The Comcast’s credit, I called the Business Support line and they got another lineman out within the hour.  Our downtime was a grand total of 70 minutes.  That’s pretty stellar response time, but it was still a significant and preventable disruption in the middle of the business day, given that 50 minutes of that time was me managing the outage on the phone, checking my side of the cabling to make sure a squirrel didn’t chew through anything, making failover plans for the business gear in the event that they didn’t send someone out soon, and then meeting the 2nd lineman.  So, if they would send me a video of them slapping the carelessness out of the first lineman that couldn’t seem to spare the time to read the notes on the f***ing work order, that would be great.

The cable company sent us a full bill this month dated Feb 15, so I called them to ensure that they had our cutoff order in the system.  The call center rep confirmed our cutoff date as Feb. 2nd, and said that their ‘system’ has not yet ‘finalized’ the cutoff.  She tried to shorten the time and bring the ‘finalization date’ closer, but her computer would only extend the date, not shorten it.  She told us to not pay this new bill (since we had paid more than the prorated amount already), and she confirmed again that we would receive a refund check for the overage.

So, we continue to watch TV as a family in the evening.  The Olympics currently dominate NBC, with hours and hours of snow sports on the local affiliate.  The kids like watching ‘the pretty girls’ skating with those ‘handsome boys.’  The NBC network aired the Olympic Curling competitions on CNBC, so we did not get to see it.  We will survive somehow.

NBC has our attention after the Olympics, too, with “Parenthood” and “The Marriage Ref” coming up, along with my own personal addiction “30 Rock.”  Fox has “House", and ABC has “Better Off Ted” (if they have enough insight to renew it for another season).  My wife is finding her “Hoarders” fix online, and the kids are watching the heck out of PBS Kids and Harry Potter movies.

Our RedBox rentals continue to outpace Netflix (which has not seen fit to send us more than a couple of new releases since November).  The kids are watching quite a bit of Netflix Streaming, and I wonder when Netflix will start capping the bandwidth.

I’ll try to remember to check in every once in a while.  Feel free to share your “quitting cable” stories/links in the comments.

I realized that I am treating everything like a commodity now, and that even my iPhone has become just another generic hammer in my toolbox of “crap I use to do the job.”  I wrote this post as a deconstruction of Fanboyism and how I have seen its decline over the past 30 years.

We all know someone who is a Fanboy of something.  He might be a sports fanatic, or an Intel CPU fanboy (versus an AMD fanboy), or an XBOX fanboy (versus a Playstation fanboy).  These people are different than regular fans; these people are staunch supporters of something diametrically opposed to a competitor.

From the Fletcher Unabridged Dictionary: “Fanboyism” describes a phenomena wherein an individual holds unwavering positive feelings of a passionate and persistent nature regarding a particular product, company, or other concept.  Individuals exhibiting “Fanboyism” become especially fervent when the the precepts of their beliefs are criticized.   “Fanboyism” results from the natural desire to defend and justify one’s personal investment (time, money, reputation, associations) in a particular and primary choice, wherein the choice represents a commitment to a specific subset of subsequent choices.  “Fanboyism” is most often observed in consumers of products and services that involve a mutually-exclusive choice and subsequent investment based on that choice.

For example, Apple Macintosh computer hardware and software is [generally] not compatible with Microsoft Windows hardware and software.  A consumer of computer products must make an initial choice between these two platforms/brands.  Once this initial choice is made, the consumer is locked into purchases that are only compatible with the chosen brand.

An individual’s personal investment (of time, money, reputation) is accounted directly to the initial choice of “Mac or PC.”  That investment cannot be recuperated if the individual later changes his mind.  If that person were to change his mind and switch to a different computer platform, he would essentially lose his investment of thousands of dollars and hundreds (upon hundreds) of hours.  The longer the person remains committed to the initial choice, the deeper the investment, and the more difficult it becomes to change his mind.

Fanboysim is complex.  It runs much deeper than mere pride.  I have seen fanboyism mimic religion, with the members of the its congregation actively trying to convert non believers, attempting to increase the size of their flocks.  It seems like a crazy thing to be so emotionally invested in a computer brand, but there it is.  I am currently having a very similar feeling about quitting cable.  There seems to be a strong desire for validation in Fanboyism; having others reassure you that you made the right decision, reinforcing your beliefs that your choice was superior to the alternative.

Brand loyalty is not Fanboyism.  I have a particular brand/model of ink pen that I absolutely love.  They don’t make them anymore.  It is the Bic Exact Tip Roller Ball Pen 0.6mm Needle Tip first manuafactured in the year 2000.  I signed my Last Will & Testament with one and fell in love with it instantly.  I asked my lawyer if I could have it, and he said “absolutely; you paid for it.”  I bought these pens over the next two years, and then bought two cases of them in 2003.

I gave most of those pens away to people, saying that “this is the best pen you will ever use.”  99% of the recipients agreed.  I was glad to give these pens away because I was sharing “the joy of writing.”  It was a ridiculously good pen.  My last pen ran out of ink in March 2005.  I still miss them.  I’ve been looking for a replacement for five years, and still hold out hopes for finding one as good as the Bic.

I was not a Fanboy of the Bic Exact Tip Roller Ball Pen.  I did not get into arguments about which pen was better.  I was not so emotionally and financially invested in the choice that I couldn’t change to a different pen later.  I did not have hundreds of dollars in pen accessories, nor did I have special paper that was only compatible with my favorite pen.  It was simply the most awesome pen ever made.  (Now that I think about it, I kind of feel the same way about this stapler.  Hmmm.)

Fanboyism is a telltale sign of competition and innovation, whereby two competing commercial entities strive to capture the same pool of customers while differentiating their products from their competitor’s products.  Ultimately, the customers’ needs would be met by either company, but the customers are isolated into two separate product silos created as a result of the two companies’ efforts to differentiate their products.  More often than not, these two silos are explicitly designed to be incompatible so as to lock in existing customers and to prevent their migration to a competitor (and to avoid paying licenses for technologies invented by someone else); Proprietary technology as a business model.

Proprietary lock-ins do not guarantee fanboys.  The fanboy phenomenon requires a competitive marketplace with at least two similarly capable products from two or more companies.  In contrast, Cable companies have exclusive arrangements with cities/municipalities that prevent competition, and cable companies are hemorrhaging subscribers at an alarming rate as customers seek out better experiences with online offerings.  That makes American cell phone companies one of the last bastions of proprietary silos, preventing customers from migrating their favorite cell phones to the network of their choice.  There are millions of iPhone fanboys, but very few AT&T fans.

Fanboyism thrives in times of luxury, wealth, and prosperity, and does not apply to commodities.  It is a sign that we are enjoying a time of plenty.  Otherwise, we would be fighting over food, not which video game system was better than the other.  I must tell you that I am running out of energy to devote to such tiresome ideological pursuits.  I am also at a loss to name any new product that meets the requirements.  No, I do not find myself getting fired up about the iPad, and I could give less of a shit about the Kindle.

Over the past 30 years, the innovation-to-commoditization cycle has gotten tighter and tighter, shortening the window for proprietary systems’ dominance in the mainstream space.  Even iTunes has dropped their DRM lock in, making the iPod a plain old (insanely well-designed) mp3 player with a user experience that differentiates itself from its competition.  In the end, however, it is just a music player with an online music store.

We have seen crazy innovation in the past 30 years.  VCR, CD, PC, TCP/IP, WWW, DVD, MP3, LCD, HDTV, 3D… The format wars keep getting shorter and shorter, due in no small part to the lessons that we learned in the VHS-vs..-Betamax years.  I mean, honestly, how many people bought a Blu-Ray player while there was still a chance that the HD-DVD player might win?  No one was willing to make that mistake.. again.

There are very few fanboy venues left in the realm of technology.  Speaking for myself, personally – I will wait for the commoditized/standardized version of [insert product name here] before I get in line.  Even then, I’ll probably buy it used on eBay.

I suspect that this is what it means to get old.  I need to tell those kids to get off my lawn.  Is there an app for that?

No.  I won’t.

Marc Maron recently had a rant about this particular topic, wishing that everyone could just unplug for [a month?] and reset.  I don’t recall his exact quote, but it was along the lines of “How much of our angst and frenzy is self-inflicted, driven by the media that we are gladly jamming down our eye sockets and ear holes.  WTF!”

Two years ago, I would have thought that Marc was a knee-jerk praetorian.  Today, I am a believer.

They prorated our monthly bill, so we only owe about half of the usual amount even though the lineman won’t be out to disconnect the line for another couple weeks.  Our RF system is disconnected from the cable service inside the house, so it doesn’t really matter to us.

I double-checked with the call center rep to make sure that the work order included a note about not disrupting our internet service (on a separate account).  She even read the note back to me, but I am still a little worried that the lineman will do something to screw it up.  Perhaps I am too cynical, lack faith, and am blindly distrustful of strangers.  We’ll find out in a couple of weeks.

Meanwhile, the wife is enjoying the high-def shows like CSI and House and GMA, I am catching up with my old friends David Letterman and Conan O’Brien, and the kids are no longer missing the endless stream of pre-teen snot-nosed brat dialogue that had spewed from the Disney/Nickelodeon channels just 11 days ago. *Ahhhhh*

One day after completely disconnecting our house from the RF cable service (but keeping the internet service via the cable modem), everything is working and we are adjusting nicely. 

The kids had been getting used to the idea for the past week because I had disconnected the TVs from cable.  They filled their time with other things like DVDs and games, though my oldest daughter has asked a few times “when will we get to watch real TV again,” to which I had responded with a “we’ll have to see.”

My wife and I had a talk with the kids about it last night at dinner time, and we explained that we have lots of things to do in our house besides watching TV.  I told them that we will no longer pay the many, many times their allowance for us to watch the same shows over and over.

Reactions:

Our oldest daughter’s eyes welled up when she heard that she would not be able to watch her Disney shows 24 hours a day. 

I told her that Hannah Montana and Zach & Cody would record once a week on Saturday morning (courtesy of ABC), and that would be enough.  She recovered quickly, though I’m sure that this will be “one of those times” that she remembers forever.  Bummer.

Our other two daughters are perfectly cool with it; just more time to play Lego Indiana Jones, Marble Blast, and Guitar Hero… and My Little Pony.

Dictating Change

I suppose that this is an illustration that effective Parenthood requires a benevolent dictatorship.  (Yes, we are also stewards of our children, but stewardship does not sufficiently address the management of dissent.)  In the end, this is such a small change resulting in such great benefit to the children and the household that it would be irresponsible to not follow through.  I regret not doing it sooner, and that is my constant burden.

Spare TV, anyone?

In the process of converting from analog to digital, I found some incredible deals for LCD TVs on eBay, and we are left with two spare TV’s that require converter boxes. 

Our babysitter is a college student, and we were able to ‘gift’ her one of our old analog-only TVs for $5.  The $5 was really just a formality because she would not accept it for “free.”  We need to find a good home for one more.

The Coat Hanger Hoverman works better than I had ever expected, though I shouldn’t be surprised; many people are having good luck with it.  We’ll have to see how it will hold up in the wind, weather, etc.  I have a plastic bag over it at the moment to help shield it from the elements, and the bag does not seem to be diminishing the signal significantly;  the seven RF ‘drops’ in the house are all being serviced from that single antenna (and an RF amplifier) with brilliant digital signal.

As of noon on Saturday Jan 30th, 2010, this house is no longer using cable television.

The kids are playing hide-and-seek, Guitar Hero, putting together puzzles, watching Harry Potter movies, playing their DS’s, reading books. 

We are sitting on the couch with the kids on Sunday watching U.S. Figure Skating on our local NBC broadcast affiliate in high-definition.  Pretty.  Dad is watching his Futurama on DVD while working at the computer, Mom is watching her Good Morning America in amazing hi-def clarity while getting ready for work.  She even commented on how clear the picture was.  Life is good.

Problem:  “Damages” is on tonight on FX (Cable).  We had not watched the previous seasons on cable, but we caught up on DVD.  Insanely-captivating show.  How will I convince my wife that it is OK to wait for it to come out on DVD?  I’ll let you know how it goes.

My wife likes several shows on several cable networks; Hoarders on A&E, Challenge on The Food Network, and the endless reruns of CSI:Whatever on whichever channels.  I also like the Futurama reruns on Comdey Central, and the Battlestar Galactica franschise on SyFy.  The startling revelation is: we can buy 20 seasons’ worth of DVDs for the price we pay for cable in a year ($700).

Sure these are tough economic times for everyone, but that is not my primary motivation.  My main goal is to get “Zach & Cody On Deck,” “iCarly,” “Hannah Montana,” and “Wizards of Waverly Place” out of my house.  The money savings is just a perk.

We have hundreds of books, broadband internet (via cable), an XBOX 360, Rock Band and Guitar Hero, two Ninetndo DS Lites, three laptops, a couple of Zunes, board games, Netflix, RedBox, and a Windows Media Center feeding this house.  Yet, I often find my kids staring agape at some rerun of some insipid Disney Channel show.  I am calling it.  The End!

I just built this antenna and put it up on our garage roof (mostly hidden from view).  It is a homemade UHF antenna for receiving over-the-air TV broadcasts. The Hoverman design is popular with the do-it-yourself crowd, and this simplified version is from www.makezine.com.  You can go full-blown if you want to, but the simple version is working for us at the moment.

I disconnected the cable from the main house feed 20 minutes ago.  I connected the Hoverman antenna to an RF amplifier, and connected the amp to the main house feed.  Viola!  (Note to self: there are two TVs in the house that are still analog, so they will be Media Center-only TVs, or I’ll need to get off-air converter boxes.)

If you think that I am brave, you need to know that I am cheating.  My wife is not all-the-way on board with the plan, but she agreed to try it with the kids for a while.  The Media Center is still connected to the cable company, and it will still record shows from the cableco;  I have not cancelled our cable service yet.  She’ll still be able to watch her shows if she sets the Media Center to record them.

So, the saga continues.  The next step is to live without cable on the televisions for a week or two and see how it goes.  I need to find answers to my wife’s concerns (Hoarders, Challenge, etc), and need to find a converter box for her laundry room TV.  After that, I hope to completely cut the cord on the CableTV and cancel our cable (though we’ll continue to use and pay for business broadband internet service).

My stance: Our house cannot function without paper towels.  Everything else is negotiable.

Our house is wired with a 10-drop house-wide CAT5 network and 802.11b wireless.  With the home-run cable network in my house and the RF modulator that I installed, I can watch our Windows Media Center on any regular TV in the house by tuning to channel 3.  I also have an XBOX 360 as a media extender connected to the ‘big screen’ in the living room.  I can also access the recorded content from any of the laptops and PCs in the house. 

So we can watch recorded TV, Netflix, DVDs on any TV in the house.  You can do it, too.  I created a diagram of the one that I built for my home back in 2005.  It would be helpful if you had an RF meter to work out the cable TV signal strength levels, but you might be able to “eyeball” it and get lucky.  (If you run into cable signal problems, you’ll need a cable TV RF signal level meter and some knowledge to work it out.  Those RF meters cost over $1,000 and are not commonly-found at rental places, but maybe you can buy your local cable guy a few beers and have him help you out.)

We’re considering getting rid of our cable and reverting back to off-air HD broadcasts for our new content, and continuing our Netflix and Hulu/Fancast for the older stuff.  Considering that would save us $700 a year, it seems like a no brainer.  Our home media network makes it an even more obvious move.

Enjoy!