#spumblog

Sometimes I forget that people don't have a crystal ball into my life, and it can make waiting for videos frustrating. So this blog will serve as news, of sorts, as well as a platform to vent my frustrations.

I know it say it a lot, but my real life has been a tad busy as of late. In the words of Wash "It's objective assessment, I can't help that it stays relevant." I don't think I've ever told it to the internet, but I live in a house with 4 other guys. For the most part, everyone keeps to themselves so it's easy to get my recording done without distractions. Still, you'd be surprised at how often my recording schedule gets interrupted, postponed, or cancelled because someone in the other room is talking or playing music too loud. For the most part, this has been a minor inconvenience, and a welcome tradeoff for living with four great people who are mature and responsible. 

However, just recently, we got a new member of the house who doesn't have a job, so he stays home watching TV. Now, in and of itself, this isn't a problem. I don't know where his money comes from, but so long as he pays rent, I don't care what he does. The problem lies in AT&T's U-Verse package. One little factor that they neglect to tell you during signup is that your internet speed is hindered by people watching TV. Significantly. As in, you have a ping of 30 while the TV is off, and a ping of 9999 while the TV is on. Basically, so long as the television is on, I don't have internet. Now, this is partly due to my wireless router, because it shouldn't be THAT slow, but switching to a wired connection will only recover some of those precious megabits. The real problem here is in AT&T's contract, which I need to pore over meticulously before I take any action against them. If I'm an idiot, and it clearly says that the internet will take a hit while the TV is on, then I'm boned. I may need to pay for another, separate internet connection. Which may be challenging because I remember the lady on the phone telling me that U-Verse and internet can't go into the same house. But that sounds more like a policy issue than a hardware issue, so there may be a way around that. Anyways, if the contract doesn't mention speeds or bandwidth loss, then I'll have them by the balls and we'll see what they can do for me.

The point is, I basically never have an internet connection now. Roommate A watches TV in the morning, and roommates B-D watch it late into the night. It's almost always on. I have, on multiple occasions, requested that they stop watching TV so that I can do some YouTubes, but this is a temporary fix. I kick them off for the day, upload a video, and then it's back on the next day and never goes off. And the cycle repeats.

In addition to that, Chris has been having internet problems at his own house. AT&T installed a faster internet, but they screwed up his router setup so he was left without internet. He said they would come out in a week, but that week ended Monday and I haven't heard from him since. Hence the lack of Facepalm!.

Fun times. My car also failed smog, so I tried to fix it, failed smog again, took it in for inspection, ordered parts, took it in for repair, spent way too much money fixing it, and smogged it again where it finally passed. I still need to take it to the DMV, but each one of these steps has taken a few hours (and many dollars), which add up over the course of a week.

To top it all off, I've been emailing back and forth with Universal Music about getting the required licenses to upload the music video. It's slow going because it takes them ~6 days in between each correspondence, and they keep treating me like I'm a record label by asking me all these industry-style questions such as "What label will it be released under" and  "Who was the writer and who were the composers of the original song?". It sounds straightforward, until you realize the song was composed by a group that's been trading out it's members like Pokemon cards. Thank god for Wikipedia.

So far as I can tell, everything is on course for the Extra-Life marathon. I had some lag related issues last time I tested the stream, but I think I will be able to fix those by keeping the TV off all day (feeding my roomates pizza and beer in return for their cooperation) and using 100' ethernet cable.