Some time back I asked if anyone thought 5g would replace cable and fiber optic for home
internet service. Well, 5g has arrived at my address. This week I wandered into the local Verizon
store and walked out with a 5g modem/router box.
This was after I used Speedtest on my iphone to check speeds all over the house.
A few hours later I had it connected to the 19 devices in our home. The results are pretty good.
The eero mesh modems are removed and for sale on eBay. All devices are working great after
I figured out the best modem placement. Speeds are 100 Mbps to 200+ mbps depending on how
much structure is blocking signal strength.
Verizon is $50 a month + tax, fiber was $72 a month. Not a huge saving, but nice.
The $20 a month difference could pay for my new iPhone in only about 50 months. If I keep it that long.
My recent phone purchase experience does not indicate that is realistic.
On Thursday, February 23, 2023 at 10:45:13 PM UTC-5, Thomas E. wrote:
Some time back I asked if anyone thought 5g would replace cable and fiber optic for homeDon't really recall such a conversation, but whatever. During CoVid, we've had some employees who've
internet service. Well, 5g has arrived at my address. This week I wandered into the local Verizon
store and walked out with a 5g modem/router box.
been issued 5G hotspots for various reasons.
This was after I used Speedtest on my iphone to check speeds all over the house.
A few hours later I had it connected to the 19 devices in our home. The results are pretty good.I've noticed that my WiFi is slower than wired, probably because I chose Ubiquity's inexpensive "U6 Lite"
The eero mesh modems are removed and for sale on eBay. All devices are working great after
I figured out the best modem placement. Speeds are 100 Mbps to 200+ mbps depending on how
much structure is blocking signal strength.
Access Points to get more of them for good coverage than for high individual bandwidth. For wired,
I'm getting ~95% of my 300/300Mbps rating (a casual test just now returned 292.3 down/281.4 up).
Verizon is $50 a month + tax, fiber was $72 a month. Not a huge saving, but nice.IIRC, if I were so inclined, I could save a similar amount if I were to convert from a business fiber
connection to a homeowner one.
The $20 a month difference could pay for my new iPhone in only about 50 months. If I keep it that long.Yes, you seem to swap out both cars & smartphones about every 2-3 years...roughly as soon as you've
My recent phone purchase experience does not indicate that is realistic.
just paid through the steepest part of the deprecation curve.
-hhWell, I was referring to speeds where devices are located. In the centrally located upstairs bedroom where the modern sits I get about 300 speeds too. Unlike your ranch my home has 3 levels and over 3,000 sq ft of heated space to cover. Thus the speeds
On Friday, February 24, 2023 at 2:18:16 PM UTC-6, -hh wrote:
On Thursday, February 23, 2023 at 10:45:13 PM UTC-5, Thomas E. wrote:
Some time back I asked if anyone thought 5g would replace cable and fiber optic for home
internet service. Well, 5g has arrived at my address. This week I wandered into the local Verizon
store and walked out with a 5g modem/router box.
Don't really recall such a conversation, but whatever. During CoVid, we've had some employees
who've been issued 5G hotspots for various reasons.
This was after I used Speedtest on my iphone to check speeds all over the house.
A few hours later I had it connected to the 19 devices in our home. The results are pretty good.
The eero mesh modems are removed and for sale on eBay. All devices are working great after
I figured out the best modem placement. Speeds are 100 Mbps to 200+ mbps depending on how
much structure is blocking signal strength.
I've noticed that my WiFi is slower than wired, probably because I chose Ubiquity's inexpensive "U6 Lite"
Access Points to get more of them for good coverage than for high individual bandwidth. For wired,
I'm getting ~95% of my 300/300Mbps rating (a casual test just now returned 292.3 down/281.4 up).
Verizon is $50 a month + tax, fiber was $72 a month. Not a huge saving, but nice.IIRC, if I were so inclined, I could save a similar amount if I were to convert from a business fiber
connection to a homeowner one.
The $20 a month difference could pay for my new iPhone in only about 50 months. If I keep it that long.
My recent phone purchase experience does not indicate that is realistic.
Yes, you seem to swap out both cars & smartphones about every 2-3 years...roughly as soon as you've
just paid through the steepest part of the deprecation curve.
Well, I was referring to speeds where devices are located. In the centrally located upstairs bedroom where
the modern sits I get about 300 speeds too. Unlike your ranch my home has 3 levels and over 3,000 sq ft of
heated space to cover. Thus the speeds drop off. The location is a compromise that gets all the TV sets
working with no buffering while achieving at least 200 speeds for our laptops located in adjacent rooms.
Yes I have traded cars and phones pretty often lately...As usual, you pick one behavior or incident and
extrapolate to something much larger. Why?
.... Of course we are also enroute to Colorado in our 8 year old CRV, with our 5 to 6 year old skis, an a 40 year
old piece of luggage. My eero system that's no longer needed was v.1. ...
On Saturday, February 25, 2023 at 7:20:06 AM UTC-5, Thomas E. wrote:
On Friday, February 24, 2023 at 2:18:16 PM UTC-6, -hh wrote:
On Thursday, February 23, 2023 at 10:45:13 PM UTC-5, Thomas E. wrote:
Some time back I asked if anyone thought 5g would replace cable and fiber optic for home
internet service. Well, 5g has arrived at my address. This week I wandered into the local Verizon
store and walked out with a 5g modem/router box.
Don't really recall such a conversation, but whatever. During CoVid, we've had some employees
who've been issued 5G hotspots for various reasons.
This was after I used Speedtest on my iphone to check speeds all over the house.
A few hours later I had it connected to the 19 devices in our home. The results are pretty good.
The eero mesh modems are removed and for sale on eBay. All devices are working great after
I figured out the best modem placement. Speeds are 100 Mbps to 200+ mbps depending on how
much structure is blocking signal strength.
I've noticed that my WiFi is slower than wired, probably because I chose Ubiquity's inexpensive "U6 Lite"
Access Points to get more of them for good coverage than for high individual bandwidth. For wired,
I'm getting ~95% of my 300/300Mbps rating (a casual test just now returned 292.3 down/281.4 up).
Verizon is $50 a month + tax, fiber was $72 a month. Not a huge saving, but nice.IIRC, if I were so inclined, I could save a similar amount if I were to convert from a business fiber
connection to a homeowner one.
The $20 a month difference could pay for my new iPhone in only about 50 months. If I keep it that long.
My recent phone purchase experience does not indicate that is realistic.
Yes, you seem to swap out both cars & smartphones about every 2-3 years...roughly as soon as you've
just paid through the steepest part of the deprecation curve.
Well, I was referring to speeds where devices are located. In the centrally located upstairs bedroom whereRange drop-off is understood; I've had (have) a repeater that I was using with my Verizon-supplied router
the modern sits I get about 300 speeds too. Unlike your ranch my home has 3 levels and over 3,000 sq ft of
heated space to cover. Thus the speeds drop off. The location is a compromise that gets all the TV sets
working with no buffering while achieving at least 200 speeds for our laptops located in adjacent rooms.
to cover a weak/slow spot in that fashion. When I replaced it with the PoE Unifi AP's, I chose locations which
nullified that weak spot, although the trade-off is that the backyard became the new weak spot; kind of knew
all along that it should have employed three APs, but the 'missing' one is an easy add.
In your case with multiple levels to cover, if the house has coax which runs upstairs/etc, you could consider using
MOCA adaptors to bring hardwire ethernet up onto each floor, plugging in AP's into the Ethernet for WiFi distribution.
Yes I have traded cars and phones pretty often lately...As usual, you pick one behavior or incident andNah, just mentioned that generalized behavior because your 5G motivation seems to be to save $20/mo.
extrapolate to something much larger. Why?
If you're looking into cost savings, it could be other low hanging fruit to harvest.
.... Of course we are also enroute to Colorado in our 8 year old CRV, with our 5 to 6 year old skis, an a 40 year
old piece of luggage. My eero system that's no longer needed was v.1. ...
Of course you're heading to CO for skiing, as that's been an annual ritual for you, just as I head to the Caribbean
for scuba diving with my now-13 year old UW dSLR camera system. One of its old strobes blew up last year, so
that was $150 to get it serviced...worth it, as it is still a current model. Been debating other details on other trips,
but they are all just "plans" until they actually happen, such as getting out to Eguisheim ~3 months ago.
-hh
On Saturday, February 25, 2023 at 2:09:31 PM UTC-7, -hh wrote:
On Saturday, February 25, 2023 at 7:20:06 AM UTC-5, Thomas E. wrote:
On Friday, February 24, 2023 at 2:18:16 PM UTC-6, -hh wrote:
On Thursday, February 23, 2023 at 10:45:13 PM UTC-5, Thomas E. wrote:
Some time back I asked if anyone thought 5g would replace cable and fiber optic for home
internet service. Well, 5g has arrived at my address. This week I wandered into the local Verizon
store and walked out with a 5g modem/router box.
Don't really recall such a conversation, but whatever. During CoVid, we've had some employees
who've been issued 5G hotspots for various reasons.
This was after I used Speedtest on my iphone to check speeds all over the house.
A few hours later I had it connected to the 19 devices in our home. The results are pretty good.
The eero mesh modems are removed and for sale on eBay. All devices are working great after
I figured out the best modem placement. Speeds are 100 Mbps to 200+ mbps depending on how
much structure is blocking signal strength.
I've noticed that my WiFi is slower than wired, probably because I chose Ubiquity's inexpensive "U6 Lite"
Access Points to get more of them for good coverage than for high individual bandwidth. For wired,
I'm getting ~95% of my 300/300Mbps rating (a casual test just now returned 292.3 down/281.4 up).
Verizon is $50 a month + tax, fiber was $72 a month. Not a huge saving, but nice.
IIRC, if I were so inclined, I could save a similar amount if I were to convert from a business fiber
connection to a homeowner one.
The $20 a month difference could pay for my new iPhone in only about 50 months. If I keep it that long.
My recent phone purchase experience does not indicate that is realistic.
Yes, you seem to swap out both cars & smartphones about every 2-3 years...roughly as soon as you've
just paid through the steepest part of the deprecation curve.
Well, I was referring to speeds where devices are located. In the centrally located upstairs bedroom where
the modern sits I get about 300 speeds too. Unlike your ranch my home has 3 levels and over 3,000 sq ft of
heated space to cover. Thus the speeds drop off. The location is a compromise that gets all the TV sets
working with no buffering while achieving at least 200 speeds for our laptops located in adjacent rooms.
Range drop-off is understood; I've had (have) a repeater that I was using with my Verizon-supplied router
to cover a weak/slow spot in that fashion. When I replaced it with the PoE Unifi AP's, I chose locations which
nullified that weak spot, although the trade-off is that the backyard became the new weak spot; kind of knew
all along that it should have employed three APs, but the 'missing' one is an easy add.
In your case with multiple levels to cover, if the house has coax which runs upstairs/etc, you could consider using
MOCA adaptors to bring hardwire ethernet up onto each floor, plugging in AP's into the Ethernet for WiFi distribution.
Yes I have traded cars and phones pretty often lately...As usual, you pick one behavior or incident and
extrapolate to something much larger. Why?
Nah, just mentioned that generalized behavior because your 5G motivation seems to be to save $20/mo.
If you're looking into cost savings, it could be other low hanging fruit to harvest.
.... Of course we are also enroute to Colorado in our 8 year old CRV, with our 5 to 6 year old skis, an a 40 year
old piece of luggage. My eero system that's no longer needed was v.1. ...
Of course you're heading to CO for skiing, as that's been an annual ritual for you, just as I head to the Caribbean
for scuba diving with my now-13 year old UW dSLR camera system. One of its old strobes blew up last year, so
that was $150 to get it serviced...worth it, as it is still a current model. Been debating other details on other trips,
but they are all just "plans" until they actually happen, such as getting out to Eguisheim ~3 months ago.
The $20 a month was not the 5g transition motivation. That was supposed to be a bit of humor given my recent
proclivity to trade phones every year or two.
One thought behind the last 14 Pro was selling my Nikon kit. I did that. It was becoming used less and less over time.
The 14 Pro camera is good enough for vacation trips, carried in a pocket, and does a few other quite useful things too. :)
Another consideration was that the eero mesh system has been slightly problematic, demanding reboots on a regular basis.
The 5g modem is close enough to our laptops to give much better speeds than the eero did, which was 100 mbps except
for the base unit connected to the router at the other end of the house that got the full 200 speed. That router was on an
outside wall at the other end of the house from the laptops. The 5g just needs to be close to a window, anywhere in the house.
Other than the 2 upstairs laptops, the other 17 devices are a basement laptop used only to run a flight sim program, 3 TV sets,
a doorbell, a thermostat, 4 Apple devices, and a bunch of Google Home devices.
In this situation not adding any repeaters is "low hanging fruit" for me. The centrally positioned 5g modem speed is good enough
for all those other devices and better for my laptop.
I had a thought on the way out here. Every year, on the last day, I get to the top of the mountain for that last run.
By then the wife has gone back to the condo. Just me and the mountain. More and more I'm thinking is this the
last run for this year, or the last run? Substitute dive for ski run, you get the picture, or will in a few years.
At 77 in a few months I find my time horizon getting shorter and shorter. With over $200 k in retirement income,
no debt, and several million already saved, I have become a lot less fiscally conservative and more focused on the
short term. So yes, I'm trading cars more often, buying new instead of used, and giving away more too. Giving has
been made easier these last few years by qualified charitable deductions out of IRA RMD funds but I think I would
have done it even if I was still itemizing.
You prompted me to look at how aging may have affected car purchases. The wife loves her CRV and I think
we will have it for a while yet. Here are some data I found in Quicken:
(Date purchased, Model Year, New/Used, mileage when traded (as best I remember). For the last car it's current mileage.)
Wife:
6/2/2004, 2003, Toyota Highlander, Used, 125,000
3/19/2015, 2015, Honda CRV EXL, New, 81,000
Mine:
11/18/2003, 2001 Honda Accord EXL, Used, 140,000
12/22/2012, 2011, Honda Accord EXL, Used, 85,000
3/30/2015, 2015, Honda Civic EXL, New, 50,000
3/12/19, 2019, Honda Insight Touring, New, 42,000
12/31/2021, 2022, Honda Accord Hybrid Touring, New, 22,000
Yep, spending more on cars, putting on fewer miles, and buying new. Having a lot of fun with them too.
Have a great time diving!
On Thursday, February 23, 2023 at 10:45:13 PM UTC-5, Thomas E. wrote:
Some time back I asked if anyone thought 5g would replace cable and fiber optic for home
internet service. Well, 5g has arrived at my address. This week I wandered into the local Verizon
store and walked out with a 5g modem/router box.
Don't really recall such a conversation, but whatever. During CoVid, we've had some employees who've
been issued 5G hotspots for various reasons.
This was after I used Speedtest on my iphone to check speeds all over the house.
A few hours later I had it connected to the 19 devices in our home. The results are pretty good.
The eero mesh modems are removed and for sale on eBay. All devices are working great after
I figured out the best modem placement. Speeds are 100 Mbps to 200+ mbps depending on how
much structure is blocking signal strength.
I've noticed that my WiFi is slower than wired, probably because I chose Ubiquity's inexpensive "U6 Lite"
Access Points to get more of them for good coverage than for high individual bandwidth. For wired,
I'm getting ~95% of my 300/300Mbps rating (a casual test just now returned 292.3 down/281.4 up).
On 2023-02-24 12:18, -hh wrote:
On Thursday, February 23, 2023 at 10:45:13 PM UTC-5, Thomas E. wrote:
Some time back I asked if anyone thought 5g would replace cable and fiber optic for home
internet service. Well, 5g has arrived at my address. This week I wandered into the local Verizon
store and walked out with a 5g modem/router box.
Don't really recall such a conversation, but whatever. During CoVid, we've had some employees who've
been issued 5G hotspots for various reasons.
This was after I used Speedtest on my iphone to check speeds all over the house.
A few hours later I had it connected to the 19 devices in our home. The results are pretty good.
The eero mesh modems are removed and for sale on eBay. All devices are working great after
I figured out the best modem placement. Speeds are 100 Mbps to 200+ mbps depending on how
much structure is blocking signal strength.
I've noticed that my WiFi is slower than wired, probably because I chose Ubiquity's inexpensive "U6 Lite"
Access Points to get more of them for good coverage than for high individual bandwidth. For wired,
I'm getting ~95% of my 300/300Mbps rating (a casual test just now returned 292.3 down/281.4 up).
I've had really good luck with using Ubiquiti's products for my clients.
I've completed a couple of installations with their "Dream Machine Pro" routers and various version of their flying saucer access points.
And in a wonderful coincidence, the company was founded by a former
Apple employee. Robert Pera worked at Apple testing their WiFi devices,
and when Apple wasn't interested in some ideas he had for better WiFi products, he founded Ubiquiti to make them.
On Sunday, February 26, 2023 at 11:36:27 PM UTC-5, Alan wrote:
On 2023-02-24 12:18, -hh wrote:
On Thursday, February 23, 2023 at 10:45:13 PM UTC-5, Thomas E. wrote: >>>> Some time back I asked if anyone thought 5g would replace cable and fiber optic for home
internet service. Well, 5g has arrived at my address. This week I wandered into the local Verizon
store and walked out with a 5g modem/router box.
Don't really recall such a conversation, but whatever. During CoVid, we've had some employees who've
been issued 5G hotspots for various reasons.
This was after I used Speedtest on my iphone to check speeds all over the house.
A few hours later I had it connected to the 19 devices in our home. The results are pretty good.
The eero mesh modems are removed and for sale on eBay. All devices are working great after
I figured out the best modem placement. Speeds are 100 Mbps to 200+ mbps depending on how
much structure is blocking signal strength.
I've noticed that my WiFi is slower than wired, probably because I chose Ubiquity's inexpensive "U6 Lite"
Access Points to get more of them for good coverage than for high individual bandwidth. For wired,
I'm getting ~95% of my 300/300Mbps rating (a casual test just now returned 292.3 down/281.4 up).
I've had really good luck with using Ubiquiti's products for my clients.
I've completed a couple of installations with their "Dream Machine Pro"
routers and various version of their flying saucer access points.
Tried to get a Dream Machine 3 years ago; went for the Pfsense because I could get it.
Do installers have a better line getting ou-of-stock?ut
And in a wonderful coincidence, the company was founded by a former
Apple employee. Robert Pera worked at Apple testing their WiFi devices,
and when Apple wasn't interested in some ideas he had for better WiFi
products, he founded Ubiquiti to make them.
Didn’t know that; certainly makes sense to hear that.
On 2023-02-27 21:20, -hh wrote:
On Sunday, February 26, 2023 at 11:36:27 PM UTC-5, Alan wrote:
On 2023-02-24 12:18, -hh wrote:
On Thursday, February 23, 2023 at 10:45:13 PM UTC-5, Thomas E. wrote: >>>> Some time back I asked if anyone thought 5g would replace cable and fiber optic for home
internet service. Well, 5g has arrived at my address. This week I wandered into the local Verizon
store and walked out with a 5g modem/router box.
Don't really recall such a conversation, but whatever. During CoVid, we've had some employees who've
been issued 5G hotspots for various reasons.
This was after I used Speedtest on my iphone to check speeds all over the house.
A few hours later I had it connected to the 19 devices in our home. The results are pretty good.
The eero mesh modems are removed and for sale on eBay. All devices are working great after
I figured out the best modem placement. Speeds are 100 Mbps to 200+ mbps depending on how
much structure is blocking signal strength.
I've noticed that my WiFi is slower than wired, probably because I chose Ubiquity's inexpensive "U6 Lite"
Access Points to get more of them for good coverage than for high individual bandwidth. For wired,
I'm getting ~95% of my 300/300Mbps rating (a casual test just now returned 292.3 down/281.4 up).
I've had really good luck with using Ubiquiti's products for my clients. >>
I've completed a couple of installations with their "Dream Machine Pro" >> routers and various version of their flying saucer access points.
Tried to get a Dream Machine 3 years ago; went for the Pfsense because I could get it.
Do installers have a better line getting out-of-stock?
I've just worked through local retailers, but it's worked out for me.
On Tuesday, February 28, 2023 at 12:25:44 AM UTC-5, Alan wrote:
On 2023-02-27 21:20, -hh wrote:
On Sunday, February 26, 2023 at 11:36:27 PM UTC-5, Alan wrote:
On 2023-02-24 12:18, -hh wrote:
On Thursday, February 23, 2023 at 10:45:13 PM UTC-5, Thomas E. wrote: >>>>>> Some time back I asked if anyone thought 5g would replace cable and fiber optic for home
internet service. Well, 5g has arrived at my address. This week I wandered into the local Verizon
store and walked out with a 5g modem/router box.
Don't really recall such a conversation, but whatever. During CoVid, we've had some employees who've
been issued 5G hotspots for various reasons.
This was after I used Speedtest on my iphone to check speeds all over the house.
A few hours later I had it connected to the 19 devices in our home. The results are pretty good.
The eero mesh modems are removed and for sale on eBay. All devices are working great after
I figured out the best modem placement. Speeds are 100 Mbps to 200+ mbps depending on how
much structure is blocking signal strength.
I've noticed that my WiFi is slower than wired, probably because I chose Ubiquity's inexpensive "U6 Lite"
Access Points to get more of them for good coverage than for high individual bandwidth. For wired,
I'm getting ~95% of my 300/300Mbps rating (a casual test just now returned 292.3 down/281.4 up).
I've had really good luck with using Ubiquiti's products for my clients. >>>>
I've completed a couple of installations with their "Dream Machine Pro" >>>> routers and various version of their flying saucer access points.
Tried to get a Dream Machine 3 years ago; went for the Pfsense because I could get it.
Do installers have a better line getting out-of-stock?
I've just worked through local retailers, but it's worked out for me.
Dang. Was hoping to be tempted by someone with an 'inside line' <g>.
Overall, it appears to me that Ubiquiti is prioritizing their 'Dream Machine Pro/SE' 19"
rackmount (in stock) over the 'Dream Machine' (looks similar to the Apple HomePod)
which seems to never be in stock. From my perspective, the latter is a bit more appealing
because its "cheaper with more": it includes an integrated WiFi AP, so its not ($299) vs ($379),
but is actually ($299) vs ($379+$99).
Granted, the more expensive (Pro+AP) combination would have a forward-looking benefit of being
compatible with Ubiquiti's webcams for when my current batch of Wyze cameras reach EOL, but
that conversion would be semi-costly, not just the cameras but their installation too, as Ubiquiti
runs on hardwired PoE, whereas Wyze is WiFi based. That means snaking new ethernet cable runs,
and debating the trade-off of how to PoE them: fewer runs if I install PoE switches in the (hot) attic
space, vs more runs if I keep the PoE inside. There's also the debate of if its then worth going from
the DM Pro ($379) to DM SE ($499) to get PoE ports included...but part of my research question there
would be if its PoE specs support both the cameras and AP's.
FYI, I'm currently powering my two AP's with a 5 port PoE+ switch from TPLink (TL-SG105PE). At $65,
it implies that the +$120 for SE vs Pro for (2 PoE + 6 PoE+) is worthwhile, but that also comes back to
the question of just how many PoE's one actually needs.. and what type of PoE, and located where:
for 3 PoE+ for APs, and 7 PoE for Cameras, sounds better to offload it.
On Sunday, February 26, 2023 at 9:49:51 AM UTC-5, Thomas E. wrote:
On Saturday, February 25, 2023 at 2:09:31 PM UTC-7, -hh wrote:
On Saturday, February 25, 2023 at 7:20:06 AM UTC-5, Thomas E. wrote:
On Friday, February 24, 2023 at 2:18:16 PM UTC-6, -hh wrote:
On Thursday, February 23, 2023 at 10:45:13 PM UTC-5, Thomas E. wrote:
Some time back I asked if anyone thought 5g would replace cable and fiber optic for home
internet service. Well, 5g has arrived at my address. This week I wandered into the local Verizon
store and walked out with a 5g modem/router box.
Don't really recall such a conversation, but whatever. During CoVid, we've had some employees
who've been issued 5G hotspots for various reasons.
This was after I used Speedtest on my iphone to check speeds all over the house.
A few hours later I had it connected to the 19 devices in our home. The results are pretty good.
The eero mesh modems are removed and for sale on eBay. All devices are working great after
I figured out the best modem placement. Speeds are 100 Mbps to 200+ mbps depending on how
much structure is blocking signal strength.
I've noticed that my WiFi is slower than wired, probably because I chose Ubiquity's inexpensive "U6 Lite"
Access Points to get more of them for good coverage than for high individual bandwidth. For wired,
I'm getting ~95% of my 300/300Mbps rating (a casual test just now returned 292.3 down/281.4 up).
Verizon is $50 a month + tax, fiber was $72 a month. Not a huge saving, but nice.
IIRC, if I were so inclined, I could save a similar amount if I were to convert from a business fiber
connection to a homeowner one.
The $20 a month difference could pay for my new iPhone in only about 50 months. If I keep it that long.
My recent phone purchase experience does not indicate that is realistic.
Yes, you seem to swap out both cars & smartphones about every 2-3 years...roughly as soon as you've
just paid through the steepest part of the deprecation curve.
Well, I was referring to speeds where devices are located. In the centrally located upstairs bedroom where
the modern sits I get about 300 speeds too. Unlike your ranch my home has 3 levels and over 3,000 sq ft of
heated space to cover. Thus the speeds drop off. The location is a compromise that gets all the TV sets
working with no buffering while achieving at least 200 speeds for our laptops located in adjacent rooms.
Range drop-off is understood; I've had (have) a repeater that I was using with my Verizon-supplied router
to cover a weak/slow spot in that fashion. When I replaced it with the PoE Unifi AP's, I chose locations which
nullified that weak spot, although the trade-off is that the backyard became the new weak spot; kind of knew
all along that it should have employed three APs, but the 'missing' one is an easy add.
In your case with multiple levels to cover, if the house has coax which runs upstairs/etc, you could consider using
MOCA adaptors to bring hardwire ethernet up onto each floor, plugging in AP's into the Ethernet for WiFi distribution.
Yes I have traded cars and phones pretty often lately...As usual, you pick one behavior or incident and
extrapolate to something much larger. Why?
Nah, just mentioned that generalized behavior because your 5G motivation seems to be to save $20/mo.
If you're looking into cost savings, it could be other low hanging fruit to harvest.
.... Of course we are also enroute to Colorado in our 8 year old CRV, with our 5 to 6 year old skis, an a 40 year
old piece of luggage. My eero system that's no longer needed was v.1. ...
Of course you're heading to CO for skiing, as that's been an annual ritual for you, just as I head to the Caribbean
for scuba diving with my now-13 year old UW dSLR camera system. One of its old strobes blew up last year, so
that was $150 to get it serviced...worth it, as it is still a current model. Been debating other details on other trips,
but they are all just "plans" until they actually happen, such as getting out to Eguisheim ~3 months ago.
The $20 a month was not the 5g transition motivation. That was supposed to be a bit of humor given my recentAh, got it.
proclivity to trade phones every year or two.
One thought behind the last 14 Pro was selling my Nikon kit. I did that. It was becoming used less and less over time.Perfectly rational, particularly if you're willing to make the trade for the proverbial ~5% that a smartphone can't do better.
The 14 Pro camera is good enough for vacation trips, carried in a pocket, and does a few other quite useful things too. :)
Another consideration was that the eero mesh system has been slightly problematic, demanding reboots on a regular basis.Argh, I would have ditched that long ago. I think the only time that I've had to do any reboots was an OS upgrade push
that I took the time to install ... what's nice about the Netgate/pfSense combo is that the router box's status light adds
an orange LED light when there's a major update to install (IIRC, there's also a way to set up a notification email too).
The 5g modem is close enough to our laptops to give much better speeds than the eero did, which was 100 mbps exceptIn general, sounds like your main issue was merely that the WiFi being pushed from the router was too far away in its remote
for the base unit connected to the router at the other end of the house that got the full 200 speed. That router was on an
outside wall at the other end of the house from the laptops. The 5g just needs to be close to a window, anywhere in the house.
Other than the 2 upstairs laptops, the other 17 devices are a basement laptop used only to run a flight sim program, 3 TV sets,
a doorbell, a thermostat, 4 Apple devices, and a bunch of Google Home devices.
location. That's what also resulted in WiFi repeaters which can incur a pretty big performance hit.
In this situation not adding any repeaters is "low hanging fruit" for me. The centrally positioned 5g modem speed is good enoughGetting rid of repeaters was also my plan. The AP's I'd installed are only $99 each (plus PoE), so it was also less
for all those other devices and better for my laptop.
expensive than the consumer Mesh systems that I'd looked at.
I had a thought on the way out here. Every year, on the last day, I get to the top of the mountain for that last run.Same. A few years ago, I helped a friend be the safety divers for his parents; believe his father was 82 at the time
By then the wife has gone back to the condo. Just me and the mountain. More and more I'm thinking is this the
last run for this year, or the last run? Substitute dive for ski run, you get the picture, or will in a few years.
(and was manifesting dementia); we knew it was the father's last set of dives. I'm expecting that age 80 is a safe
time to "call it" for myself; I've been trying to pencil in what destinations are on my diving 'bucket list'. For that, I
was looking at a Red Sea liveaboard this fall (being organized by local dive shop), but State Dept advisories are a
bit dicy again, plus it could conflict with the Japan dates we're contemplating (Smithsonian Journeys tour pkg).
At 77 in a few months I find my time horizon getting shorter and shorter. With over $200 k in retirement income,Which is why I'd mentioned to you on how it seemed you were holding back on your travel budget & that you could
no debt, and several million already saved, I have become a lot less fiscally conservative and more focused on the
short term. So yes, I'm trading cars more often, buying new instead of used, and giving away more too. Giving has
been made easier these last few years by qualified charitable deductions out of IRA RMD funds but I think I would
have done it even if I was still itemizing.
probably safely move from $20K/year to $30K/year. Checking the archives, that comment was March 2018, plus
I'd also mentioned the "do the hard stuff" while you still can too, as a self-imposed factor to help identify what needs
to be prioritized: airline travel, especially longer international trips, is another place where age is an increasing factor
for doing the hard stuff before you can't.
And on that, there's a semi-recent "new" class of air service which splits the difference between Economy/Plus and
full blown Business/First. On United Airlines, its known as "Premium Economy" or "Premium Plus". Briefly, it looks like
they've effectively recycled their old domestic First Class "lounge" style seats to offer an option between sardine class
and the "Left Arm" lay-flat seats such as UA's Polaris. Here's two reviews:
<https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/travel/is-united-premium-plus-worth-it> <https://thepointsguy.com/reviews/united-premium-plus-boeing-787-10/>
We opted for PP on our last EU flight; was roughly an extra +$800/pp-RT, but found it to be a nice step up and quite
notably, got to sleep a lot better on the flight (and both ways too); the leg rest made for a big difference for me.
We'll consider using that service level again on red-eyes.
You prompted me to look at how aging may have affected car purchases. The wife loves her CRV and I think
we will have it for a while yet. Here are some data I found in Quicken:
(Date purchased, Model Year, New/Used, mileage when traded (as best I remember). For the last car it's current mileage.)
Wife:
6/2/2004, 2003, Toyota Highlander, Used, 125,000
3/19/2015, 2015, Honda CRV EXL, New, 81,000
Mine:
11/18/2003, 2001 Honda Accord EXL, Used, 140,000
12/22/2012, 2011, Honda Accord EXL, Used, 85,000
3/30/2015, 2015, Honda Civic EXL, New, 50,000
3/12/19, 2019, Honda Insight Touring, New, 42,000
12/31/2021, 2022, Honda Accord Hybrid Touring, New, 22,000
Yep, spending more on cars, putting on fewer miles, and buying new. Having a lot of fun with them too.Its been too long since I've had real fun in a car at an Autocross; don't really have any wheels today
that are suitable for possibly getting a little beat up (hitting cones) though. If you have room in the
driveway, consider finding a good used Miata and a local SCCA chapter. Or you can do what my
cousin is doing, which is to start to take dealership test drives in higher end vehicles to see if anything
catches his fancy. If you've ever thought of a Mercedes, might be the year to pick up an S Class coming
off of lease, as their recent price hikes are going to start to affect used prices soon, if not already. Best
price bet would be to find a friend who's already leasing one and arrange for a private sale at lease end.
Have a great time diving!Its still a few months out, and I have another trip (local) before it, plus some other commitments,
so it is probably going to be busy right up to the wire. The house we're renting again has WiFi, so
once we settle in, I'll be able to get caught back up on civilization ... I'll have to remember to configure
the new iPad so as to be able to host my Zoom calls from the waterfront porch again.
-hh
On Sunday, February 26, 2023 at 8:55:42 PM UTC-5, -hh wrote:
On Sunday, February 26, 2023 at 9:49:51 AM UTC-5, Thomas E. wrote:
On Saturday, February 25, 2023 at 2:09:31 PM UTC-7, -hh wrote:
On Saturday, February 25, 2023 at 7:20:06 AM UTC-5, Thomas E. wrote:
On Friday, February 24, 2023 at 2:18:16 PM UTC-6, -hh wrote:
On Thursday, February 23, 2023 at 10:45:13 PM UTC-5, Thomas E. wrote:
Some time back I asked if anyone thought 5g would replace cable and fiber optic for home
internet service. Well, 5g has arrived at my address. This week I wandered into the local Verizon
store and walked out with a 5g modem/router box.
Don't really recall such a conversation, but whatever. During CoVid, we've had some employees
who've been issued 5G hotspots for various reasons.
This was after I used Speedtest on my iphone to check speeds all over the house.
A few hours later I had it connected to the 19 devices in our home. The results are pretty good.
The eero mesh modems are removed and for sale on eBay. All devices are working great after
I figured out the best modem placement. Speeds are 100 Mbps to 200+ mbps depending on how
much structure is blocking signal strength.
I've noticed that my WiFi is slower than wired, probably because I chose Ubiquity's inexpensive "U6 Lite"
Access Points to get more of them for good coverage than for high individual bandwidth. For wired,
I'm getting ~95% of my 300/300Mbps rating (a casual test just now returned 292.3 down/281.4 up).
Verizon is $50 a month + tax, fiber was $72 a month. Not a huge saving, but nice.
IIRC, if I were so inclined, I could save a similar amount if I were to convert from a business fiber
connection to a homeowner one.
The $20 a month difference could pay for my new iPhone in only about 50 months. If I keep it that long.
My recent phone purchase experience does not indicate that is realistic.
Yes, you seem to swap out both cars & smartphones about every 2-3 years...roughly as soon as you've
just paid through the steepest part of the deprecation curve.
Well, I was referring to speeds where devices are located. In the centrally located upstairs bedroom where
the modern sits I get about 300 speeds too. Unlike your ranch my home has 3 levels and over 3,000 sq ft of
heated space to cover. Thus the speeds drop off. The location is a compromise that gets all the TV sets
working with no buffering while achieving at least 200 speeds for our laptops located in adjacent rooms.
Range drop-off is understood; I've had (have) a repeater that I was using with my Verizon-supplied router
to cover a weak/slow spot in that fashion. When I replaced it with the PoE Unifi AP's, I chose locations which
nullified that weak spot, although the trade-off is that the backyard became the new weak spot; kind of knew
all along that it should have employed three APs, but the 'missing' one is an easy add.
In your case with multiple levels to cover, if the house has coax which runs upstairs/etc, you could consider using
MOCA adaptors to bring hardwire ethernet up onto each floor, plugging in AP's into the Ethernet for WiFi distribution.
Yes I have traded cars and phones pretty often lately...As usual, you pick one behavior or incident and
extrapolate to something much larger. Why?
Nah, just mentioned that generalized behavior because your 5G motivation seems to be to save $20/mo.
If you're looking into cost savings, it could be other low hanging fruit to harvest.
.... Of course we are also enroute to Colorado in our 8 year old CRV, with our 5 to 6 year old skis, an a 40 year
old piece of luggage. My eero system that's no longer needed was v.1. ...
Of course you're heading to CO for skiing, as that's been an annual ritual for you, just as I head to the Caribbean
for scuba diving with my now-13 year old UW dSLR camera system. One of its old strobes blew up last year, so
that was $150 to get it serviced...worth it, as it is still a current model. Been debating other details on other trips,
but they are all just "plans" until they actually happen, such as getting out to Eguisheim ~3 months ago.
The $20 a month was not the 5g transition motivation. That was supposed to be a bit of humor given my recentAh, got it.
proclivity to trade phones every year or two.
One thought behind the last 14 Pro was selling my Nikon kit. I did that. It was becoming used less and less over time.Perfectly rational, particularly if you're willing to make the trade for the proverbial ~5% that a smartphone can't do better.
The 14 Pro camera is good enough for vacation trips, carried in a pocket, and does a few other quite useful things too. :)
Another consideration was that the eero mesh system has been slightly problematic, demanding reboots on a regular basis.Argh, I would have ditched that long ago. I think the only time that I've had to do any reboots was an OS upgrade push
that I took the time to install ... what's nice about the Netgate/pfSense combo is that the router box's status light adds
an orange LED light when there's a major update to install (IIRC, there's also a way to set up a notification email too).
The 5g modem is close enough to our laptops to give much better speeds than the eero did, which was 100 mbps exceptIn general, sounds like your main issue was merely that the WiFi being pushed from the router was too far away in its remote
for the base unit connected to the router at the other end of the house that got the full 200 speed. That router was on an
outside wall at the other end of the house from the laptops. The 5g just needs to be close to a window, anywhere in the house.
Other than the 2 upstairs laptops, the other 17 devices are a basement laptop used only to run a flight sim program, 3 TV sets,
a doorbell, a thermostat, 4 Apple devices, and a bunch of Google Home devices.
location. That's what also resulted in WiFi repeaters which can incur a pretty big performance hit.
In this situation not adding any repeaters is "low hanging fruit" for me. The centrally positioned 5g modem speed is good enoughGetting rid of repeaters was also my plan. The AP's I'd installed are only $99 each (plus PoE), so it was also less
for all those other devices and better for my laptop.
expensive than the consumer Mesh systems that I'd looked at.
I had a thought on the way out here. Every year, on the last day, I get to the top of the mountain for that last run.Same. A few years ago, I helped a friend be the safety divers for his parents; believe his father was 82 at the time
By then the wife has gone back to the condo. Just me and the mountain. More and more I'm thinking is this the
last run for this year, or the last run? Substitute dive for ski run, you get the picture, or will in a few years.
(and was manifesting dementia); we knew it was the father's last set of dives. I'm expecting that age 80 is a safe
time to "call it" for myself; I've been trying to pencil in what destinations are on my diving 'bucket list'. For that, I
was looking at a Red Sea liveaboard this fall (being organized by local dive shop), but State Dept advisories are a
bit dicy again, plus it could conflict with the Japan dates we're contemplating (Smithsonian Journeys tour pkg).
At 77 in a few months I find my time horizon getting shorter and shorter. With over $200 k in retirement income,Which is why I'd mentioned to you on how it seemed you were holding back on your travel budget & that you could
no debt, and several million already saved, I have become a lot less fiscally conservative and more focused on the
short term. So yes, I'm trading cars more often, buying new instead of used, and giving away more too. Giving has
been made easier these last few years by qualified charitable deductions out of IRA RMD funds but I think I would
have done it even if I was still itemizing.
probably safely move from $20K/year to $30K/year. Checking the archives, that comment was March 2018, plus
I'd also mentioned the "do the hard stuff" while you still can too, as a self-imposed factor to help identify what needs
to be prioritized: airline travel, especially longer international trips, is another place where age is an increasing factor
for doing the hard stuff before you can't.
And on that, there's a semi-recent "new" class of air service which splits the difference between Economy/Plus and
full blown Business/First. On United Airlines, its known as "Premium Economy" or "Premium Plus". Briefly, it looks like
they've effectively recycled their old domestic First Class "lounge" style seats to offer an option between sardine class
and the "Left Arm" lay-flat seats such as UA's Polaris. Here's two reviews:
<https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/travel/is-united-premium-plus-worth-it>
<https://thepointsguy.com/reviews/united-premium-plus-boeing-787-10/>
We opted for PP on our last EU flight; was roughly an extra +$800/pp-RT, but found it to be a nice step up and quite
notably, got to sleep a lot better on the flight (and both ways too); the leg rest made for a big difference for me.
We'll consider using that service level again on red-eyes.
You prompted me to look at how aging may have affected car purchases. The wife loves her CRV and I think
we will have it for a while yet. Here are some data I found in Quicken:
(Date purchased, Model Year, New/Used, mileage when traded (as best I remember). For the last car it's current mileage.)
Wife:
6/2/2004, 2003, Toyota Highlander, Used, 125,000
3/19/2015, 2015, Honda CRV EXL, New, 81,000
Mine:
11/18/2003, 2001 Honda Accord EXL, Used, 140,000
12/22/2012, 2011, Honda Accord EXL, Used, 85,000
3/30/2015, 2015, Honda Civic EXL, New, 50,000
3/12/19, 2019, Honda Insight Touring, New, 42,000
12/31/2021, 2022, Honda Accord Hybrid Touring, New, 22,000
Yep, spending more on cars, putting on fewer miles, and buying new. Having a lot of fun with them too.Its been too long since I've had real fun in a car at an Autocross; don't really have any wheels today
that are suitable for possibly getting a little beat up (hitting cones) though. If you have room in the
driveway, consider finding a good used Miata and a local SCCA chapter. Or you can do what my
cousin is doing, which is to start to take dealership test drives in higher end vehicles to see if anything
catches his fancy. If you've ever thought of a Mercedes, might be the year to pick up an S Class coming
off of lease, as their recent price hikes are going to start to affect used prices soon, if not already. Best
price bet would be to find a friend who's already leasing one and arrange for a private sale at lease end.
Have a great time diving!Its still a few months out, and I have another trip (local) before it, plus some other commitments,
so it is probably going to be busy right up to the wire. The house we're renting again has WiFi, so
once we settle in, I'll be able to get caught back up on civilization ... I'll have to remember to configure
the new iPad so as to be able to host my Zoom calls from the waterfront porch again.
First of all, our post-2018 travel plans were affected by travel restrictions, not finances.
We are now 5 years older but still wanting to travel. I just bought a flying club membership,
opening the opportunity to take some trips by air not involving airlines.
We are also stilling planning a trip west into Alan Baker's part of the world.
Finally, over a month into the Verizon 5g modem/router experience I'm VERY pleased. I was
amazed when I bought my iPhone 14 to discover 200-300 5g mbps speeds inside my house.
By getting it positioned in the center of the second story with a window 10 feet away we now
have excellent coverage in the entire home, including the basement, no other equipment required.
Having the fiber optic router on an outside was a problem that required repeaters. Those cut
the speeds in half (backhaul) where the devices were not connected to the base unit. Of course,
the ability to place the 5g unit without wiring considerations is dependent on a strong 5g signal
in the home. That works for us. YMMV.
On Tuesday, March 14, 2023 at 1:59:44 PM UTC-4, Thomas E. wrote:
On Sunday, February 26, 2023 at 8:55:42 PM UTC-5, -hh wrote:
On Sunday, February 26, 2023 at 9:49:51 AM UTC-5, Thomas E. wrote:
On Saturday, February 25, 2023 at 2:09:31 PM UTC-7, -hh wrote:
On Saturday, February 25, 2023 at 7:20:06 AM UTC-5, Thomas E. wrote:
On Friday, February 24, 2023 at 2:18:16 PM UTC-6, -hh wrote:
On Thursday, February 23, 2023 at 10:45:13 PM UTC-5, Thomas E. wrote:
Some time back I asked if anyone thought 5g would replace cable and fiber optic for home
internet service. Well, 5g has arrived at my address. This week I wandered into the local Verizon
store and walked out with a 5g modem/router box.
Don't really recall such a conversation, but whatever. During CoVid, we've had some employees
who've been issued 5G hotspots for various reasons.
This was after I used Speedtest on my iphone to check speeds all over the house.
A few hours later I had it connected to the 19 devices in our home. The results are pretty good.
The eero mesh modems are removed and for sale on eBay. All devices are working great after
I figured out the best modem placement. Speeds are 100 Mbps to 200+ mbps depending on how
much structure is blocking signal strength.
I've noticed that my WiFi is slower than wired, probably because I chose Ubiquity's inexpensive "U6 Lite"
Access Points to get more of them for good coverage than for high individual bandwidth. For wired,
I'm getting ~95% of my 300/300Mbps rating (a casual test just now returned 292.3 down/281.4 up).
Verizon is $50 a month + tax, fiber was $72 a month. Not a huge saving, but nice.
IIRC, if I were so inclined, I could save a similar amount if I were to convert from a business fiber
connection to a homeowner one.
The $20 a month difference could pay for my new iPhone in only about 50 months. If I keep it that long.
My recent phone purchase experience does not indicate that is realistic.
Yes, you seem to swap out both cars & smartphones about every 2-3 years...roughly as soon as you've
just paid through the steepest part of the deprecation curve.
Well, I was referring to speeds where devices are located. In the centrally located upstairs bedroom where
the modern sits I get about 300 speeds too. Unlike your ranch my home has 3 levels and over 3,000 sq ft of
heated space to cover. Thus the speeds drop off. The location is a compromise that gets all the TV sets
working with no buffering while achieving at least 200 speeds for our laptops located in adjacent rooms.
Range drop-off is understood; I've had (have) a repeater that I was using with my Verizon-supplied router
to cover a weak/slow spot in that fashion. When I replaced it with the PoE Unifi AP's, I chose locations which
nullified that weak spot, although the trade-off is that the backyard became the new weak spot; kind of knew
all along that it should have employed three APs, but the 'missing' one is an easy add.
In your case with multiple levels to cover, if the house has coax which runs upstairs/etc, you could consider using
MOCA adaptors to bring hardwire ethernet up onto each floor, plugging in AP's into the Ethernet for WiFi distribution.
Yes I have traded cars and phones pretty often lately...As usual, you pick one behavior or incident and
extrapolate to something much larger. Why?
Nah, just mentioned that generalized behavior because your 5G motivation seems to be to save $20/mo.
If you're looking into cost savings, it could be other low hanging fruit to harvest.
.... Of course we are also enroute to Colorado in our 8 year old CRV, with our 5 to 6 year old skis, an a 40 year
old piece of luggage. My eero system that's no longer needed was v.1. ...
Of course you're heading to CO for skiing, as that's been an annual ritual for you, just as I head to the Caribbean
for scuba diving with my now-13 year old UW dSLR camera system. One of its old strobes blew up last year, so
that was $150 to get it serviced...worth it, as it is still a current model. Been debating other details on other trips,
but they are all just "plans" until they actually happen, such as getting out to Eguisheim ~3 months ago.
The $20 a month was not the 5g transition motivation. That was supposed to be a bit of humor given my recentAh, got it.
proclivity to trade phones every year or two.
One thought behind the last 14 Pro was selling my Nikon kit. I did that. It was becoming used less and less over time.Perfectly rational, particularly if you're willing to make the trade for the proverbial ~5% that a smartphone can't do better.
The 14 Pro camera is good enough for vacation trips, carried in a pocket, and does a few other quite useful things too. :)
Another consideration was that the eero mesh system has been slightly problematic, demanding reboots on a regular basis.Argh, I would have ditched that long ago. I think the only time that I've had to do any reboots was an OS upgrade push
that I took the time to install ... what's nice about the Netgate/pfSense combo is that the router box's status light adds
an orange LED light when there's a major update to install (IIRC, there's also a way to set up a notification email too).
The 5g modem is close enough to our laptops to give much better speeds than the eero did, which was 100 mbps exceptIn general, sounds like your main issue was merely that the WiFi being pushed from the router was too far away in its remote
for the base unit connected to the router at the other end of the house that got the full 200 speed. That router was on an
outside wall at the other end of the house from the laptops. The 5g just needs to be close to a window, anywhere in the house.
Other than the 2 upstairs laptops, the other 17 devices are a basement laptop used only to run a flight sim program, 3 TV sets,
a doorbell, a thermostat, 4 Apple devices, and a bunch of Google Home devices.
location. That's what also resulted in WiFi repeaters which can incur a pretty big performance hit.
In this situation not adding any repeaters is "low hanging fruit" for me. The centrally positioned 5g modem speed is good enoughGetting rid of repeaters was also my plan. The AP's I'd installed are only $99 each (plus PoE), so it was also less
for all those other devices and better for my laptop.
expensive than the consumer Mesh systems that I'd looked at.
I had a thought on the way out here. Every year, on the last day, I get to the top of the mountain for that last run.Same. A few years ago, I helped a friend be the safety divers for his parents; believe his father was 82 at the time
By then the wife has gone back to the condo. Just me and the mountain. More and more I'm thinking is this the
last run for this year, or the last run? Substitute dive for ski run, you get the picture, or will in a few years.
(and was manifesting dementia); we knew it was the father's last set of dives. I'm expecting that age 80 is a safe
time to "call it" for myself; I've been trying to pencil in what destinations are on my diving 'bucket list'. For that, I
was looking at a Red Sea liveaboard this fall (being organized by local dive shop), but State Dept advisories are a
bit dicy again, plus it could conflict with the Japan dates we're contemplating (Smithsonian Journeys tour pkg).
At 77 in a few months I find my time horizon getting shorter and shorter. With over $200 k in retirement income,Which is why I'd mentioned to you on how it seemed you were holding back on your travel budget & that you could
no debt, and several million already saved, I have become a lot less fiscally conservative and more focused on the
short term. So yes, I'm trading cars more often, buying new instead of used, and giving away more too. Giving has
been made easier these last few years by qualified charitable deductions out of IRA RMD funds but I think I would
have done it even if I was still itemizing.
probably safely move from $20K/year to $30K/year. Checking the archives, that comment was March 2018, plus
I'd also mentioned the "do the hard stuff" while you still can too, as a self-imposed factor to help identify what needs
to be prioritized: airline travel, especially longer international trips, is another place where age is an increasing factor
for doing the hard stuff before you can't.
And on that, there's a semi-recent "new" class of air service which splits the difference between Economy/Plus and
full blown Business/First. On United Airlines, its known as "Premium Economy" or "Premium Plus". Briefly, it looks like
they've effectively recycled their old domestic First Class "lounge" style seats to offer an option between sardine class
and the "Left Arm" lay-flat seats such as UA's Polaris. Here's two reviews:
<https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/travel/is-united-premium-plus-worth-it>
<https://thepointsguy.com/reviews/united-premium-plus-boeing-787-10/>
We opted for PP on our last EU flight; was roughly an extra +$800/pp-RT, but found it to be a nice step up and quite
notably, got to sleep a lot better on the flight (and both ways too); the leg rest made for a big difference for me.
We'll consider using that service level again on red-eyes.
You prompted me to look at how aging may have affected car purchases. The wife loves her CRV and I think
we will have it for a while yet. Here are some data I found in Quicken:
(Date purchased, Model Year, New/Used, mileage when traded (as best I remember). For the last car it's current mileage.)
Wife:
6/2/2004, 2003, Toyota Highlander, Used, 125,000
3/19/2015, 2015, Honda CRV EXL, New, 81,000
Mine:
11/18/2003, 2001 Honda Accord EXL, Used, 140,000
12/22/2012, 2011, Honda Accord EXL, Used, 85,000
3/30/2015, 2015, Honda Civic EXL, New, 50,000
3/12/19, 2019, Honda Insight Touring, New, 42,000
12/31/2021, 2022, Honda Accord Hybrid Touring, New, 22,000
Yep, spending more on cars, putting on fewer miles, and buying new. Having a lot of fun with them too.Its been too long since I've had real fun in a car at an Autocross; don't really have any wheels today
that are suitable for possibly getting a little beat up (hitting cones) though. If you have room in the
driveway, consider finding a good used Miata and a local SCCA chapter. Or you can do what my
cousin is doing, which is to start to take dealership test drives in higher end vehicles to see if anything
catches his fancy. If you've ever thought of a Mercedes, might be the year to pick up an S Class coming
off of lease, as their recent price hikes are going to start to affect used prices soon, if not already. Best
price bet would be to find a friend who's already leasing one and arrange for a private sale at lease end.
Have a great time diving!Its still a few months out, and I have another trip (local) before it, plus some other commitments,
so it is probably going to be busy right up to the wire. The house we're renting again has WiFi, so
once we settle in, I'll be able to get caught back up on civilization ... I'll have to remember to configure
the new iPad so as to be able to host my Zoom calls from the waterfront porch again.
First of all, our post-2018 travel plans were affected by travel restrictions, not finances.Understandable for 2020, but not as much for 2019 activities.
We are now 5 years older but still wanting to travel. I just bought a flying club membership,CoVid messed up my plans to have gotten to Million Miler status benefits, but we’re
opening the opportunity to take some trips by air not involving airlines.
back to working towards that.
We are also stilling planning a trip west into Alan Baker's part of the world.I need to keep remembering Vancouver as a stop too; have gotten some stuff sorted out for this year.
As mentioned back in January, we have the Brac slotted in, plus the volunteer week is back “on” too.
The debate between Ireland vs Japan has reached a conclusion…and for FF, need to find two more
flight segments; thinking that since we’re not able to book a local Billy Joel/Stevie Knicks concert,
perhaps will book one that does work in the schedule and fly into that city for a weekend.
Finally, over a month into the Verizon 5g modem/router experience I'm VERY pleased. I wasGood to hear. I’ve been tempted to pick up a Unify “Dream” router to resolve the weak WiFi spot
amazed when I bought my iPhone 14 to discover 200-300 5g mbps speeds inside my house.
By getting it positioned in the center of the second story with a window 10 feet away we now
have excellent coverage in the entire home, including the basement, no other equipment required.
Having the fiber optic router on an outside was a problem that required repeaters. Those cut
the speeds in half (backhaul) where the devices were not connected to the base unit. Of course,
the ability to place the 5g unit without wiring considerations is dependent on a strong 5g signal
in the home. That works for us. YMMV.
in our back yard, but that would probably require an early retirement of a midrange PfSense router,
so that’s probably off unless I can find someone willing to buy the PfSense for ~$300 or so.
-hh
On Thursday, February 23, 2023 at 10:45:13 PM UTC-5, Thomas E. wrote:
Some time back I asked if anyone thought 5g would replace cable and fiber optic for home
internet service. Well, 5g has arrived at my address. This week I wandered into the local Verizon
store and walked out with a 5g modem/router box.
Don't really recall such a conversation, but whatever. During CoVid, we've had some employees who've
been issued 5G hotspots for various reasons.
This was after I used Speedtest on my iphone to check speeds all over the house.
A few hours later I had it connected to the 19 devices in our home. The results are pretty good.
The eero mesh modems are removed and for sale on eBay. All devices are working great after
I figured out the best modem placement. Speeds are 100 Mbps to 200+ mbps depending on how
much structure is blocking signal strength.
I've noticed that my WiFi is slower than wired, probably because I chose Ubiquity's inexpensive "U6 Lite"
Access Points to get more of them for good coverage than for high individual bandwidth. For wired,
I'm getting ~95% of my 300/300Mbps rating (a casual test just now returned 292.3 down/281.4 up).
Verizon is $50 a month + tax, fiber was $72 a month. Not a huge saving, but nice.
IIRC, if I were so inclined, I could save a similar amount if I were to convert from a business fiber
connection to a homeowner one.
The $20 a month difference could pay for my new iPhone in only about 50 months. If I keep it that long.
My recent phone purchase experience does not indicate that is realistic.
Yes, you seem to swap out both cars & smartphones about every 2-3 years...roughly as soon as you've
just paid through the steepest part of the deprecation curve.
-hh
On Tuesday, March 14, 2023 at 6:44:21 PM UTC-4, -hh wrote:
On Tuesday, March 14, 2023 at 1:59:44 PM UTC-4, Thomas E. wrote:
On Sunday, February 26, 2023 at 8:55:42 PM UTC-5, -hh wrote:
On Sunday, February 26, 2023 at 9:49:51 AM UTC-5, Thomas E. wrote:
On Saturday, February 25, 2023 at 2:09:31 PM UTC-7, -hh wrote:
On Saturday, February 25, 2023 at 7:20:06 AM UTC-5, Thomas E. wrote:
On Friday, February 24, 2023 at 2:18:16 PM UTC-6, -hh wrote:
On Thursday, February 23, 2023 at 10:45:13 PM UTC-5, Thomas E. wrote:
Some time back I asked if anyone thought 5g would replace cable and fiber optic for home
internet service. Well, 5g has arrived at my address. This week I wandered into the local Verizon
store and walked out with a 5g modem/router box.
Don't really recall such a conversation, but whatever. During CoVid, we've had some employees
who've been issued 5G hotspots for various reasons.
This was after I used Speedtest on my iphone to check speeds all over the house.
A few hours later I had it connected to the 19 devices in our home. The results are pretty good.
The eero mesh modems are removed and for sale on eBay. All devices are working great after
I figured out the best modem placement. Speeds are 100 Mbps to 200+ mbps depending on how
much structure is blocking signal strength.
I've noticed that my WiFi is slower than wired, probably because I chose Ubiquity's inexpensive "U6 Lite"
Access Points to get more of them for good coverage than for high individual bandwidth. For wired,
I'm getting ~95% of my 300/300Mbps rating (a casual test just now returned 292.3 down/281.4 up).
Verizon is $50 a month + tax, fiber was $72 a month. Not a huge saving, but nice.
IIRC, if I were so inclined, I could save a similar amount if I were to convert from a business fiber
connection to a homeowner one.
The $20 a month difference could pay for my new iPhone in only about 50 months. If I keep it that long.
My recent phone purchase experience does not indicate that is realistic.
Yes, you seem to swap out both cars & smartphones about every 2-3 years...roughly as soon as you've
just paid through the steepest part of the deprecation curve.
Well, I was referring to speeds where devices are located. In the centrally located upstairs bedroom where
the modern sits I get about 300 speeds too. Unlike your ranch my home has 3 levels and over 3,000 sq ft of
heated space to cover. Thus the speeds drop off. The location is a compromise that gets all the TV sets
working with no buffering while achieving at least 200 speeds for our laptops located in adjacent rooms.
Range drop-off is understood; I've had (have) a repeater that I was using with my Verizon-supplied router
to cover a weak/slow spot in that fashion. When I replaced it with the PoE Unifi AP's, I chose locations which
nullified that weak spot, although the trade-off is that the backyard became the new weak spot; kind of knew
all along that it should have employed three APs, but the 'missing' one is an easy add.
In your case with multiple levels to cover, if the house has coax which runs upstairs/etc, you could consider using
MOCA adaptors to bring hardwire ethernet up onto each floor, plugging in AP's into the Ethernet for WiFi distribution.
Yes I have traded cars and phones pretty often lately...As usual, you pick one behavior or incident and
extrapolate to something much larger. Why?
Nah, just mentioned that generalized behavior because your 5G motivation seems to be to save $20/mo.
If you're looking into cost savings, it could be other low hanging fruit to harvest.
.... Of course we are also enroute to Colorado in our 8 year old CRV, with our 5 to 6 year old skis, an a 40 year
old piece of luggage. My eero system that's no longer needed was v.1. ...
Of course you're heading to CO for skiing, as that's been an annual ritual for you, just as I head to the Caribbean
for scuba diving with my now-13 year old UW dSLR camera system. One of its old strobes blew up last year, so
that was $150 to get it serviced...worth it, as it is still a current model. Been debating other details on other trips,
but they are all just "plans" until they actually happen, such as getting out to Eguisheim ~3 months ago.
The $20 a month was not the 5g transition motivation. That was supposed to be a bit of humor given my recentAh, got it.
proclivity to trade phones every year or two.
One thought behind the last 14 Pro was selling my Nikon kit. I did that. It was becoming used less and less over time.Perfectly rational, particularly if you're willing to make the trade for the proverbial ~5% that a smartphone can't do better.
The 14 Pro camera is good enough for vacation trips, carried in a pocket, and does a few other quite useful things too. :)
Another consideration was that the eero mesh system has been slightly problematic, demanding reboots on a regular basis.Argh, I would have ditched that long ago. I think the only time that I've had to do any reboots was an OS upgrade push
that I took the time to install ... what's nice about the Netgate/pfSense combo is that the router box's status light adds
an orange LED light when there's a major update to install (IIRC, there's also a way to set up a notification email too).
The 5g modem is close enough to our laptops to give much better speeds than the eero did, which was 100 mbps exceptIn general, sounds like your main issue was merely that the WiFi being pushed from the router was too far away in its remote
for the base unit connected to the router at the other end of the house that got the full 200 speed. That router was on an
outside wall at the other end of the house from the laptops. The 5g just needs to be close to a window, anywhere in the house.
Other than the 2 upstairs laptops, the other 17 devices are a basement laptop used only to run a flight sim program, 3 TV sets,
a doorbell, a thermostat, 4 Apple devices, and a bunch of Google Home devices.
location. That's what also resulted in WiFi repeaters which can incur a pretty big performance hit.
In this situation not adding any repeaters is "low hanging fruit" for me. The centrally positioned 5g modem speed is good enoughGetting rid of repeaters was also my plan. The AP's I'd installed are only $99 each (plus PoE), so it was also less
for all those other devices and better for my laptop.
expensive than the consumer Mesh systems that I'd looked at.
I had a thought on the way out here. Every year, on the last day, I get to the top of the mountain for that last run.Same. A few years ago, I helped a friend be the safety divers for his parents; believe his father was 82 at the time
By then the wife has gone back to the condo. Just me and the mountain. More and more I'm thinking is this the
last run for this year, or the last run? Substitute dive for ski run, you get the picture, or will in a few years.
(and was manifesting dementia); we knew it was the father's last set of dives. I'm expecting that age 80 is a safe
time to "call it" for myself; I've been trying to pencil in what destinations are on my diving 'bucket list'. For that, I
was looking at a Red Sea liveaboard this fall (being organized by local dive shop), but State Dept advisories are a
bit dicy again, plus it could conflict with the Japan dates we're contemplating (Smithsonian Journeys tour pkg).
At 77 in a few months I find my time horizon getting shorter and shorter. With over $200 k in retirement income,Which is why I'd mentioned to you on how it seemed you were holding back on your travel budget & that you could
no debt, and several million already saved, I have become a lot less fiscally conservative and more focused on the
short term. So yes, I'm trading cars more often, buying new instead of used, and giving away more too. Giving has
been made easier these last few years by qualified charitable deductions out of IRA RMD funds but I think I would
have done it even if I was still itemizing.
probably safely move from $20K/year to $30K/year. Checking the archives, that comment was March 2018, plus
I'd also mentioned the "do the hard stuff" while you still can too, as a self-imposed factor to help identify what needs
to be prioritized: airline travel, especially longer international trips, is another place where age is an increasing factor
for doing the hard stuff before you can't.
And on that, there's a semi-recent "new" class of air service which splits the difference between Economy/Plus and
full blown Business/First. On United Airlines, its known as "Premium Economy" or "Premium Plus". Briefly, it looks like
they've effectively recycled their old domestic First Class "lounge" style seats to offer an option between sardine class
and the "Left Arm" lay-flat seats such as UA's Polaris. Here's two reviews:
<https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/travel/is-united-premium-plus-worth-it>
<https://thepointsguy.com/reviews/united-premium-plus-boeing-787-10/>
We opted for PP on our last EU flight; was roughly an extra +$800/pp-RT, but found it to be a nice step up and quite
notably, got to sleep a lot better on the flight (and both ways too); the leg rest made for a big difference for me.
We'll consider using that service level again on red-eyes.
You prompted me to look at how aging may have affected car purchases. The wife loves her CRV and I think
we will have it for a while yet. Here are some data I found in Quicken:
(Date purchased, Model Year, New/Used, mileage when traded (as best I remember). For the last car it's current mileage.)
Wife:
6/2/2004, 2003, Toyota Highlander, Used, 125,000
3/19/2015, 2015, Honda CRV EXL, New, 81,000
Mine:
11/18/2003, 2001 Honda Accord EXL, Used, 140,000
12/22/2012, 2011, Honda Accord EXL, Used, 85,000
3/30/2015, 2015, Honda Civic EXL, New, 50,000
3/12/19, 2019, Honda Insight Touring, New, 42,000
12/31/2021, 2022, Honda Accord Hybrid Touring, New, 22,000
Yep, spending more on cars, putting on fewer miles, and buying new. Having a lot of fun with them too.Its been too long since I've had real fun in a car at an Autocross; don't really have any wheels today
that are suitable for possibly getting a little beat up (hitting cones) though. If you have room in the
driveway, consider finding a good used Miata and a local SCCA chapter. Or you can do what my
cousin is doing, which is to start to take dealership test drives in higher end vehicles to see if anything
catches his fancy. If you've ever thought of a Mercedes, might be the year to pick up an S Class coming
off of lease, as their recent price hikes are going to start to affect used prices soon, if not already. Best
price bet would be to find a friend who's already leasing one and arrange for a private sale at lease end.
Have a great time diving!Its still a few months out, and I have another trip (local) before it, plus some other commitments,
so it is probably going to be busy right up to the wire. The house we're renting again has WiFi, so
once we settle in, I'll be able to get caught back up on civilization ... I'll have to remember to configure
the new iPad so as to be able to host my Zoom calls from the waterfront porch again.
First of all, our post-2018 travel plans were affected by travel restrictions, not finances.Understandable for 2020, but not as much for 2019 activities.
We are now 5 years older but still wanting to travel. I just bought a flying club membership,CoVid messed up my plans to have gotten to Million Miler status benefits, but we’re
opening the opportunity to take some trips by air not involving airlines.
back to working towards that.
We are also stilling planning a trip west into Alan Baker's part of the world.I need to keep remembering Vancouver as a stop too; have gotten some stuff sorted out for this year.
As mentioned back in January, we have the Brac slotted in, plus the volunteer week is back “on” too.
The debate between Ireland vs Japan has reached a conclusion…and for FF, need to find two more
flight segments; thinking that since we’re not able to book a local Billy Joel/Stevie Knicks concert,
perhaps will book one that does work in the schedule and fly into that city for a weekend.
Finally, over a month into the Verizon 5g modem/router experience I'm VERY pleased. I wasGood to hear. I’ve been tempted to pick up a Unify “Dream” router to resolve the weak WiFi spot
amazed when I bought my iPhone 14 to discover 200-300 5g mbps speeds inside my house.
By getting it positioned in the center of the second story with a window 10 feet away we now
have excellent coverage in the entire home, including the basement, no other equipment required.
Having the fiber optic router on an outside was a problem that required repeaters. Those cut
the speeds in half (backhaul) where the devices were not connected to the base unit. Of course,
the ability to place the 5g unit without wiring considerations is dependent on a strong 5g signal
in the home. That works for us. YMMV.
in our back yard, but that would probably require an early retirement of a midrange PfSense router,
so that’s probably off unless I can find someone willing to buy the PfSense for ~$300 or so.
-hhI meant say post-2019, not 2018.
In 2019 we went to Colorado for 2 weeks, England for 2 weeks, and Door County.
Then in 2020 only Florida for 2 weeks and Colorado skiing.
Backyard wifi???? Interesting. Our iPads are all on 4g cell service, and the back
porch Google puck works fine, so not an issue here.
On 2/24/2023 12:18 PM, -hh wrote:
On Thursday, February 23, 2023 at 10:45:13 PM UTC-5, Thomas E. wrote:
Some time back I asked if anyone thought 5g would replace cable and fiber optic for home
internet service. Well, 5g has arrived at my address. This week I wandered into the local Verizon
store and walked out with a 5g modem/router box.
Don't really recall such a conversation, but whatever. During CoVid, we've had some employees who've
been issued 5G hotspots for various reasons.
This was after I used Speedtest on my iphone to check speeds all over the house.
A few hours later I had it connected to the 19 devices in our home. The results are pretty good.
The eero mesh modems are removed and for sale on eBay. All devices are working great after
I figured out the best modem placement. Speeds are 100 Mbps to 200+ mbps depending on how
much structure is blocking signal strength.
I've noticed that my WiFi is slower than wired, probably because I chose Ubiquity's inexpensive "U6 Lite"
Access Points to get more of them for good coverage than for high individual bandwidth. For wired,
I'm getting ~95% of my 300/300Mbps rating (a casual test just now returned 292.3 down/281.4 up).
Verizon is $50 a month + tax, fiber was $72 a month. Not a huge saving, but nice.
IIRC, if I were so inclined, I could save a similar amount if I were to convert from a business fiber
connection to a homeowner one.
The $20 a month difference could pay for my new iPhone in only about 50 months. If I keep it that long.
My recent phone purchase experience does not indicate that is realistic.
Yes, you seem to swap out both cars & smartphones about every 2-3 years...roughly as soon as you've
just paid through the steepest part of the deprecation curve.
How much latency do you get? Here I measure 40 ms on Verizon UWB. On
fiber I get 4 ms.
On Friday, March 17, 2023 at 12:47:24 PM UTC-4, John wrote:
On 2/24/2023 12:18 PM, -hh wrote:
On Thursday, February 23, 2023 at 10:45:13 PM UTC-5, Thomas E. wrote:
Some time back I asked if anyone thought 5g would replace cable and fiber optic for home
internet service. Well, 5g has arrived at my address. This week I wandered into the local Verizon
store and walked out with a 5g modem/router box.
Don't really recall such a conversation, but whatever. During CoVid, we've had some employees who've
been issued 5G hotspots for various reasons.
This was after I used Speedtest on my iphone to check speeds all over the house.
A few hours later I had it connected to the 19 devices in our home. The results are pretty good.
The eero mesh modems are removed and for sale on eBay. All devices are working great after
I figured out the best modem placement. Speeds are 100 Mbps to 200+ mbps depending on how
much structure is blocking signal strength.
I've noticed that my WiFi is slower than wired, probably because I chose Ubiquity's inexpensive "U6 Lite"
Access Points to get more of them for good coverage than for high individual bandwidth. For wired,
I'm getting ~95% of my 300/300Mbps rating (a casual test just now returned 292.3 down/281.4 up).
Verizon is $50 a month + tax, fiber was $72 a month. Not a huge saving, but nice.
IIRC, if I were so inclined, I could save a similar amount if I were to convert from a business fiber
connection to a homeowner one.
The $20 a month difference could pay for my new iPhone in only about 50 months. If I keep it that long.
My recent phone purchase experience does not indicate that is realistic.
Yes, you seem to swap out both cars & smartphones about every 2-3 years...roughly as soon as you've
just paid through the steepest part of the deprecation curve.
How much latency do you get? Here I measure 40 ms on Verizon UWB. OnI don’t know about Tom, but without any prep, a quick test finds my wireless (iPad) at
fiber I get 4 ms.
11ms & ~100Mbit, while the desktop (w/too many tasks running) is 7ms & ~300Mbit.
-hh
On Friday, March 17, 2023 at 9:57:53 AM UTC-4, Thomas E. wrote:
On Tuesday, March 14, 2023 at 6:44:21 PM UTC-4, -hh wrote:
On Tuesday, March 14, 2023 at 1:59:44 PM UTC-4, Thomas E. wrote:
On Sunday, February 26, 2023 at 8:55:42 PM UTC-5, -hh wrote:
On Sunday, February 26, 2023 at 9:49:51 AM UTC-5, Thomas E. wrote:
On Saturday, February 25, 2023 at 2:09:31 PM UTC-7, -hh wrote:
On Saturday, February 25, 2023 at 7:20:06 AM UTC-5, Thomas E. wrote:
On Friday, February 24, 2023 at 2:18:16 PM UTC-6, -hh wrote:
On Thursday, February 23, 2023 at 10:45:13 PM UTC-5, Thomas E. wrote:
Some time back I asked if anyone thought 5g would replace cable and fiber optic for home
internet service. Well, 5g has arrived at my address. This week I wandered into the local Verizon
store and walked out with a 5g modem/router box.
Don't really recall such a conversation, but whatever. During CoVid, we've had some employees
who've been issued 5G hotspots for various reasons.
This was after I used Speedtest on my iphone to check speeds all over the house.
A few hours later I had it connected to the 19 devices in our home. The results are pretty good.
The eero mesh modems are removed and for sale on eBay. All devices are working great after
I figured out the best modem placement. Speeds are 100 Mbps to 200+ mbps depending on how
much structure is blocking signal strength.
I've noticed that my WiFi is slower than wired, probably because I chose Ubiquity's inexpensive "U6 Lite"
Access Points to get more of them for good coverage than for high individual bandwidth. For wired,
I'm getting ~95% of my 300/300Mbps rating (a casual test just now returned 292.3 down/281.4 up).
Verizon is $50 a month + tax, fiber was $72 a month. Not a huge saving, but nice.
IIRC, if I were so inclined, I could save a similar amount if I were to convert from a business fiber
connection to a homeowner one.
The $20 a month difference could pay for my new iPhone in only about 50 months. If I keep it that long.
My recent phone purchase experience does not indicate that is realistic.
Yes, you seem to swap out both cars & smartphones about every 2-3 years...roughly as soon as you've
just paid through the steepest part of the deprecation curve.
Well, I was referring to speeds where devices are located. In the centrally located upstairs bedroom where
the modern sits I get about 300 speeds too. Unlike your ranch my home has 3 levels and over 3,000 sq ft of
heated space to cover. Thus the speeds drop off. The location is a compromise that gets all the TV sets
working with no buffering while achieving at least 200 speeds for our laptops located in adjacent rooms.
Range drop-off is understood; I've had (have) a repeater that I was using with my Verizon-supplied router
to cover a weak/slow spot in that fashion. When I replaced it with the PoE Unifi AP's, I chose locations which
nullified that weak spot, although the trade-off is that the backyard became the new weak spot; kind of knew
all along that it should have employed three APs, but the 'missing' one is an easy add.
In your case with multiple levels to cover, if the house has coax which runs upstairs/etc, you could consider using
MOCA adaptors to bring hardwire ethernet up onto each floor, plugging in AP's into the Ethernet for WiFi distribution.
Yes I have traded cars and phones pretty often lately...As usual, you pick one behavior or incident and
extrapolate to something much larger. Why?
Nah, just mentioned that generalized behavior because your 5G motivation seems to be to save $20/mo.
If you're looking into cost savings, it could be other low hanging fruit to harvest.
.... Of course we are also enroute to Colorado in our 8 year old CRV, with our 5 to 6 year old skis, an a 40 year
old piece of luggage. My eero system that's no longer needed was v.1. ...
Of course you're heading to CO for skiing, as that's been an annual ritual for you, just as I head to the Caribbean
for scuba diving with my now-13 year old UW dSLR camera system. One of its old strobes blew up last year, so
that was $150 to get it serviced...worth it, as it is still a current model. Been debating other details on other trips,
but they are all just "plans" until they actually happen, such as getting out to Eguisheim ~3 months ago.
The $20 a month was not the 5g transition motivation. That was supposed to be a bit of humor given my recentAh, got it.
proclivity to trade phones every year or two.
One thought behind the last 14 Pro was selling my Nikon kit. I did that. It was becoming used less and less over time.Perfectly rational, particularly if you're willing to make the trade for the proverbial ~5% that a smartphone can't do better.
The 14 Pro camera is good enough for vacation trips, carried in a pocket, and does a few other quite useful things too. :)
Another consideration was that the eero mesh system has been slightly problematic, demanding reboots on a regular basis.Argh, I would have ditched that long ago. I think the only time that I've had to do any reboots was an OS upgrade push
that I took the time to install ... what's nice about the Netgate/pfSense combo is that the router box's status light adds
an orange LED light when there's a major update to install (IIRC, there's also a way to set up a notification email too).
The 5g modem is close enough to our laptops to give much better speeds than the eero did, which was 100 mbps exceptIn general, sounds like your main issue was merely that the WiFi being pushed from the router was too far away in its remote
for the base unit connected to the router at the other end of the house that got the full 200 speed. That router was on an
outside wall at the other end of the house from the laptops. The 5g just needs to be close to a window, anywhere in the house.
Other than the 2 upstairs laptops, the other 17 devices are a basement laptop used only to run a flight sim program, 3 TV sets,
a doorbell, a thermostat, 4 Apple devices, and a bunch of Google Home devices.
location. That's what also resulted in WiFi repeaters which can incur a pretty big performance hit.
In this situation not adding any repeaters is "low hanging fruit" for me. The centrally positioned 5g modem speed is good enoughGetting rid of repeaters was also my plan. The AP's I'd installed are only $99 each (plus PoE), so it was also less
for all those other devices and better for my laptop.
expensive than the consumer Mesh systems that I'd looked at.
I had a thought on the way out here. Every year, on the last day, I get to the top of the mountain for that last run.Same. A few years ago, I helped a friend be the safety divers for his parents; believe his father was 82 at the time
By then the wife has gone back to the condo. Just me and the mountain. More and more I'm thinking is this the
last run for this year, or the last run? Substitute dive for ski run, you get the picture, or will in a few years.
(and was manifesting dementia); we knew it was the father's last set of dives. I'm expecting that age 80 is a safe
time to "call it" for myself; I've been trying to pencil in what destinations are on my diving 'bucket list'. For that, I
was looking at a Red Sea liveaboard this fall (being organized by local dive shop), but State Dept advisories are a
bit dicy again, plus it could conflict with the Japan dates we're contemplating (Smithsonian Journeys tour pkg).
At 77 in a few months I find my time horizon getting shorter and shorter. With over $200 k in retirement income,Which is why I'd mentioned to you on how it seemed you were holding back on your travel budget & that you could
no debt, and several million already saved, I have become a lot less fiscally conservative and more focused on the
short term. So yes, I'm trading cars more often, buying new instead of used, and giving away more too. Giving has
been made easier these last few years by qualified charitable deductions out of IRA RMD funds but I think I would
have done it even if I was still itemizing.
probably safely move from $20K/year to $30K/year. Checking the archives, that comment was March 2018, plus
I'd also mentioned the "do the hard stuff" while you still can too, as a self-imposed factor to help identify what needs
to be prioritized: airline travel, especially longer international trips, is another place where age is an increasing factor
for doing the hard stuff before you can't.
And on that, there's a semi-recent "new" class of air service which splits the difference between Economy/Plus and
full blown Business/First. On United Airlines, its known as "Premium Economy" or "Premium Plus". Briefly, it looks like
they've effectively recycled their old domestic First Class "lounge" style seats to offer an option between sardine class
and the "Left Arm" lay-flat seats such as UA's Polaris. Here's two reviews:
<https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/travel/is-united-premium-plus-worth-it>
<https://thepointsguy.com/reviews/united-premium-plus-boeing-787-10/>
We opted for PP on our last EU flight; was roughly an extra +$800/pp-RT, but found it to be a nice step up and quite
notably, got to sleep a lot better on the flight (and both ways too); the leg rest made for a big difference for me.
We'll consider using that service level again on red-eyes.
You prompted me to look at how aging may have affected car purchases. The wife loves her CRV and I think
we will have it for a while yet. Here are some data I found in Quicken:
(Date purchased, Model Year, New/Used, mileage when traded (as best I remember). For the last car it's current mileage.)
Wife:
6/2/2004, 2003, Toyota Highlander, Used, 125,000
3/19/2015, 2015, Honda CRV EXL, New, 81,000
Mine:
11/18/2003, 2001 Honda Accord EXL, Used, 140,000
12/22/2012, 2011, Honda Accord EXL, Used, 85,000
3/30/2015, 2015, Honda Civic EXL, New, 50,000
3/12/19, 2019, Honda Insight Touring, New, 42,000
12/31/2021, 2022, Honda Accord Hybrid Touring, New, 22,000
Yep, spending more on cars, putting on fewer miles, and buying new. Having a lot of fun with them too.Its been too long since I've had real fun in a car at an Autocross; don't really have any wheels today
that are suitable for possibly getting a little beat up (hitting cones) though. If you have room in the
driveway, consider finding a good used Miata and a local SCCA chapter. Or you can do what my
cousin is doing, which is to start to take dealership test drives in higher end vehicles to see if anything
catches his fancy. If you've ever thought of a Mercedes, might be the year to pick up an S Class coming
off of lease, as their recent price hikes are going to start to affect used prices soon, if not already. Best
price bet would be to find a friend who's already leasing one and arrange for a private sale at lease end.
Have a great time diving!Its still a few months out, and I have another trip (local) before it, plus some other commitments,
so it is probably going to be busy right up to the wire. The house we're renting again has WiFi, so
once we settle in, I'll be able to get caught back up on civilization ... I'll have to remember to configure
the new iPad so as to be able to host my Zoom calls from the waterfront porch again.
First of all, our post-2018 travel plans were affected by travel restrictions, not finances.Understandable for 2020, but not as much for 2019 activities.
We are now 5 years older but still wanting to travel. I just bought a flying club membership,CoVid messed up my plans to have gotten to Million Miler status benefits, but we’re
opening the opportunity to take some trips by air not involving airlines.
back to working towards that.
We are also stilling planning a trip west into Alan Baker's part of the world.I need to keep remembering Vancouver as a stop too; have gotten some stuff sorted out for this year.
As mentioned back in January, we have the Brac slotted in, plus the volunteer week is back “on” too.
The debate between Ireland vs Japan has reached a conclusion…and for FF, need to find two more
flight segments; thinking that since we’re not able to book a local Billy Joel/Stevie Knicks concert,
perhaps will book one that does work in the schedule and fly into that city for a weekend.
Finally, over a month into the Verizon 5g modem/router experience I'm VERY pleased. I wasGood to hear. I’ve been tempted to pick up a Unify “Dream” router to resolve the weak WiFi spot
amazed when I bought my iPhone 14 to discover 200-300 5g mbps speeds inside my house.
By getting it positioned in the center of the second story with a window 10 feet away we now
have excellent coverage in the entire home, including the basement, no other equipment required.
Having the fiber optic router on an outside was a problem that required repeaters. Those cut
the speeds in half (backhaul) where the devices were not connected to the base unit. Of course,
the ability to place the 5g unit without wiring considerations is dependent on a strong 5g signal
in the home. That works for us. YMMV.
in our back yard, but that would probably require an early retirement of a midrange PfSense router,
so that’s probably off unless I can find someone willing to buy the PfSense for ~$300 or so.
Ah, that makes more sense.-hhI meant say post-2019, not 2018.
In 2019 we went to Colorado for 2 weeks, England for 2 weeks, and Door County.Had four in ‘19; t Caymans & TN workweek, plus Prague/Budapest, & Rapa Nui in Chile.
Then in 2020 only Florida for 2 weeks and Colorado skiing.
For 20 & 21, no vacation flights; donated a ~month to our group’s Admin who had run
out of sick leave. Last year was limited to just the Caymans and France; looking to be
making up for the lull this year.
Backyard wifi???? Interesting. Our iPads are all on 4g cell service, and the backAs I’d mentioned, the new AP locations resulted in the deck area’s WiFi strength
porch Google puck works fine, so not an issue here.
being a bit weak; noticed it while hosting Zoom calls. It’s a nice area to sit outside
(& can choose sun or shade) when the weather is nice.
-hh
| Sysop: | Keyop |
|---|---|
| Location: | Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, UK |
| Users: | 546 |
| Nodes: | 16 (2 / 14) |
| Uptime: | 145:53:34 |
| Calls: | 10,383 |
| Calls today: | 8 |
| Files: | 14,054 |
| D/L today: |
2 files (1,861K bytes) |
| Messages: | 6,417,687 |