YouTube TV

Wow! It's been over a month since I posted. I started doing a personal (instead of public) journal which has taken away from here but I do type on that daily. I like that I can say whatever I want without having to worry about repercussions. I don't like to talk about work here for a couple of reasons. Because this is public, I don't want to speak bad about work, even if it's about the people I work with, in case my employer does run across it. Not that I would have that much to complain about but you never know. I also don't want a fellow employee run across something that I said about them. I don't ever use names but if it's about them, I'm sure they'd figure it out so I don't say anything. It's kind of the same thing with home. So I always have to be concerned about who sees what so I don't post much. Like I said, it's been nice not having to worry about that.

About a month ago, we finally dropped our cable. TV, not internet. I still have internet through Comcast/Xfinity because they are the best there is, at least around here. We looked at dropping our internet and just using hot spots on our phones for internet at home. Verizon has an unlimited data plan but if you read the small print, it slows down after 15 gb and we use almost that now without using it at home. Like I said though, we dropped the cable TV portion and are using YouTube TV. It saves us about $65/month which in the long run, is quite a bit. We've been using for a month now and are completely happy. There are a few channels that we don't have now but not enough to even be a negative and they seem to be adding channels as they can. The added all the Turner Network (TBS, TNT, ect.) just after we signed up. We can't seem to get the app to work on our Roku that's part of our TV. So we stream it through our phones through the Chromecast to our TV. We had to upgrade our Chromecast because we still had the 1st generation but other than that, it's been fine.

The positives about YouTube TV.

1. You can have up to 5 accounts. Each account is separate so all 5 accounts can record their own shows. Cheri records her shows and I record mine and our shows since we only watch them when I'm home.
2. Unlimited DVR cloud storage for each account.
3. Live TV on over 60 channels. All my local channels are included as well as a whole slew of sports channels. Most of the channels we watched are here as well, like I said above, only a few we watched aren't.
4. The most positive for me is the live sports. That's the whole reason we hadn't cut the cord until now. I can still watch my Michigan games as well as the White Sox. I'm also looking forward to watching the NCAA tourney on my phone at work since they play games all day long in the early rounds.

The negatives about YouTube TV.

1. It records everything. You can't tell it to just record new episodes but it does show new episodes in a different location than the reruns so it's not a very big negative in my book.
2. It doesn't have all the channels we watch but again, not a huge negative because it has most of what we watched. It might be a bigger negative to other people because it depends on what channels you tend to watch.
3. You can't record 1 episode of something. An example is I want to record a regular Big Ten Network show that is doing an episode on the Michigan head coach, but it sets it to record every episode. After that episode airs, I will take it off of recording.

You can take what you will out of the above but those were the positives and negatives that we have noticed.

Random stuff for today

Update on cutting the cord (my last post)

We had decided to do it, we were going to stay with Xfinity for internet because let's face it, I have to have high speed and that is what they are best at. I have 4 people in this house, all with laptops and phones. I need high speed just to keep up with that demand let alone all the streaming (Netflix, Amazon) that goes on here. We were about to be done with our 7 day free trial on Sling TV and Hulu (BTW - I have Netflix (my moms account) and Amazon Prime (my daughters account) that I don't pay for) so my wife contacted Xfinity to cancel the cable and phone. She chatted with them on their site and when all was said and done, they lowered our cost of everything we have now for $123/month. That ends up being cheaper than what we were going to do because the internet was going to be $100, Sling TV was $20 (cheapest version) and Hulu was $13, all montly, for a total of $133/month. So we get that rate for a year and we'll either cut the cord next year or get another new low rate. So basically, we aren't cutting the cord. Which we're happy about, just because using a DVR is easier than trying to catch some shows live and trying to remember what all you need to catch up with on Hulu. Plus I'd have to remember the shows I can't watch with those 2 services and try to remember to catch the seasons when they get posted to Amazon or Netflix.

I do the Timehop thing on my phone and today had a few things that I thought were good enough to share.

A year ago today, I posted this on my personal Facebook.

It's funny because it's true. My stepdad does a lot of the work on the families cars because he's good with that stuff. I happen to be at his house when he was working on one of his vehicles and decided I needed to replace some of the duct tape holding my car together (it's old). I backed into somebody either last winter or the winter before, and my bumper (plastic) was hanging on the ground so I duct taped it up rather then spend a fortune on replace it all. I used black duct tape and it's only on one corner of the bumper so it's not that bad looking. The post is also funny because that's about the extent of my knowledge of cars as well.

5 years ago, I posted this post - Please teach your kids!

I was on my way home from picking up the kids from the Ex and was driving down a 2 lane road when I came upon a biker riding his bike in my lane. I slowed down so the car coming towards me got past so I could go around him in the other lane. Unbeknownst to me, he didn't know I was there and turned right in front of me as I was passing him. I made that post thinking he was just going to ride on the other side since there was no cars coming. I see kids doing that all the time, riding on both sides depending on the traffic. After I made that post, I found out he was an adult not a kid (I thought he was an older teenager) and I also found out he was actually turning down the street to the left and not just switching lanes. Either way, it wasn't a pleasant evening for either of us, or the kids.

I never heard anything about the rider, I heard him tell the ambulance that he never saw me and I know his head is what did the damage to my windshield (pictured above), it went clean all the way through before he rolled off my hood. He stood up afterwards so I assume it wasn't anything major.

7 years ago

That one was just funny, I love their croissanwiches, I hate the running to the bathroom afterwards.

This section will become a regular for however long I keep it as a regular. I'm going to repost all the funny stuff I post on my Random Thoughts Facebook page over here on Sundays, call it Sunday comics or funny's or something. Either way, here's your first dose. Feel free to join the FB page so you don't miss out when my lazy ass stops posting them here.

I also wanted to give a little plug over to my other blog - Last Song of the Day. If you like music, check it out. It gets a post a day on average.

That's all for today, a bunch of randomness I know, but I have to live up to the title of the blog. See you again, hopefully soon, but maybe not.

Phone Wars

We were with Verizon at the beginning of the year, but the cost alternatives at other places were too much to ignore.  Our plan was up with Verizon so we shopped around.  We ended up going with the AT&T plan where you got 4 smartphones, unlimited talk and text and 10GB of data to share.  The plan really was perfect, we text a lot, don’t talk a lot (the teenager does) and Cheri and I didn’t use much data while Skyler used between 4 and 5 GB herself.  We had to buy our phones because it wasn’t a contract, and we had to buy Skyler out of her contract with Verizon but we went ahead and dropped the cash because we’d be saving $100 a month with AT&T.

It was ok at first, the network was a little slower, but we expected that.  Then we noticed that occasionally the phone wouldn’t ring but we would get a voicemail alert.  So it wasn’t letting calls through.  Now mind you, we don’t live out in the middle of nowhere and we never had these issues before.  I rarely use the phone for talking so it didn’t bother me so much.  I just made everyone aware of the issue, via Facebook.

The money we were saving made it ok but the longer we were with the service, the more we noticed that we would lose network.  Text messages wouldn’t go out or when they did, they would take anywhere up to 10 minutes.  It’s been really bad the last month or so, maybe because I’m paying more attention to it.  Sending a picture is torture, don’t even try to send multiple ones.

Earlier today, while bitching about my phone, Cheri got online and started looking at Verizon plans.  They have a plan that’s pretty much the same as the AT&T plan so we decided that we were going to run over to Verizon tomorrow and check it out.  Since I was annoyed, I sent out a tweet with both of the companies listed.

I figured that would be it, but apparently not.

I feel so loved.  I figured I would go ahead and respond and see what each would say.  Here’s the Verizon conversation.

That was it, a typical sales job.  He was trying to get me over to their side, which I expected.  He didn’t really answer if I can use my old Verizon phones or not and didn’t really say anything about the Edge plan other than it was an alternative to a contract so I assume it’s a month to month like our AT&T plan.  According to the website, it costs the same as well but we’ll look into that tomorrow.

Here’s the conversation with AT&T and it didn’t go to well for him.

Like I said, it didn’t go to well for him.  Granted, he started behind the 8 ball because I was already annoyed with the network.  Then he did the cardinal sin (in my eyes) as someone that calls tech support.  Have you restarted your phone?  I realize that support deals with morons all the time, but I hate it when they ask me the basic questions.  It shouldn’t make me mad because I hadn’t really told him anything yet. but I just hate when they treat me like one of the morons.  Yes, I’ve shut my phone off, I’ve shut off all running apps, I made sure I had bars before I sent messages or made calls.

I guess we’ll all have to wait until tomorrow after work to see if I switch to Verizon or not.  Like I said above, it will depend on deposits and how much we have to pay for phones.

Journal, July 31st

The end of the month crap at work sucks.  Nobody wants to be charged for the inventory so we get nothing in the last few days and we run out of things.  We run out of things and there is nothing to do.  The convertor lines basically cleaned all day, the lines didn’t run.  I organized stuff with the forklift, the day was just dragging.  Now at midnight tonight, everything will start coming in on the trucks and we’ll have work to do tomorrow.  It’s just stupid, but I do have a funny story.

Usually, when I go to the bathroom, I leave the forklift in my area.  I got paged to department 78 and I took care of their things then figured, since I’m here (next to the bathroom) I’ll just park it here and go.  When I come out, I go back to my area and the forklift is gone.  My forklift was down so I was using the extra one so pretty much any time it’s free, someone is taking it.  I walked around and did nothing for half an hour, waiting for my forklift to return.  During my walk, I walked up the front aisle and there was my forklift, right where I left it.  It was sitting there the whole time but out of habit, I thought it was in my area.  What’s even worse, it was parked right next to the aisle that I used to go to the bathroom.  So when I was finished, I walked right past it.

Samantha has a friend over for the evening and tomorrow.  It’s the girl that she talks to non-stop on her phone.  Cheri made the comment, and I agree, it’s nice to here giggling come from her room.  I don’t know why she hasn’t had more friends over, she must be embarrassed by me.  TheEx even text her and wanted to pick them up early tomorrow and she said no because her friend was still here.  I like it when they tell her no.

I’ve been having issues with my internet on my laptop and my phone has been sucking ass lately.  It’s really starting to piss me off.  I’m guessing it’s my laptop and not necessarily the internet.  The internet all of the sudden about 2 weeks ago slowed way down.  My phone did about the same time too, it takes forever to do anything.  I tried to use the GPS to get to Samantha’s friends house today and it kept freezing which did me know good.  I was so tempted to toss it out the window.  I might be hitting AT&T this weekend about a new phone.  The website says I’m eligible for an upgrade so we’ll see.

Check out them all – Random Thoughts from a Random Guy, My Sports Obsession, My Sports Obsession Tumblr,  My Sports Obsession – Wolverines, My Sports Obsession – Index, A Day in the Life of a Nobody,My Life (private), and Cats Are Cuter.  I also post on Too Many Manninghams.

• I’ve ran out of posts for A Day in the Life of a Nobody and Cats are Cuter so I only posted the usual 3 posts to My Sports Obsession Tumblr and MSO – Wolverines.
• I did post one again to My Sports Obsession, a pick up for the Cal Ripken jr collection.
• Most days I post the last song that I listened to off my Spotify playlist – Anything & Everything, to my Tumblr blog A Day in the Life of a Nobody, called Last Song of the Day.  Here’s the album cover, click it to find out what song it was and to play it so you can listen too

Here’s a listing of all the new (to us) episodes that we watched tonight.

• Extant (DVR) – I definitely like this show.
• Taxi Brooklyn (DVR) – This show isn’t too bad, it’s gradually getting better.  Which is why I usually give new shows 3 or 4 episodes before I quit watching.
• the Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon (DVR) – Heidi Klum was funny and so was Mike Birbiglia.  I remembered him from the days I listened to the Bob & Tom show.
• Hot in Cleveland (DVR) – This is a weird episode, it’s all animated.  I’m not caring for it too much.  We actually stopped it not very long into it.
• Duck Dynasty (DVR) – Funny episode pitting brothers vs. brothers.
• Big Smo (DVR) – He has to write a song to pitch to Darius Rucker for a collaboration which, since I’ve listened to the album, I know he does.
• Impractical Jokers (DVR) – I love this show, I can’t tell you enough times how hilarious this show is.

Randomness #22

One thing I have come to find out, is that on the weeks when I work Monday, Tuesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, I rarely come up with new content for this blog.  I do get online on my 2 days off, but I’m usually in a blah mood and all I do is go through my Feedly (which I am way behind on).  Even my Tumblr blogs were neglected, except My Sports Obsession Tumblr because I had enough queued up to cover the week.  Now if you pay enough attention, you’ll notice I posted here on Monday and Tuesday but that would be because I had already typed them up the week before.  Maybe on my shorts weeks I should create enough to last me through next week as well but I don’t see that happening.

2 weeks ago, my wife noticed that my left ankle was swollen and after pressing on it and questioning me about pain, we thought maybe I was retaining some water.  A couple of days later, I was at work and a friend noticed that the left side of my face was swollen as well.  So I asked a couple of people and they all pointed out my left side so I sent a text to Cheri and she set me up with an appointment on Friday with our doctor.  The next day while I was at the doctor’s office, Cheri noticed that my left hand was swollen as well.  After talking with the doc, he set me up on a water pill for the next 10 days and scheduled me for an ultrasound and blood work.  The blood work was just to check organ functions and the ultrasound was to check my leg for a blood clot because I have a couple of relatives who get them all the time.  All of them were negative but let me tell you about those damn water pills.  The first day I took them, Samantha had a basketball tournament where she played at 9am and 10am and depending on their record, possibly at 11am.  So I pop the pill and we head to the gym, we get to the gym and I go pee.  Sam’s games are only 7 minute quarters and through that first game, I had to pee after every quarter.  It did finally taper off but I got rid of a lot of water that first day.  I actually took my last one today so I guess we’ll see if it comes back in the coming week.

(that’s not Trevor)

Last weekend, I get a text from theEx that says they took Trevor to Great Clips and they screwed up his hair, again.  Why they insist on taking him to get his hair cut is beyond me.  Cheri used to do hair for a living, she did it for years and she always takes care of the kids hair.  Our oldest daughter, who will be 19 in a couple of months, still comes home to have her mom cut her hair and brings friends and her boyfriend home to get hair cuts.  She still cuts Samantha’s hair but for some stupid reason, when they take the JackAss to get his hair cut, they cut Trevor’s hair.  He has a basic boys cut and yet, they’ve screwed it up twice now.  This time, he has very little hair left, he’s damn near bald.  What annoys me is she’ll pay for a haircut but not buy the kids clothes that fit.

For those that don’t know, I switched cell phone services.  Our contract was up at Verizon and we switched over to AT&T.  While I believe Verizon has the best service, it’s way too expensive with all the no contract plans out there.  We were going with a $40-50/month prepay service and then I saw the new commercial where you get up to 4 lines, unlimited talk and text and 10 GB to share for $160/month.  We only have 3 phones so it’s $145/month but we can add a 4th line for another $15.  Obviously, the unlimited talk and text is great, and the 10 GB is plenty.  Cheri and I use about 1.5 GB and Skyler will use between 4 and 5 GB’s so like I said, we have plenty.  The service isn’t nearly as good as Verizon’s was.  I struggle to get text’s in and out at work where with Verizon, that wasn’t an issue.  Both networks sucked as far as using data at work so no difference there.  Outside of work I haven’t had many issues but I have with one and I’m curious if other AT&T customers have this problem.  Cheri has called me multiple times at it doesn’t even show that she called on my phone.  I’m sitting at home, where I have service so it shouldn’t be a service issue.  Does anybody else have this problem?  With all the money we are saving (about $100/month) it’s not enough issues to make me upset.  Nobody really calls me anyways, it’s even rare for Cheri to call me because either I’m at work or we are together.

Randomness #21

I just realized it’s been over 2 weeks since I posted something that wasn’t a weekly meme.  I suck, but nobody really reads this anyways.  To prove it, I’ll admit to something I did this week.  I kind of started writing a book.  Only 4 chapters, but I did start one.  I also have a few ideas for other books but taking the time to write them will be the issue.

I get about 100 pageviews a day, but I know most of those go to a certain post that has pictures of woman on it.  I regret copying that over to my blog.  I would delete it but at least with a 100 page views, I feel like someone is listening, even if they aren’t.

At this point, I’m just trying to get through this long work week because next week I only have to work 1 day.  Oh yeah, it’s also Christmas.  I’m excited to see how happy the kids will be when they open their new tablets.  They are just cheapies, but it’ll be their first big test for electronics for them.  Trevor will probably just play video games on it, Samantha will be the one I have to keep an eye on.  I already have the tablets set up that I get an email every time they download an app.  I’m a little worried about them having access to the internet but they are both good kids and I don’t think either of them would do anything they weren’t supposed to but I’ll keep an eye on them regardless.

Cheri went to town the last month or so making treats to sell at the kids school system for the girl’s basketball team.  We set up a table at the arts and crafts show and tried to sell what she made.  Everybody loved the stuff but we didn’t sell as much as we thought we would.  Of course, Cheri went way overboard with everything she made but she made some awesome treats.  We did come out ahead with what she sold but a lot was due to our family buying stuff.  I had fun helping her sell it though (don’t tell her).  We spent the whole morning setting up, selling, and tearing down.  You can check out her treats on her Facebook page, check out the photos and be sure to like it while you’re there.

I haven’t posted about theEx or the JackAss recently.  That’s mainly because he has finally given up harassing us.  That might have to do with all his medical issues or as we call it, karma.  He has been going from hospitals to nursing homes.  I’m not going into all that because to be honest, I just don’t care.  TheEx on the other hand has gone from living in her duplex, to living with her mother, now they are staying at a hotel and supposedly getting ready to move into a rental farm house.  But what really annoys me is they are taking advantage of their church.  The kids have gotten clothes and food from them, and now, I hear, they are furnishing her new house.  Meanwhile, every time the kids are over at her place for the weekend, they go out to eat.  They had Golden Corral on their way home after the church delivered their furniture.  There is a reason we don’t go out much with the kids, it’s expensive for 4 people to eat out.  But I guess since she only pays $27/week child support, she can afford it.  As far as we go, they’ve annoyed us here and there.  Mainly not giving Trevor his pills over the weekends but I’ve complained about that here before.

I’ve been thinking about cutting the cord as it’s called.  Ditching cable and just going with Netflix and Hulu+ to watch all my TV.  When I came home, I was leaning towards ditching it, but after getting on Hulu and checking out what all is there, I’m leaning on keeping cable.  There are a lot of shows that I watch that weren’t listed or that I had to watch on another site.  So right now, the convenience of just checking the DVR is winning out over having to keep track of everything I watch and what website I watch it on.  Which really sucks because it would have save me a fortune.  Of course, my mom and brother would have to take me in every Saturday during the Michigan football season, but they won’t mind.  If they do, I have keys to both their houses and I know when they work.

Hulu does have a free week with sign up so maybe I’ll check it out next week and see.

I guess that’s about all for now, I’m in the middle of my 5 day work week and at 12 hour days, I don’t know how much I’ll be on this week.  But like I said in the top paragraph, nobody reads this anyways so you won’t notice.