Crasymaker

Back at the beginning of the new TV season, I had my eye on a few new shows: The Class, Six Degrees, Studio 60, 30 Rock and Heroes.

I watched the first episode of The Class and it was pretty awful…not exactly Laguna Beach-style awful but definitely not something I’d ever watch again and Six Degrees got really boring really fast.

Studio 60 and 30 Rock are both fantastic and I’ve watched every episode so far.

For some reason, however, I never even started watching Heroes. Some friends of mine are always talking about how good it is so I used an iTunes gift card to buy the first episode and it was friggin’ great. I’ve since watched the next 5 episodes and I can’t wait to catch up and watch them on our new TV in HD.

Anyway, are any of ya’ll watching Heroes?

OK so ya’ll know Cory, right? Well he has this song that he sometimes plays at his live shows about how the band KISS broke his heart in the 80s when they washed off their makeup (and “rock-n-roll”) to enjoy a more commercial resurgence.

It’s a funny song and obviously a joke but not to some. Oh no. Especially the “KISS Militia”, who according to Cory is “apparently a smaller rogue group of fans that roams the cyberland defending the band’s 80’s output”. Since uploading a video of the song to his MySpace Videos page, he’s gotten an onslaught (ok so it’s just a handful so far) of comments from angry, aging KISS fans.

I highly suggest heading over there and reading some of the earlier comments. Funny (sad) stuff.

After a few months of our internet working great, things started getting back to normal at our house (and if you recall, normal ain’t so good).

Anyway, our first step in getting rid of Cox was to switch to satellite TV and then we’d get DSL and be done with our “friend in the digital age” for good. After shopping around and getting some advice from friends, we decided to try Dish Network.

We discovered that there are three things you need to know if you’re considering Dish Network that we didn’t find out about until after we were signed up, installed and ready to go.

1. If you want a true HD DVR, you must demand model #622
When I called and asked for an HD DVR in the main room and a regular receiver for the bedroom, the woman happily set up my account and even repeated my order back to me. However, when the guy showed up to install our system, he had no HD DVR with him. Instead, he had an HD receiver and a non-HD DVR that he was going to put next to our TV (that’s TWO boxes) and when I asked him if I’d be able to record in HD, he said, “No, but you don’t want to do that anyway because HD takes up too much hard drive space.” Wrong answer, dude. If I’m gonna live with two boxes instead of one, I’d better be able to do MORE than I was with Cox, not LESS. So I called customer service and they said I’d have to pay a $199 non-refundable fee for model #622 if I wanted a true HD DVR. I argued for a while and got the fee credited to my account and scheduled a new installation date a few days later.

So far, so good okay.

2. Although Dish Network does provide your local channels for $5/month, they do not provide them in HD in all cities
I found this out the hard way after the guy left and nothing on ABC, NBC, CBS or FOX was in HD. This isn’t a terrible thing since not everything that comes on those channels is broadcasted in HD but there are a few things that are such as Lost and NFL Football. For us, those are pretty important pieces of programming that Cox already provides in HD so we weren’t willing to downgrade those channels.

At this point, we started to regret signing up.

3. You must have an active (land) phone line or you will be charged an extra $4.99/month
We woke up the morning after our install only to discover an error message stating that we needed to connect an active phone line to our satellite box in order to continue watching television. Well, that wouldn’t necessarily be such a problem if we had an active phone line but since we don’t, I figured I’d better call customer service again. Wanna guess what they told me? Sure enough, you must have a phone line connected to the boxes at all times or else you will be charged an extra $4.99/month and you won’t be able to order any of the tons upon tons of Pay-Per-View programs that Dish Network offers. Somehow, I had talked to 3 customer service representatives and two different installation technicians without any of them saying anything at all about a phone line. I even told the woman that I placed the order with that I only had a cell phone after she asked for my home phone number. That would’ve been the perfect time to tell me that I’d be facing extra charges, now wouldn’t it?

By now, we’d had enough so we cancelled our service completely…but not without Dish Network keeping our $199 non-refundable HD-DVR fee that they were going to credit to my account if we had stayed with them.

The moral of the story is this: Dish Network might not be right for you so you’d better make sure it is before you sign up for an 18-month contract. If recording shows in HD is important to you, it’s gonna cost you $199. If having ABC, NBC, CBS and FOX in HD is important to you, then you better make sure you ask if those channels are provided in HD in your city. And finally, if you don’t have a phone line, they’re gonna charge you a fee and you won’t be ordering any Pay-Per-View shows.

If none of those things are a problem for you, then go for it. They’ve got a ton of standard definition channels, a ton of HD channels (some really cool ones, too) and it’s way cheaper than Cox.

I’m sorry for such a long post but I feel like I owe it to everyone who I told Dish Network about. I know some of you were actually considering switching after I talked to you about our new setup. Choose wisely, ya’ll. Consider us your guinnea pigs.

UPDATE: A few weeks after posting this, I noticed a $199 refund credit to my bank account from Dish Network. Read more about it here.

Well, we knew it was coming but I don’t think anyone expected it to be this cool. The iPhone arrived this morning and as a result, Apple’s stock has already risen 7% in just a few hours.

I’ve only given the site a quick once-over but I cannot believe how groundbreaking this new device is. There isn’t a single phone on the marked that even begins to compare to the iPhone and I wish like hell that I owned some Apple stock when the rest of the world takes notice.

I would highly suggest heading over to the iPhone page and taking a few minutes to see how your new phone works because there are just way too many cool features for me to list. I’m still trying to wrap my head around a few of them.

It will set you back $499 (4GB) and $599 (8GB) which may sound steep but then again, you’re getting 1) the most advanced cell phone on the market, 2) a wide-screen iPod which also happens to be the most advanced MP3 player on the market and 3) a Wi-Fi/EDGE/Bluetooth device that not only features true internet browsing (not some dumbed-down cell phone browser) but will also handle all of your e-mail.

The catch? It’s only available through Cingular. Good thing I switched from Sprint a couple of years ago…

It’s a few days late but Happy New Year anyway. Did anybody do anything sweet on New Year’s Eve? Anybody got any resolutions for 2007?

I’m gonna try the ole “No Sodas” resolution that I tried a couple of years ago and failed miserably at. So far so good, but it’s only been 5 days.

I’ve been working with Sarah over at Bittersweet Styles quite a bit lately. I’ve been taking/editing photos with our new camera and also re-designing the eBay store and all the listings. I guess it’s safe to assume she’s my new boss. I actually have two jobs now because I’m still at my old one (but only part-time…and that’s a whole other story).

Hmm, what else? I guess that’s it. Have a bonus-filled 2007.