Wednesday, February 17, 2016


Take a look at the first name on the list of musical performers at the Lexus booth for the 2016 Chicago Auto Show... Hanna Ashbrook.

Hanna was my daughter's "stand mate" in Orchestra during middle school and high school. They both played violin. When they were young, they made a recording (singing) at my home studio. Hanna decided to go into music as a career and my daughter went on to pharmacy.

Hanna's step mom is also a Balanced Exposure student! I mentioned the coincidence to her and she was surprised! Also, two of Hanna's songs were used as "jingles" in the two most recent Nutela TV commercials. Listen for them the next time you see a Nutela commercial!

Hanna was at the Lexus booth because she recently participated in "The Voice" on TV. Didn't win, but still... not bad, eh? She played guitar and sang. She asked me for photos from that old recording session from middle school years, but I didn't know why she wanted these old photos. Little did I know that she needed it for submission to "The Voice." Luckily, I still had the photos from that recording session and also some photos of her when she was in competition during some of the violin contests from middle school.

Kids... amazing, huh?

Here's a link to Hanna's Nutela commercial. It's her song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bME8ZWwpEUQ

Wednesday, February 10, 2016

On Hub - Router


I recently upgraded my internet with Comcast to 75mbps.  Unfortunately, I was told both my Motorola cable modem and my Linksys router were too old to get the faster speed.  They are only 2 years old!  Apparently, 2 years in this industry is considered too old!  Because of this and the fact that my router was not the fastest available, my 75mbps was only giving about 18mbps speed.

I went to Best Buy and purchased an On Hub TP-Link router (made by Google) for $199.95.  Yes, very expensive... but worth it!  (My old Linksys router was only around $59.)  The On Hub is very simple to set up and is controlled by the On Hub app on my iPhone.  Now I'm getting 89mbps speed!  Plus, the app allows for quick remote diagnostics of the network even off-site and can handle up to 128 devices... so it can handle any of my home devices as well as a LOT of guests asking to connect at the same time when they come to our home to visit!

The On Hub has 13 antennas built into it and so the range is plenty to cover our home.  You can be anywhere in the house and get great connectivity.

Highly recommended!  Read more about it on their website by clicking here.

By the way, I did not update my Motorola modem, even though Comcast tried to convince me it wasn't good enough and too old.  Well, it
is good enough because with it and the On Hub, I'm getting faster speed than I'm supposed to at 89 mbps!