Partial Pay-Down Success

I took the morning off work to await the arrival of our 46" of LED awesomeness, and decided to sit down with my coffee to a multi-entry, rush poker tournament of 519 entrants. It only cost $1.10 to enter and I had some time to kill and a hangover to nurse, thanks to last night's all-you-can-drink and all-you-can-eat sushi special.

To my surprise, I made it to the final table, and came in 5th place out of 519. Which is awesome in terms of my staying power, but relatively anticlimactic in terms of the payout. But, I made $33.74, minus the $1.10 to enter, bringing the total TV pay-down winnings to $32.64 and bringing me to ultimate household glory in the race to gamble ourselves to financial freedom.

Of course, I also paid $50 yesterday to see Michael Stipe and Mike Mills play with a cast of all-star mucisans covering Big Star's Third/Sister Lovers album at Baruch on Saturday. But that's neither here nor there. http://www.jambands.com/news/2011/03/23/michael-stipe-to-play-big-star-s-third-sister-lovers-tribute-show



Anyhow, here's a picture of yours truly ruling the final table until it all fell apart. So far, my choice of gambling has proven more financially rewarding than Hern's (BURN!), but hey, you never know. According to his correction, the TV was actually $970, and after breaking even with Lotto, and my stellar poker showmanship, we only have $937.36 left to pay off, most of which will be made up in the cancellation of cable, the price of which went up this month, just in time to give TWC the finger.

Time to call those FedEx assholes and find out if our TV has finally departed Jamaica, Queens.

Television! Teacher, mother, secret lover. ~Homer Simpson, The Simpsons

I am a television hog. I wallow in it. I consume it with gluttonous abandon.

MTV and Nickelodeon were my child hood muses. I can recall with great joy when the Fox Network debuted and when we first got cable and HBO. I would watch the same movies over and over. Rewatch programs ad infinitum. But then it all came to a halt when I went to college.

For some reason my college did not provide cable television to it's students in their dorm rooms. Except for a few hours on Sunday nights (the Simpsons) and Saturday mornings (The Tick) in crowded tv lounges I barely watched TV. Even my senior year when we lived in the giant fire hazard known as Shitby we had 8 people vying for the access to the one small TV. I recall nothing much being watched except South Park, Pop-up Video and My So Called Life (shame on 21 year old college men for watching that show). Oh, and a recurring viewing of MST3K's Warrior of The Lost World (MAKE IT SLOW, MEGAWEAPON!).

Upon graduating (1998) I resumed my television consuming binge. First there was the glory of having my own TV set. Then was the glory of street corner cheap-o DVD's. The advent of the DVR simplified my life as I became consumed with LOST and Battlestar Galactica (the best in serialized television story telling)- no longer did I need to be home at certain times on certain days to watch my stories. I was able to stay out whenever I wanted and wherever I wanted, confident that my electronic guardian angel was ensuring that my shows would be waiting for me upon my arrival.

I've started exploring a couple of options for non-cable content. One is Boxee and the another is TVersity. My guess is that I may find more use from TVersity since it's a versatile DLNA media server but at a glance Boxee has an impressive array of free television shows to choose from. I don't know if I can stream from my computer to my TV using Boxee. The other option that intrigues me is the recent resurgence in "rabbit ears" for capturing broadcast HDTV signals. Will any of these satisfy? I aim to find out.

Clearly, I don't have a verdict on which is best yet as my home network has been unreliable and I am not in possession of the television yet. Damn you Time Warner Cable and your shitty wireless router and even shittier chat based technical service! Swine. But, I'm pretty sure that between services such as those mentioned above and a plethora of torrents at my disposal- plus my good friend John having a huge jump on this sort of thing and who has amassed a huge media collection that he is generously willing to share - that there will be no dearth of content on my TV screen. I'm going to review the pros and cons of these services in the near future as I get the TV set up, the cable off loaded and my bearings straight.

Replenishing the nest egg

Naturally, Hern decided that playing Lotto was the best course of action in recouping the cost of our bitchin' new TV. He called me on his walk home from work to proclaim that he was about to purchase a Mega Millions and a Powerball, so I asked if he'd chosen any particularly meaningful numbers. "Statistics, Reeno, statistics! All numbers have an equal chance of being called, so I'm just letting the machine pick them." I reminded him that statistically, he had a 1:175 million chance of winning back our money. But I digress...



Outcome: Hern wins us $3. Which brings the remaining cash money total to recoup to $997. Except that he paid $3 for the Lotto tickets, and absent my ability to watch Teen Mom 2 on what I now call Teen Mom Twosday, I spent $3 on ingredients to perfect the hummus recipe I've been at war with for three months. But it worked!



So now we've got to figure out how to earn back $1,003 while snacking on truly amazing homemade hummus by the spoonful. Enter: my online poker addiction.


Will Reeno's year-long crash course in poker theory improve the household's financial state? Or will bad luck and pockets full of 10-2 off-suit plunge us further into economic turmoil?

We can't stop here, this is bat country!

I'm about to start stumbling through the world of life without cable. This is intimidating. The fear in the air is palpable.

I've thought about doing this for quite a while but just never had a strong impetus to take the plunge. Two weeks ago my girlfriend threw a Wiimote through my Sony LCD. I know, I should have had the straps on. All I ever played was Guitar Hero, hence the straps being removed from the controllers. The first time I put Wii Bowling into the damn Wii in about 4 years and the TV gets busted.

Go figure.

Weeks have passed. I've dithered, hemmed, hawed and researched. I even cried a little. We spent hours at J&R Music World and PC Richards while battling fierce hangovers from the party where we finally destroyed the TV completely in the best party game ever.


So we split the cost of a new awesome Sony Internet Enabled TV, a 46EX520- 46 inches of LED Internet enabled awesomeness and decided that we'd cancel cable for a while to pay back the cost of the TV. Is this a smart move? Will our relationship survive the two of us actually having to talk? The answer so far is "I don't know". We haven't talked yet - she's playing on-line poker and I'm aimlessly blogging about cutting the cord with Time Warner. How long can man go without channel surfing?

We're about to find out.

Stay tuned.