Now that is a long drive

Had to do a 4.5 hour drive for a training class today to beautiful midstate PA. I have to say that I-78 is certainly full of very dangerous truck drivers trying to make their deadlines on tiny bad two lane roads. I am not a delicate driver by any means but these guys gave me the willies! Never have I seen so many trucks cutting in front of people, trying to weave through traffic, and all going around 75mph. Ever seen a truck weave through traffic? Not a pretty sight if you are the poor vehicle that they decide to cut in front of leaving maybe a quarter of a car length behind you. Luckily for me I seem to have some foresight or maybe it is hindsight and I stayed clear of the ones who were obviously too dangerous to drive near.

So I am down here for a training session to learn how to install and sell the PC Hughes internet connection. Now to each his own and I can sell anything with fervor that I need to in order to put bread on my table but anyone with half a sence would get DSL or Cable.

Ok the pro's and cons for those not in the know.

Satellite Internet - blistering download speeds but uses a phone line to upload. That's right folks 56k upload for your 40+ dollars a month. Woo hoo.

DSL - Great if you can get it. This technology has been available for decades but ATT labs and then the baby bells decided not to tell anyone that they could carry more than one "line" on their twisted copper pair. Look at it their way, why tell a customer they can have multiple lines coming in on one twisted pair when they were charging per line and (do you remember this?) per PHONE. Anyway if you are able to get DSL go for it, but god forbid you are the unlucky sap who is too far outside of their Dmark. Last but not least the Baby Bells who had the foresight to upgrade to optical fiber are SOL because at present the guru's have not figured out how to translate dedicated copper twisted pair over to optical fiber and not have the signal hopelessly lost.

Cable Modem. My favorite. Upside is that if you can get cable you can have a great internet speed. So it is available to many more people than DSL (but less that Satellite cause you can live in the boonies and still get a satellite feed if you don't have a mountain in the way). Downside is that the more people that use it the slower speed you get, unlike DSL which gives you a dedicated twisted pair whose speed does not diminish. (Barring that old distance from the Dmark problem).

So there ya go. What will I learn tomorrow? The world may never know...

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