Super Bowl – I Won’t Get Fooled Again

By Tim Hermes | Published: February 8, 2010

Ouch. As a music lover, sometimes its hard to admit when a band needs to pack it in. But following the show by half of the Who that is still alive during the Super Bowl halftime (congrats Saints,) I ALMOST wanted to throw the remote through the TV. Now THAT would have been a cool blog – can a plasma screen TV withstand the impact of a four-ounce cable remote? (Speaking of destroying stuff – side note to Pete Townsend – go back to Les Pauls and Marshalls, buddy, that Fender sound is too thin for a single-guitar band.)

So how did my system perform for the big game? Well I ran a test.

1. Kept all TVs on
2. Used my wireless network the whole game
3. As did my son
4. Talked to my Mom during the game for an hour on the landline
5. Watched some Jon Stewart during commercials on the DVR
6. Used my iPhone on the wireless network to update Facebook

Now this might seem run-of-the-mill. But factor this in. Friday and Saturday we had 3 FEET OF SNOW. The heavy wet stuff, not the fluffy pow-pow you Coloradans get. This was cloud-mush that weighed down the utility lines and put 59,000 of my fellow Arlingtonians out of power for several days. Now of course no power means no modem, set-top or TV, which means no service. But in the areas that had power I have not heard of a SINGLE outage due to a fallen cable line. Inside, my ARRIS, CISCO (nee S-A) and Signal Vision gear delivered the goods inside the home. But more importantly all the OSP stuff seemed to prevail as well. All those closures, trunk and feeder cable (shout-out to CommScope who supplies my ‘hood,) amplifiers (MOTOROLA nee GI) et al weathered the storm beautifully. Hey I even made a fake 911 call just to see if I could get through. OK that’s not true.

So, hat’s off to you cable. You played a perfect game.

P.S Note to Jim Caldwell , coach of the Colts: playing a soft-zone defense agains the most accurate arm in the NFC is suicide. You had that game. Better luck next year.

Tim Hermes is CEO at Broadband Gear Report. Email him at timhermes@comcast.net.

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