Not So Fast

A couple days ago I saw a piece on TV about France emerging relatively unscathed from the world financial crisis. The thesis of the news item was that French culture was less consumer driven and that credit isn't very available or used. These ideas extend to the financial markets so that they are less dependent on credit and therefore aren't experiencing the crunch that others are.

To illustrate they interviewed a French banker who had worked in London and then moved back to Paris. He said that The British are very focused on fashion and acquisition of "stuff" and that he was glad to be back in France where things were different.

I was enough impressed by this to bring it up at lunch yesterday with a friend who immigrated from Poland. His response was a quick and emphatic "No." He maintains that the US should never consider such a change. He says that risk taking is what sets Americans apart and gives us our edge.

It never occurred to me that we need to be chronic overspenders in order to preserve our place and reputation.

Parkas in September

There's a day care facility in the basement of my apartment building so I get to see the comings and goings of parents and their children. It makes me wistful for the days when Chris was that age.

Last week we had our first march of 55 degree mornings and, sure enough, parents made appearances dressed in light sweaters toting kids in parkas zipped up to their chins. This isn't a one time or single family occurrence. Many parents believe that their children operate on a different thermostat OR are some how more vulnerable to cool days than they are.

After seeing kids wet with sweat for so many years I'm making an appeal to parents, don't over dress your kids! A good rule of thumb is simply to dress your baby as warmly or lightly as you're dressed for the weather. You're comfortable in a t-shirt, dress your child in a t-shirt. You're comfortable in a light jacket then dress children in a light jacket. Stop over heating your kids.

Power Steering

We found ourselves close to Atlantic City on Saturday so we decided to make an excursion. Coming into town we saw signs for a Greek Food Festival at St Nicholas' Church and decided that we must go even though K and I were pretty full from our pancake house breakfast. We stocked up on some baked goodies and listened to piped in music while we snacked. Chris has recently developed a voracious appetite so he had a full meal. The kid and I eat on the same schedule but there are times when I'm stuffed and he shows interest in food. I used to suspect that he wanted it just because it was there but lately he packs it away. We think he's got a hollow leg.

Afterward we drove to the Tropicana and found parking on the street. Walked on the boardwalk and I surrendered $30 to the blackjack table. Have to balance this off against the $40 I won when I went with my cousin Mike a couple weeks ago. Still $10 up :)

When we decided to leave I was pulling away from the curb and the power steering quit. There was no way I was going to look for a mechanic in AC late on a Saturday so I man handled the car out of the city and up the parkway. I stopped to check the belts and the p/s fluid. All looked normal.

We made a decision to stay at the marina on Monday and I took the car to The Ship Bottom Getty service station at 8AM. We got it back around 3PM with a new power steering pump. And he replaced both the serpentine belt and the air conditioning belt all for $650. I thought we were treated fairly.

The extra day on the boat even allowed me to do some work I'd been putting off.

Winter Dry Dock

We did a cost comparison to see if we'd save money by storing the boat close to LBI vs. burning the gas to get to Millville. I included marine gas, car rental, storage, shrink wrap, and winterization of the engines. On Saturday we went to 2 local marinas that seemed like good candidates based on price and recommendations from others.

Spoke to Rick at Total Marine in Tuckerton and he seems knowledgeable and easy to work with. His price to shrink wrap was considerably higher than the others and when I asked him about it he talked about big increases in the cost of plastic. The other small gotcha is that they don't have pump out so we'd have to make sure the holding tank was pumped before we dropped the boat off.

Spoke to Violet at Chestnut Neck Boat Yard in Port Republic. She was very conversant in the lingo but I don't think she'd be directly involved in work done on our boat. It's a big place and we'd be more of a number than a name there.

Chestnut Neck is about $300 cheaper than Total Marine so we'll take the boat there sometime in the next couple of weeks. It'll be easy to switch next year if our experience is bad.

Sling!

We have a modest house in S Jersey that's a nice change of scene from the concrete of Manhattan. So, we carry the standard utilities that you'd expect; phone, cable TV, electricity, etc. Because both K and I are so attached to the internet we also pay for cable modem service there.

I've eyed the cost of cable TV going up and up and have been on the lookout for an alternative. At the beginning of the year I read the fine print for DirecTV and was excited about the prospect of saving $20/mo. over the cost of cable but when the tech came out he told us we'd have to cut down a few trees to give the dish the unobstructed view it needs. That wasn't in the cards so I went back to stewing about the $70 cable TV bill.

I've been reading about The Slingbox on the gadget blogs for a while and started to think that watching the cable service from Jersey City at the house might be a good idea. The theory behind this technology is that an A/V source can be connected to the internet and watched somewhere else. Sources can be a cable TV box, VCR, Tivo, etc. There's no subscription fee with Slingbox so it's just a one time payment to buy the hardware.

I was skeptical about the video quality but independent reviews said it was pretty good. We've had a Windows XP Media Center PC connected to the TV at the house so it was easy to run the receiving program and pipe it to the TV. For those that don't have such a configuration Slingmedia does sell a Sling Catcher that can be used instead of a PC.

Saturday night was our first time watching TV over the internet and I admit that the picture is lower quality than the signal we got from the local cable box but it is imminently watchable! We all agree that this is a more than satisfactory replacement for the cable box.

The Fine Points

Watching the Slingbox on the local network in Jersey City produces a high quality picture on the computer. Since the main difference between watching locally and at the house is speed we could probably get a better picture by subscribing to Comcast Blast which would increase the uplink speed from the Slingbox. At this point it's not worth it.

Comcast would not allow me to keep only the cable modem and continue to pay the $43/mo. we were paying. If we kept only the cable modem service they would have charged $58/mo. The obvious compromise was to keep basic cable for $11.50 and continue the cable modem service at $43.

When you watch TV the SlingPlayer program allows you to control the source by dispalying an image of the remote control that you'd normally use to switch channels were you at the source. That is if you're controlling a cable box then you get a picture of your cable box remote control and to change channels or bring up the guide you use the mouse to click the buttons that you'd normally press if you were watching TV at the source. Kevie, Chris, and I found this really cumbersome! Fortunately all of the buttons have keyboard shortcuts and this turned out to be a much better way to control the cable box.