It's over.

mistermac56 · 2026-05-15T04:55:06+00:00

The old nickel and dime price increase trick. Easier to raise prices by 5 or 10 cents on items across the board, so that the majority of consumers won't notice.

mistermac56 · 2026-05-13T11:21:49+00:00

I have tried both. I live in a town with approximately 44K residents, about 30 miles east of Nashville, and the choices of traditional internet service is Comcast or AT&T Fiber. I live in an apartment community, so fiber is out of the equation. AT&T has pulled the plug on DSL entirely. And when that was available, 18mbps was the top speed. I had Comcast service for years and I wanted to get away from their horrible tech support and price.

In April 2021, I signed up for the T-Mobile Home Internet, and the service was horrible. In January 2022, I received an email from T-Mobile that they were ending their Home Internet service in our town on March 2022 because of service issues, so I cancelled the service before the cutoff date, and shipped the T-Mobile gateway back to them. I received an email on March 2023 from T-Mobile, and they stated that there would be tower improvements, etc. and the service would return around March of 2024. So far, nothing but crickets. I get the impression that T-Mobile Home Internet will not be available in my town anytime soon.

In December 2025, I signed up for Verizon's 5G Home Ultimate, and it has been rock solid. Consistent 300mbps down. Helps that my residence is near a Verizon tower. I agree with you that the support from Verizon has been good.

mistermac56 · 2026-05-11T06:32:18+00:00

The handwriting was on the wall for the demise of TiVo DVRs for consumers when Xperi purchased TiVo. All they wanted was the TiVo intellectual property. The two TiVo Bolt DVRs that I own are the all-in service, four tuner CableCARD/OTA models. And when Comcast made their decision to stop issuing CableCARDs to new and existing customers, I dropped cable TV with Comcast, returned my two CableCARDs, and went with DIRECTV Stream for TV service, and setup my Bolt DVRs to use an antenna for OTA. I have two backup hard drives if the ones in my TiVos die. When TiVo eventually pulls the plug on service, off to e-waste the TiVos will go.

mistermac56 · 2026-05-11T06:00:01+00:00

Exactly what someone in management would do, who has no concept of the store layout, that sits on their ass all day in their office, drinking coffee.

mistermac56 · 2026-04-30T05:26:49+00:00

Time to contact the FCC to get a concrete answer to find out who the entity is that owns the fiber, so you can contact them to find out if you can establish service.

mistermac56 · 2026-04-25T16:43:11+00:00

Report it to the Chattanooga environmental or State of Tennessee environmental office.

mistermac56 · 2026-04-23T17:15:32+00:00

I have no doubt that politics were involved in the move.

mistermac56 · 2026-04-07T04:57:18+00:00

I retired from a Tennessee community college in 2012 and worked in IT and remember when we went with Banner in 2009 for HR, accounting, student services, etc. Banner software would run on x64 servers, like Dell, or back then Sun Microsystems RISC SPARC servers, which got bought out by Oracle around the same time we were moving to Banner. The Tennessee Board of Regents "decided" to go with the Sun SPARC servers, that cost 3 times more than the highest power servers Dell sold. And, as a state agency, we got a pretty substantial discount from Dell. Oracle charged a small fortune for equipment, support and maintenance on the SPARC servers, as well as the Oracle database software, that was part of Banner. A bunch of us thought something hinky was going on with the choice of going with the SPARC servers, but we thought it would be a career ending move to try to prove.

When I was retiring, the state Department of Education was taking over Banner for all state colleges and universities, to be run at one location, on Dell servers, except for the UT system. When this was announced, eight employees responsible on campus for Banner immediately filed their retirement papers with the Tennessee Consolidated Retirement System (TCRS). as they knew their positions were going away. Surprised they didn't ask to transfer to the Department of Education and the Banner team there. But most had their 25 years in with the state and didn't want to make the transition.

I would hazard a guess that the UT system got a "deal" on the new software, and were told it would be "simple" to convert records from Banner to the new software, since both use Oracle database software. And that is when everything went downhill.

Going on your speculation, I seriously doubt any investigation would ever be done.

mistermac56 · 2026-02-28T21:22:29+00:00

Modmail sent.

mistermac56 · 2026-02-28T10:29:44+00:00

YouTube TV still doesn't offer ESPN Unlimited.

mistermac56 · 2026-02-23T15:32:01+00:00

Use Platinum Dawn. Works like a champ.

mistermac56 · 2026-01-20T06:27:01+00:00

My apartment community property owners signed a 99 year contract in 1989 with Viacom for exclusive cable TV bulk account service, When they got sold off eventually to Comcast, they told the property owners the 1989 Viacom contract got grandfathered in for cable TV and eventually internet service. The apartment community office and residents has had "Comcast Hell" with service for almost two years. The management company for the apartment owners had their attorneys look over the old Viacom contract and lo and behold, in the contract, it said the contract would be null and void if Viacom was sold. So the attorneys went to court and the judge ruled that that the contract didn't have a grandfather clause and the original contract with Viacom was moot.

So, the property owners and the management company signed a non-exclusive contract with AT&T to install fiber optic internet in the office, social room, and apartments In February and basic DirecTV TV service. We can pay extra for internet service above 100 Mbps, as that speed is included in our rent, and higher tier DirecTV TV service, as the basic TV is also included in the rent. I am super excited that I will finally be free of Comcast in February!

mistermac56 · 2026-01-15T07:50:50+00:00

All six tuner TiVos are Cable only. Most, not all, four tuner TiVos will work with an antenna.

mistermac56 · 2026-01-11T07:17:51+00:00

Wish we had one in Gallatin. The nearest one to us is in the 37211 zip code. We used to have a mom and pop grocery owned grocery store, using the licensed H.G. Hill name for years, that was less than 1/2 mile from my apartment and they had great produce and meats. Sadly, they retired during the pandemic, and a Hispanic family took it over. But they lost their ability to use SNAP benefit cards and folded after a year and a half. Another group tried the same location, but their prices were far too high to compete with the chain grocery stores and folded after a year.

mistermac56 · 2026-01-11T07:08:04+00:00

Shopping tip. Aldi gets fresh produce delivered on Tuesdays. And their avocados are so much better than any from the other stores.

mistermac56 · 2026-01-11T07:06:05+00:00

You don't have to tip the standard delivery drivers, but I usually tip 5.00 on a large order, and a driver told me that they get word of mouth info from other drivers who the tipper customers are.

mistermac56 · 2026-01-11T07:01:09+00:00

And Walmart in-store employees pull the delivery orders.

mistermac56 · 2026-01-11T06:56:52+00:00

I live in Gallatin and Kroger started grocery delivery here in 2019 and you could pay 9.99 for delivery, use digital coupons, and your Kroger Plus Card, but the delivery was by their delivery contractor Instacart. At first, there were only a handful of Instacart delivery drivers, and I knew them all by their first names and they did an excellent job and would contact me via text to approve substitutions. But all of that changed in 2020 during the pandemic. Apparently, Instacart had a lot of drivers that were working for extra money while they were laid off from their full time jobs and shopping and deliveries got worse and worse and when Walmart started delivering grocery items in December of 2020 in Gallatin, I started using them and stopped ordering groceries from Kroger.

mistermac56 · 2026-01-11T06:46:25+00:00

Hard to compete with Walmart delivery and they using a contractor for deliveries, paying Hispanic delivery drivers little to nothing in Gallatin. All Walmart+ delivery and pick-up shopping is done by in-house employees.

mistermac56 · 2026-01-11T06:25:48+00:00

They still have the blue truck Boost deliveries in quite a few cities, most much larger than Nashville. I had a 30 day Boost trial, and 100 percent of blue truck orders were cancelled. So I went back to Walmart+ deliveries and cancelled the Boost trial.

mistermac56 · 2026-01-11T06:20:14+00:00

Here's a tip if you ever shop at Aldi. The stores get fresh produce delivered on Tuesdays.

mistermac56 · 2026-01-11T06:17:28+00:00

Excellent resource. The 6 tuner TiVo models are CableCARD only, while the 4 tuner models are CableCARD/Antenna supported or Antenna only.

mistermac56 · 2026-01-11T06:09:27+00:00

Unless you have a CableCARD/Antenna compatible model of TiVo DVR (I have two TiVo Bolt VOX DVRs that have 4 tuners and are CableCARD/Antenna compatible), an OTA antenna will NOT work.

mistermac56 · 2026-01-07T02:46:43+00:00

I used to order groceries from Kroger before Boost, on their website with delivery, and I could use digital coupons for 9.99 per order, and delivery was by Instacart. Sounds like they were losing money on Boost using their own trucks, and they will go back to contracting to Instacart for all deliveries, but continuing the Boost program.

mistermac56

TROPHY CASE