Hell froze over, rip it out

Last night after work I felt the need to be productive.  I fulfilled that need by heading out to the orchard to do some tree removal.  The orchard is one of the first things we added to the landscape after building the house.  It never has lived up to expectations with several of the trees looking ratty, unhealthy and remaining very unfruitful in their yields.   I have allowed them to continue on for literally a decade like this due to equal parts apathy and sentimentality.

Well I decided a few days ago it was time to finally do something about it.  I drug my shovel, rake and post bar into the orchard and ripped out the tangerine and key lime trees both of which have done next nothing for several years.  Removing the key lime was pretty easy, it’s roots were not that big.  The tangerine, despite it’s ill/stumpy appearance above ground, had a large set of roots lurking underneath which took some prying to get at.

There is at least one other tree in the orchard that I have my eye on for removal but it actually appears to have some fruit on it, granting it a stay of execution.  My hope is to plant two new trees and do a better job tending to their care so they can grow and prosper.

Yesterday in the mail I got a promo for Comcast’s X1 home service.  X1 is the new modern spin Comcast has put on their cable TV service.  It includes all new equipment that actually has a modern and user friendly interface compared to the shit they used to put out there.  It allows you to do many of the things that Tivo’s can.

Speaking of Tivo, the reason I even took the time to look more seriously at the X1 is my Tivo Premiere has been starting to act flaky, more than likely the hard drive is starting to go bad.  If it goes that means I would either be spending the time/money on a new hard drive or a new Tivo box.  I have been less and less thrilled with what Tivo does for me for the money.  Since I only have OTA antenna programming feeding into it, there is very little on there.  I have been a looong time Tivo customer, dating back to when I had a DirecTv/Tivo receiver, some 10 years ago.

So anyway after looking at what the X1 system was I looked at the packages.  Right now I am paying 80 a month for 25mb internet service and the shitty digital tv package which I don’t even use (non-HD).  For roughly another 40 a month I could move to 50mb internet service, an X1 HD DVR for the main room, an X1 secondary HD box for the bedroom, 160 channels AND free HBO for 2 years.  I then factored in the $15 a month I would no longer be paying to Tivo, meaning my monthly bump would be more like 25 bucks. When I mentioned the idea to Cindy she was all on board, she misses having some of her favorite channels like HGTV available.

So I said f it and pulled the trigger, completing the upgrade arrangements with a roughly 10 minute phone call.  I also managed to get the installation charge of 40 bucks waived for the tech which is supposed to show up Monday afternoon.

To be honest, deciding to give Comcast more of my hard earned dollars isn’t something I thought would ever happen after I threw up my HD antenna some 4 years ago.  I am still apprehensive about it and if I didn’t have Cindy here helping me split living expenses I doubt I would have upgraded.  Still I am sort of excited for both the 100% faster internet speed and the features the X1 system will give me.  It should up the geek/tech factor in the house another few degrees.

I plan to still be utilizing my OTA feed for the other coax runs in the house like the guest bedroom.  I will need to be an active participant when the installer arrives to help him navigate the considerable coax runs and splitters that converge in the attic crawl space.