Looks like I'm not the only one fed up with ATT's service. The Daily Show with John Stewart did a wonderful piece on Verizon's announcement of the iPhone.

So it is official. I've made the switch from ATT, and so far I couldn't be happier. So to start I've been an ATT customer for many years. In fact, I was a customer back in the day of Cingular. I was happy with my service because they were nationwide and actually had full coverage at my parents house in the middle of nowhere, and that mattered to me at the time since I was in college. So when ATT got the iPhone I was pretty excited. Now to be honest I didn't "have to have" an iPhone.

The New York Times has a piece talking about the surprising number of people who stick with high priced cable despite the internet as a viable option. What is surprising to me is how much people pay for their cable. Since I graduateInternet yet to do anything more than basic cable ($10) and for most of that time it has been free lumped with my internet connection. Even now I get a $10 discount on my Internet connection if I have basic. So while the bill is same I do get some live TV from time time.

The New York Times published two articles about the negative trend of test scores associated with wide spread Internet access. The first article has the detailed information. Essentially the studies looked at either areas where the Internet spread and compared test scores, or in the first case looking at a voucher program for low income families to purchase computers. In all of the cases cited test scores dropped, though in some cases only modestly.

My undergraduate degree is in Music Education. When I was student teaching my discipline for the class was setup on a rewards system (I was k5-5th grade). The class had "m-u-s-i-c" written on the board and would lose a letter if I needed to discipline for a particular reason. The reward was a star at the end of class and 1 point for each letter that remained on the board, with a bonus 5 points if no letters were removed. Basically it served as a competition. I told them that the class from each age group with the most points at the end of the month would get a special prize.

Wired is running an interesting review for The Heart is a Drum Machine. I have to admit I hadn't heard of this movie before, but now I am going to have to check it out. From the review it sounds like it is 1 part science for every part of artistry. Which should work out perfectly for me. I've already added it to my netflix queue and can't wait for it to get here.

So I've decided to take back my health. It really wasn't a new years resolution, though it all started at the beginning of the year. My sister lives in Georgia and has been an avid runner for some time now. She has been hounding me and my wife to run a race with her for a year or so. Finally when we saw the whole family at Christmas she convinced us to run a race. The only race that worked, however, was a half marathon and it was in February. The short of the story is that we decided to go for it.

During my Undergraduate degree music ed majors were required each semester to take an instrument class. At first I thought the idea was great. I would choose an instrument that I had no previous experience with and learn the basics in that instrument, maybe pick up a new instrument along the way. In reality I didn't like the classes at all for a few reasons. First my school had the grand idea that you learn theses instruments with the intent to be "prepared" to teach these instruments to beginning students.