My New Broadband Connection

Yes I have ordered it. Breeze Home Lite

At the moment I have Ripwave but the speeds
have been absolutely terrible for the last 3 weeks
so I was left with no option but to upgrade to
breeze which has a dirty 12 month contract!
But I think it is worth it. Most people that have
the service are extremely happy with it and it is
also meant to be very good for online gaming also.

It is going to cost me almost 50 euro per month
but I am going to be sharing the connection with
2 other people. Those being my roommate James
and one of my flatmates Simon. That will bring
down the cost considerably.

Also the girls in the flat upstairs have expressed
their interest in sharing the connection also so the
cost could become quite minute indeed. : )

The speed of the connection is 1 mbit up and 1mbit
down, so it is quite fast although it may now be fast
enough for more than 3 people. Hence I may have
to upgrade to a higher bandwidth antenna to cope
with all the extra traffic. The extra bandwidth will
also come with a hefty price tag and the price could
go up to as much as 100 euro per month. Yet I only
plan to use it at this rate for a few months and then
downgrade as it gets closer to exam time when the
usage rates from the people sharing will drop a lot.

Oh yeah I forgot to physically describe the product.
The connection is a wireless one. I will be connected
to the "Ballymun" mast which is about 500 meters
away from me. This is a perfect distance considering
that the range of the service is between 5 and 10
miles. The engineers will install a small dish on my
roof. It is basically a wire mesh with an antenna in the
center to focus the signal at the mast.

This is also the same mast that I am connected to
with the Ripwave. Wouldn't you think that the signal
would be good for the Ripwave too considering that
the mast is so close?
Well it was very good for a few months and then this
month it was absolutely decimated and it was almost
unusable with connection speeds equivalent to a 56k
modem!!!

Anyway there is a 5 week waiting list to get this thing
as it is so popular in Dublin at the moment. I ordered
it a few weeks ago and I should get an installation date
sometime in mid January. The installation should be
very easy also due to the fact that we have a flat roof.

I will talk about my new connection a bit more when I
have been using it for a few days. : )

Christmas Day

OK this is my second attempt at this post as the
electricity died the first time round. : )

Well it was snowing here this morning for a few
hours in central Ireland. As the country was wet
from rain the night before, the snow didn't stick
for long. : ( It only remained on the hedges, roof
and trees. Boooo.

The family are running around the house like
headless chickens getting everything ready for
Christmas dinner. hehe I stayed in bed for most
of the morning although I have done plenty of
decorating the last few days so I don't feel guilty.

Everyone else in the country seems to open their
Christmas presents in the morning. In terms of
the stuff you get from Santa that is ok but I think
that the rest of the presents should remain until
after Christmas dinner is over and everything has
been cleaned up. Then the whole family can go in
to the main room and open up all the presents
together. When I was younger I used to absolutely
hate the idea of "waiting", but now that I have a
bit more sense I realise that it is actually quite
fun holding out till later. Its something to look
forward to for the entire day! : )

I think the presents this year should be pretty
good all round as both my sisters have jobs now
and I have been working all year.
About 10 years ago I remember having about
20 euro to spend on the entire family and then
having to go into the pound shop and get every
thing in there. Man! They were terrible presents.

But in the years following the present quality has
improved dramatically. : )