I've not been to many festivals even in the United States - I had an opportunity to go to Bonaroo back in the first couple of years, but didn't do it for whatever reason. There haven't been a whole lot of other opportunities since then - most of the US festivals are on the coasts or elsewhere. Lollapalooza has really not been that interesting to me, and that, along with the much smaller (snooze) Pitchfork festival are probably my closest options.
I discovered this high-def only channel when we bought our new TV called Palladia, which seems to be an outlet for Viacom to repurpose HD content, but good HD content. It's actually about the (mostly live) music, as opposed to their mainstays which have very little to do with music anymore and are more lifestyle oriented (and surprisingly, we don't get in HD yet, but we do get this other, awesome channel)
Watching Palladia has helped fuel my wish to someday go to the Glastonbury music festival to fuel my love of multiple different kids of music (specifically rock and dance), and while I'm at it, take in some other things that go on at that time of year. It would involve going over to the UK and Ireland for 2 to 3 weeks to take in Glastonbury in the UK in the last weekend of June and the Oxegen festival in Ireland which is usually the second weekend of July. In between, I'd want to take in some tennis at Wimbledon (my favorite Tennis tournament for whatever reason) and the sights of Ireland and the UK. I haven't spent any time anywhere other than London and I was 15 when I was last there, so it'd be totally different.
I feel like I'm skewing on the older end of the audience for these festivals given the crowds I've seen in various films of the past festivals. And I could potentially skip the Oxegen festival if the lineup was close enough (the same bands tend to do the festival circuit in Europe, which lasts all summer). Going to Glastonbury would probably be enough.
I have no idea how hard or easy it is to get tickets to any of these things either - Glastonbury sells out in less than 24 hours and many people get shut out. I have no idea if there's a secondary market for it. Wimbledon also seems like it'd be an expensive endeavor. I'd also have to figure out how to work the family into the mix, a tougher proposition when you have a wife that's not a huge live music fan and small children, not compatible with anything.
It's still just a crazy idea in my head, but maybe it'll happen someday.
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Friday, August 20, 2010
The summer of buying stuff - iPhone 4
I have not been good about updating here. At any rate, it's been a good summer. My wife is back at work and the little one is doing quite well.
I talk quite a bit about things I buy on here, and it has been quite the summer for that. I talked about my TV in a previous post and I've talked about phones.
We did end up getting iPhones a few weeks ago. I liked what I saw with the iPhone 4, and I planted the seed with Katie that she could get one too (I figured that she'd use it more than some other smartphone/device). My Sprint contract expired and that happened to coincide with Katie getting water on the contact of her Palm Centro that she was using and rendering it useless (not before I managed to rescue her contacts in one last sync!).
We have various old Sprint phones lying around from 10+ years of being a customer, the problem is that most of the chargers got thrown out when we moved for whatever reason. So switching Katie to another phone was not really a viable option. I was oh-so-tempted to just re-up with Sprint and get an Evo and get her a Palm Pixi or something similar (she liked the QWERTY on her Centro). But I resisted the urge to do that, and we finally ended up deciding to switch to AT&T and get iPhones.
This was a few weeks ago, and at the time, there was still a shortage of iPhone 4's. If I had a lot of time, I would have ordered through the corporate discount site and waited, but since Katie was sans phone, I decided to try and track some down locally and deal with converting the account to the corporate discount later on. I printed out a list of stores and Katie started calling. Low and behold, the first Apple store she called on a Sunday morning had a "few" 16GB's (what Katie wanted) and "a lot" of 32's (what I wanted) in stock. So I went over there shortly after they opened. They must not have had that many 16's, because they were out when I got there, but they did have 32's and I picked up two of them.
Say what you will about the Apple store. It does have a weird cult-like feel to it, I do admit. But their service is stellar. I was in and out in 20 minutes flat with the new phones. I had left my old phone with Katie and attempted to call her on my blackberry and tell her it was switching over, but the iPhone in my pocket was already ringing. It happens that quick to port a number (never done it before, as I've been with Sprint the whole time). The Apple store employees are top notch.
I got home and got everything set up. I had rescued Katie's contacts from her old phone via Outlook, and I exported those to her Google Account. I had our Google accounts linked via exchange and push in no time flat (done that config several times on my old ipod touch). Boom, all of our contacts are just there, calendars are updated, and my mail is streaming to the device. It just works. I've heard people complain about being a Google platform junkie with iPhones, but hey, it works fine for me. You can use the HTML 5 web apps in Safari and those work very well as well (I use Reader a lot on it, and like it quite a bit). I mean, clearly, android would have been a good fit for my Google loving self too, but Apple plays fine with that world (ironically - thanks to a Microsoft technology!).
I've been a fervent iPod touch user for several years, and this experience is not that different. There's a camera and a phone, and you can access data anywhere but that's really the only difference.
AT&T still leaves a lot to be desired from a pricing perspective - Sprint definitely had them beat there. But my net is going to be a savings of about 10-15 bucks a month. I was actually paying Sprint for things I wasn't really using, which I can get around on AT&T. We went aggressive on the minutes, but have roll-over and won't have to worry about that after a couple of months. I also went really aggressive on text messages, since I don't use that many any longer. I turned off all the services I had texting me, because the iPhone has an app with alerts for most of those things as well (and frankly, I'm trying to funnel everything through email since it's much cheaper to use that on an iPhone than text messaging).
So far so good. Katie likes her phone quite a bit. It does seem to drop calls more than the average phone, but maybe that's just a fluke. I don't know. Verizon and Sprint did not work particularly well within the confines of our house, and AT&T seems to have much better signal strength (I can maintain a call in our basement on my iPhone, I couldn't do that with my old phone consistently).
I guess they all have their flaws, and I'm willing to put up with AT&T for the iPhone. Sucked in by Steve Jobs. I'm still pretty sure I'll end up on Android at some point, but for now, I'm liking what I've got.
I talk quite a bit about things I buy on here, and it has been quite the summer for that. I talked about my TV in a previous post and I've talked about phones.
We did end up getting iPhones a few weeks ago. I liked what I saw with the iPhone 4, and I planted the seed with Katie that she could get one too (I figured that she'd use it more than some other smartphone/device). My Sprint contract expired and that happened to coincide with Katie getting water on the contact of her Palm Centro that she was using and rendering it useless (not before I managed to rescue her contacts in one last sync!).
We have various old Sprint phones lying around from 10+ years of being a customer, the problem is that most of the chargers got thrown out when we moved for whatever reason. So switching Katie to another phone was not really a viable option. I was oh-so-tempted to just re-up with Sprint and get an Evo and get her a Palm Pixi or something similar (she liked the QWERTY on her Centro). But I resisted the urge to do that, and we finally ended up deciding to switch to AT&T and get iPhones.
This was a few weeks ago, and at the time, there was still a shortage of iPhone 4's. If I had a lot of time, I would have ordered through the corporate discount site and waited, but since Katie was sans phone, I decided to try and track some down locally and deal with converting the account to the corporate discount later on. I printed out a list of stores and Katie started calling. Low and behold, the first Apple store she called on a Sunday morning had a "few" 16GB's (what Katie wanted) and "a lot" of 32's (what I wanted) in stock. So I went over there shortly after they opened. They must not have had that many 16's, because they were out when I got there, but they did have 32's and I picked up two of them.
Say what you will about the Apple store. It does have a weird cult-like feel to it, I do admit. But their service is stellar. I was in and out in 20 minutes flat with the new phones. I had left my old phone with Katie and attempted to call her on my blackberry and tell her it was switching over, but the iPhone in my pocket was already ringing. It happens that quick to port a number (never done it before, as I've been with Sprint the whole time). The Apple store employees are top notch.
I got home and got everything set up. I had rescued Katie's contacts from her old phone via Outlook, and I exported those to her Google Account. I had our Google accounts linked via exchange and push in no time flat (done that config several times on my old ipod touch). Boom, all of our contacts are just there, calendars are updated, and my mail is streaming to the device. It just works. I've heard people complain about being a Google platform junkie with iPhones, but hey, it works fine for me. You can use the HTML 5 web apps in Safari and those work very well as well (I use Reader a lot on it, and like it quite a bit). I mean, clearly, android would have been a good fit for my Google loving self too, but Apple plays fine with that world (ironically - thanks to a Microsoft technology!).
I've been a fervent iPod touch user for several years, and this experience is not that different. There's a camera and a phone, and you can access data anywhere but that's really the only difference.
AT&T still leaves a lot to be desired from a pricing perspective - Sprint definitely had them beat there. But my net is going to be a savings of about 10-15 bucks a month. I was actually paying Sprint for things I wasn't really using, which I can get around on AT&T. We went aggressive on the minutes, but have roll-over and won't have to worry about that after a couple of months. I also went really aggressive on text messages, since I don't use that many any longer. I turned off all the services I had texting me, because the iPhone has an app with alerts for most of those things as well (and frankly, I'm trying to funnel everything through email since it's much cheaper to use that on an iPhone than text messaging).
So far so good. Katie likes her phone quite a bit. It does seem to drop calls more than the average phone, but maybe that's just a fluke. I don't know. Verizon and Sprint did not work particularly well within the confines of our house, and AT&T seems to have much better signal strength (I can maintain a call in our basement on my iPhone, I couldn't do that with my old phone consistently).
I guess they all have their flaws, and I'm willing to put up with AT&T for the iPhone. Sucked in by Steve Jobs. I'm still pretty sure I'll end up on Android at some point, but for now, I'm liking what I've got.
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
How we bought a TV
A 46" flat panel LED LCD HDTV (how many acronyms can we use in a row?) is now gracing the wall in my basement man cave. Up until last night the man cave was the hobby cave and sitting room. A TV transforms it over night into "the room Bill will spend the most time in".
This was probably my wife's motive when she suggested we buy this beautiful piece of electronic goodness. In fact, there's no probably about it, it was her motive. She wanted to reclaim her living room from my clutches. There's been far too much World Cup, Golf, Wimbledon, and baseball game viewing the last few weeks, and I honestly think she'd had enough of it. Not that she'd admit that, necessarily.
It was all triggered by a Best Buy Coupon that Katie got at the pride parade that promised a $100 gift card with the purchase of $1000 or more. She brought up the idea on Sunday afternoon and it had me quickly looking at the available deals. I'm all about playing the zero financing game, particularly if you can buy a product for close to what you'd get if you didn't have the deal. That's becoming tougher. Increasingly, stores like Best Buy are offering "zero down" deals but what you might not notice if you don't shop around is that you're not getting a particularly good deal. I see no real downside, other than the cost of these deals is often shoveled back into the cost of the item.
I've worked this deal with a number of items recently - our Tivo, the deck furniture, and the dishwasher. We buy it with zero interest for x amount of time, and then I set up a monthly payment in my bank's bill pay system to pay it off a month shy of when that deal expires. Of course, if you don't pay it in full, you get robbed - we're talking 25%+ interest rate. I'm assuming that's what ends up happening to a certain percentage of people, but I've never let it happen to me.
So we ended up buying a TV at Best Buy utilizing 3 years, no interest (which we'll probably pay off in a couple of months, but it helps the cash flow for now). We borrowed a friend's truck to take it home, because delivery was another 100 bucks. Another thing - Best Buy's prices are often higher on their web site than those in store, but they still charge sales tax. They offer free delivery online, but on TV's at least, that appeared to be a wash - if you chose to have the TV delivered. Do it yourself, and you save a bit.
Modern flat panel displays are quite light, and other than the size, are not difficult to move around. There's a wide array of options to choose from. We ended up deciding on a size and type, and then looking at what reviewed well on consumer reports. Type is less of a factor now - plasma is the older, established technology, but most of the shortcomings of LCD screens in the past are gone. The price differential is very small now and several companies have gotten out of the Plasma game altogether. So we decided to focus on LCD displays, although the differences between the two at the end of the day are pretty small. Sony Bravia and Samsung LCD panels topped the reviews, with Toshiba and LG also ranking well. I know Sony had some issues over the past few years from talking to some of my AV oriented friends, but they've come back strong this year. I looked at the Sony
Once we had a size, it was up to how much we were going to spend on features. Pretty much all the TV's sold now support 1080P (was not the case just a few years ago). The key differentiators on LCD displays right now are the types of lighting the TV's use, the engine that drives the picture and the speed refresh of the screen.
As far as lighting goes, there are LED or conventional back-lit displays. LED TV's are new and use less energy than traditional back lit. The price difference on these has gotten to be quite small. LED lit displays command a few hundred more dollars, but the difference in energy use seems like it might be worth it over the life of the TV.
The engine that drives the TV can make a big difference in the picture. Sony has the Bravia engine, which works very well, and the Samsung models we looked at achieved similar results via their own engine (the engine is the differentiator since the actual display hardware in a Samsung or Sony TV is virtually identical since the panels are made via a joint-venture between the two companies).
The last item, which I failed to consider before landing in the store for the final purchase, is the refresh rate. Many of the LCD TVs are 60hz refresh, but increasingly being offered at 120hz. The advantage is you get less blur when watching sports. The sales person at Best Buy convinced us to buy the higher refresh rate TV. It was only 80 more than the model without.
So we ended up with a Sony Bravia EX700 series 46" panel. I'm very pleased with it so far. We already had a Tivo capable of HD which we moved to the new TV. I bought an expander for the Tivo as well, since the HD capacity of it was suspect without. I plugged it in via the HDMI cable and it just worked. TV's have gotten so much easier to use with HDMI.
The only issue I've had so far is that the audio was lagging on some of the high def channels. This was being caused by the optical audio out on my Tivo having a delay. I hooked up the optical output to the TV instead and the delay went away. Probably good anyway, since I'm going to have to use the TV to do switching until I buy a different amp, an effort that also gets much easier with HDMI cables that carry both picture and digital audio.
Haven't bought a blue-ray player yet. I'm tempted to get a PS3 to provide that functionality and also have a video game system, but I won't pull the trigger on that for a while. We just canceled Netflix and our movie watching has gone down for the summer. I can rent high-def movies from amazon on demand and will probably use that to fill the gap.
Ironically, this will probably get me watching less TV because we put the TV in our basement, which separates it somewhat from the day-to-day activities of the house. And this is a good thing, because in the end, I want to read more anyway. Funny how that works.
This was probably my wife's motive when she suggested we buy this beautiful piece of electronic goodness. In fact, there's no probably about it, it was her motive. She wanted to reclaim her living room from my clutches. There's been far too much World Cup, Golf, Wimbledon, and baseball game viewing the last few weeks, and I honestly think she'd had enough of it. Not that she'd admit that, necessarily.
It was all triggered by a Best Buy Coupon that Katie got at the pride parade that promised a $100 gift card with the purchase of $1000 or more. She brought up the idea on Sunday afternoon and it had me quickly looking at the available deals. I'm all about playing the zero financing game, particularly if you can buy a product for close to what you'd get if you didn't have the deal. That's becoming tougher. Increasingly, stores like Best Buy are offering "zero down" deals but what you might not notice if you don't shop around is that you're not getting a particularly good deal. I see no real downside, other than the cost of these deals is often shoveled back into the cost of the item.
I've worked this deal with a number of items recently - our Tivo, the deck furniture, and the dishwasher. We buy it with zero interest for x amount of time, and then I set up a monthly payment in my bank's bill pay system to pay it off a month shy of when that deal expires. Of course, if you don't pay it in full, you get robbed - we're talking 25%+ interest rate. I'm assuming that's what ends up happening to a certain percentage of people, but I've never let it happen to me.
So we ended up buying a TV at Best Buy utilizing 3 years, no interest (which we'll probably pay off in a couple of months, but it helps the cash flow for now). We borrowed a friend's truck to take it home, because delivery was another 100 bucks. Another thing - Best Buy's prices are often higher on their web site than those in store, but they still charge sales tax. They offer free delivery online, but on TV's at least, that appeared to be a wash - if you chose to have the TV delivered. Do it yourself, and you save a bit.
Modern flat panel displays are quite light, and other than the size, are not difficult to move around. There's a wide array of options to choose from. We ended up deciding on a size and type, and then looking at what reviewed well on consumer reports. Type is less of a factor now - plasma is the older, established technology, but most of the shortcomings of LCD screens in the past are gone. The price differential is very small now and several companies have gotten out of the Plasma game altogether. So we decided to focus on LCD displays, although the differences between the two at the end of the day are pretty small. Sony Bravia and Samsung LCD panels topped the reviews, with Toshiba and LG also ranking well. I know Sony had some issues over the past few years from talking to some of my AV oriented friends, but they've come back strong this year. I looked at the Sony
Once we had a size, it was up to how much we were going to spend on features. Pretty much all the TV's sold now support 1080P (was not the case just a few years ago). The key differentiators on LCD displays right now are the types of lighting the TV's use, the engine that drives the picture and the speed refresh of the screen.
As far as lighting goes, there are LED or conventional back-lit displays. LED TV's are new and use less energy than traditional back lit. The price difference on these has gotten to be quite small. LED lit displays command a few hundred more dollars, but the difference in energy use seems like it might be worth it over the life of the TV.
The engine that drives the TV can make a big difference in the picture. Sony has the Bravia engine, which works very well, and the Samsung models we looked at achieved similar results via their own engine (the engine is the differentiator since the actual display hardware in a Samsung or Sony TV is virtually identical since the panels are made via a joint-venture between the two companies).
The last item, which I failed to consider before landing in the store for the final purchase, is the refresh rate. Many of the LCD TVs are 60hz refresh, but increasingly being offered at 120hz. The advantage is you get less blur when watching sports. The sales person at Best Buy convinced us to buy the higher refresh rate TV. It was only 80 more than the model without.
So we ended up with a Sony Bravia EX700 series 46" panel. I'm very pleased with it so far. We already had a Tivo capable of HD which we moved to the new TV. I bought an expander for the Tivo as well, since the HD capacity of it was suspect without. I plugged it in via the HDMI cable and it just worked. TV's have gotten so much easier to use with HDMI.
The only issue I've had so far is that the audio was lagging on some of the high def channels. This was being caused by the optical audio out on my Tivo having a delay. I hooked up the optical output to the TV instead and the delay went away. Probably good anyway, since I'm going to have to use the TV to do switching until I buy a different amp, an effort that also gets much easier with HDMI cables that carry both picture and digital audio.
Haven't bought a blue-ray player yet. I'm tempted to get a PS3 to provide that functionality and also have a video game system, but I won't pull the trigger on that for a while. We just canceled Netflix and our movie watching has gone down for the summer. I can rent high-def movies from amazon on demand and will probably use that to fill the gap.
Ironically, this will probably get me watching less TV because we put the TV in our basement, which separates it somewhat from the day-to-day activities of the house. And this is a good thing, because in the end, I want to read more anyway. Funny how that works.
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
My impending mobile phone decision
I have a year and a half old Palm Treo 800w. It's been a good, fully functional phone. It has a few shortcomings, like the battery life has never been that stellar, but you buy a few more charging accessories and that's really not a problem very often, particularly because I sit at a desk all day, and have a car charger.
The chief issue is that it's a Windows Mobile phone. Probably the least developed for of the major smartphone platforms (And it's running an old version, to boot). Increasingly, there's been a shift to Android.
I've been a Sprint customer since 1998 and had the same phone number with them through too many phones to count, starting with that brick-ish Qualcomm phone back in the day (when Qualcomm still made phones as opposed to just milking their CDMA patents for all they are worth).
Sprint gets a really hard knock lately as a wireless provider. Their phones have tended to be substandard compared to Verizon and AT&T, and their customer service issues are well known. I've not experienced any significant customer service issues and have even been lumped into "Sprint Premiere" which is an MVC type program which, as far as I can tell, has relatively few benefits that are of use to me. A discount on your already hugely marked up phone accessories? No thanks! They do have one benefit there - which is that you can get upgrade price on a phone after 1 year instead of two, but I haven't taken advantage of that thus far.
I have a dilemma coming up. My contract is up with Sprint in July. The HTC Evo on Sprint looks to be the best fit of the Smartphones available in the next 60-90 days. Perfect, right? Because I'm already on Sprint. But they are going to charge a phantom 10 bucks a month more for the service, and I'm already having issues with how much I'm paying Sprint for my family plan.
At the same time, I've been pricing out AT&T with the new corporate discount that I can get through work. And I can get an iPhone, Katie can get something and we can save 20 or 30 a month over our current plan if it all works out. And I just got a Blackberry from work on AT&T to try it out. And the performance of their network is better than Sprint has been for me in the places I regularly am. So this is not boding well for Sprint.
My current plan is to wait to see what is announced for the next gen iPhone, and then evaluate at that time. My current Sprint contract is up in July, so if I do decide to go iPhone, I'll probably do it then and make the AT&T switch. I can't even believe I'm saying that.
If I decide to go to an Evo I'll probably buy one in June sometime. And I'm going to try and work the Sprint retentions people for all it's worth. I'd like to stay off contract and still get a good price on that phone if possible as well.
Decisions, Decisions.
The chief issue is that it's a Windows Mobile phone. Probably the least developed for of the major smartphone platforms (And it's running an old version, to boot). Increasingly, there's been a shift to Android.
I've been a Sprint customer since 1998 and had the same phone number with them through too many phones to count, starting with that brick-ish Qualcomm phone back in the day (when Qualcomm still made phones as opposed to just milking their CDMA patents for all they are worth).
Sprint gets a really hard knock lately as a wireless provider. Their phones have tended to be substandard compared to Verizon and AT&T, and their customer service issues are well known. I've not experienced any significant customer service issues and have even been lumped into "Sprint Premiere" which is an MVC type program which, as far as I can tell, has relatively few benefits that are of use to me. A discount on your already hugely marked up phone accessories? No thanks! They do have one benefit there - which is that you can get upgrade price on a phone after 1 year instead of two, but I haven't taken advantage of that thus far.
I have a dilemma coming up. My contract is up with Sprint in July. The HTC Evo on Sprint looks to be the best fit of the Smartphones available in the next 60-90 days. Perfect, right? Because I'm already on Sprint. But they are going to charge a phantom 10 bucks a month more for the service, and I'm already having issues with how much I'm paying Sprint for my family plan.
At the same time, I've been pricing out AT&T with the new corporate discount that I can get through work. And I can get an iPhone, Katie can get something and we can save 20 or 30 a month over our current plan if it all works out. And I just got a Blackberry from work on AT&T to try it out. And the performance of their network is better than Sprint has been for me in the places I regularly am. So this is not boding well for Sprint.
My current plan is to wait to see what is announced for the next gen iPhone, and then evaluate at that time. My current Sprint contract is up in July, so if I do decide to go iPhone, I'll probably do it then and make the AT&T switch. I can't even believe I'm saying that.
If I decide to go to an Evo I'll probably buy one in June sometime. And I'm going to try and work the Sprint retentions people for all it's worth. I'd like to stay off contract and still get a good price on that phone if possible as well.
Decisions, Decisions.
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Earthtainers galore!
Bless me blog readers, for I have sinned and not posted for a long while. Well, we've been really busy with a new baby and all, so I guess I have a good excuse.
I've also spent a good chunk of my free time the last week constructing 7 EarthTainers for various people and inspired building of at least 4 additional EarthTainers that I know of (with consultation to the builder).
For those of you that are like, "huh, what's he talking about?", an EarthTainer is a container growing system that ensures vegetable plants, usually tomatoes, are properly watered. I built one last year after reading about it on LifeHacker a year ago (Lifehacker is a must read, if you don't already read it, particularly for the tinkering types among us). It took me several hours and lots of new tools and parts to build one last year. The results? They were pretty great - my tomato yield was fantastic.
Several of my friends caught on to my little project and were interested in building containers of their own, so I told a few people that I'd help them build these this year.
Last Thursday I went over to Jenni and Matt's place, and built 3 containers for her. It went really smoothly and it's a lot easier of a project when you have people to help. Jenni's planting tomatoes and peppers in her containers. I can't wait to go over and see how they are growing.
This past weekend, I built 4 more containers, 1 more for myself, 1 for my father-in-law and 2 for my friend and co-worker. My friend's family was so impressed with them that they were building 4 more total for 2 different people.
I'm pretty excited about the 11 earthtainers I've built or inspired, and I'm sure there will be many more. I bet the Lowes in West St Paul and Plymouth are wondering why there's a run on 31 gallon tan RuggedTotes.
If you do decide to build, there's a frequently updated PDF here, and if you're local to the Twin Cities and need assistance, feel free to get in touch with me.
As for my bins, I'm growing 4 tomato plants this year. I have to still buy those and plant them, but that will happen sometime this week.
I've also spent a good chunk of my free time the last week constructing 7 EarthTainers for various people and inspired building of at least 4 additional EarthTainers that I know of (with consultation to the builder).
For those of you that are like, "huh, what's he talking about?", an EarthTainer is a container growing system that ensures vegetable plants, usually tomatoes, are properly watered. I built one last year after reading about it on LifeHacker a year ago (Lifehacker is a must read, if you don't already read it, particularly for the tinkering types among us). It took me several hours and lots of new tools and parts to build one last year. The results? They were pretty great - my tomato yield was fantastic.
Several of my friends caught on to my little project and were interested in building containers of their own, so I told a few people that I'd help them build these this year.
Last Thursday I went over to Jenni and Matt's place, and built 3 containers for her. It went really smoothly and it's a lot easier of a project when you have people to help. Jenni's planting tomatoes and peppers in her containers. I can't wait to go over and see how they are growing.
This past weekend, I built 4 more containers, 1 more for myself, 1 for my father-in-law and 2 for my friend and co-worker. My friend's family was so impressed with them that they were building 4 more total for 2 different people.
I'm pretty excited about the 11 earthtainers I've built or inspired, and I'm sure there will be many more. I bet the Lowes in West St Paul and Plymouth are wondering why there's a run on 31 gallon tan RuggedTotes.
If you do decide to build, there's a frequently updated PDF here, and if you're local to the Twin Cities and need assistance, feel free to get in touch with me.
As for my bins, I'm growing 4 tomato plants this year. I have to still buy those and plant them, but that will happen sometime this week.
Monday, April 19, 2010
Personal Finance - Keeping Track of Bills on Google Calendar
I used to be an fervent user of Quicken. I'd load all the detail in there and even maintained a cash account to track every single last dime.
I did this up until a couple of years ago when it started getting more complicated, and also around the same time that Mint came on the scene and I started loading everything into that. I've never really had any issues using Mint to store info that's available everywhere else anyway.
Mint has slowly evolved to be an online competitor to Quicken. It's still not as full featured, but it's got basically everything I need - namely budgeting and trending tools with the ability to categorize transactions.
Mint works more seamlessly than anything in quicken ever did. I do have to review transactions periodically to ensure they are in the proper categories - it has a tendency to mis-categorize certain things, though you can give it rules to fix that stuff. For example, I bank with USAA and also use them as an insurance company. I tend to get emails that I exceeded my spending on Auto Insurance for the month when really I just made a big transfer to my USAA savings account that it classified as Auto Insurance when really it was just a Transfer. The only other issue currently an issue with my 401k provider not able to be accessed by mint after it was available for a while due to a provider change. Hopefully they'll fix that. In the meantime, there's not really a good way to track that info short of entering it as an asset and manually updating it. It's not ideal, but at least it allows me to still track all my assets in one place.
But other than those small things, mint's served my needs quite well. One of the things I used to use Quicken for was the ability to schedule transactions ahead of time. Like a lot of people these days, I don't "balance a checkbook" in the traditional sense since we hardly write any checks. But I still have a need to ensure that there's the appropriate amount of money in my account to pay scheduled bills. I have most of our bills on ACH withdraw with the respective companies, and have our mortgage on a bi-weekly schedule to coincide with both me and my wife's pay schedule (we work for the same company).
About 2 months ago, my wife was complaining about how she didn't know when bills were due and how much money was left in our joint account, so I decided to create a new Google Calendar called "Bill Calendar" that I'd share with her. I've used Google Calendar for several years, and stepped up my use about 2 years ago when I got a smart-phone that could sync to it via exchange. My wife has also become a regular user of it and we use it to coordinate schedules quite regularly, so it was a good option for me to share this information.
The calendar I created for Bills also helps me to better track our upcoming expenses at a quick glance. It's really simple - I simply put the bill name and amount as an "all day event". It looks like this when it's done:
I do this for all of my bills as well as any regular post-paycheck investments, of which we have several. For the investments and some of the recurring bills that are always the same amount, same due date, I make it a recurring event.
It's working very well for me and is a simple way at a glance to plan expenditures. It also helps me to not forget one time things that I pay for and do a better job of managing our balances.
I did this up until a couple of years ago when it started getting more complicated, and also around the same time that Mint came on the scene and I started loading everything into that. I've never really had any issues using Mint to store info that's available everywhere else anyway.
Mint has slowly evolved to be an online competitor to Quicken. It's still not as full featured, but it's got basically everything I need - namely budgeting and trending tools with the ability to categorize transactions.
Mint works more seamlessly than anything in quicken ever did. I do have to review transactions periodically to ensure they are in the proper categories - it has a tendency to mis-categorize certain things, though you can give it rules to fix that stuff. For example, I bank with USAA and also use them as an insurance company. I tend to get emails that I exceeded my spending on Auto Insurance for the month when really I just made a big transfer to my USAA savings account that it classified as Auto Insurance when really it was just a Transfer. The only other issue currently an issue with my 401k provider not able to be accessed by mint after it was available for a while due to a provider change. Hopefully they'll fix that. In the meantime, there's not really a good way to track that info short of entering it as an asset and manually updating it. It's not ideal, but at least it allows me to still track all my assets in one place.
But other than those small things, mint's served my needs quite well. One of the things I used to use Quicken for was the ability to schedule transactions ahead of time. Like a lot of people these days, I don't "balance a checkbook" in the traditional sense since we hardly write any checks. But I still have a need to ensure that there's the appropriate amount of money in my account to pay scheduled bills. I have most of our bills on ACH withdraw with the respective companies, and have our mortgage on a bi-weekly schedule to coincide with both me and my wife's pay schedule (we work for the same company).
About 2 months ago, my wife was complaining about how she didn't know when bills were due and how much money was left in our joint account, so I decided to create a new Google Calendar called "Bill Calendar" that I'd share with her. I've used Google Calendar for several years, and stepped up my use about 2 years ago when I got a smart-phone that could sync to it via exchange. My wife has also become a regular user of it and we use it to coordinate schedules quite regularly, so it was a good option for me to share this information.
The calendar I created for Bills also helps me to better track our upcoming expenses at a quick glance. It's really simple - I simply put the bill name and amount as an "all day event". It looks like this when it's done:
I do this for all of my bills as well as any regular post-paycheck investments, of which we have several. For the investments and some of the recurring bills that are always the same amount, same due date, I make it a recurring event.
It's working very well for me and is a simple way at a glance to plan expenditures. It also helps me to not forget one time things that I pay for and do a better job of managing our balances.
Friday, April 16, 2010
On Target Field
I managed to snag some tickets to the Twins Home opener a few weeks ago, that small chance that I talked about here panned out for me - as I had the opportunity to purchase tickets from a guy that always gets us tickets for the opener. His allotment was way down so I couldn't get as many tickets, but I was still able to get some.
I got down to Target Field early, about 1pm, after doing some work in the morning on my couch while watching the countdown coverage. I parked in the NorthStar ramp and walked down 6th street, being told it was the best and most dramatic way to come into the park. I hadn't really been downtown near the Target Plaza in a while (though I had seen lots of pictures), but I was still impressed by how it melds right into downtown so seamlessly. (the bridge that starts close to the Target Center seems like it's always been there). And it really is a dramatic entrance - the park is quite visible from a few blocks away - and walking there in my Twins garb among the people working downtown was pretty fun.
I got into the park and found my seat. There were not many people there yet, but for almost 2 hours before game time, there were quite a few. I decided to walk around the concourse once. It reminds me a lot of the newer ballparks I've been in - Miller Park and Minute Made Park come to mind - the open concourses are pretty similar. Target Field seems like it's the most open of all - pretty much all the way around on the first concourse it's open to the field. Even at those other parks there are stretches where it's not. The attention to detail is really striking at Target Field too - the art, the granite, the perfectly sculpted canopy (which looks awesome at night when they are not playing, all lit up), the way the lights are integrated into the canopy. I could go on and on. And the fan friendly features - such as the area where you can look right down into the bullpen, the number of seats they put into the first level bowl, the rail in left center where you can have a drink and watch the game from basically fieldside, the area in right field right off of Target Plaza where you can congregate.
We sat in the right field bleachers - one of the only places where the seats are benches instead of plastic seats. I didn't mind it one bit, as people were coming and going the whole game and there was plenty of room by the end. The view was great - you could see everything but a very small part of right-center field and the scoreboard behind the wall there.
The ceremonies before the game were great fun as well, and it was fun to be a part of a historical moment in Minnesota sports history. In recent years at the dome, I only went to a couple of games every year because of how stale of an experience it was. I only have tickets to one other game at the moment for this season, but I'm sure I'll end up going to at least a half dozen games - you almost have to if you're any kind of baseball fan and live in this town. I can go outside and watch a game, like I did for the vast majority of my childhood. And there's really no other sports experience like that for me.
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