land Rover from Bay Area to Jefferson City.

“Got a pick up window with a great carrier, next Wednesday -Friday (Aug 15-17). They’ll tighten up the window early next week. They’re sending a driver that handles the Bonham’s & Gooding auction vehicles. I figure a week or less on the road depending upon how many stops they have to make before you.”

Sounds like we might see the thing in JC by August 24.