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My Slow Frontier DSL Internet Service in McCall

I hate to complain about this service, as the technicians who’ve come out have been very nice, but here’s the truth: I have very slow Frontier DSL internet service.  Performance will be “fine” (fine equals about 80% of the speed I’m supposed to be getting) much of the time and then just seriously cut out throughout the day and evening.  You really notice when you’re trying to watch a movie on Netflix or a Hulu video, etc.  I should clarify that last statement.  I really notice it no matter what — watching a movie or video is practically impossible.  Heck, blogging right now is utterly terrible.  With Netflix, the Silverlight software figures out what speed and quality to play, sets up a buffer, plays swimmingly well for 20 minutes or so (mileage varies) and then bam, you get the “Your internet connection has slowed message…” and 5-10 minutes later your up and running again.  Lame.  This will often happen multiple times throughout a movie.  I’m constantly managing the buffer and pausing the movie so it doesn’t crap-out and restart the whole process.

I’ve called Frontier multiple times — as this is far and away the slowest and most sporadic broadband Internet service I’ve ever had.  I’m pretty sure that takes us back to the Clinton Administration.  Not sure, but it’s been a long time.  The routine is the same — they tell me to go to speedtest.frontier.net and run it.  Yada, yada.  The test usually comes back at an acceptable level, which is frustrating.  They’ve sent two technicians out who haven’t found a problem with the lines or the modem.

The technicians who come out keep asking me if the slowdown is “time of day dependent”.  My response is “not always,” but it does seem worse in the evening — which makes sense, as that’s when the bulk of folks are streaming lots of zeros and ones.  However, I’m not streaming movies during the day, so daytime slowdowns would be a bit less noticeable I would guess.

The last technician that swung by said that all of his tests indicated that the line from inside the house up to the road was fine — and his money was on a bandwidth issue.  As in, someone with an infected PC somewhere on Frontier’s DSL network is stealing all my bandwidth.  He said he would run it up the chain of command.  I should have asked him what next steps were for contacting me, but I was in a trance it would seem and nothing concrete was established for a follow up.  Ball’s in my court.

As a bit of an aside, what doesn’t make sense to me is that DSL providers love to throw around in their marketing materials that unlike cable broadband, DSL service doesn’t suffer from other users hopping on the network.  As far as I recall, it’s basically DSL’s ONLY play as cable generally beats the snot out of DSL speeds hands-down.  And evidently it’s perhaps not even really true.  I don’t claim to be an expert in this area, just know what I’m experiencing.

So where am I with all this?  I’m not really sure.

I think it’s time to call again as things are really creeping right now.  It’s so bad that it inspired this post.  And I happened to grab a doozy of a screenshot showing  just how bad it is.  For those of you that didn’t notice, that’s a download speed of 48kbps!  Wahoo!  Surf is up.  I might as well plug in the 56K dial-up modem and see what free internet service I can get that outperforms this baby.

Is anyone else experiencing similar service?  Frontier, if you’re reading this, drop me a line.

-Scott

I splurged last night and had an old favorite, the Doubleshot Burger from Lardos Grill & Saloon in McCall, Idaho.  I have pretty durned fine memories of eating these burgers in my college days with friends.  We’d stop at Lardos every now and again and power one down with a large Coke.  To be young and invincible.

Anyway, it had been a long time since I’d had one, but it was time to see if they’ve changed.  First off, what is a Doubleshot Burger you ask?  If memory serves, it’s something like this:

2 1/3 pound beef patties topped with American cheese, Canadian Bacon, sauteed mushrooms, on a quite-buttered and grilled sesame seed bun.  And of course, if you’re worth your salt, you’ll order it with Lardo Fries.

To quote Jules from Pulp Fiction, “that is a tasty burger.”

It doesn’t seem like much has changed over the years with regards to the burger.  However, if I’m not mistaken, in the before times — yes, the long-long ago, I think they used canned mushrooms, vs. non-canned.  I can’t be sure, but I’d wager a few bucks on this.  And surprisingly, if I’m correct, I think I liked canned mushrooms better.  I know it’s crazy, my wife can’t believe it, but there’s something about the texture of canned mushrooms that really work well with the Doubleshot.  And if I’m wrong about this condiment change, then I suppose that it makes my opinion about the whole burger very suspect.  Regardless, the Doubleshot is still a solid sandwich, an old friend, a formidable foe.

There is however a change that I’m positive about, and it’s not for the better.  Lardos used to have the most AMAZING french fies.  (And I don’t capitalize liberally.)  They were hand-cut, fresh made, whatever you want to call it.  Skins were on, it was obvious that you weren’t dealing with something from Sysco or otherwise.  Sometimes they were very crispy, sometimes oily, but there were always unique and delicious.  They were cut like potato chips, but much thicker and they would often bubble and puff of, proving they were recently exposed to some very hot oil.  Heavenly.  Lardos’ current fries are cut this way too, but it seems that they’re delivered in a bag, frozen, and likely par-cooked.  There are no skins, they’re uniform and frankly nothing special.  They still call them Lardo Fries, but they’re not the Lardo Fries that were every bit as tasty as the burgers.  I presume that reduced cooking time was the primary reason for the switch, but whatever the reason, I would argue that having standout french fries is worth the expense.  There are a lot of places in McCall that server hamburgers now, it seems like Lardos Grill & Saloon could differentiate itself by bringing back the olden-days.

Nothing like publicly dating yourself.

“Bizzaro World” Weather

"Bizarro World" Weather

• 2009 Brundage Pond Skimming event was fun. Real McCall, Idaho reporting to follow. Post and photos are here: http://tinyurl.com/c5ecce #
• BikeMccall.com is now up and running. I guess the real work starts now, huh? http://tinyurl.com/cyz27h #