And so I arrive in the rather large state of Texas.  My sweetie and I have decided that there are too many whining sissies out there blubbering about how "dramatic" things can be, so we’re going to cram a few of these so-called "life changes" into one basket.  Not content with moving from the cold, barren wastelands of the North (well, Philly), we’re (naturally) changing jobs and housing, getting married, and having a son (who I continue to insist will be named Connor Warren, but that’s for another post).

As we’ve settled on a particular place where we shall call home, I was a touch disgruntled to find that our apartment complex has a bulk deal with Time Warner, and that we are required to pay (as part of our rent???) a cable bill to them regardless of our choice.  (Ironically enough, we are able to choose from dozens of power companies, but I will forcefully digress).  We could choose a satellite provider or a DSL-based service (U-verse, although all around me, hasn’t reached this apartment complex yet…more on AT&T later).  I’ve had the pleasure of using the Time-Warner cable service here in Austin, and I’ll go on record as saying that it’s a matter of taste, and mine leans more towards "not this".  The boxes are provided by Scientific Atlanta; the OS for these boxes is similar to the OS used by Comcast on the same boxes (not surprisingly), and what it lacks in style it generally makes up for in customizability and functionality.  I prefer my TV experience to be a bit more slick, but it’ll get me my content, and that’s what matters most, I suppose.

Logically, we’re going to try out Time Warner’s Internet service as well, and it’s here where I’m a bit more concerned.  This article (masterfully written by Ars Technica; not that they need my patronage, but a great site if I say so myself) details the plan by Time Warner to go to a strange, cell-phone like usage-based billing model to manage bandwidth.  The trials are being launched four hours east of me, just shy of the Louisiana border.  I am nervous.

Mind you, I’m not really nearly the online junkie I used to be, but I love my online gaming from time-to-time, and more directly impactful (and cited in the "Arsticle"…ah yes, my marketing wizardry strikes again) is the amount of bandwidth that is consumed by perfectly legal, ad-supported streaming of HD content from TV networks such as Fox and ABC (The latter of the two got one hell of a workout as I watched the entire third seaon of Lost through the service…did you know there’s a Lostpedia?  Amazing…).

I can certainly see this swinging in one way, as a reward for limited use, but unlimited bandwidth is part of the internet industry.  Even the rumored Bittorrent bandwidth-throttling with Comcast pales in comparison to "going over on my Internet minutes".  Khidr said it best: "If TW wants to reward people for using less, good for them, give grandma a 19.00 bill for checking her email once a week in highspeed, but straight up, meter-running billing is unconscionable."

I’m not entirely sure where I’ll fall on the usage scale these days, but instead of finding out, I decided to explore other options: AT&T, perhaps?  To show my patronage and support for their eventual U-verse rollout in my complex, why not take some DSL for a spin?  This is why.  (Be sure to check out this interesting piece over at G4TV…why can’t The Loop be longer than 3 seconds?!  It feels like watching speed chess sometimes…)  How can you support the active monitoring of content from your users?  Did you f*(king write the Patriot Act, AT&T?  Sorry guys, this is a bit too disturbing for me to support.  You can keep your Internet service if this is the cost.  All of a sudden TW isn’t sounding so bad…

So I write to you now with fingers-crossed (which severely limits my wpm, btw) that neither of these brain trauma-induced ideas are brought to fruition.  Any suggestions on another local ISP?