TechyDad

Last week, I was walking to my car when I spotted some money on the ground. It was only a quarter, a dime and a penny so I figured I’d pass it up. Yet, I found myself strangely compelled to pick up the money. For some odd reason, it brought to mind my childhood.

My sister and I would constantly pick up whatever money we found lying around. Usually, this would be a penny here and a dime there. Occasionally, we’d luck out and spot a dollar bill. One time we spotted a twenty. I thought that a guy standing near it had dropped it so I decided to wait to see if he’d pick it up. My sister didn’t wait and grabbed the twenty.

My father would constantly tell us that it was a waste of time picking up that money, but we insisted that all those pennies, nickles, dimes and quarters added up. We disagreed, of course. In some respects, I’ve proven him wrong thanks to my recent 12 pound coin deposit.

As I got older, however, I passed money on the ground more and more. I found it just wasn’t worth my while to walk across a room just to pick up a nickle. For some reason, however, I felt an urge to pick up this 36 cents.

After picking it up, I began to think. I still wouldn’t pick up a lone penny on the sidewalk, but would definitely go out of my way if I spotted a twenty on the ground. I wondered what was the threshold a given amount of “ground money” had to reach before it turned into a worthwhile amount for an adult to pick up.

So my Aloha Friday question to you is: What is the smallest amount of money that you would pick up off the ground?

Thanks to Kailani at An Island Life for starting this fun for Friday. Please be sure to head over to her blog to say hello and sign the MckLinky there if you are participating.

Aloha #21

Ok, maybe I didn’t have a ton of coins, but the amount of coins I had is nothing to sneeze at either. A few years back, I noticed that I’d have pocket change lying around after every transaction. I’d stick it back in my pocket, but those two dimes, a nickel and a penny don’t help much if your next cash payment is $12.79. Plus, who wants to stand in line figuring out where each and every coin is needed to complete the transaction?

Cashier: “Your total is $3.65.”

Me: “Ok, here’s three singles. And let’s see. [digs in pocket] A quarter. A penny. Another penny. A dime. A nickel. Another dime. Another nickel. Another quarter. Oh wait, that’s too much. Let me take back those pennies, one dime and one nickle.” [Glances back to see people in line behind me giving me the evil eye.]

Much better to simply pay in dollar bills and save the change for later, I figured. Perhaps I could even buy something nice with the saved up money.

Since I didn’t want it stashed in a thousand spots around the house, I took an empty spice container (one of the big ones you can get from BJs) and started plunking my change in there at the end of the day. Over the years, the container filled more and more.

Last year, the coin jar got to be too heavy so I figured it was time to roll the coins up. So began a project with NHL. He enjoyed helping me count the coins and roll them up. I stuck the rolled up coins in another empty container and made a mental note to deposit the money. Somewhere along the way, though, my mental note came loose and sliped under the mental refrigerator.

Recently, I decided to finally deposit the money. First, I rolled up the new coins that I had collected.

After counting it all, I stuffed the rolled coins back into the container.

Of course, lifting it was a challenge. It weighed 12 pounds. (Yes, I weighed it. I’m that much of a nerd!) Have you ever tried to life 12 pounds of coins? It was HEAVY! I toyed with keeping it around for weightlifting but figured a set of dumbbells would cost a lot less than the amount of money in that container.

So how much money is 12 pounds of coins? Well, in my case it totaled $144.50! Not bad for a few years of tossing coins into a jar!

It seems to happen to me constantly. I have something I enjoy doing. It’s just something I do during my free time. I’m enjoying doing it. Then I begin to wonder: “Can I make money doing this?” Before you can say “Business Opportunity”, I’m mentally mapping out how my business would run. I’m calculating costs and projecting profits. In short, I’ve turned my hobby into a job – even if only in my mind. Of course, eventually, reality comes crashing in.

Read more…

It Slices! It Dices! It Cuts Cable Cords In Two!!!

Thanks to the one two punch of Netflix Online and Roku, I’m pretty confident that my kids would survive a cut cable cord without too much screaming.  So where does this leave cable in our household?

For now, it hasn’t been cut, but don’t confuse being uncut with being safe.  We’re currently looking into many options ranging from cutting to going with an alternative service like DirecTV.  (Any DirecTV reps out there who want a technologically savvy daddy blogger to do a review on your service? )

My original conclusion, meanwhile, has been revised.  Previously, I determined that we would save about $15 per month if we cut cable.  However, I soon realized that that relied on two erroneous assumptions.

The first was that we would buy $15 in DVDs every month.  We really don’t buy many DVD movies because we tend to watch them once or twice and then add them to the stack.  Kids movies get a bit more play, but there’s only so many times you can let your child watch a show before you go insane.  Now, we tend to rent our DVDs via Netflix or our local library.  DVD purchases happen pretty much only if a deal is extremely good or for a Chanukah or Birthday present.  Our total DVD purchase budget is probably closer to $30 per year than $15 per month.  This increases the Cut Cable savings to $27.50 per month.

The second assumption was that we would frequent Amazon VOD.  Apart from having Mythbusters episodes, I just can’t see spending a lot of money on this service when I get essentially the same thing "for free" with my paid for Netflix subscription.  (Yeah, I know Netflix isn’t free, but you know what I mean.  I don’t have to pay $1.99 just to see another episode of Heroes.  It’s right there.)

The only thing I might pay for is the aforementioned Mythbusters.  (TechyDad want big boom!)  At $1.99 per episode and an average of 25 episodes per season, I’d only be paying about $24, or $2 per month, for this Amazon VOD.  This is far short of the $26 a month I initially assumed and raises the Cut Cable savings to $51.50 a month.

I’ve also re-thought my setup.  I don’t need to invest in a media streaming setup.  I just need to manage our existing DVDs better.  So I’ve used EMDB to catalog all of my DVDs.  I plan on making a list out of it and laminating it for the kids to refer to.  This way they’ll be able to point to an item on the list and have B or I put it in rather than wondering just what we have to watch.

The only tripping point at the moment is how we would hook our existing TVs up to receive over the air broadcasts (do we need to buy any equipment for this?) and what DVR to buy to replace our cable company issued one.  TiVo is a possibility, of course, but the monthly fee ($129 per year) would eat into our Cut Cable savings.  Still, even after TiVo, we would have over $40 left per month in savings.  The first six months of savings would pay off the purchase price of TiVo.  After that (and possibly a few months paying off equipment to receive digital OTA signals), we’d be in pure savings mode.

Alternatively, we could switch from Time Warner Cable to DirecTV.  The one year locked in rate would save us $28 per month over cable.  Either way, money talks, especially in this economy.  Unless things radically change, I don’t think our current cable connection has much of a life left in our household.

Disclaimer: I received a complimentary 3 month preview of Netflix for review purposes.  However, after my preview period, I intend to remain on as a paying Netflix member.  As stated, I won the Roku box during an online giveaway.  The reviews expressed above are my own and were not altered in any way by Netflix, Roku or anyone else.

Heeeere’s Roku!

When we last left our intrepid Cable Cutting hero, he was talking about Netflix streaming devices.  There are many of these on the market, to be sure, but my favorite is the Roku box.  This small box, and I’m talking palm of your hand small, will easily fit into any home theater arrangement.  It is easy to set up, navigate and has plenty of content available on it.

Once your Netflix Instant Queue is set up, the titles appear nearly instantly on your Roku box.  If your title includes multiple episodes, say because you’re watching The Addams Family, you can jump to a specific episode easily .  Fast forwarding and rewinding, though inexact, are simple to master.  Simple enough, in fact, that my 6 year old figured it out quickly and now is not to be trusted near the remote.  Not because he’s going to mess something up, but because he *will* fast forward/rewind/change the video when I just want to watch what’s playing.  In fact, all of the controls are easy to master.  If I hand NHL the remote, I can be certain that he will find a show that he wants to watch and will be able to play it with no problem.

The only problem we ran into was constant wireless network connection losses.  However, considering I’ve been experiencing these on my laptop as well, I think this is more of a problem with my network (more specifically, my router) than with Roku/Netflix.  Even when the network is acting funky, though, reconnecting is as easy as clicking "OK" a few times.  Assuming that the network cooperates, that is, but you can hardly fault Roku or Netflix for not being able to connect to a trouble-making router!

Since introducing them to the Roku, my children’s viewing habits have changed.  Whereas before their "default" choice was Noggin, The Disney Channel or possibly PBS Kids, they have rapidly made Roku one of their favorite choices.  Why, after all, bother with waiting until their favorite show is on when you can just click and play.  JSL has learned to ask for "Wiggle Roku" for his favorite Wiggles videos or "Bobby He Can Build It Roku" (Bob the Builder on Roku) and NHL has found enjoyment in some of my old favorites: Inspector Gadget, Super Mario Brothers and The Pink Panther.

Previously, I had mentioned how Netflix wasn’t resting on their laurels.  Well, Roku isn’t either.  While Netflix on Roku might be enough to justify the $80 – $130 price tag (depending on which Roku box you buy), Roku also offers access to Amazon Video on Demand, which has some great movies and TV shows, and Major League baseball.

Those offerings require extra purchases, however.  Amazon VOD requires you to pay for each video while MLB insists on a yearly subscription fee.  To increase the value of your Roku box, they are branching out to other content providers, most of which will be free for all.  Their Channel Guide allows you to customize your channel listing to include Motionbox, Mediafly, blip.tv, twit.tv, Facebook Photos, Revision3, Frame Channel, Flickr and Pandora.  These options just came out, so I haven’t explored them fully.  Still, I got a taste for how much more content they have just made available via Roku and I like it.  Clearly, Roku is trying to position itself as the go-to box for streamed media content.

Coming up next, will the cable cord survive being cut?

Disclaimer: I received a complimentary 3 month preview of Netflix for review purposes.  However, after my preview period, I intend to remain on as a paying Netflix member.  As stated, I won the Roku box during an online giveaway.  The reviews expressed above are my own and were not altered in any way by Netflix, Roku or anyone else.

Watching Movies At Warp Speed

Previously, I mentioned that Netflix is keeping up with the changing rental climate.  One of those changes is online viewing.  I’m a big believer that the future successor of DVDs isn’t going to be Blu-Ray or some other super-incredible-ultra-high-resolution disc, but no disc at all.  All of the pieces are in place or nearly so.  Internet speeds are fast enough in many areas to support video streaming. Video codecs can alter video quality to account for changes in bandwidth.  Wireless technology allows for devices (*cough*Roku*cough*) to stream Internet videos without needing any wires (save for the power cord). Read more…

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve heard about Netflix.  They’re the online video rental shop that will mail you DVDs from a queue you create.  For many years, I wrote them off as not worth it.  After all, I reasoned, we didn’t rent movies all that often so why pay $16.99 a month when we might rent only one movie that month.  Tis better, I thought, to pay $5 to rent the new release in the local big name video chain.  Boy was I wrong. Read more…

With the economy the way it is, everyone is looking for ways to save money. For awhile now, I’ve thought about how much our cable TV costs us per month and whether/how we would do without it. We currently have Time Warner Cable’s All-In-One package (Internet, Phone and Cable) with two boxes. One is a DVR and one is a plain cable box. The phone line and Internet we would need to keep. (Ok, technically we could cut our land line and go cell phone only, but that’s a thought experiment for another day.) Switching to Time Warner’s “Surf & Talk” plan would save us about $65 per month.

Of course, our cable TV doesn’t go unwatched every day. NHL and JSL watch it. B watches it. I watch it. So we can’t just rip out the cable line and pocket the monthly savings. Some kind of entertainment is going to need to replace the cable TV loss at or below the cost of cable TV. In doing research on this, here are some of the options I’ve come up with:

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