Tag comcast too expensive

So Saturday morning I was timing my first every regional cross country meet.  I put a lot of effort in ahead of time preparing for this task.  I had a couple phone conversations with the author of the timing software I use to make sure I was doing everything correctly.  Instead of spending hours entering paper entries I spent the time doing test sessions and importing spreadsheets from each school that had their roster.

One important detail I forgot to address was exactly how to get the location of the event which being held at one of the area high schools.  I turned down the street that had a sign for the school but I ran into a locked gate.  I could see the football stadium all lit up inside the fence (where I needed to go) but I had no idea of how to get there.

Along the fence line there was a narrow dirt path that ran parallel to the field.  I thought maybe if I followed it I would eventually come to an opening where I could cut across.  Well after about a half mile on this path it dead ended to another locked gate.  The path was too narrow to turn around on since there was a canal on the other side of it so I had to drive backwards out of there.

Of course I was getting rather annoyed as I tried to use my GPS to guide me into the facility.  Luckily I just stumbled into another entrance after circling around for a little while.  I found the race organizer and finally was able to pull my truck into the football stadium.

The Collier County school system has VERY impressive athletic facilities.  They just got done replacing all of the high school football fields with RealTurf, the fake grass that is actaully better than grass in many ways and light years ahead of good old astroturf.

I was impressed on how much bounce the field had.  The “grass” itself looked pretty real as well.  One of the things that helps RealTurf feel like it does are the millions of tiny little rubber balls that are buried in the grass.  They both provide cushion and prevent cleats from getting stuck in the turf which causes many injuries.  I also noticed that if you walk on this turf for a period of time you will surely have a bunch of these little rubber balls inside your sneakers. It felt pretty cool to be down on that beautiful field that was lit up from the stadium lights which were all burning brightly.

It was time for me to set up.  Because in this event all of the data entry was handled ahead of time it made for a pretty leisurely environment leading up to the race.  After getting the laptop and timing equipment set up I had a lot of stand around time until the first race started at 8:00 am.

The first race was the varsity girls.  As the first finisher crossed the line I panicked a bit when I saw her time was two minutes longer than it should have been, I made a typo in the race start time.  Luckily I was able to correct it easily.  By the time the last girl crossed the line I already had the results of the first race complete.  The coaches were thrilled with instant results.  In the past they timed the race by hand which takes MUCH longer and produces much less information.

In total there were four races that went down one after the other and the timing went great.  I had one girl that said her chip didn’t register (although it tested fine later) and one girl we had to DQ because she accidentally cut the course short.  Other than that, things were perfect.

I have a feeling that my chip timing the race could possibly lead to more timing work for other cross country meets as word spreads of how efficient it was.  I had a couple coaches on site ask me about the possibility of timing stuff for them.  I told them I would be happy to talk to them about it, hell I could use Camaro money.

I actually did pretty much every part of timing the race myself, I didn’t have to hardly involve Alison at all.  She showed up on site after a group run and handled getting all of the chips sorted and put away which was a nice help.  Other than that it was a one man show.

I can’t tell you how many times I was thanked and told how much my efforts were appreciated at the race.  It made me feel good about what I do.

Once we got home and after I had the results posted and equipment put away I immediately moved into my other work.  Alison was pooped from getting up early and running so she retired for her customary nap.  By the time she came outside I was finishing up the last of three things I wanted to get done, back filling the sprinkler repair area, spreading weed n feed over the rest of the yard and replacing another ripped section of screen in the pool cage.

Once I was done there I decided to hop on the mower and mow down the majority of the back yard which was overgrown badly.  I had worked on the tractor the week before trying to fix an annoying oil leak that would cause the mower to smoke like mad when it first heats up from oil on the exhaust manifold.  It seems like my repair was successful, I had no oily smoke during the session.

Alison went out for a girls night out Saturday night with Christie and Michelle.  She said they hit a number of places before she rolled back home after midnight. I spent my night working on the computer and watching the Phillies get eliminated from the playoffs.

Sunday morning we just did a swimming workout at the water park.  I told Ali I almost felt lazy by doing JUST swimming and not tying running, biking or both into it.  My goal this time was to swim another 1600 meters/yards (not sure of exact length) however this time I wanted to do it continuously.

I have traversed this distance in the water twice before but the first time it was four 400 meter segments and then two 800 meter segments.  This would be the full Olympic swimming distance at once.

Before I started I had Ali shoot video of me doing my warm up lap with the Flip HD I grabbed off of Woot.  I have described how my swimming style is very weird and leaves much to be desired.  As you can see, there are elements of freestyle, side stroke and even a breaststroke style kick in there.  I know it looks very odd but for whatever reason it allows me to swim extended distance in a reasonable amount of time.  Why fix it if it works for me?

I was able to hit my goal, pulling down 32 fifty yard laps in about 34:30 according to my watch.  It wasn’t easy.  I tried to imagine hopping right on a bike for 25 miles and then running another 6 after such a swim.  It didn’t seem like it would be very much fun.

Boy this past weekend was a big change from the last where all of the Philly sports news was good.

The Phils had a lot of momentum returning home after a huge win in San Fransisco to extend the series.  The rabid fans were thrilled when the team jumped out to an immediate 2-0 lead. Unfortunately that was all the team scored, filling the rest of the game with frustration culminated by Ryan Howard striking out looking to end the game.  The Giants simply played better during the series.  Their pitching for the most part shut the Phils down, plain and simple.  Oh well there is always next year.

The Eagles game was very aggravating as well.  For half of the game the Birds were handling the Titans pretty easily.  They were driving for a TD that would have given the Eagles a huge lead when LeSean McCoy fumbled the ball away after a sloppy exchange.  Then the wheels came off.

The Titans have this receiver I never heard of with the last name of Britt.  All of a sudden he become God-like.  He burned the Eagles again and again AND AGAIN for huge gains down the field.  It was utterly insane.  Sean McDermott had absolutely no answers for this kid.  Instead of moving Asante Samuels onto Britt he left Ellis Hobbs on him who got burned worse than toast in a flamethrower.  Hobbs looked like he was playing on one leg, he apparently sucks.

Well McDermott had no plan to slow down Britt who had 225 yards and 3 TD”s receiving. As a result the Eagles went down in flames after controlling the game for more than a half.  It was very disappointing.

I have continued my investigation into ways I can cut down on paying too much money for stuff that I shouldn’t be, my latest target being the ridiculous amount of money Comcast charges us for cable tv.

One of the options is to use a HDTV antenna to grab over the air high def broadcasts of the major networks.  I have read that surprisingly, the best HD picture you will get is via this route.  The vast majority of what is sitting on our Tivo is major network programming AND the Tivo’s have support for an antenna based connection, another plus. I also have my Netflix service which is an unlimited source of tv content.

If there is a downside it would be the absence of some cable only programming I like such as Caprica, The Ultimate Fighter, Iron Chef and a few more.  Well I may have found an answer for that as well.

A Google search turned up a website called http://playon.tv  It is an application that you install on your Windows based pc that allows it to act as a proxy for other DLNA/uPnP devices to grab web based video content.  It supports a number of devices including all the popular console gaming systems, iphone/ipad and many more.

I tested the system out on my Wii as well as my Iphone and Ali’s IPad.  It’s pretty damn slick.  The interface is barebones but simple to use.  The selection of available content is pretty staggering including Hulu, Spike.tv, ESPN and many, many more.  The content took less than a minute to finish buffering before it fired up.

There are a few drawbacks.  To use the service obviously your Windows pc has to be up and running to serve up the content.  The client itself seems to be a large resource hog as my CPU meter was running at over 50% even when it wasn’t actively streaming.  Once streaming started it almost pegged the CPU.

The quality of the video stream varies from provider to provider.  On the small Iphone and Ipad screen the video content looked just fine across the board.  However when you blow that up to 73 inches there is a pretty big visual quality hit.

Playon is not a free service.  You can try it for two weeks for free.  After that you can pay $40 and then $20 a year or bite the bullet and pay $80 to be good to go permanently.  A one time $80 cost versus $700-$800 in cable tv charges a year is a good trade in anyone’s book.  It’s all a matter if you are ok with some of the other trade off’s.

Friday afternoon I left work early so I could head directly out to Jeremy’s place.  Prior to leaving Jeremy and I had gone back and forth about various plans for dinner with nothing being decided upon concretely.  As I was reentering civilization on the other side of Alligator Alley he called me and asked if I would mind stopping to pick up a pizza order.  Jeremy said the place was easy to find.

Well I was navigating via GPS.  Jeremy gave me directions via phone that I tried to scribble with one hand on a napkin which proved to be impossible.  Instead I had to try to rely on memory.  Surprisingly I managed to find the place without getting lost even with my mistaking “Powerline” for “Caroline” and swapping “Olive Garden” with “Carrabas”.  I was surprised when I was handed a medium pizza with meatballs and peppers.  As I did the math I figured that was pretty tight for three adults and a little kid. Oh well I figured I would make up the calorie deficit with beer.

I arrived at their house a few seconds before Jeremy who ran out to get materials needed to hang his set of gymnastic rings in his garage.  Jeremy’s wife Mandy and their little boy Connor were outside playing.  I handed off the pizza and unloaded my crap from the van. 

I had never been to his place before.  It’s a big house with incredibly high vaulted ceilings, they have to be at least 15 feet high at their peak.  Jeremy gave me a quick mini-tour of the place and then we sat down to eat the pizza. Prior to eating I finally gave Mandy that much talked about hug without prior notice.  It really wasn’t as big of a deal as I made it out to be.  I’m sure she was glad it was finally out of the way.

After chowing down we didn’t waste much time before digging into a project.  We had a list of things we wanted to do during my short visit, the first of which was getting the rings up on the ceiling.  Jeremy knows I have a decent amount of experience in little projects like this so he let me take the lead for the install after we picked an ideal spot to mount the rings.

I stood at the top step of a ladder and stretched up into the attic to measure the distance between the roof trusses. After determining they were spaced two feet apart I measured out where they should be on the drywall side.  Luckily my measurements were close enough that we hit the truss with all six 4″ wood screws that were used to attach the 2×4 to the ceiling.   After the wood was attached all that was left to turn in two long eye hooks into the 2×4 and attach the rings to them.

Both Jeremy and I tested the rings for strength.  Jeremy had fears of pulling down the ceiling.  Luckily the install felt rock solid and should easily be able to support his 160 odd pounds of body weight. 

After the install was done we wanted to do a bit of a workout.  Of course I came prepared with my camcorder. We did a one rep max bench press test, some power cleans and finally some work on the newly installed rings.  Despite consuming around a six pack of beer during the process I dominated all of the strength events which was expected.

The one thing that wasn’t expected was the result of the ring competition.  Neither Jeremy or I could do a conventional muscle up on the rings.  Instead we raised the height of them and tried to do jumping muscle ups.  At first I questioned if either of us would be able to do them, however after Jeremy went first and was able to barely squeeze one out I knew I could do it, which I did pretty easily.

The funny thing was after his initial success, Jeremy failed on all subsequent attempts to duplicate the move while I continued to do it easily.  I did it easily enough that I started adding weight and doing it.  At the end I successfully performed the move with 20 pounds of weight from one of the weight vests stuffed in my pants.

I could tell Jeremy, who regularly boasts of his superior vertical leap, was annoyed that he failed repeatedly at the jumping muscle up.  Luckily for him, he finally got to taste some success playing Wii Tennis. 

I fancy myself as a pretty strong Wii Tennis player although I haven’t played the game for at least 6 months.  Well after 6 or 7 consecutive losses to my gloating opponent I was quite frustrated.  Losing didn’t frustrate me as much as the way I was losing.  Repeatedly I would hit shots that hit the top of the net and then carried out of bounds, giving Jeremy easy point after point.  I hit the ball OB in this manner at least 25-30 times, it was maddening.  I was never able to quite figure out what I was doing wrong because I never had this issue in the past.

After the tennis loss Jeremy put in this disturbing title.  You could tell it was the sort of game that the Japanese adore.  It was basically just an endless amount of these silly mini-games.  Each game took no more than 5 seconds.  I can’t really describe just how annoying it was yet, Jeremy seemed to really like it.  To me it seemed like a game whose sole purpose is to trigger epileptic seizures.  Repeatedly I indicated to Jeremy I had enough and repeatedly he would hand me the controller to play yet another ridiculous mini-game.

Finally around 11:45 I managed to pry him away from the madness.  I was quite sweaty from doing our open air ring install / power lifting session so I took a shower before bed.  My sleeping arrangements were in a day bed.  I just barely fit inside the frame, only having a couple inches clearance.  I set up a 6:15 alarm and my white noise app on my Iphone and fell asleep rather quickly.  The odd thing is I actually had a solid, uninterrupted block of sleep until the alarm went off, the type of sleep I haven’t gotten at home in ages, weird.

When I woke up I noticed that I must have not set my white noise app correctly, it appeared to be on all night.  As a result my battery was low.  I didn’t bring a phone charger with, dumb.  An Iphone owner needs to have a charger available at every moment of the day, I know better.

I brought my own Pop Tarts for breakfast. Mandy was nice enough to get up and make eggs and bacon.  Randall arrived early so he could partake in the breakfast as well.  We piled all of our equipment into the party van and headed south to Fort Lauderdale.

There was a strong turnout for the tournament, the biggest one I have seen in Florida for years.  Evidently the promise of old school rules was a nice draw for players, I know it was for me.  They had four nets of BB.  The most I had seen in the prior 5 years was probably two. (outside of the Rumble)  We had a lot of gear to unload.

Jeremy was unable to find a partner to play so he decided he would be our coach/documentary provider.  His high end camera also shoots high quality video.

I recognized one person on our net, everyone else was a new face.  It felt good to be back on the beach.  The last time out with Randall was miserable, we didn’t win a single game.  I was really ready to erase that bad memory with the assistance of old school rules and a bigger court.  It didn’t happen.

Once again it was very windy on the beach.  You have to expect wind when you play on the beach.  Unfortunately when you play as little as I do anymore, strong wind really wreaks havoc doing even some of the basic skills required to play the game.

Our first match was a mismatch.  We played two German guys, Markus and Fabian.  Based on appearance alone you would have thought they could be formidable.  Fabian looked like a lean quick player and Markus was a tall guy with a case of the skinny fats, but we assumed he could play. Well they couldn’t.  I served for 9 points in a row.  We destroyed them 11-1 without even breathing heavy.  The easy win against over matched opponents may have given us a false sense of confidence which was quickly destroyed the next match.

We were playing one of my hated combinations, an older skilled player and a young kid whom I assume was not old enough to drive.  The adult on the team was not very likable, he seemed like an a-hole. Well he was the first to serve in the match.  All of a sudden we were the hapless Germans.  In the span of a few minutes we were down 9-0 without even serving once.  It was ridiculous.  We were shut out in short order 11-0.  I can’t quite verbalize how disappointed I was in the effort so I figured it was best to not say much at all.

Our next match was a must win.  There were two teams on our net that were B level and two that had decent skills.  Since we epically failed to beat the kid team we HAD to win this game.  This team had the one guy I sort of knew.  They were a solid team but nothing spectacular.  In my prime, it’s a team that we would have rolled through. 

This game at least was competitive and at one point we had a lead late in the game.  However once again, mostly unforced errors doomed us and we lost the game 11-9.  Our last meaningless match was against the other low skill team.  I was so not into the match.  We actually let them get us to 8-8 before we scratched out the last couple points, it was pretty pathetic.

The day went nothing like I expected.  Typically side out scoring results in longer games since you only score points when you are serving.  Instead the first four matches on our net were all 11-0 or 11-1, taking less time than a normal rally scoring game.  For brief periods I used the big court and wind to my advantage in serving but nearly as much as I hoped. 

I just have very little confidence any more on the court.  I go into situations afraid to make mistakes instead of aggressively trying to make plays.  It’s a surefire way to fail.  Of course the remedy to this problem is to play more.  The problem is I don’t have the motivation to invest heavily in resurrecting my vball hobby.  Nowadays I get more enjoyment and satisfaction from self challenging activities like running, biking and lifting.   For several years I was able to get away with not playing vball much and still be able to put a respectable showing on the court.  Evidently those days have now passed.

After the match during my interview with Jeremy I announced my official volleyball retirement although I did leave a Brett Farve style loophole in the event I somehow find the motivation to step back on the court.

After we were done playing there was talk of playing some pick up games.  I bowed out of the activity partly because my left knee was feeling a bit flaky but more because I just had all motivation to play sucked out of my body after our performance, it felt that bad.

Randall and Jeremy played three King of the Hill format games with a guy and some young girl while I hung out with Suly, who was nice enough to stop by and watch our lackluster performance for a bit.  After the impromptu games finished we packed up and headed out for a lunch at another new place for me, Five Guys.

I had heard a lot of Five Guys praise from my buddy at work that goes there a lot, he loves their burgers.  I ordered a standard burger, fries and soda.  The burger was good, very similar in style and taste to what I get at Steak N Shake only more of it.  I actually prefer the shoestring style fries at SnS a bit more. I had a close call as we were walking out of the place. Luckily I realized that my pockets were missing my wallet.  I fast stepped back inside and found my wallet open on the floor, whew. 

We headed back to Jeremy’s place where we unloaded and said our goodbyes.  I had everything of mine packed up except for the 50 pound weight vest that Jeremy bought as a pair off of CraigsList.  I said goodbye to Randall, thanked Mandy and Jeremy for their hospitality and got a goodbye fist bump and hug from Connor. I hurried back across the alley just in time to enjoy a late pizza and Tivo date with Ali.

Ali was gone a good portion of Sunday, first running with her girlfriends and then going shopping with my mom.  I was left for a list of small chores to do and very little motivation to do them.  I came up with a brilliantly stupid idea to make the chores even more annoying, do them while wearing a 50 pound weight vest.

Initially the 50 pounds doesn’t feel that bad however that changes quickly.  Having 50 pounds pulling down on your shoulders gets annoying first, painful soon after.  I found that I needed to be doing movements that shifted the focus of the weight on my body off the shoulders.  I did laundry, watered plants, pool maintenance, stripped the bed, cleaned the counters and more in the vest.  In total I probably had it on for close to two hours.  By the time I took it off I was sweated through my shirt.  Lugging around an extra 50 pounds made each and every movement significantly tougher.

After lunch I found myself feeling super tired.  I actually laid down for a planned one hour nap.  After the alarm went off I wound up staying in bed another half hour, I just felt spent.  By the time Ali got home all of the chores I planned to do were done.  I was going to replace the MAF sensor in the Tacoma but strong afternoon storms washed those plans away.

For some reason I decided Sunday afternoon would be a good time to try to get my cable bill reduced. Earlier in the day I called and inquired about the costs involved with getting a cable card for the incoming new Tivo.  I was extremely annoyed to hear that having the card would add another $11-$12 to my already ridiculously expensive $119 monthly bill.  On top of that they wanted to charge me $40 to have an installer install the card, something that I could easily do myself but Comcast won’t allow it.

  I initiated an online chat with a representative and told them I needed to reduce my bill. I mentioned I have seen various competitive offers from Century Link that were significantly less expensive.  Surprisingly, the rep on the other side seemed genuinely interested in lowering my bill as much as possible.  She spent a lot of time looking into my options.  In the end the only thing she came up with was a bundle they had where you could get internet, phone and tv service for $99 for a period of time.  Well I don’t need the phone service, and I knew that after the promotional period was up you had to agree to keep the phone service for a period of time.

I pointed out to the rep it made no sense that I could get all three of those services for $99 but to only get two of the three I was paying 20% more.  The rep said that my best avenue would be to call the customer loyalty department and tell them I needed to reduce my bill.  She indicated they have the ability to offer better deals than she did.  Before I ended the session my rep WAS able to get me a break on the second CableCard.  It supposedly will only cost me $1.50 extra a month and she got the install fee reduces to $24.99, a small victory at least.

Once the new Tivo is installed I plan to call that customer loyalty department up and see what I can do about getting the price hacked down.  It is just ridiculous to me to be paying $120 a month plus for cable service and internet with no premium channels.  It also is an absolute rip off that providers are still treating HDTV as a premium service that they bill extra for.  EVERYTHING is going HD, at what point to do they stop treating it like it is HBO?

The rest of my Sunday was low key.  Ali made another quiche which I was happy to chow down on.  I am becoming a big quiche fan.    I also took a few minutes to sign up for a NetFlix free trial.  NetFlix integrates nicely with an HD Tivo but I never checked it out.

Setting up an account was easy and within a couple minutes I was on the site rating movies so it could get an idea of what I liked.  Netflix still offers the dvd by mail service that they got famous for, however I was more interested in their streaming service that allows me to instantly dump content to my Tivo via broadband.

As I was impressed with how slick the Netflix site is. It’s extremely well thought out and really geared to find out exactly what type of movies you like and make recommendations based on that research.  They seemed to have almost anything you can imagine available.  The only negative is the majority of it was not available for streaming.  If I used the service it would be for streaming, I really don’t want to have to shuffle dvd’s anymore.  I assume they are trying to make more content available for streaming.  At this point I doubt I will extend my trial into a real subscription based on the lack of streamable content but I definitely would consider picking it up again as more stuff is available digitally over the wire.

I did some more homework this week on the potential Camaro purchase, checking in on insurance costs.  It won’t be cheap to add a muscle car to our transportation fleet, they want a little under $1000 a year to insure it, even with three other vehicles on the policy.  It seems high to me considering my age, clean driving record and the “pleasure” designation the vehicle would have.  I would probably reduce my coverage on the Tacoma simultaneously, removing comprehensive coverage, it is 11 years old at this point.

I also was running some potential loan numbers.  My hope was to be able to slide into a Camaro for approximately the same monthly tab that we currently put out for the Camry.  Since there would be no trade in on the deal I will get crushed with full boat sales tax which means I would need to put down a big wad of cash to get the amount financed down enough to match the Camry payment.

I am still determined to make it happen but the timeline for it becoming a reality keeps getting extended further and further down the line.  I have maintained how I want to order the car from the factory so it is truly my car, as I want it, to keep until I leave this planet.  The nagging practical side of me keeps whispering how a pre-owned Camaro would be significantly less painful financially.

Yesterday I ordered the latest Tivo box, the Premiere.  I have wanted to replace the standard definition dual tuner Tivo in our bedroom for awhile.  Getting the Sony LCD HD set for the bedroom accelerated that desire. Out with the 73 inch monster TV we have a high def  Tivo that we love. 

One of the cool things you can do with multiple Tivos is watch programs on either box from either location.  However when you have an HD and non-HD model you lose the ability to go both ways.  The SD box can’t display the HD content.  Now that functionality will be restored.

I will be doing a little musical chairs act.  The current HD-Tivo will be relocated to the bedroom and the new Premiere will go out with the Mitsubishi.  I will have to get another cable card from Comcast for the new Tivo, something I am not thrilled about.  Anything that costs me another cent over the outrageous ransom we already pay to Comcast makes me sick.  Hopefully by this time next week both units will be relocated and up and running.

I am leaving right from work today to head over to the east coast.  I am playing in a vb tournament with Randall tomorrow.  Jeremy was kind enough to invite me to stay at his place tonight, cutting down my commute to the tourney by 75% tomorrow morning.  I expect to have a busy evening with him.  There may be YouTube exercise videos created, Wii smack downs applied, construction projects and copious amounts of alcohol consumed all in the span of a few hours. 

I’m looking forward to the tournament on Saturday.  I am hoping Randall and I can redeem ourselves from the horrible outing we had last time out.  I plan to take advantage of the big court and old school rules as much as possible.