I started this month with the intention of showing up here more and clearing my mind of its detritus, to keep my photo collection managed and processed in a timely fashion.  Here we are, nearly halfway through the month and I have popped in her once and I am still sitting on 4GB of photos dating back over a month.  So much for intentions.

The Post-TV experiment is going great and I am personally enjoying the experience more than I did with a traditional television service.  We have been watching an incredible amount of movies, both streamed and DVD from Netflix as well as from Green Cine.  One interesting think I have noticed is that how we approach our watching habits; gone is that driver of “we have to” to “what do we”.  It is a subtle difference where the former is driven by the consumption of advertisements and opinion leaders, passive consumption in which you are guided to choices. The latter is more active, we spend time looking around at what interests us or catches our eye, from a documentary on Anheuser-Busch to an independent comedy about a small coffee shop in London.

Our TV watching has evolved into our music habits where we are largely off the opinion grid and finding things in a deliberately meandering way.  It is a relaxing process, one where we feel much less pressure to make a choice.  With the satellite subscription there were artificial constraints on the availability of content so in addition to the drivers of advertisements and opinion leaders there was this feeling of “use it or lose it.”  Now, the choice it completely ours. With the DVD plans being largely minimal we really only need to watch at least four a month to be even with the local rental businesses which in turn frees time to listen to more music, read, or just lay around having a kid and dogs run over you.

Canceling satellite service was painful to say the least.  It took nearly two hours and I traversed some five retention departments with the hardest upsell coming from AT&T trying to convert me to a UVerse customer.  The only service that I really want from them is their 18MB DSL but to get it we have to sign up for their TV service.  No deal.  I just want the bandwidth.  It makes me wonder, though, at what point they will unbundle these services and let you get what you want? In all honesty, I do not need or want a landline and at this point we are stepping clear of television so our actual needs are cellphones, and a data plan.  Maybe someday.