A good day...

Ever have one of those days when everything actually goes well?

First, Trader Joe's brought back a favorite treat (see previous post).

Second, I did some calculations, and switching to Verizon FIOS will save me about $60 a month, with a 10x increase in internet speed.

By bundling my internet and TV, and dumping my land-line phone (I only kept that so I'd have DSL), it saved quite a bit. There were two major factors in this that I had to figure out first:

• I've got a web server at home - that's forbidden by Verizon (they actually block port 80), so I enquired my ISP (Easystreet.com) about hosting a server there - a whopping $19/month gives me 1.5 GB or storage. Geez, I remember when a hundred MB cost something like $150/month! I'm getting old...
• I did some digging, and HD Tivo works just fine with FIOS - just gotta get a multistream cablecard instead of a FIOS DVR. You don't get PPV on the box, you gotta call Customer Service for that, but I've done that a total of twice in my DirecTV experience.

Poor DirecTV - they just can't figure out what to do with Tivo. They "support" HD Tivo, but have no plans to have any of the new satellite's HD channels on the older HD DirecTivos. I emailed and called Customer Support, but they had nothing. Oh, well...

So, I went down to BestBuy and got a Series 3 HD Tivo for $299. I actually got somebody who knew what they were talking about (gasp!). To top it off, when checking out I got a coupon for $50 off my next purchase. The Tivo wireless internet adapter runs $54.95, I'll swing by Monday and pick that up. Sweet. No more stupid phone line and wireless modem (and now I'll get all the spiffy features that DirecTV turned off).

Icing on the cake - Tivo has an offer for current users when they buy a new box - the Lifetime Subscription. It's $399 - that's a lot - but over the lifetime of the unit, it'll pay for itself (assuming it lasts more than four years).

Now I've just got to deal with the whole FIOS thing and get it installed. That should be fun.