For years before having kids my wife and I managed life without having cable. If we felt like watching tv we would just rent a movie. When people would come over and see the rabbit ears on our tv they taught we where trying to communicate to outer space. Two years ago we decided to give the cable guy a chance, so we decided to subscribe to cable. Of course could not just get the basic plan because the basic plan does not include the basic channels, e.g. children channels, history channel, sport channels, HGTV, TLC,… so we had the get the extended plan (for extra $ of course!), we are paying approximately $55/month.
If we look at our daily habits, the few times that our kids watch tv we pop a dvd in because they want to either watch “Bugs Life” or “Ratatouille” or “Finding Neemo”… never did they ask to watch the Disney Channel. As for the adults, after long days of work and kids by the time the kids are in bed and you finish up cleaning and prepping up for the next day it’s already 9pm, if you decide to watch tv you end up flipping the channels through commercials, “reality” tv, commercials, gossips, commercials, commercials… oh did I mention commercials?
So once again I face the same question again: is it worth the $700/year to watch non sense after non sense? Or should I just kill the cable guy?
I’m curious of your opinion, what is your daily routine after a long day? Please share and comment.
We opened our eyes lately on natural disasters with the cyclone going through Myanmar and the earthquake hitting Sichuan (China), such sadness. Having said that I would like to point out other atrocities happening in the world and this time it is not blamed on nature but on humans. Instead of me blogging away on a particular subject I rather point out two interesting links that everyone one of us should take a look at and be aware of.
So for all the INJUSTICES happening in the world, on this day of May 15, 2008 – Bloggers Unite for Human Rights!
After accumulating an uncontrollable amount of dept with my credit card company I was bound to be on their VIP list for a couple of years with their generous 17% APR. A month ago my wife and I (ok… my wife) decided to take control of our financial situation. The option of calling our credit card company and begging them to lower our interest rate by 1% or 2% was just not enough.
So we went to our local credit union bank to speak with a financial adviser from the loan department. After explaining to her that we wanted to see if we could get a loan to payoff the credit card at a lower rate, she replied to us with a question:”What year and model is your car?”. And I replied a little bit frustrated:”What does our car have to do with this? I’m not applying for an auto loan!”. And that’s where she started explaining that the reason she was asking is because you have the option of borrowing against your car, if it is not payed off.
If you enjoy running you probably will enjoy this webtool called RunningAHEAD. I found it two years ago when I was searching online for a cheap way to calculate the length of my running routes without having to buy an expensive portable GPS system.
This online software is a collection of tools permitting you to:
Record your different workouts (running, cycling, swimming and weight training);
Measure your running routes with their mapping tool;
Share your routes online with other RunningAHEAD members;
Graphs the progress of all your workout entries;
Participate in the forum discussion group.
Signing up is totally free and using all of the tools are free as well.
The tool I enjoy the most is their mapping tool. You can trace your desired route over their map (powered by Google). The accuracy is very good. It permits you to discover or create new routes just by looking at the map in all the modes you want (map, satellite, hybrid, topographic and USGS satellite). On your map that contains your route you can add water notes, medical notes, route points, mile markers, display the elevation graph and much more. When you are done with the route you have the choice to save it as private or share it with the RunningAHEAD community. By sharing routes with other users you give them the opportunity to discover new routes and can be useful if they are living in the same area.
Well it was about time that Skype (Google) came out with there unlimited calling plans. I was waiting for this for a long time. All of our siblings live in Canada, so you can imagine the long distance bills we were getting each month. For a while I managed to cut down the phone bills since by using a VoIP calling card with tel3advantage. But the call quality and reliability was still not good enough. Frequently we would hear echo, calls not going through, always had to go through their 1800 number. But for 3 cents a minute to make a call from the US to Canada, it was worth swallowing the pill and accepting the hit on quality to save on monthly bills.
When Skype (Google) announced their unlimited long distance calling plans from a Skype account to regular land line phones, with Skypeout, that’s when they got me really interested. They have 3 different unlimited calling plans: Keep reading →
Hi and welcome to Santa Barbara Chronicles. This web log will treat about subjects surrounding my day to day life. If you take a still image of my current life, this would be a good indicative of the kind of topics this web log will contain. Some of the subjects will be on relationships, parenting, running, diy home projects, events in Santa Barbra and more.
Thank you for visiting and be sure to bookmark this site. I hope to see you again soon!
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