Do you remember that awful ad campaign? Come see the softer side of Sears? Yeah, it makes me gag too. Really and truly it sounded like Sears wanted to show you it’s naughty bits or take you out in the wilderness and have you beat drums with it and then cry on your shoulder while you listen to a tale of woe.
I do not want to beat drums with you or cry on your shoulder, and I certainly don’t want you crying on mine. I just washed this shirt and I don’t need tears all over it, thank you very much.
Instead I want to tell you about my very techie weekend adventure. But first there’s something you need to know.
I love my tech. I love it so much. The more it involves my personal life the more I love it. I embrace it and snuggle up with it with and make it feel all warm and welcome. I can’t count the number of times I’ve been caught whispering sweet nothings to my iPhone or lap top. I had a couple year love affair with my TiVo and I’m not even going to get into the intense emotional relationship I have with the internet and all my internetty stuff. Hello, can’t have blogS without love now can we?
But as much as I love my tech? I’m not the most tech savvy girl out there. I’m in the gray between techie and layman that often drives my husband crazy. For a person who isn’t a techie I know a whole hell of a lot about computers, the internet and gadgetry, but on the other hand for a gal that’s hosts a podcast featuring some of our areas best and brightest in technology… I could stand to learn a thing. Or ten.
And I am learning. I learn new things everyday. I also learn who I need to talk to about what I need to learn and these days that’s just as important.
All of that? Leads me to this post. The techie side of me, which also lends it’s self well to my nerdy geek girl side and segues nicely into the consumer whore Cami that gadget retailers know and love.
And now to the point. We cancelled our cable. It’s gone. Bye bye cable. That also means *gulp* bye bye TiVo. Why… why oh why oh why would we get rid of our cable and TiVo? Because $900 a year seems, to me, to be too much money to pay for mindless television programming that I could get on my beloved internet.
For free.
But I want to be able to see my junk TV shows on my actual TV and not just on my laptop… so Sunday morning at 9:15 when we heard the cable company outside disconnecting our cable (less than 24 hours after we cancelled our service) I cringed a little. We didn’t yet have the system in place for me to watch TV on my TV.
Mike peeked out the window at the cable uninstallers and then put on his pants (You’re imagining my husband in his man panties aren’t you? Yes, you are. You’re welcome). Now Mike tends to take things pretty slow in the morning, relaxing and figuring out how he can sit as still as possible while drinking his coffee and not being spoken to. But on this particular day he took his coffee upstairs, took a shower and got ready to go. Then while I stayed at home fixing the Strange Love Live site (and by me fixing… I mean implementing a fix that someone else so kindly created for me…thanks John) he went to the Fruity computer store to buy me an apple TV.
I need a moment to revel in that and let it sink in…
Yes, I have an apple tv and that’s cool just as it is, and as excited as I am there’s something that makes it even better: Boxee! Right now, I’m watching Hulu on Boxee on my apple tv on my wall mounted TV in my bed with my laptop on my lap and my iPhone by my side.
The techie side of Cami? Is very happy right now. So are the companies we purchased all those products from over the years, though I’m pretty sure the cable company is shedding a little tear. As long as they don’t get any salt water on my shirt we’ll be fine.
(tomorrow I’ll tell you about my very techie Saturday)
CamiKaos 
I’m super jealous. I’d love to get rid of our cable.. too bad I live with sports fiend who would never let me.
Every time I go into the Apple store, I wonder what Apple TV is. I still have no idea. And that, my friends, is the techie side of Melissa Lion. It’s sad, I know.
We made the same jump a while back: No more cable, replaced with TV and later Roku and Boxee.
I don’t regret it for a minute, though there was a bit when Apple and NBC/Universal were having their little pissing contest that I had to resort to bittorrent for my BSG fix.
nice! congrats on the new addition to the fam, appeTV + boxee. so who did the boxee upgrade + hack? you or dr. normal? details! details!
p.s. – i’m tremendously disappointed i not allowed to go out to the wilderness with dr. normal and you and beat drums, paint ourselves with goat’s blood, read some robert bly verse, then expunge my tale of personal woe and cry on both your shoulders. i’m all torn up about that. really.
Glad it worked out for you!! Now, don’t mind if I stalk around, so I can catch the next episode of how your Apple TV is working out for you. This behavior of course, is being conducted in the best interest of a very concerned consumer!
I am totally consulting with you if we ever do this. We’re down to basic cable now, and watch some things on the ‘puter too.
-BW: So far sports is really the only thing I see that’s missing… and since no one in our house watches sports (save the occasional basketball game) we’re good to go. And the tv is so much less expensive than our cable (though without boxee we’d have to pay for content)
-Melissa: We had to ask many questions to make sure that it would be able to do what we wanted it to do… Cami’s techie side plays 20 questions with everyone.
-Jerry: Ohhhh, you’re so techie you know how to insert that little apple symbol!!! With the clever use of the command key, now I can too! Oh yeah. Thanks for that.
-Faddah: There will be no crying on me… but you may be able to work something out with the doc… as for the hack, we each did part of it. It was super easy though, there were excellent instructions available, and as always twitter peeps totally stepped in with knowledge.
-lollyrae: I love it when you stalk me… I’ll let you know how all goes.
-Kathleen: So far it’s going well. If your family isn’t big on sports then this seems to be a good way to go. It’s passing the first test. K is home sick from school today and I needed to get some work done while getting her to lie down quietly. She wanted to watch TV… something she hadn’t seen. Oh whatever will I do? Boxee to the rescue she’s watching the Jumanji cartoon on Hulu.
Glad to hear you are following the trend. We dumped cable six years ago in our move to a new house where broadcast TV was possible. There were complaints over the lack of Nickleodeon, and some tears over missing Disney Channel, but our TV time went down and our watching selections went up. Then the media movement to online over the last couple of years widened our viewing choices. The switch to digital last summer drove the nail in the coffin (24 channels).
Of course, we use Windows Media Center, but the addition of Gmote Server on my Android phone is making things even better.
Good luck in the new media world, sounds like you’ll do fine!
Wow, I am jealous too, sighhh. But glad for you of course…;D
And what did you write on the sign about George in the end? I am so sad for K. Gits.
i am so not following you down this route. no way. i’m not thinking about it right now. not at all.
i’m not going to think about it for the next coming months, like i thought about the iphone from the moment you got it.
(actually, i got an htc smartphone, and that has stopped the iphone covetting. for now.)
I was reading your post and was so excited to get to the comments and share my similar tale of woe about getting rid of cable, a sad tale with a happy ending involving my beloved Tivo and Amazon Video On Demand. And then I got to the ending of your post, with the shiny and coveted Apple TV, and now I am going to drag my jealous ass into the corner to pout.
You said “man panties.” Heh heh.
Congrats on the new tv… sounds great!
I got Apple TV this summer and a Netflix Roku player last month. I’m lovin’ it! Who needs stinkin’ cable?!??! Now, I’ve got to try out this Boxee you speak of….