One of the blogs I subscribe to on google reader really helped a lot with my move.  I’m talking about Unclutterer.  I somehow knew I would be moving to a smaller place, so I took to reading this site and its new posts adamantly.  The attitude there is refreshing.  While a part of me wants to collect the latest and greatest toys, I don’t always like to let go of things I’ve used in the past.  This blog has helped me reduce the amount of clutter and get me somewhat more organized before and after the move.  Thanks, unclutterer!

Still, I had lots of things I wanted to keep that wouldn’t fit in my new room in my friend’s house.  So I rented a 10×10 storage unit, and started moving boxes and smaller things in my car about two weeks before I actually had to be out of my apartment.

All my furniture I moved with a U-Haul truck in two trips: one to storage and another to my new room.  The day with the U-Haul was a long one.  Many thanks to my friends that helped.

After one year living in Michigan, I renewed with my apartment complex even though they increased my rent by almost 25%.  I thought that drastic of an increase was ridiculous, but stayed.  I liked the fact that I could walk to work.

But two things happened.  One, I found out that people moving in around the time I renewed were offered the same rate I was when I moved in, the year before.  So I was paying almost 25% more than my neighbors for the exact same place.  Actually, a worse place, because theirs had a fresh coat of paint.  I was furious when I found out.  Second, the office I work at was moved several miles away.  So not only did I have a reason to move, I no longer had a reason to stay.

So for what seemed like the entire month of October, I shopped for a new place to live.  I came very close to renting a nice little house near downtown.  The neighborhood didn’t seem all that bad, but the house didn’t come with all the necessary appliances.  And having none, I thought the move-in price was a little high.  

I checked out a nice apartment complex within walking distance of my new office location.  They were slightly more than I was paying, but almost seemed worth it because it was more square feet.  I applied there, and waited like two weeks, without a word from them.

I also had two friends that wanted me to rent a room in their house.  This was difficult, knowing that no matter what I did, I had to disappoint someone.  In the beginning of October, they both wanted $500 (utilities included) for their room.  I told them both I had apartments I had found that were reasonably clean, closer to work and not much more expensive.  One of them changed their price, the other didn’t.

During the time I was waiting for approval on the apartment complex downtown, the one room that became cheaper finally hit a price so low I couldn’t refuse.  I have a longer commute, but the price became so low that I couldn’t say no.  Hopefully I can save some money and pay down debt a little more now that my living expenses have gone down dramatically.

So my feelings on this are mixed.  I paid $100 for watching movies 4 or 5 months earlier than I could for no extra money on my XBox.  So that’s not a good feeling.  BUT, Roku has been saying that there is an upgrade in the works that will allow the Roku to stream content from other providers, which might make the thing worth the money I spent.

Then again, the 360 is supposed to have a deal with NBC, and they’re actually disclosing this new content.  Roku has said next to nothing about what other content providers they’ll be adding.  They’re just myseteriously “Big name” as a descriptor.

In the end, I hope my Roku box will end up doing something that the 360 can’t… just to prove my money hasn’t been wasted.

My first experience with the box was very surprising.  The video quality is excellent.  I’d like to know if anyone can tell the difference between this and cable.  I even experiemented with limiting my Internet connection.  I had my computer using a lot of the bandwidth, so the box could only get 1, 2 or 3 dots out of 4.  I was unable to find a difference in quality, really.  The only difference was a lack of sharpness.  At 1 dot the video simply looked blurry.  The frame rate never seemed to drop, and there were very few “buffering…” moments, even though my computer was competing for every bit of my Internet connection’s 6 mbps.  I’m very impressed.

My only complaints so far are to do with the service Netflix provides.  The box works flawlessly.  I was even able to setup my Logitech Harmony universal remote with it, after a small amount of searching on their website.

I watched an instant movie on Netflix for the first time a couple of nights ago, after signing up again. I was very impressed. The quality is better than any streaming video I’ve ever experienced. It was even better than hulu, but I think that’s because hulu uses flash video, rather than a Windows Media Player Activex plugin. Hulu is great, but this Netflix video was flawless: no buffering delays, no noticeable compression artifacts, and no processing jitter (from my computer needing cpu cycles for other tasks).

My only (minor) complaint, is that because the streaming video requires a Media Player plugin, Media Player is free to be compatible with whatever browser it wants (or more to the point, doesn’t want) to be.  Typical monopolistic Microsoft has forced this particular feature to be compatible with Internet Explorer only.  So whatever, I have to start IE to watch a movie on my computer.  I only use IE when absolutely forced to, by websites like this that don’t like FireFox.

But, when I receive my Roku Netflix box, I’ll have solved that problem.  I hope the quality is every bit as good as it was on my PC.  We’ll see.

So then I called Comcast, only to find out they don’t work past 9pm. They advertise 24 hours, but that’s only for their automated billing inquiries. So I called again the next day. I got the nicest, most personable guy on the phone, who actually seemed to care that I was leaving Comcast. He offered me a great deal: switch my Internet back to Comcast, and he’ll give me cable and Internet for $25 less than what I was paying originally. But, on principle (and because I’d just spent $99 on the Roku box) I went ahead and canceled. I still don’t agree with them raising the price of cable when I canceled the Internet. The poor customer service rep seemed heartbroken, and for a moment, I felt guilty, but whatever, it’s my money.

So that was done. I called Tivo, and talked to them about it. They offer a little bit more than just cable TV lineup (they have internet downloads from Amazon.com’s Unbox, and various podcasts). But I didn’t think that was worth paying $13 a month for. Then they mentioned that I could use my Tivo with an antenna, just like I’m doing with my cable, which was great. So I decided to stick with Tivo.

However, the next day I learned that my particular Tivo is only compatible with Satellite and Cable, not antennas. It’s a Dual Tuner Series 2 Tivo. It basically gives you the ability to pause one channel (live) and change to another tuner, on a different channel, and watch two shows at once, cycling back and forth. It’s too bad I can’t buy two antennas and have the same functionality. And there’s no way to get it to work on only one tuner. So it seems I was screwed. I call them back and cancel. They did with no problem.

My antennas and roku box should arrive later this week. I’ll be posting about my experiences setting everything up. One of my TVs has a digital tuner, so I won’t need a converter box to get digital tv. But my bedroom TV will need a converter box. I’m going to apply for the free government $40 coupon for one of those right now.

One could argue that Television and Internet are related, but one does not affect the other.  The infrastructures needed to put TV and Internet down the same tube are completely independent.  The frequencies of the data running down the wire are different.  One does not affect the other.  It’s just masquerading as the “buy more, pay less” deal, which has no bearing here.

I recently switched Internet providers from Comcast Cable to AT&T DSL.  DSL offered slightly slower download speed, and better upload speed, for less than what I was paying.  But Comcast raised the price of the Cable TV I have had.  They raised it by substantially more than what I was saving by switching to AT&T.

I’ve been contemplating what to do about this.  I do not want to spend more than I what I was originally.  And I do not want to switch back to Comcast, as badly as they have been behaving.  They don’t deserve my business.

I considered Satellite TV, but found out my apartment complex charges a hefty installation deposit, on top of whatever setup fees are necessary from the provider itself, like DirecTV or Dish.  And it wouldn’t really save me that much money.  I would end up paying two different companies about the same as I was giving Comcast before I switched to DSL.

Another option was to ditch TV entirely.  I could have an antenna for the local news, and major network programming.  I could have sites like hulu.com for shows like The Daily Show, and other cable network television I would want to keep up with. This option seemed extreme.  But it would save a substantial amount of money.

Tempting, but, I wasn’t sure I wanted to go quite that extreme.

Recently, I’ve been reading about the Roku Netflix box.  It seems to sweeten the deal.  In my mind, combining this instant download service with my XBox 360, and broadcast TV just about makes up for the loss.

These instant movies and TV shows through Netflix are unlimited, even with the least plan, a measly $9/month.  So I’ll be saving over $45 per month, over $500 a year, and if I get bored surfing the web or with broadcast TV, I can always watch a random movie off of Netflix instantly.

The device from Roku is actually $99, and I would need to purchase two antennas for my televisions, both $15.  So in order for the savings to actually pay off, I need to switch for at least 3 months.

I’ve made my decision: for the next three months, I’m going to try the Roku box/antenna combo.  If I don’t like it, I can cancel Netflix, sign up for cable again, and sell the roku box on ebay.  Although something tells me I’m going to like it.  There are rumors flying about Roku introducing new content providers with a firmware upgrade.  I hope they’re true, and I hope the content is as good as Netflix’s 10000 on-demand movies.

Last week, I bought a Series 2 Dual Tuner Tivo, which is great. I love it. My parents have several, and I miss it when I’m at my place.

I bought a new entertainment center last weekend because my old one’s wheel came off. My friend was nice enough to help me set it up. Thanks dude! The new one looks much better, and is more to my taste anyway. I’ll see if I can post a picture at some point.

I bought a new mp3 player, the SanDisk Sansa, this weekend also. It kicks ass. It plays videos, displays pictures, plays my music, tunes fm radio, and is tiny. Everything I’d ever want. It’s only 2 gig now, but once I buy a mini-SD card, that will increase significantly.

My cat has also benefited from my recent shopping spree. She got two new pieces of furniture to cozy up to or play with as she sees fit.

But you guys have to help me out… please smack me upside the head if I spend much more money. Luckily all my most recent purchases came out of my bank account (no more credit card debt, I hope), because I got my $600 tax refund Friday! Hooah! As you can tell, I’ve already spent most of it. Oh well…

I have a new laser pointer. I’ve discovered many different ways of amusing myself with it. I’ve had a red laser pointer for years. I bought one when they first came out, in the early 90′s. But this one is green, and appears much brighter, as the human eye is much more sensitive to green light than red. I got it from China, for half the normal domestic price.

In early December, I bought an XBox 360. Actually, I bought two of them, but the first one turned out to be a fraud. The online seller was offering a too-good-to-be-true price, and I went for it. I ended up getting my money back, but ended up waiting much longer to get the game system than I had intended.

I also bought an extremely nerdy toy, a 500 GB external hard drive. I think I get a few bonus points, though, because it was designed by F.A. Porsche. I have put every song, book and movie I have ever downloaded on it, and it only a quarter of the way full, if that.

I have a subscription to blockbuster online. I recently switched from Netflix. I get way more movies per month with blockbuster for the same price. I can have six movies at a time with the three movie plan. Awesome… I’ll explain how that works later.

Soon enough I’ll finally be getting a DVD writer. I’ve waited long enough to join that revolution.

I don’t see myself writing too much about the hard drive or DVD writer. Not all that much new you can do with that stuff. I’ll be writing some reviews for games that I enjoy, my thoughts on the various movies I’ve watched with blockbuster online, and new ways of enjoying my green laser pointer.