Monthly Archives: January 2016

The cord has been cut!

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14

Cableone made me mad and I have had enough. If you are like me, you’ve heard about the television cord-cutting trend but are not sure how it works, so I’m going to tell you what I’ve found out.

The biggest change when you cut the cable cord is that you have to decide what to watch. There’s nothing playing on the TV until you decide what to put on. As near as I can tell, DVRs don’t work with an internet only setup but that’s OK with me. I quickly realized that the shows I was recording can be found online if you are willing to subscribe to a few services (Netflix, Hulu, etc.)

There is a huge amount of content online and it is really easy to find something to watch. I can already tell that I am never going to run out of interesting shows. I like being able to watch a season of shows at whatever pace feels good.

netflix

For this to work, you need to be able to connect the internet to your TV. I have an Apple TV device connected to the TV in the living room. Apple TV can connect to the internet via wifi or with an ethernet cable. I use the cable because I think it might be a better/faster connection, and because I had the cable already in place.

The TV in the kitchen has a wireless Roku stick. This is a little thing that looks a lot like a flash drive that plugs into an HDMI port on the TV. It has a cord that plugs into a power outlet. Neither of these devices was that hard to set up. It took a little time to enter passwords and set up channels (Netflix, etc.) on each device, but it was easy to do.

Both of these devices work well and allow you to watch a variety of things. I am currently watching subscription services like Netflix, Hulu, CBS All Access, but there and I’ve found  a variety of free channels as well. Additionally, you can connect both Apple TV and the Roku to your computer or other smart device and stream from them.

My cable bill is about 1/3 of what it was before. The combined monthly Netflix/Hulu/CBS/HBO fees will be a little more than what I was paying Tivo (my DVR provider). I’m saving money—that hardly ever happens!

The one downside is that we don’t get local/live news. I solved that problem with the WFAA app on my ipad. (WFAA is the ABC channel in Dallas that we watched until Cableone took it away.) We usually watch evening news and this app works for us. I suspect I’ll be able to get more news using other apps… in fact, Nowhere TV might work very well.

I hope this has answered questions for those of you who might have been thinking about doing this yourself.

Happy New Year!

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I hope your new year is off to a dandy start. Mine has been good so far. I’m not walking as fast as usual, and I’m still in the boot, but otherwise my foot feels better than it did before surgery and I’m moving around normally. I’m even back to standing at my desk!

Steve is in Hawaii now, teaching Natural History of the Hawaiian Islands with Keith Kisselle, his colleague. I’m on my own for 3.5 weeks and since he left I have been overcome with the urge to tidy.

On Saturday Chris came over and helped me rearrange my studio. I moved my computer to the other side of the room so that I can look outside when I work. That meant stringing ethernet cable through the attic and down the wall. It took about 4 hours, but it’s done and I wish I had done this years ago. I ended up spending another many hours trying to connect my wireless printer to the computer. It never did so I got a faster, newer one that works better. (Printers are actually cheap—it’s the toner that’s expensive.)

Yesterday I tackled some shelves in the garage that have bothered me for months. If I never saw them I could have ignored them, but I walk past them numerous times every day. It may not look that tidy to you, but it’s so much better than before!

Garage1

I didn’t waste a lot of time dusting the shelves off because, why? They’ll be dusty again in a few days.

Garage2

I was all done and congratulating myself on a job well done when the garage door decided not to work. What happened was that one of the sensors was out of alignment. It’s had a problem ever since I hit it with the car months ago. I’ve had to tweak its position in the past but this time that didn’t work. So I had to take the thing apart, re-bend the metal bracket, and wire it in place on the back side of the bracket. It works!

Garage3

What I’m really doing is practicing work avoidance. I should be doing so many other things but I can’t seem to concentrate on anything until I feel like my space is in order. I’ve about run out of projects so perhaps the work will commence this afternoon :-).