Chad Dickerson » new york http://www.chaddickerson.com/blog A little bit technology, a little bit rock-n-roll Sat, 20 Feb 2010 21:07:59 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 en hourly 1 Best broadband ISP in NYC (Brooklyn)? http://www.chaddickerson.com/blog/2008/08/19/best-broadband-isp-in-nyc-brooklyn/ http://www.chaddickerson.com/blog/2008/08/19/best-broadband-isp-in-nyc-brooklyn/#comments Tue, 19 Aug 2008 15:03:48 +0000 Chad Dickerson http://www.chaddickerson.com/blog/?p=318 I’m getting down to brass tacks on my move to Brooklyn (just ordered the gas and electric hookup this morning) and I’m ready to set up my broadband account. For the past several years, I have been a happy customer of Speakeasy’s OneLink Select Plus service. It’s more expensive than the Comcasts and Time Warners of the world, but I’ve never had a single problem in four years as a customer, which is remarkable. Here’s what I get:

  • 6mbps down / 768 kbps up
  • 4 static IPs
  • great customer service (very rarely used, but when I call, the person on the other end of the line is smart and empowered)

So, I could re-up with Speakeasy in NY (which I’m leaning towards, but don’t know if their quality is better/worse out there), or I could consider other options. The high-speed Verizon FiOS and AT&T U-Verse services are not available in my area. Any thoughts?

]]> http://www.chaddickerson.com/blog/2008/08/19/best-broadband-isp-in-nyc-brooklyn/feed/ 3 Carroll Gardens: my new home in Brooklyn http://www.chaddickerson.com/blog/2008/08/10/carroll-gardens-my-new-home-in-brooklyn/ http://www.chaddickerson.com/blog/2008/08/10/carroll-gardens-my-new-home-in-brooklyn/#comments Sun, 10 Aug 2008 18:34:32 +0000 Chad Dickerson http://www.chaddickerson.com/blog/?p=314 Carroll GardensAfter what I’m told is by NY standards an unusually short search for a place to live (it was the second place we looked and on our first day of looking), we found a place in Carroll Gardens, one of our favorite neighborhoods in Brooklyn. Our place is the top floor of a brownstone built around 1900, similar to the ones you see in the photo at the bottom of this post. I’ll be out here (i.e. NY) for good by September 1.

The landlord is very friendly and lives three doors down (we signed the lease at her kitchen table, which was filled with photos of her with her family). We were warmly welcomed to the neighborhood by both the merchant at the corner store and the kind folks at Moonshine (which is officially in Red Hook, but a short walk).

All in all, it’s been a surprisingly delightful experience after I had spent the last few weeks bracing for a brutal apartment search. Since we booked over a week in NY, we are using the found time to catch up with friends here and do the kind of things you do in New York. While we still have to pack up our stuff back in the Bay Area and move cross-country, knowing exactly where we’re going to land makes the whole process a lot simpler.

Carroll Gardens brownstones

(Photo of Carroll Gardens district by Fecki, brownstones by wallyg)

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