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Longhorn Fever

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Everything posted by Longhorn Fever

  1. This motivated me to share my story on long story phones. As I mentioned, I had been a long time Sprint customer. With the lack of deals on phones that they were doing at the time I was ready to switch, I started looking at ATT & Verizon. I decided if I was going to pay Sprint's going rates at the time with no phone deal any better than VZW or ATT, I wanted to get better coverage. Thus I tested our unlocked iPhone 6 phones on Cricket to test ATT. I loiked it, but still heard that Verizon was best. In the meantime, I had seen an ad for a T-mobile offer called "Get Out of the Red" where they were offering to pay up to $650 per line for people willing to switch from Verizon. The catch was that you had to have been a Verizon customer for 60 days. Since I wanted to test each network, I went ahead and purchased 4 iPhone 8+ from Verizon while they had a buy one-get one promotion on an installment plan using monthly credits. I stayed with them for my 60 days and switched under the promotion to go ahead and give TMO a chance. I immediately sent in my authorizations for the $650 credit per line. I think all in, the rebate for $2600 on a Mastercard debit card came in at about 40 days. This was just in time for my final bill from VZW. I paid off my phones. I used TMO for 2 months and decided it was not for us. So, after giving each major network a 2 month run, we decided that the ATT network was best for us where we lived and roamed to most often. I've now been on Cricket for almost two years with no complaints. Now for the bad: The 4 unlimited lines for $100 plan is technically throttled at 3Mb/s and videos are typically shown at 480p rates. On a phone, I have not noticed a problem with video quality even if I use AirPlay to our Apple TV 4th gen. Note that I still have a 1080 p TV and no 4k Apple TV. I have seen rates occasionally up to 10-15 Mb/s. Cricket does, or at least used to, offer a plan with higher speeds. I think it was a whopping $160 for 4 lines. We decided that the "slower" plan worked for us. I have been able to watch games streaming on WatchESPN while we were at HS marching band competitions in NC, Atlanta and Indianapolis. Now that my youngest is in a college marching band/dance line, I have had trouble streaming at her Div IA school football games in rural Alabama with attendance of about 12,000. However, when I carried a VZW phone for work I had the same issues to some extent. I think there it is just a lack of network build out for all the carriers. I am sure as a CW customer, I get less priority than a full-fledged ATT customer. BOth of my daughters are heavy users. The youngest has gone over 22gb in a month twice, but said she did not notice a significant drop off. She was able to still watch videos on the phone and cast to the TV. The phone was her primary television device rather than cable or satellite. We all also routinely stream Netflix, DirecTV Now, Hulu and/or Amazon Prime Video while on road trips.
  2. Too proud to use Cricket? It is a wholly owned subsidiary of ATT and uses the ATT network.
  3. By the way, you can add tethering to each line for an additional $10/line. We only got it on mine because I occasionally tether for work. Also, regarding international service, we could do WiFi calling at hotels and trusted hotspots in Italy.
  4. Just took a trip to Italy with my wife and youngest daughter over the holidays. I just bought local SIMs for use in country. As far as I know, you can only travel to Canada and Mexico with Cricket. I think they have an inexpensive plan add-on for that.
  5. I am a shag uh surly poor, so laugh at me all you want: we we were with sprint for a LONG time only because they offered inexpensive service and great retention discounts on phones for a long time. The discounts were significant enough that we overlooked the slow “unlimited” service we were offered. Those great discounts slowly disappeared over time. I finally decided to switch carriers. I wanted to test ATT networks where we lived so I bought Cricket SIMS for our phones and had good service and coverage. I ultimately tried Verizon and T-Mobile to get a great discount on iPhone 8 pluses a couple of years ago, but ultimately switched back to Cricket (ATT) because we found the service better than the other 3 networks where we live and travel most. Long story I won’t share now, but managed to get 4 new iPhone 8 Plus phones for about $250 each. I currently have 4 unlimited lines of service (throttled after 22gb/month/line).One line has tethering capability. We pay $110/month and I have no complaints and no contract.
  6. I prefer a mix of crabgrass, dallisgrass and johnsongrass.
  7. I asked this question earlier.I am completely stupid about basketball, but... Looking back, I think that there was about 22 seconds left in regulation when Tech shot free throws to go up by 3. I know that is a good bit of time. I wondered why not immediately foul and let Virginia take two free throws rather than potentially give up a game-tying three-pointer. At worst tech makes one, misses the second and puts up 2 more to tie. At that point Tech has 15-20 seconds to go score/get fouled by Virginia. If Virginia does not tie, they are forced to foul Tech to prevent Tech from running the clock. Play the back and forth fouling game in the waning seconds, best free-shooters deserve to win at that point. Please tell me what's wrong with this strategery?
  8. Help this basketball illiterate. When Tech went up by three on the free throws, why not foul Virginia quickly to avoid a three point play?
  9. Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? I get where you were going here, but doesn't Cetacea also include dolphins, porpoises and other marine mammals like orca that may be fast and agile, besides just the big, blubbery whales. Let's trust they have more of the latter than the former.
  10. So, we already have a suburban and were shopping for a wagon for some time. I’ve been looking at Edmunds, KBB, Cars.com to get an idea of pricing. Since there aren’t a lot of wagons out there we fairly easily narrowed down the search between a VW Golf Sportwagen and Subaru Outback. The best deals I could find on the VW were a 4-hr drive away. Most Subaru dealers did not seem initially willing to bargain much outside of the $1750 dealer cash incentive since Subaru is offering 0% financing on the cars. I finally pulled the plug and tried the Costco referral service. It listed one of our local three Subaru dealers. I spent the afternoon emailing back and forth with the associate to let him know what I was looking for. After some back and forth, he finally said since it was end of month and quarter, he might be able to do better than Costco pricing. The car we agreed upon had a Sticker MSRP of $32,814. I requested to add an OEM trailer hitch and accessories that listed out at $707. This put me at a list of $33,521. I then checked with the 2 other local dealers. I ruled one out right away because they play the game of dealer add-ons on all their cars with highly overpriced nitrogen fills, wheel locks, window tint, etc. I ended up with the second dealership because I liked the salesman. Final deal for $27,292 plus TTL and BS doc fees that N.C. allows. Ended up with about 18.5% discount off MSRP and 0% financing. I feel like I got a pretty good deal considering Edmunds True Market Value of $29,916 not including a couple hundred of added accessories. TL,DR: got 18% discount off MSRP and 0% financing of 2019 Subaru Outback
  11. Good job, @Dbeasy! Can you share how you did on the vehicle compared to, say, Edmunds True Market Value?
  12. So, Coach K or Roy Williams? Or Is “high major” code for heaven? That’s it!!! Those bastards are gonna try and pay God to reanimate John Wooden!!!
  13. I actually used something like this many years ago along one wall. https://www.lowes.com/pd/47-75-in-x-7-98-ft-Smooth-White-Hardboard-Wall-Panel/3015239 What I used had a smooth glossy white finish like a whiteboard. We used dry erase markers for quick measurements or notes, notes to/from the wife, and for the kids to draw.
  14. Yeah, sip, that was when A$M only admitted men's men. What about since A$M became co-ed and scholarship limits were put in place? Oh, wait... Since the modern era began in 1984? No, wait a minute. Frick!!!!!
  15. We're not taking any transfer QBs until at least next year.
  16. The D-pad is muddy feeling, too; not precise. I've used worse.
  17. Well, he did say he ate at places better. Maybe it was Emerald's.
  18. I think the problem may actually be with my Panasonic TVs. CEC between my AppleTV and our other Panny doesn't always work, come to think of it. The lack of a Last channel button is a glaring omission. I set the remote to work as a touchpad instead of just a D-pad. Not sure I like that setting. It may be a little more frustrating than my AppleTV remote in that regards. The center part of the pad, the OK, button really should be more pronounced. When I go to click it, I am sometimes a little off center and move the cursor off my selection. I do like that the infinite scroll on the guide. Oddly enough, I noticed the DirecTV app on our FireTV stick has done that since earlier this year. I wish the app on the AppleTV worked that way, but still have to scroll from top top bottom, or bottom to top rather than the infinite loop.
  19. And didn't/don't most of the the computer rankings heavily weight the human polls?
  20. I agree that having a playoff spot on the line would have likely helped attendance. Not having the game on a Friday afternoon evening during rush hour in the bay area hundreds of miles from both campuses would probably be helpful, too.
  21. I agree with you. This box runs on Android TV and has the google Play store available. You can install Android apps. However, Netflix and Amazon have not authorized their services. This is just a beta piece of equipment. Some things I have seen are that this is probably a test for tuners to be used with "normal" DirecTV services that they are performing with DirecTV Now subscribers. The thought is that this equipment, or its future iterations, will allow customers with high-speed internet to do a self install. Rural customers will still likely need a dish and professional installation. What is not clear is when this tech is finalized is if the tuners will be leased or sold outright and whether they will require a monthly equipment fee as satellite and cable companies are wont to add.
  22. Just got mine last night. I like it alright. Obviously, the biggest drawback is that this box is lacking Netflix and Amazon Prime. The biggest problem I am having is that the auto-programming for the remote almost got it right. It turns my TV and the box off, but will not turn my TV on. I can't find programming instructions to do it manually. Speaking of the remote, I don't like the left to right oriented volume buttons. It would have been nice to have dedicated channel up/down buttons instead of using the d-pad/touchpad. I have gotten used to scrolling through channels/networks alphabetically on my Apple TV and Fire devices. It is nice that this unit now shows channel numbers and allows them to be entered with the numeric keypad. However, if you select to display the channels with an alpha sort, the channel numbers disappear on the guide. It's gonna take me a while to learn numbers.If you move from a DirecTV satellite tuner, it looks like maybe the channel numbers are the same.
  23. User name checks out. Herpes followed up with the triple clap.
  24. Ha. Ha. Ha ha. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Excuse me, what did you say?
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