A Story of Contracts

Once upon a time there was a boy, we’ll call him me.  His name won’t be me, but I’m going to share a little about myself.  And actually, I wasn’t a little boy.  I was a grown man.  Well, I guess I still am.  But this story is about the idiocy of temporary pleasure verses the wisdom of thinking a little longer term, or very long term.  I had wanted to save money by spening less on the luxury of non-broadcast television and switched from Cable Television (with Comcastic service) to Satelite service DirectV from the stars… or some such nonsense.  I would save money and get the better programming of directive DirecTV.

Except that I had to agree to a two year contract to pay DetecTV monthly during that two years or else pay a penalty fee to infecTV for each month remaining in the contact.  Being a cheerful dolt, and not ever thinking that I would ever not want to get derelicTV, I agreed to that lovely penalty.  The world was grand and there were weeks of Food Network to watch with the added benefit of children’s cartoons, educational television, and news broadcasts twenty-four hours a day slevin days a week.  The fun and entertainment we would have due to DefecTV was endless.  Until we actually wanted to end the service.

Fast-forward a year and a half and I still have half a year left of paying more a month than I need to because we’re in a bundled package from our phone/internet/smellovision provider.  Locked in for two years of promised payment even though better deals could be had (and I would actually dump my land-line phone as well, thus futher reducing my monthly outgo towards communications and entertainment).  So the young boy who was me, who I am now -  as an adult, made a dumb choice because what he wanted then was what he was obviously going to want for two years.

The moral of this story, other than avoid the shoddy equipment that comes with the ‘awesome’ package at insecTV, is that you shouldn’t commit to a contract unless you’re really, really, really, really sure that its what you need, its what you want, and that you’re going to want it in two years with just as much passion or excitement.  There are a lot of companies that masquerade as your friend until they lock you into a contract and then you discover that you’re really bound, like so many periodicals, to servitude, slavery, and to eat pudding with cement mixed into it.  And after watching enough episodes of House on satellite television, I’m confidently going to announce that I’d no longer like to eat cement, I’ve seen what it can do to your intestines, and I don’t want to undergo that kind of surgery to get it out of me.

What do you want now?  What do you think you will still want in two years that you want now?

If you like watching shows but don’t have or like the idea of paying for a DVR then save a few bucks and check out hulu.com.  It’s free to use and is sponsored by the TV networks.  That means that its free, legal media over the internet.  Yes, you have to watch it on a device connected to the internet, but I think that you can use a bunch of different devices that will do that, or you could just watch on a desktop computer or a laptop computer.

TV isn’t the most valuable thing you can do with your time, but its quite nice to have control over when you watch various things and know that the

Today I went on a witch hunt. A hunt to find electricity sucking things plugged into my wall outlets that were drawing current for no good reason. The hunt wasn’t hard and I didn’t burn anything but some calories - which is probably one of the worst forms of exercise, second only to television. But I went through each room of the house and evaluated the things plugged into the wall sockets to make sure that they made sense and weren’t just killing my electric bill one hour at a time.

Things to consider include:

• Does it plug into something that gets used?
• Could it be plugged in and unplugged quite easily?
• Could it be put on a power switch to turn off a group of devices at once to save energy when they’re not in use?
• Could the number of plugs in the outlet create a fire hazard?

These little vampires of electrical energy are probably around your house. I found two things that were drawing current - how about you?