Cutting the Cord...Again

You know, I often find myself revisiting the past, 2007-2008 to be specific. That's the era that historians refer to as The Financial Renaissance. It was during this time in a little state called North Carolina that my credit was born. A strapping young lad, it grew quickly because I fed it nothing but disposable income. It would later die a horrible fiery death in a tiny overpriced town called Washington, DC, but let's not dwell on the negative.

I remember a phone call I had back then with the cable company. I can't remember exactly what it was about. Perhaps I forgot to mail off a payment and they were charging me a late fee. Whatever it was, I just remember saying something along the lines of, "It's only $20. I'm not going to get all up in arms about it. I'll know next time though." Back then I could say silly things like that. Fast forward to today and a much poorer me is on the phone with the cable company feeling like Claude McKay:
Like men, we'll face the murderous, cowardly pack
Pressed to the walls, dying.
But fighting back!

I'm ready to go to war over this $23 increase in my cable bill. They just mailed me a new price as if it was okay. No heads up or anything. I opened the bill and there it was: "Hey, your cable is now $23 more. No, they're no new features. You still have to watch commercials. Yeah, the Tivo is still set up so that you have to pass the beginning of your show by like 15 seconds or else it'll snap back into the commercials you're trying to bypass. Huh? Can we cut you a deal? We can cut it off. That's about it."

Back to our history lesson. We were all sad to see the Financial Renaissance come to an end, but it gave birth to a new era, The Age of Discovery. If necessity is the mother of invention then "being broke" is its father. I learned how to cook during the new era, so much so that I actually prefer my own food over the restaurant quality fare that I was trying to replicate. I didn't really know what "open source" was until my computer crashed and I couldn't find the product keys for any of my programs. That's when I became aware of GIMP, OpenOffice, Kompozer, etc. It's also when I discovered Yelp Elite (free food and booze), Film Metro (free movie premieres) and several marketing research firms that pay me $75 to $200 a pop to give my opinion on things.

The point of all of this is that I see RCN's latest price increase as a challenge. My bill was $80 a month two years ago. This new one is $135. A novice would pay it. No, that's not right. A fool would pay it. A novice would try to see what Comcast is offering. I'm a doctoral degree candidate in being broke and for my dissertation I'm canceling my cable, installing MythTV and a TV Tuner on the Mac Mini that's hooked up to the big TV, which will give me my own subscription-free DVR. As for the cable channels, I only watch the Food Network, HGTV and Comedy Central. All of those have PLEX channels, which is already on my computer.

-Dr. Ordale J Allen
Brokeologist