When comparing Sprint and Verizon’s EVDO service, Verizon usually came up short, given their 5GB monthly cap, and terms of service that restricts everything but browsing and e-mail. However, with Sprint suffering through a rocky financial stretch, it looks like their CEO has decided that customers were getting too much, for too little. drew  directs my attention to a leaked memo posted on the dslreports.com forum, which says monthly caps are coming:

Quote

Sprint reserves the right to limit throughput speeds or amount of data transferred and to deny, terminate, modify, or suspend service if usage exceeds 5GB per month in total or 300MB/month while off-network roaming. Check your subscriber agreement rights on Sprint.com.

There’s no word yet just how tough enforcement will be. You may have to cross the bandwidth gestapo at Sprint several times during the year in order to have your wrist slapped. Sprint’s CEO, in a meeting with employees, apparently told them he believes the caps will only really impact about 1% of their EVDO user base.

Source: http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Sprint-To-Impose-5GB-Monthly-EVDO-Cap-94576

Now with that said, if this is true, it will not bode well for me.  I believe that I am one of the 1% of users.  I use the card about 3-4 hours a day 3 days a week.  During this time, I am actively browsing the web and have email open.  The email is the key component here, as outlook is a bandwidth PIG!  I need to look up my statements and see how much bandwidth I am really using.  If this change is truely going to happen, I am going to cancel my service with sprint and move to verizon.  I have asked other laptop users I’ve sat with and inquired about the dead spots and they said that their service works like a champ.  I always get about 1 to 2 dead spots during my train ride.  Of course, I think I use it more (irc demands continual connection) that your average user wouldn’t notice.  If I fly under the 5 gig cap, verizon it is!  Time will tell…

So this completely baffles me.  I am minding my own business, passed out on the train.  No suprise there.  I wake up at 4:20 AM and get on a 5:40 AM train.  Of course I am going to be tired.  Anyways, I am peacefully sleeping when I hear the following…

Excuse me…

Excuse me….

EXCUSE ME…

Now, I wake up and figured it was the conductor, you know, who else would want to wake me up?  Nope.  It was some random women looking to sit across from me.  Now, as I gaze around, I see a million open seats that are completely not occupied.  There was even one just like my configuration one row up from me!  That’s right, but she wanted to sit across from me.  I am baffled!

She then pulled out a newspaper, which I hate it when people read newspapers on the train.  They are loud and annoying.  All you hear is flip flip crumble crumble over and over again.  One day I am going to rip someone’s newspaper out of their hand and tell em to shove it!  It is ruining my beauty sleep!

If the paper was not bad enough, she then started glaring at the seat next to me and then at myself.  She did this about 20 times and then said, and I quote!

“Generally people sit at the ends of the seat and then everyone has more room”

Of course, I had to respond but I was still very much groggy.  I really should of told her that she can move to another seating location, (which was still open when she made this comment) and leave me alone.  Instead, I said the following…

“I am aware of the seating configuration”

What I personally like to do, is sit in the middle of a three seater because I find it to be the most comfortable when sleeping.  When the train gets a little bit more crowded, I will move over to the left or the right to provide more seating.  I don’t see why I cannot get 20 minutes of sleep with comfort beforehand.  It is not like the 5:47 train to NYC gets all that crowded.  When I took a later train, I wouldn’t even dare do such a move.  This train, I don’t see what the fuss is!

Oh well, another day, another problem!

Well, I will be honest that the first thing I dislike about the new job is waking up at 4:30 AM!  First off, when I go to bed, my wife likes to talk!  Last night, she talked for 40 minutes.  40 bloody minutes!  I tried hard and long to get her to shut up, but she just kept on going.  Secondly, I had a hard time falling asleep after this.  When I sum everything up, I got about 4 hours of sleep, and not good sleep mind you.  I probably woke up 4 times throughout the night.  It doesn’t help that my cat gets something in her head around 1 am that she wants to attack me and wake me up.  I think the cat thinks its funny.  I don’t know, I don’t get it.

Anyways, the drive to the train station is nice at 4:30 AM.  There are very few cars, and everyone drives really fast.  I like driving fast, but I like driving fast behind someone else better!  If I get pulled over for speeding, at least I can say I was following the flow of traffic.  Well, there is no traffic at this time, but who is counting?

The train itself is nice mostly due to the little amount of people there are.  The stop I get on at is the first stop, and therefore seats are a plenty.  Sitting is very important for me, mostly because the train ride is around 90 minutes.  Unfortunately, at this time, the seats are still the fucking seats from 1970.  This annoys me because they had revamped this line and put in all new seating.  I guess they haven’t gotten to all the trains yet?  Thankfully, it is the nicer cars of the 1970 seating, but is that really the point?

Well, I will be here enjoying my commute!  Everyone get to work safely!