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	Moved to Verizon FIOS Hi All, I have decided to make the move from Time Warner Cable to Verizon FIOS. This means I now have a 1.5 times faster internet connection. TWC was 10mb/1mb connection and FIOS is 25mb/5mb. The installation went fairly smooth. There were some issues with bad equipment and some misleading advertising on Verizon\'s part. They advertise with their Home Media DVR you can record a program and watch it on \"any other set top box.\" (equal to TWC cable box) This is NOT the case however. I have a HM HD DVR in the livingroom, a (plain) HD DVR in my computer room, a digital set top box (STB) in my bedroom and 2 digital converter box\'s in the kids room\'s. The recorded program on the HM DVR cannot be watched on the 2 digital converters (I understand that). It also CANNOT be watched on the (plain) HD DVR because it has a computer hard drive installed (to record it\'s own programs). So that means the only other location I can watch a HM HD DVR program is in my bedroom. No big deal you say. Here is their monthly pricing structure for the different boxes; Digital Converter = $3.99/month Plain STB = $5.99/month HD DVR = $15.99/month HM HD DVR = $19.99/month Not as appealing when you see their prices for \"renting\" their boxes. Luckily they had a promotion going when I signed up. I get the HM HD DVR free for the first 3 months. After that I will most likely be returning it for a regular HD DVR. At this point, it just isn\'t worth (to me) the additional cost per month when only one other tv in my house can watch the HM DVR recorded programs. Thay seem to be aware of the issue and say eventually they will fix that glitch, but for now, it\'s just not worth the extra $60/yr. I also had alot of problems with their Verizon/Westell Router. The installer simply installs it and makes sure you have an internet connection. Any problems you need to call their tech support. Turns out, 9 out of 10 calls to their tech support you will get someone that really doesn\'t know much about the technical side of support. Granted, I know more than the average user. I have a degree in computers and have run an ISP as well as been a network manager. If Verizon Tech Support can\'t help, they gave me (what they called 2nd tier tech support) Westell\'s number. Turns out, Westell won\'t talk directly to the end user. They will only talk to Verizon tech support. I got tossed around a few times until I started saying, \"If you can\'t get someone to help me with my problem, this equipment is of no use to me, please come and remove it and I will go back to Time Warner.\" The problem I had was forwarding ports so my domains, KozRadio.Biz & kprods.com were visible to the internet. As well as my shoutcast radio station KozRadio5252 (live.kozradio.biz:5252 from WinAmp or WMP). First I was told by several of their reps that they block port 80 and that is why I couldn\'t forward ports. But, if I upgrade to a business account and a static IP, port 80 would be unblocked. I also couldn\'t get port 5252 (radio station) to forward. Anyways, turns out Verizon \"used\" to block port 80 but for the past 2-3 months they no longer block port 80. Without some knowledgeable help, what appeared to be straight-forward instructions were not, it was complicated and their first level tech support had no clue how to set it up so it worked. I finally gave up trying to get port forwarding to work. The next day the phone rang and it was a Verizon Tech Support rep that wanted to know if the problem was fixed. I said no and she offered to help me set it up. Even though I was skeptical, I said yes. This woman actually knew what she was talking about and got me to the point where both ports (80 & 5252) were forwarding correctly......from here end. She said she could surf from one of her computers there to my website and was able to listen to my radio station using WMP. I could get to the radio station with no problems but port 80 was still not working for me. I kept getting the routers login page when I tried to go to kozradio.biz, which is definitely not a good idea to allow anyone from the outside access to the hardware. I thanked her for her help and hung up. After having something to eat, I decided to give it another try. With much experimentation, I finally found the correct setup and all is working as before! Yaaaaa! I think the trick to Verizon Tech Support is calling after 6pm. They offer tech support 24/7 but the customer service support goes home for the day at 6pm and after that is the \"real\" tech support. So far, even with all the issues I had from the start, I would still recommend Verizon FIOS. You don\'t need to get the entire bundle like I did (FIOS TV, Internet and Phone). If you are a speed freak, like me, FIOS internet is the way to go! They offer several levels of service up to 50mb/25mb speeds. For downloaders (people who use FTP\'s, IRC, P2P etc) you will be amazed at how fast you get your files. I was utterly amazed when I went from a 56k modem to cable at how fast web pages loaded and how fast I was receiving files. I figured there wasn\'t much more that could amaze me. I was wrong! My 25/5 internt connection is just phenomenal!. You\'d think TV is TV. Not much that could make a difference. FIOS TV is also amazing. The picture quality is in a word, \"wow!\" Getting used to the new channel numbers and remote control will take some time but I can deal with that! As far as the Phone service, phone is phone. Nothing different there. Koz by kingkoz | Friday 20 November 2009 8:16am | General | permalink | 0 comments Summer and the Great New York State Fair It\\s August 27th, 2009 and summer is fading away. Ha! We have had maybe a weeks worth (of what I call) summer! The temperatures here in Syracuse have been very low. This past week was the first time the temperature has climbed over 90 degrees during the summer months. But, in my opinion, that is Central New York for you. I know many places say \\\"if you don\\\'t like the weather here, just wait 5 minutes and it will change\\\", but that old adage seems to always apply for Syracuse and the surrounding area. Which, brings me to the Great New York State Fair which starts today. My 16yr old Daughter will carry on the family tradition of working at the NYS Fair. When I was around her age, I worked at the Dairylea ice cream stand. Back then the NYS Fair was not as long as it is now (11 days) but believe me when I say, even a week straight working 10 hours per day was tiring enough (as I did). I would come home after 10hrs of scooping HARD ice cream out to fair-goers with my right wrist hurting so bad that I would have to ice it down (funny it needed ice after scooping ice cream all day) just to relieve the inflammation so I could do it all again the next day. After about the third or so day of scooping, your wrist (mine anyway) started to be able to deal with the pain and each day forward the pain was less and less. It seemed like just as the wrist was totally pain free, the Fair was over. In later years, I returned to work at the NYS Fair but this time working for the Ushers union. The Ushers Union has the ticket taking contract with the state. I got (what I considered) a cake job. Since I was in good favor with the boss of one of the gates (main gate #2) I got the walk-in gate at gate #2. All I did was stand/sit there meeting and greeting the fair-goers as I took tickets. I quickly became amazed at the number of people that attend the New york State Fair on a daily basis. Most of the people I saw more than one day were concert goers. Syracuse seems to have a huge country music fan base. A lot of them would have tickets 2 and sometimes 3 nights in a row because of the line up at the grandstand. Another perk for working at gate #2 was that I would get to see the daily 6pm parade. No big deal, just something to break up the day. Gate #2 was also the gate that vendors used to enter and exit the fairgrounds. This meant that during the final couple days, they would change from bring things in (to sell) to packing things up before the end was upon them. They used to offer some of their (perishable) products to us as gifts. Otherwise the product would go bad. I left for home one night with a huge brick of American Cheese. But the best gift was the biggest bag of Cashews I have ever seen. My 80yr old dad still works at the fair every year for the Ushers Union. He has been an Usher for about as long as I hve been alive. A few years back, he finally got a Gate Supervisor job. So if you attend the Great New York State Fair in 2009 and are near gate 9 (way out back!) say Hi to my dad! :-) Anyway, my daughter won\\\'t have it so hard. She will be handing out slices of Dominoes Pizza and soda to the fair-goers. I bet by the end of her 11 days, she will not want pizza to eat for a long time :-) Atleast she will come away with an experience she will remember for the rest of her life. Not to mention a paycheck and a job for the resume. :-) Koz by kingkoz | Thursday 27 August 2009 6:56am | General | permalink | 0 comments Windows 7 My son downloaded windows 7 beta from Microsoft the other day and I decided to try it out. When Windows Vista came out I really didn\'t like it. It just didn\'t seem very security conscious and obviously was something totally different than windows XP. But, after installing windows 7, I have to say I really like windows 7! I am really digging the gadgets ago on the side of your desktop. I found one online that allows me to enter kozradio\'s listening URL. After a little futzing around with the setup I finally got it to work. Now when I turn my computer run it starts playing my radio station. I also like the speech recognition feature built into windows 7. I wrote this entire blog, without touching the keyboard! ;-) However, it is annoying sometimes because speech recognition sometimes has a hard time learning what I say and it gives me incorrect words. Anyway, if you want to check out Windows 7 for yourself you should get to the Microsoft web site right away. I believe the beta testing version ends very soon. Koz by kingkoz | Sunday 19 July 2009 2:45pm | General | permalink | 0 comments Happy freaking 4th of July everybody! It\'s the day after the 4th of July and I wanted to comment on the \"national\" 4th of July fireworks celebrations. I have to say, I have not seen such a fantastic fireworks display as the NYC Macy\'s display! 6 barges floating in the river with the NYC skyline as their backdrop that went on for (what seemed forever) about 45 minutes continuously! I have seen a lot of fireworks in my 50+ years but I think the Macy\'s display was the best! I don\'t know who (fireworks company) put on the show, but I bet they got paid a bunch of money. Just one of the barges shot off more than the most I have seen up to that point. They not only shot the typical fireworks we are used to seeing but had some new designs I have also never seen before. All sorts of shapes, squares, rectangles, circles, smiley faces. I think I even saw a couple tetrahedrons and maybe a triangle! The Washington DC Fireworks Spectacular celebrations had some very nice fireworks as well. Aretha Franklin sang as well. I have not seen the \"Queen of Soul\" on TV in a long time and was very surprised at her size. She is one large women. I did notice that her voice was not like it once was. During her first song she appeared to have forgotten the words to the song \"Think\" from the Blues Brothers movie and her voice crackled many times. I wish people would realize when it is time to retire. Take some of that millions/billions of dollars they have made during their career and spend it. Relax on a beach with a cold drink and get that well deserved life. One last comment about the show was that they seemed to have ended the show before the fireworks finale. The band was playing, the fireworks were going off and the host, Jimmy Smits is saying, \"that\'s it for the show, goodnight everybody\" but the fireworks were still going off and we all know that every fireworks display ends with a flurry of many bright fireworks and lots of loud BOOMS! but not this show. I think they were cut short by the network. Now that I think of it, the show was on PBS so I am not sure why they ended abruptly. The Boston Pops fireworks show sucked! The only highlights of the show were the Boston Pops orchestra and host Craig Ferguson. The singing guest was the great Neil Diamond. Another one that needs to retire. The area in front of the stage where the POPS played and the host/singers were was only about 60-70% filled with people and their were no chairs. It was set up more like a rock concert than a television show. It appeared like as the show went on, less and less people were standing in the stage area. (a football analogy) It looked like everyone was leaving the game because their team was getting their asses kicked! The fireworks were shot from one barge and only lasted about 20-30 minutes. I was disappointed in CBS. They are a better television station than that. by kingkoz | Sunday 5 July 2009 9:23am | General | permalink | 0 comments Abusing KozRadio:5252 I wanted to take a moment to let those that use stream ripping software and just sit hours at a time on my radio station so that they can build their mp3 catalog, I will start banning entire IP\'s And if I have to entire subnets or even countries! I started KozRadio as a place for those that want to listen to commercial free rock n roll, NOT to have my bandwidth consumed by those using stream ripping programs. I have been reading alot of bad things on the internet lately about a particular German based ISP...dip.t-dialin.net being a hotbed for streamripping software users. I may not be the greatest JSP/HTML/DHTML/CF programmer, but I have programmed my own Shoutcast XML web page that displays many things and one of them is the type of software my listeners use AND the ISP they are connecting from. I know who you are! So, if you used to be able to connect to KozRadio:5252 and now you can\'t, it is due to the fact either YOU or someone from your ISP is using a streamripper and has gotten your IP\'s subnet banned. Don\'t even think about asking to have your subnet or country removed from the ban list. I have been there, done that and I give no second chances with this one. Please, if you want to expand your mp3 collection, do it like I did, go to the store (or ask for a cd as a birthday gift) and BUY the music yourself then rip it using your favorite music ripping software. For instance Winamp Pro or Audio Catalyst. Please leave KozRadio:5252 for those that want to enjoy commercial free Classic Rock from the 60\'s, 70\'s & the 80\'s! Koz by admin | Thursday 26 March 2009 9:51pm | KozRadio, General | permalink | 0 comments <-- Previous page About This is the default theme installed with the PluggedOut Blog script, available from pluggedout.sourceforge.net. Contact E-Mail : you@yourdomain.com Archive November 2009 (1) August 2009 (1) July 2009 (2) March 2009 (1) February 2009 (2) January 2009 (2) Calendar « February 2012 » M T W T F S S     1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29         Search   Recent Entries Moved to Verizon FIOS Summer and the Great New York State Fair Windows 7 Happy freaking 4th of July everybody! Abusing KozRadio:5252 Categorised General (9) KozRadio (1) Affiliations