Friday, October 28, 2011

Thank you, Sprint. Thank you, video chat.

For the past several days, my Kindergartner's first loose tooth has been giving him fits. He keeps accidentally chomping down on it at mealtime, causing quite a bit of pain. Last night he kept asking me to pull it, but it still seemed too attached. So I just told him to wiggle it around as much as possible and it should come out soon.

Well, it did! This morning at work I got picture mail from my wife of the tooth and the gap! I was a little disappointed to not be there in person. So, I immediately got out my Motorola Photon - powered by Sprint's 4G NOW Network - and fired up a Google Talk video chat with my wife. It was super-awesome to get to see how excited he was about losing his first tooth. And he thought it was way-cool to see me in the video chat. To make it even better, as we were about to wrap up, his little brother came toddling in to the kitchen. At first, he was just really confused (having just woken up), but once he realized he could talk to me AND see me, he was grinning from ear to ear.

Technology rocks.


Thank you, Sprint. Thank you, video chat.

Monday, February 28, 2011

Cutting cords. Cutting costs.

High speed cable modem with VoIP - Check.
HD DVR cable box - Check.
Remote control - Check, Check. (Why did we have two remotes??)


We dropped off all our Time Warner Cable equipment and cancelled our service. So that's it. No more land-line phone. No more Internet. No more TV.

Well...not exactly! Enter Sprint, Roku, Netflix, and Hulu Plus. We got a 4G desktop modem from Sprint for our ISP and we've got a Roku box to stream Netflix and Hulu Plus. We're getting our basic TV over the air with a digital converter and antennae.

We've been thinking of doing this for over a year, but just haven't gone through with it. Finally, with a little inspiration, we've made the jump. It's not flawless; periodically we have some buffering and loading issues, but not that often, and it clears up quickly. A small price to pay considering this is saving us around $80 a month.

If nothing else, it has proved one thing. I knew that if I ever started watching Heroes, I'd be hooked.