Missing Dad

As this Father’s Day approaches, I’ve found myself thinking more about my Dad.  He was in his fifties when I was born, so we didn’t have the close relationship of most.  I don’t ever remember playing football or tossing a baseball with him. 

He was a quiet man, except when something didn’t work right.  He had served on a submarine in the Navy.  That experience endowed him with words that could make my Mom madder than a wet cat.  “Jack” she would scream after hearing a sixty- second barrage of harsh language.  He’d look, and say, “what”?  The salty language would just come out automatically.  He didn’t even realize it. 

Mother was a devoted Christian and a faithful member of the Church of Christ.  Her Dad was an Elder who lived within rock throwing distance of our house.  Dad didn’t go to church.  He did at one time, but got angry over an incident involving a preacher and something about the Lord’s Supper.  The details remain a mystery to me and I’m not sure why I never asked.  I guess I figured Dad wouldn’t say anything about it and Mom was just too embarrassed.  He would listen to gospel music every Sunday morning.  I think now that he probably missed attending.  I did see Dad in church one time at Easter, when I was little.  Then, never again.  It must have brought back too many memories.

Again, Dad was mostly quiet about things.  He didn’t say much in a conversational way.  Course, it was probably because Mom did all the talking.  They were opposite in most regards.  I easily figured out neither were happy with the other, even at my young age.  They fought a lot, not loud fighting, but the quiet kind.  They wouldn’t speak to each other for days, and then suddenly everything would be back to normal.  He probably learned, like most married men, it’s best to be quiet!

Money was always tight.  Dad didn’t make that much as a meat cutter and Mom tended to impulse buy at times.  She controlled the checkbook, and for some reason, couldn’t keep the balance correct.  I remember meals of cornbread and milk.  We had a lot of pinto beans and discounted meat that Dad would get at work.  We never went hungry, so Dad was a good provider.

He had tons of integrity.  I saw Dad cry once. My sister’s boyfriend was arrested by the Sheriff for theft.  No one in our family had ever had trouble with law enforcement.   Dad took that hard, but moved past it. 

He smoked two packs of Cool cigarettes for most of his life.  Finally, he decided to quit smoking somewhere around my high school years.  Five years later, he was diagnosed with emphysema and began a slow suffocating death.  It is a cruel disease because it slowly takes your breath away over a period of years.

Dad fought it admirably, but death finally came to the quiet man who was devoted to his family.   Being much older now, I respect him more now than I ever did while I was young.  I know he went through hard times with difficult people.  He probably had much to tell me, but I was too busy to ask or listen.  Most of us take our parents for granted.  All you can think about, being young, is fledging the nest and starting out on your own.  After that, most never look back. 

This Father’s Day, if your dad is still around, appreciate it.  Maybe you’d like to ask him something that will bother you twenty years from now, when he’s gone.  It’ll bother you, not because you don’t have the answer, but maybe because you didn’t ask the question.

I Like My U-verse

It's been a while since I've written a blog and since it's really cold outside, so here you go.  I thought I'd give my opinion on my U-verse service from AT&T.  I worked on U-verse repairs almost every day before I retired, but was never able to sample it as a customer.  Obviously, being a customer of a product makes anyone who works on it, even more knowledgeable.

For all you nerds out there, I'm on a thirty-two meg profile.  My maximum is fifty-six meg downstream and about eleven meg upstream.  My quality tests were perfect and I have no reason to believe they have changed.  We only have two televisions, both on a new cat5 wire.  The installer was going to make one wireless, but I talked him out of it.  That turned out to be a good decision, which I'll explain later.

I haven't had any major problems and the quality is pretty awesome.  With that said, I have experienced a complete freeze and had to reboot a set top box.  I have noticed pixilation a few times but nothing that would amount to a major issue.  Digital television has it's pros and cons just like everything else.  I'm pretty sure that I've worked on customer's lines who have experienced those same small problems and found there was nothing broken to repair.   They just loved reporting imperfection.  The Charter digital service we used at our former residence(there wasn't U-verse at that location) had the same kind of issues at times.  Again, I still thought it was okay.  The big difference between the two was the Internet speed.  In the morning Charter was smoking at twenty-eight meg per second, but at night, I was lucky to get six meg.  The good thing about U-verse Internet is that it doesn't bog down in the evenings.  It's the same speed all day long.

U-verse has a great channel line-up.  You can go online and check those lists out for yourself.  The guide is unmatched as far as I've seen.  I wrote about it many blogs ago and you can read it by clicking on this link.  Like other companies, there are too many home shopping channels.  I wish they could all be grouped together and or be blocked out entirely.  Those of you who are addicted to them know their location anyway.  A simple solution is just to create a favorites menu and use it.  I did, but I usually forget about it.

The only real problem I found was location specific.  The location of the wireless router wouldn't allow me to have service in the back of the house.  One of those things I've also had customer complaints on.  I downloaded an app on my phone which worked like a wireless meter.  I was able to walk around the house and measure the wireless signal strength.  I discovered that once I left the room where the router was, the strength dropped off quickly.  So much so, that by the time I took a tablet to the last bedroom, there was no service at all.

My solution to the problem was a simple one.  I unplugged the second set top box, which was located more in the center of the house, and plugged in a network switch.  I plugged the set top box back in and rebooted it.  It came up fine and TV service worked great.  I plugged another router into a spare port and set my tablet and a couple of other devices to connect to it.  Problem solved.  I have read that routers with a real antenna have a better range and that seemed to be the case here.  Had the installer used a wireless box here, my solution wouldn't have worked without the installation of a wire back to the U-verse router.

I do have one other complaint and it's a local one as well.  When I told one of my new neighbors that I was getting U-verse installed, he said I shouldn't do it.  He said that U-verse only gives local channels in the Birmingham, Alabama market.  During a recent tornado, people felt that the Cullman area didn't get the emergency coverage they needed.  Cullman weather is covered out of the Huntsville National Weather Service Office.  I took his warning seriously and installed a digital antenna outside so I could receive all the Huntsville channels for weather emergencies.  I've noticed already that Huntsville does tend to have better local coverage and the weather forecasts are much more accurate. We even shop more in Huntsville than Birmingham so I'm not sure how this problem could be corrected.  Maybe it's just a government requirement, I'm not sure.

I'll also mention we have U-verse telephone service as well.  It works fine, we just don't use it much.  Since we're only allowed two hundred minutes per month, everyone just uses a cell phone.  Telemarketers and wrong numbers tend to wear it out, calling at all hours anyway.  I've had to block a few and threaten a couple of others to stop calling.  The "do not call" list just doesn't work anymore.  I even had one to "spoof" my number when they called.  That is a problem with VOIP lines.  The phone rang and when I looked at the caller-id, it startled me.  I was calling myself.  That one got blocked as well.

Overall, I'll have to say that U-verse is a great product.  If you qualify for the service where you live, you might give it a try.

After abandoning my Apple TV,  I purchased another video streaming product that I'll tell you about next time.  I will say that I'm extremely pleased with the quality and content.  Need a hint... starts with a "R" and ends with a "4'.