Movin' on up

I'm not George and Weezie, but I am moving my blog over to Wordpress. http://matthewpetro.wordpress.com

Satellite free today!

Today Tracie and I celebrate our freedom from satellite TV! Over the weekend, I hooked up our second TV to a DTV converter, thereby eliminating the need for Dish Network's expensive bill. All seemed to be well and the TiVos did fine with the local broadcast channel lineup, so after nearly 10 years of being a loyal customer to Dish, I canceled the service.

Why did we decide to pull the plug on Dish? Primarily, the price. The base package alone was $63/month. Add on a second receiver and the "Dish Home Protection Plan" and the total cost actually came to $74/month. That included 250 channels and the local stations, but no premium packages. $74 for 250 channels? How much TV can two people possibly watch? Seriously!

The funny thing is that when I was talking with the customer service agent, she actually offered me a $10/month "local only" package. How does this make sense? I spent $30 on two DTV converters which will now bring me all the local TV I want for no additional cost, and Dish wants me to keep giving them $10/month for the SAME EXACT THING.

Finally, I have two Dish Network receivers for sale. I'll give a good price to anyone who mentions this blog post.

Going satellite free

This week, Tracie and I took our fist steps toward being free of the satellite TV...I ordered a DTV converter box for our old and decidedly non-digital TV. I'd requested two coupons from the government and they arrived recently, so we decided to test the concept by going satellite free on one of our two TVs. I already have an antenna in the attic, so we'll see if it can pull in DTV signals.

We first thought about going satellite free a couple of months ago, when Tracie looked at all of our expenditures and realized that we spend $70/month JUST FOR TELEVISION! Seriously. And we don't even have the most expensive package, nor do we get any premium channels.

Further updates to come!

Hey Glendale, you have a downtown. Use it!

I finally got around to reading "Glendale rethinking light-rail path" from last weeks Republic. While I can see some of Glendale's economic points regarding a different light rail path, I'm really bummed to see the city's total lack of commitment to downtown.

Granted, Glendale's downtown is definitely not in the same class as Scottsdale, Tempe or Gilbert, but it has a lot of potential to gain a distinct vibe which would attract people. But, it would take some effort from the city to act as the catalyst to start that change. Instead, the city seems entirely focused on developing the shiny, chain-based glitz which is Westgate.

I'm not opposed to Westgate...it definitely can become a large economic driver for the west side and the stadiums are ready-made seeds for growth in the area. But, to me it feels like Glendale is trying to create a "destination" by building lots of stuff and throwing in some chain restaurants. This will undoubtedly generate a lot of revenue from sports fans, but it doesn't seem connected to the Valley or even to Arizona in any way. Westgate and the stadiums could be picked up and set down just about anywhere in the country and they wouldn't feel out of place.

On the other hand, downtown Glendale has some historical connection to the city and it has some character. It doesn't yet have the vibe that other Valley spots have developed, but I really think that with some nurturing by the city, it could.

Feeling better about American Idol

OK, three weeks into the Top 12/13 and I feel better about American Idol. Despite the crapola which was the top 36, it seems like a pretty good group of finalists have emerged. The judges comments have been better, Tatiana has gone back under whatever hyper-melodramatic rock she crawled out from under and I can ignore Seacrest's intros. At least I don't feel like I wasted all those hours gritting my teeth watching the top 36 anymore.

Things About "American Idol" That Annoy Me This Season

• Tatiana
• Kara's overbite
• Having 36 people in the first round
  
• Seacrest's overdramatic delivery of "This........is American Idol!" at the beginning of the show
• Judges critiques which involve the phrases "it didn't tell me what kind of artist you'll be" or "it didn't tell me anything about you"
  

What's wrong with Heroes

WARNING: SPOILER!! Stop reading here if you're not current on Heroes!

I know the world really doesn't need another blog post analyzing what's up on Heroes, but I'm in a ranting mood. I'm kind of a sci-fi geek (I've been to the Star Trek exhibit at the Arizona Science Center), so I'll probably keep watching Heroes regardless, but I gotta admit, they've gone astray.

Heroes was supposed to be about the characters. It started off promising to look at what happens to ordinary people who have discovered they had extraordinary abilities. This laid a good foundation for a character-driven show which mostly focuses on the characters internal struggles and interpersonal relationships. Somewhere along the way, the writers got way to fascinated with the sci-fi geekery of hero abilities. They forgot that the characters matter and that they need to be consistent and believable.

The bottom line: Heroes needs to quit being written by sci-fi and comic book fanboys, and needs to be written by the staff from Lost.

Valley growth pattern screws us

I was reading this article in The Arizona Republic about how the Valley's standard growth pattern helped push the state into recession. Basically, the pattern was for builders to whip up a shiny new neighborhood on the edge of the Valley, sell the homes cheap and then let retail and schools follow the new homeowners as they moved in and filled up the development.

Apparently no one noticed that this was not even remotely sustainable, and the article does a good job of filling in the details of the mess which has followed the collapse of the housing market. I can't imagine that this comes as a surprise to anyone involved. It's like home buyers and builders were all playing a game of chicken with the economy. Everyone knew that when the growth stopped, developments which weren't complete would be screwed. But, when you bought your new house for a good price way out on the edge of the Valley, you figured it wouldn't happen to you. Your neighborhood would fill up, all of the retail outlets would be built, all of the roads would be widened and the guy who bought the house a few miles further out might get f*$%ed, but you'd be fine.

The cities seemed to be thinking the same thing. They hoped all of the land they had sitting around would get built up and provide a nice tax base for them before all of the fun stopped. Then it would be the next further out city that would be left holding the bag. This seemed to work out well for cities like Chandler and Gilbert on the east side and Avondale and Goodyear on the west. But, take a look at Queen Creek, Maricopa, Buckeye and Tonopah.

So lots of people and cities are screwed. I think it is obvious that the low density sprawl we have now is not good. People on the Valley's edge are stuck in half-finished neighborhoods whose buildout has completely stalled, commutes suck and public transit is very difficult to implement in such low density areas, even if there was public money to do so.

Now what do we do about all this? That's a really good question and I certainly don't have any magic answers. I think higher density but responsible growth is a good goal to strive for in the future, but that doesn't help a lot of homeowners now.

So is Phoenix's glory days of growth over? Are we going to soon languish into the place that people move away from, instead of to? I really hope not, but we need some intelligent local leadership to start figuring this out.

A new definition of prosperity?

I was listening to this story on NPR's Morning Edition about author Matt Miller and his new book The Tyranny of Dead Ideas. His basic premise is that there are six social, political and economic paradigms which are outdated and need to be changed in America. His first dead idea is summed up as "Our children will earn more than we do" and this got me thinking. In particular, I started thinking about how we measure success and prosperity.

Everyone wants their children to have a "better" life than they do. This is largely driven by the American dream of being able to make your life whatever you want through determination and hard work, regardless of where you start. But, in our consumer-driven society, "better" has often been interpreted as meaning "having more material possessions" in the form of money, home and personal items (flat-panel TV, Blu-Ray, iPhone, SUV, etc).

Miller's problem with this idea, which I think is becoming ever more obvious, is that today's kids will NOT make more money and be able to buy as much stuff as Gen Xers and Baby Boomers. But does that mean that the next generation won't have a better life than today's adults? Yes, unless we rethink our what better means.

At this point, many Americans want for nothing. Granted, many people still want for some things (flat-panel TV, Blu-Ray, iPhone, SUV, etc), but are these things really necessary for life? Also, many Americans are still living with few possessions, small paychecks and no health insurance, but by and large, Americans have every basic need met with virtually no effort.

Food is so easy to come by that we've turned the basic equation upside down. Meat and other foods which are expensive and resource-intensive are now the cheapest way to eat (McDonald's $1 menu, anyone?) and things like decent vegetables are expensive. Up until last year, anyone who wanted to a house could easily buy one and have a roof over their heads with heating, air conditioning, clean water, indoor plumbing, etc.

Even things which were once considered luxury items are now nearly staples in every house...big SUV's with GPS systems, entertainment systems with surroud sound and cell phones that keep us connected to everything, all the time. In order for today's kids to grow up and have more stuff than we do now, they'd all have to live like Donald Trump. I'm no economist, but I'm pretty sure that would be impossible, even if America remained far and away the largest economic powerhouse on the planet.

So, if the growth of personal wealth and possessions has stopped, or at least will be taking a long vacation, does that mean that the next generation is doomed to a worse life than we've enjoyed? Not if we use something else as the measurement of what is "better."

I suggest we consider the quality and richness of one's relationships and one's satisfaction with life as the new yardstick. We could spend less time trying to make lots of money and buying lots of stuff, and instead spend time building personal relationships. We can spend time doing things that cost less and count more.

OK, I know that this sounds like idealistic crap, but I think that we would move in this direction, even if we don't entirely get there. The huge growth of social networking points to an evolution in the way interpersonal relationships are built and maintained. Not all online relationships are deep and meaningful, but sites like Facebook certainly make it much easier to form and nurture relationships which may become meaningful offline friendships.

This is starting to sound like the concept of Whuffie from the novel Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. We probably won't get to that point, but I think it might be good to measure ourselves in terms of who we are, instead of what we have.

Sully is to Obama as apples are to oranges

I was reading this article at Politico which compared US Airways flight 1549 to the current economic crisis. In particular, it attempted to extract some lessons from Capt. Sullenberger's handling of the situation and suggest actions Obama should take to deal with the economy. Does this strike anyone as ridiculous? Because it sure does to me.

A jet airliner with no thrust at 3,200 feet in the sky is WAY different than the economy and the president's ability to affect anything is not even close to the direct control a pilot has over his plane. In fact, I'm fairly certain that our government is constructed in the manner it is precisely to avoid having one person with that much power.

I say, nice attempt at trying to capitalize on the flight 1549 hype, but it just doesn't work.

The Twittersphere

With the growth of blogging online, the blogosphere has become an increasingly bigger force for the spread of opinion, especially in the political arena. But I've realized that a lot of the user-generated communication that I receive now comes through Twitter. Has Twitter reached the critical mass to become the Twittersphere? I think it has.

I'm highly impressed by what Twitter has become. When I started using Twitter last year, it was a fun service to use. But during the run-up to the election, it seemed like Twitter really started growing and becoming an import networking and communication tool. It's really amazing how the simple concept of Twitter has created such a rich and powerful method of interacting.

Free at last, free at last, thank Jobs almighty, we're free at last!

Digital Rights Management (DRM) is dead. Apple annouced at Macworld this week that all songs available for purchase on iTunes will soon be available with no DRM. That means no restrictions on where a song can be played or by whom. Granted, the songs will still be in Apple's AAC format, but at least they can be easily converted into MP3s for play on any computer and music player.

By this time next year, DRM will be nothing more than a bad memory of the early days of digital music adoption. With Amazon and Wal-Mart selling DRM-free MP3s for a year and Apple, early proponents of DRM, abandoning it, the major music labels are admitting that selling music with annoying copy-protection schemes did more to promote piracy than it did to discourage it.

I will most certainly be paying the incremental price to purchase DRM-free copies of all my iTunes music.