Yesterday we went out and drove around to see just how close the fire was.  All of the Chino Hills state park was charred!  Houses a mile away from us were evacuated.  My boss, who lived in Yorba Linda, was also evacuated from their house over the weekend.  Scary!  Thankfully the Chino Hills side seems to be under control.  For the latest update, check this map.

Then met some cops chatting at the side of the road so Jeannie decided to go and ask for a picture with them:

Friday we went to the newly opened Johnny Rockets here in Chino Hills (it was the 1st time for both Lorelai & me).  Lorelai made more funny faces and enjoyed some fries and shake while I enjoyed their Smoke House Burger:

We did, however, went into the Barnes and Noble and saw Clifford, which was kinda cool.  Lorelai seems to be kinda indifferent though.

Then there’s a SpongeBob hanging around in our local Alberson, so we of course had to bring Lorelai there to get a shot too.

But I guess the one good think that came out of it is that we found a new DIY yogurt place (same as Yogurtland @ Fullerton) right next door with a funny name – Joghurt:

This place was PACKED with no sitting room inside.  No matter, Jeannie was sent in to gather some tasting samples for us.  I think it was 32 or 34 cents per oz. (sorry, I have bad memories), and for me, it tastes exactly the same as soft serve ice cream (since I only get flavored ones).  Not bad I would say, but then again, I am easy to satisfy with deserts.

Here’s their info if you want to check them out:

Ok, so on our way back from Joghurt, Jeannie spotted another DIY yogurt place 1 block away that just newly opened…  Eh…  I guess we had to go check it out the following day.

The place is call The Yogurt Bar, not a very imaginative name, but it’s basically the same thing.  It’s only 30 cents per oz. there, and again, I can’t really tell the difference.  Not very busy though, probably because they just opened.

In another month, The Shoppes at Chino Hills is going to open (looks like a really nice outdoor mall btw) with a Pink Berry inside.  So that means we will have at least 3 Yogurt places on a single street (Grand Ave.) at Chino/Chino Hills area.  Crazy eh?

First order of business, our home phone. Before FiOS, I had DSL. And since you can’t get DSL without a phone line, I had to pay $18 a month just to get basic phone service, add that together with $30 a month for DSL, I was paying $48 a month for my 786kb/128kb internet service. Now with FiOS, Verizon is moving your home phone lines to VoIP using this fiber interface box (transparent for end users) and they still charge you the same, but you don’t need a phone line to get internet service anymore (sweet!). So now we are paying $40 a month for 5Mb/2Mb!!! And since they are connecting your phone line to the fiber box, it’s super easy to rig up your house phone with your VoIP service provider of your choice (a much much better deal, trust me). Check here, you see the phone jack that your house phone line goes into. I simply pull the 2 wires out, cut the phone line that comes out of my Vonage box (that normally goes to a phone), and twist them together with the little yellow wire-twister thinging, and bam, all the phone jacks within the house are now connected to Vonage. Awesome! (And it worked with my DishDVR box. Double Awesome!)

Naturally the first thing I did when the FiOS was installed was to test out the speed, and I was unpleasantly surprised when I checked it out. The download speed was horrible, worse than my DSL (~100kbs). But why? Maybe my wireless connection wasn’t good? Well, after some trial and error, it’s the poor performance of the Verizon wireless router. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised since generally when they give you stuff, especially if it’s something multi-functional, it usually can’t do any of the single functions that well. So I disabled the wireless router function on the Verizon box, and added my own D-Link router, and BAM, it’s all good now (~630kbs). So just a word of advice, if you are getting FiOS and going all wireless with your network, get your own decent router otherwise you are getting ripped off (bandwidth-wise!).

This concludes our tales of our FiOS installation. I will update some more once we get to use it some more, but so far, so good. Here’s a look at the final setup. It’s kinda messy with lots wires, but hey, that’s why it’s in the garage.

Well what do you know? I checked the FiOS website today and it says that it’s available at our address now! The earliest installation date was next Monday, but I don’t really want to take a day off for it, so had to schedule it next Sunday. The appointment time? 8am to 5pm… LOLz… I guess that’s the norm these days. I am expecting the worse – showing up late, installation problems, wiring problems, etc… I’ve learned that if you put your expectations low on these things, you’ll be less irritated when things don’t go as planned.

Still, hoping there won’t be any big problems.

Anyway, Verizon started to dig up stuff all around our neighborhood now, and I can see the light at the end of the fiber optic cable getting near.  I am hoping that I can dump my land line once I get FiOS so I won’t have to pay for both the phone line and DSL just to get to the wonderful internet.