Sam1

Thank you sir

  That's crazy though, a 63 month contract?

    Many of the alarms now run now off cellphone signal, so they can do anything they want to your cable/phone lines and it won't interrupt the system

And that's a fact, Jack!

  Those are cool, but holy moly could you imagine having to decon the house after one of them tripped?

  +1 there are a lot of nice cabins in Kingston Springs & Peagram.     Not sure how much $ you're looking to spend, but this one is 65 acres for $650k in Fairview w/ rental property on the land too http://realtracs.com MLS#: 1364231   I wish we could afford that!

Doesn't make me mad at all, it sounds like personal justification for not wanting a system. A few things to clarify: You want the company to call to verify possible false positives The alarm sysytem has mechanisms built in (for ours personally) panic buttons on keychains, panic button on the wall by the bed, that report an emergency request directly to police without question and sound off the sirens in/out of the house instantly. The system is configured for carbon monoxide and smoke as well, they're no longer just physical security. Alarm systems with dispatch also lower our renters insurance, and it lowers our new home owners insurance by a substantial amount, dogs do not do that. Finally, if it takes a while for the police to respond, why worry about calling the fire department when your house in on fire? Cause they'll take longer and the house could be completely engulfed within 20 minutes. Point is, no matter what the situation, you need backup/assistance. We can't handle all aspects of an invasion/fire by ourselves, no matter how much we would like to think otherwise.

We currently use simplisafe but they don't have video. Recommended by Dave Ramsey cause there's no contract and you own the equipment. The one time maintenance came into our place, I got a text, within 5 seconds they were calling asking for the code word and had police verified on the way within 60 seconds of it going off.

We're moving right south of there into Fairview.  Traffic on the west side of Nashville is fractional as compared to north, south or east.  Getting through Nashville itself is always a task, no matter the direction.   Fairview is ultracheap and about 15 minutes closer to Nashville than Dickson... A lot of farmland out in the area too, so you may want to spread your search out into that area + you'll be in Williamson county for the schools.

The house we're moving into was under a contract for termite/pest control and I was thinking this may be something easily handled by ourselves instead (we dislike monthly payments on services).   Question I had was, those termite spikes were about $50 for 15 at home depot.  Are the ones we get in the store similar to the ones used by commercial service companies?    Am not sure what they are actually paying for the service, but am expecting it to be a decent amount since the house is in the middle of nowhere, and if we can do the spike thing once or twice a year ourselves, it would be preferred.   Any info on that is greatly appreciated, as I don't know the first thing about pest control.. Literally nothing other than bugs exist and humans use chemicals to kill them.

  good point, I completely forgot about those tunnels.  

voted yes cause we're in TN.  same thing with overalls in KY, they're acceptable for any occasion

This is my favorite thing in there, it's a device hooked up to an MP44 used to shoot around corners

http://issuu.com/cowans/docs/cowans-classiii-richard-wray?mode=window   Some awesome looking stuff in this!

  There are two types of terrain in Korea, uphill and downhill. That is what kills our tech advantage, sure we have precision guided munitions, but those things have a terrible accuracy on the other side of a mountain.   These mountains also hide AA systems, since it's impossible to see on the opposite side, a drone wouldn't be able to see more than a fraction of what it does in the sandbox.  Helicopters flying nap bust over a ridge and poof without warning AA right at them, nothing they can do. Jets flying high and fast would have trouble firing back at AA in a ridge pocket, but that AA would have a field day with them.   All the computers in the world cannot change terrain, and we are simply not set up to perform infantry operations like what would be required there. And, since DPRK has no money, infantry is the largest focus on their tactics. 

Here's a quick picture to grasp the concept of how much arty rules in that terrain, this is the pile of arty shell containers from a 96 hour battle at a single outpost:

  Don't be quick to judge that situation, Cav scout and I both spent a few years there and can say without question it would be the nastiest war in modern times.  We have anywhere between 25,000-30,000 US troops there at any given point, and the calculations were for approximately 75% of them to be dead after the first attack from the north.  DPRK has enough artillery to shoot it's like 4000 rounds minute for days straight and never run out... And that's all we know of, nor is it taking into consideration the use of chemicals which is a large portion of their stockpile.   They will not use nukes on the south because they need to capture the resources.  Those people have lived in absolute misery for decades, we simple do not have the stomach to deal with images like what happened in the first Korean war with melted machine gun barrels overlooking acres of rice patties with so many dead bodies you could walk across and never touch the mud one time.

  +1 I have always said DPRK is the worst areas in the world, but we have chosen not to go to war with them due to logistical concerns.  Hussein's rule has nothing on the Kim's

  Not just the potential, but the terrain also hinders our technology.  We joke about them not being able to reach anything outside the range of a remote control helicopter, but if a full-scale war breaks out there, millions of people will die in the process.  It's not going to be like the sandbox where a couple thousand people lose their lives and a few billion $ in equipment.   Other than here on the homeland, that is the absolute last place I would ever want to see us go to war at.  

I guess if we're at the shooting range aiming east, you could say we're aiming at Syria... but it doesn't really amount to much lol

It gets a lot more complex than that, an antenna helps reduce the resistance between the empty space and the devices, they don't actually gain power, it's only to help reduce the resistance (measured in various ways). Basically the only thing you can do with an antenna is shape the signal, and in a general home use setting, you want an isotropic configuration (unless doing a point to point from say the house to a cabin a few hundred feet away). <edit> posted that while still half asleep sorry, it was meant to say that the majority of internal antennas are designed with isotropic mapping in mind only. Most external antennas have a variation, and that's why they allow you to move them around to try and adjust the map. For generalizing it, the difference in internal/external antennas is a moot point because that's just the tip of the iceberg. I work with fairly low powered Cisco aironet 600's on a regular basis, that have much better coverage than my home router with nearly 8 times the transmission strentgh, and both with internal antennas.

    Don't focus on internal vs external antennas, some internal antennas have a much stronger transmission signal.

+1 on what Jeff said   If you are just looking for a general use plug n play router, any of the name brand ones will work.  I am 100% against combo units; just like the old tv's with vcr's built in, if the vcr breaks, you've lost your tv as well and vice versa.   Surfboard's are top notch, probably the industry standard for translational bridges (yeah there's no such thing as a cable modem; it's actually a bridge).   Personally I use the Netgear N900, it gives full strength in a 1200 sq ft apartment, and it is in the corner of a shelf in a far room.  It also goes outside the building (is not near a window either), about 100 feet away up to the garages.  Signal isn't great, but it does stay connected.

  Been contemplating that for months now, and just went over and deactivated the account.  Not even 5 minutes later my mother was calling asking what is wrong, like I am obligated to maintain an account there or something.   I didn't understand how silly FB was until that just happened.

  I disagree with the sentiment you are proposing for this guy.  As the others have said, it took minutes for him to get the dog off, what would have happened if the switch in that dog flipped on a baby wading in the water with its parents?  Would that be acceptable as long as he helped get the dog off, or not acceptable for the sole reason it was a child?   Dogs require responsible owners just like guns do.