I'm in a strange little neighborhood between a freeway and a...whatever you call a river in the LA area but it's nearly dry all the time... anyway, it's definitely at the end of the line. Verizon's best ADSL speed is up to 1 MB download an 0.3 upload. In a city with a population of 80,000, across the street from Long Beach with 470,000 people, and the switch is in Long Beach.

So, while I hate, in a generic way, all cable companies, I finally got cable for internet only. (There are reasons why I don't use it for TV, too.)

With DSL I could hardly ever get speedtest.net to load! Just now I checked and the speed is 116 down, 12 up. May I say this: ! ! ! ! ! !

On another topic, the entire concept of "up to" deserves to die a swift decisive death. When talking with Verizon, who initially claimed they could deliver "up to" 3 MB, it occurred to me that at any given moment I have "up to" six billion dollars in my pocket. The fact that I only have a tenner is irrelevant: ten bucks fits within "up to six billion."

"Up to" is a totally BS way of describing something. If you've got a female CSR on the line, ask her if she would ever describe her weight as "up to three hundred pounds" and her age as "up to 78 years old." We just don't describe things that way unless we're trying to get away with something!

This also goes for store-wide sales where prices are up to 75% off. If nothing AT ALL is discounted, that fits within the description!