Category: Entertainment

Is it time to stop owning your media?

~ SA Otey

For as long as I’ve had money and ears I’ve been purchasing music. I started with cassette tapes in the 80s and moved on to CDs in the 90s followed by iTunes in the 00s. Now I have the AppleOne subscription where I can upload all my CD-rips and enjoy endless tunes connected to Apple Music.

Music (Yes)

I have a disappearing collection of CDs as they have all been put into Apple lossless format. I rarely purchase a physical CD anymore unless I sign up for a Kickstarter campaign and get the artist to sign it.

I purchase soundtracks for my favorite movies and have the physical CD and the auto-rip from Amazon. Once I subscribed to Apple One, and for only $39 a month, my family and I can listen to anything we want with our own playlists.

Books (Maybe)

I’m slowly removing all my physical books from my shelf and replacing them with their digital counterpart. I’ll keep a few on the shelf because I could never part with them. My Grandmother’s study bible and hymnal, my personal bible collection, and a few Star Wars books. But other than that I have everything on my Kindle. Let’s hope Amazon doesn’t close its virtual doors anytime soon.

Movies (No)

I still own many movies, I have VHS, DVDs, Blu-rays, and 4K discs. I also own the original non-special edition Star Wars films on Laserdisc (and a Laserdisc player). Physical media is superior because they don’t buffer like streaming services. You get the highest quality picture and sound. They also don’t disappear from the platform every few months.

It’s a neat idea to have all your media in the cloud, it would put those time-life CD infomercials out of business because you can dig in the virtual crates and find all your favorites, all for the easy payment of $9.99 a month.

Spectrum internet monopoly

~ SA Otey

The only option I have for the internet is Spectrum. To get a good deal I have to make the business and residential services compete with each other.

After getting locked into a “deal” for spectrum business class. They started offering lower rates and faster speeds. After several attempts, they offered to raise my rate to $349 a month rather than the $100 I’m paying now. Not that good of a deal in my opinion.

So I decided to sign up for residential service at a lower rate and faster speed. But now the tech for the business class came by and disconnected me on the street. They truly are separate entities because they don’t check to see if you signed up for another service, they just cut the cord. I called to see if they would come to fix their mistake and they said since I’m a residential customer they wouldn’t touch the line. I said it didn’t stop you from disconnecting my residential a few hours ago.

So now I’m at the mercy of Spectrum. The sad thing is if you are a business customer they will fix your problem within 4 hours, but now that I’m a lowly residential customer I have to wait for the first available appointment. Even though it’s their error.

Fast forward a year, and I spent about a half hour today trying to give Spectrum my money for cable TV. The deal kept getting worse. By the time my base package was quoted, it was $160 for broadcast channels (no DVR) and internet. My current promotion ended and it was now $140 for both, which was up from $110 the previous month. So I ended up dropping cable and now only paying $60 for the internet. Now guess what’s showing in my newsfeed? Ads for Sling, Dish, and DirecTV. I will probably go with Sling since it works with AppleTV. Thankfully, AT&T Fiber is coming soon.

Is Sirius XM worth the money?

~ SA Otey

After about a month, Sirius XM gets old and repeaty. I took a trip to the grocery store and heard the long version of the Humpty Dance on Rock the Bells Classic Hip Hop. Once I got tired of the endless loop, I flipped over to 90s on 9 where the Humpty Dance was just beginning. Also, you can only hear Downtown Julie Brown so many times.

You will get your three-month preview whenever you get a new car, but that’s as far as you should go. One time, I made the mistake of getting the 6-month extension for $29 ($36 after fees), so I was stuck hearing Humpty Hump for a few more months. By the way, Sirius XM doesn’t work well if there are trees around or you pull into a gas station. The signal will go out because you need a line of sight to the satellite.  Once your free trial is up I suggest Apple Music if you are an iPhone user. That way, you can put Humpty on repeat to your heart’s desire.

Blocking pop-ups from magazines…

~ SA Otey

IMG_2873It sounds like a contradictory non-sensible statement but I’m talking about the little card that flies out of a magazine when you thumb through the pages. These are the equivalent of pop-up ads on websites. Now that add blockers are basically useless you have to go back to print media to get your news, but now you have to deal with Geico shoving a card within each page.

Whenever I get a new magazine, which is rare these days. I will take it directly to the garbage can with the widest opening. I shake the magazine until all the cards fall out and then enjoy the magazine as it was intended. You know, a few articles and embedded ads.

Best and Worst Times to Visit Disney World

~ SA Otey
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Walt Disney telling you to leave!

When a hurricane is there

The park will be closed and you won’t be able to get through the gates, Well you probably could, but you would go to jail. Not Disney jail, but a real jail, where the mice bite. However, if you are on the property then you are safe. Disney Resorts are made to withstand a Category 5 hurricane. They will treat you like royalty and since they are their own municipality, you will have power sooner. However, if they stay open during a hurricane you will have little wait times because people will cancel their vacations.

When it’s hot

You will sweat profusely and you will get dehydrated if you don’t buy the $4 bottles of water. Don’t drink the soda and beer or you will dehydrate faster. And be broker faster

When there are numerous amount of people there

Holidays and weekends are the worst, and holiday weekends are a no-brainer to stay away.

When you just bought new shoes

That is unless you like blisters on your feet. Never take a brand new pair of shoes into the park. Don’t buy a brand new pair of waterproof timberland boots for your July trip. Your boots will be filled with pain and suffering.

When a new ride is open

Well, it might be a good time to visit other areas of the parks except for Guardians of the Galaxy Cosmic Rewind, Tron Lightcycle Run, or Peter Pan’s Flight. Make sure to get a virtual queue

No one really knows the best time to visit

There is no slow season no matter what anyone tells you. If you are going to go, just do it and enjoy your time. Be patient with people because 95% of people are not self aware and will bump into you. If someone says they got on all the rides with no waiting they are lying, and you shouldn’t be friends with liars.

Old Movies in Theaters: Are They Worth It?

~ SA Otey

I’ve noticed an uptick in the trend to bring back older movies from the 70s, 80s, and 90s to local theaters. I think it’s a great idea, but unnecessary in our day and age.

I can see the appeal. You can watch an old movie on a large screen with high-quality audio. It’s easy to do now because there are no unwieldy film reels to deal with. All the movies are delivered over the internet or on hard disk drives that basically load into a fancy digital projector. Kinda irks me when they splash the Sony 4K logo before a movie. Really? You are proud that your resolution is lower than celluloid?

The real reason movies are coming back out is because Hollywood is out of ideas. They’ve rebooted every movie franchise they can think of. They’ve created movies based on video and board games. The only untapped market is the cereal industry. I’d pay to see a movie where Captain Crunch fights Count Chocula, Franken, and Boo Berry like Van Helsing.

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Windows XP on the Big Screen!

Should you upgrade your movie ticket to premium?

~ SA Otey

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Regal Premium Experience has been out for a while, and in my opinion, is worth the extra price if you must see the latest hot garbage from Hollywood. You get a comfortable seat, a huge screen, and super loud audio with many speakers. I used to go for the 3D version but have since switched to 2D only because the picture is much sharper. They could make it even more premiumer if they had some way to keep the movie commentators quiet. Maybe some sort of EMP to disable all cell phones so that we are not blinded by blue screen light as we are engrossed in a Xenomorph chomping its way out of a human body cavity.

Of course at my house, I have a pretty large screen, super loud surround speakers, and all the popcorn I want to eat. I can pause the movie anytime I want so no one interrupts the Xenomorph cavity carnage.
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Binge watching is the new standard

~ SA Otey

I have all but quit watching TV shows when they are broadcast. I believe I stopped watching live TV shows when Friends went off the air before DVRs were a thing. I don’t like commercials and with Disney+, Hulu, HBO Max, and other knockoffs, you can watch an entire season rather quickly. Once the streaming services became available it made it too easy to watch what I wanted on my schedule. There are some shows that I like to keep up to date on so I will wait about a month until they get at least 4 shows in the books before I begin watching. Then there’s that awful waiting period for them to get another 4 episodes in the queue.

The problem today is we’ve been tricked into watching commercials again. Now each service has a “premium” tier with no ads. They’ve gone back to releasing shows every week so no more binge watching when a new show comes out. That way you can see more ads. Unless you pay!

What is Friendship Day?

~ SA Otey

Friendship Day is another greeting card invented event where you are supposed to enjoy your relationships with others. I say it’s a good time to clean house on your Facebook lists.

  1. Look at your friend’s list
  2. See who has the most friends
  3. Unfriend that “friend”
  4. See how long it takes for them to send you a friend request
  5. Repeat every week until you have no friends

Chances are if someone has 3000+ friends they won’t notice you’ve unfriended them until they see you pop up on the “Find New Friends” or “People you may know” feature. Hopefully, Facebook has it in their algorithms that you don’t surface again.

Have fun, enjoy, and tell a “friend”!

Enough with the end credit scenes!

~ SA Otey

The mid and end-credit scenes are just a way to get you to read all the names of the people who made the movie. That, and see job titles that didn’t know existed. You will then wonder how much an assistant food dolly gripper makes and if it’s the right career move at this point in your life.

The end credit scenes have never been so good that it makes it worth the wait, and yet I still watch them all. Just leave the theater! Then go read a fanboy website that will explain and or theorize what it all means. Then hear them rant about people being bandwagon fans, and they didn’t read the comics when they were growing up. Well, you are right. I was too busy pitching no-hitters and hitting home runs in Little League when I was a kid. Now I can just watch the movie.

The new Superman movie’s end credit scenes are not worth the wait. Just go back and watch Man of Steel, Batman v Superman, and the Snyder cut of Justice League.