Just forget the words and sing along

Saturday, July 23, 2005

Well, it's another high-speed-Internet-free weekend in my house! Here's the ongoing saga of "Mark vs. Xplornet."

Ever since we got our high speed about two months ago, we've noticed that it cuts out about every second weekend. Every second weekend, we just can't get online, so we use the Telus dial-up that we just can't let go of to check e-mail and such. And that's what I'm using now.

So, finally, we called up StarView, the folks who install Xplornet in this area. StarView tells us that two things can interfere with out wireless Internet signals: cordless phones and ham radios. When our high speed Internet winks out, it means one of three things:

1) Someone in the house is using the cordless phone.
2) Our neighbours are using their cordless phones.
3) The town's ham radio enthusiast has fired up his ham radio and is talking to his friend in Norway.

StarView told us that, the next time it happens, we are to phone the Xplornet customer service in Nova Scotia, complain to them, and they can adjust our high speed Internet to a higher frequency so this doesn't happen.

Fast forward to today. It's the second weekend, so the high speed winks out. We do as we're told and we call up Xplornet customer service. "Have you done this? Have you done that? Well, unplug it and plug it back in." HELLO!! Where's our promised signal re-modulation? Finally, the customer service rep passes the message onto the profesional techies, and now we wait for the pros to get back to us.

All the while, I've got no high speed.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: wireless high speed Internet SUCKS!! You don't get these problems with a wire in the ground.


Well, here's something to cheer me up.

On October 4, Paramount release Star Trek: Nemesis - Collector's Edition. This is the 2-disc special edition of the final Star Trek film, thus making sure every film now has a special edition.

Now, the question is this. The original Nemesis DVD was a pretty nice special edition in and to itself, so the question is, what's new? What warrents me buying this again? So, here's the list of bonus features on the new DVD, and I've got my old DVD right here, so I'll go through the bonus features on the Collector's Edition and flag what's new:

- running commentary by director Stuart Baird
- running commentary by producer Rick Berman <--new!
- text commentary by Michael and Denise Okuda <--new!
- 7 production featurettes <--looks like 3 or 4 of them are new!
- 3 Star Trek Universe featurettes <--looks like 1 is new!
- 5 Romulan Empire featurettes <--all new!
- 7 deleted scenes <--all different from the ones on the orignal DVD! This time, we get the cut Wesley Crusher cameo!
- storyboards and production photos <--all new!
- teaser and trailer
- 3 Easter eggs <--new!

Looks like it just may be worth buying again.


And one last bit of DVD news.

On October 4, 20th Century Fox finally releases Space: Above and Beyond - the Complete Series. Man, I loved this show! But here's the catch. On October 4, it'll only be available at Best Buy. It'll be available at all locations in December.

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