15%, Prime Day, Drop to gain
Yesterday I posted on FB a thought that has run through my head countless times, how impossible it seems to be for people of the millennial generation to go to the bathroom without a smartphone in their hand. I see this at work on a regular basis where I walk in the mens room and encounter the sounds of someone playing a music track to accompany their shitting or they are texting at a urinal or watching an Instagram video while washing their hands. It just all seems so ridiculous to me. Now of course I know this behavior is not exclusive to the millennial generation, they just suffer from it the most.
Obviously I love technology, f I am paying a small mortgage for a Tesla for cripes sake. I do not love what aspects of technology has done to human beings, especially the kids that were raised when the internet was already well established. The sight of public environments where the majority of people have their heads down, mindlessly thumbing through screens on their smart devices bothers me every single time which may seem hypocritical based on my field of employment. So many young people seem to just have little to no sense of the basic formula for success where hard work + time = success. Nope, they instead have been conditioned for instant gratification with minimal effort for most of their lives. The end result is these kids drifting into adulthood rudderless, unmotivated, and ill equipped to deal with the realities of life.
The irony of me sounding like the adults during my childhood is not lost on me. Back then the corrupting influences were too much tv, reading comic books, and the advent of video games, as basic and simplistic as they were back then. I think every generation looks at the following generations as softer and less able to cope with the world and I don’t think they are incorrect. Even though as a child I didn’t enjoy physical punishment when I acted badly, I look back it now as something that served a purpose. I learned that bad behavior has consequences. I think today the exact opposite is being ingrained into the youth of today.
Yesterday was the first day of Amazon Prime day. I have not been blown away by the deals the last year or two but I still poked my head in. I did find a couple things I decided to indulge myself in, a dirt cheap Android phone to run some Android only EUC apps on and a third AnyCubic I3 Mega 3D printer. The other two are my workhorse printers which create the majority of my 3D printed EUC stands. It was on sale yesterday for almost 30% off what I paid for the other two so I jumped in.
I called Comcast yesterday to address the insane $240 bill I got last month. I needed to get on a promo rate. I looked at plans online and was surprised, they must have just recently opened up gig speed internet in our area. The cap for me is currently 150mbs. Well of course this peaked my interest. I also saw just how insane the cost of premium channels has gotten. Almost $50 of the bill was for these channels, many of which I cared nothing about. After looking online I called in to speak to a person about my changes.
I wound up investing in the internet side of my package and slashing the TV side of things, dropping all premium channels like HBO, Showtime, Cinemax, etc… I not only signed up for the 1000 mbs speed but also the new Xfi service which includes a new gateway/router. Normally I prefer to use my own modem however the reason I went this route was for $15 a month I rent the gateway but also get the data cap waived, which normally costs $50 a month. The final benefit is more upstream bandwidth, something I really have been wanting due to uploading YouTube videos. My old plan had a 10mb upstream cap, the new plan is 35mb, a big difference.
So the subtraction of the tv items and the addition of the improved internet plan resulted in a net savings of roughly $50 per month which isn’t a huge but it’s something. I was surprised they had appointments available today to do the work, which will happen late this afternoon. This upgrade is going to result in a LOT of additional work for me to configure the new wifi gateway for my home network including changing EVERY wifi connected device, which there are at least a couple dozen of.