October 2010 Archives

After spending a while hitting the limit of my laptop hard drive, and being annoyed with being forced to actually cull my data and videos and music to make it all fit, I finally realized that for under $100 I could almost triple the storage space I had in it with little or no worries (other than possibly voiding the warranty, not an issue in a 2.5 year old machine).   It was actually pretty easy to do, other than one or two minor blips.  There's lots of information online about how to do it, and other than the minor detail of needing a computer to read the instructions on while you have the computer open with it's guts exposed, it was up and done with no muss and no fuss.

First things first, reading resources. 

• This Extreme Tech article is great, and being the first hit on google was nice.
• When I did run into one thing I needed confirmation on, this video showed that there were minor differences in the versions of the hardware (or at least from the first article).

So for $79 I picked up a 500G, 7200rpm laptop drive, and a few dollars more I got the SATA to USB connector kit that would let me connect the drive to the computer as a USB drive.  This was needed to make the upgrade smooth. Oh, and a T-6 Torx screwdriver as well, as per the article.  Seems apple can't leave it at just one type of screw in their bodies....



When I got home I made sure my homebrew time capsule backup was current, and nuked a few un-needed big files from the desktop.  I assembled the SATA drive and adapter and plugged in the drive, formatted it, and then I broke out Carbon Copy Cloner.  CCC is an awesome utility that basically will clone one drive to another and make it bootable if needed, so for me the theory was clone old drive to new drive, swap out drives, boot up on new drive, with all my data in place and no issues.  In theory.

Unlike most stories about me and hardware, this time the theory was the reality.  I assembled a bit of paper to keep track of which screws went where, consulted the webpages a lot for each step, got a little scared with the sticky cable attached to the top of the drive, and in the end, reversed the whole process to put it all back together.

End result, computer working properly, more than twice the disk space, and only about $100 spent on tools, adapters, and the actual drive.  Well worth saving the random "dangnabbit what else to I have to delete now!?" yells.

Shaw called me up yesterday and asked if I was wanting a digital cable box for the low-low price of $0 (for the next 6 months) to "make my picture and sound better" because they were "trying to get their customers onto digital picture and sound" or something like that.  I talked to the guy for a bit, and it seemed like not that bad a deal, free for 6 months, then $2.50 or so after that (should we decide to keep it of course and not accidentally forget).  Not bad I told him, but how about a PVR.  No no, this is just the digital tuner.  OK, but it is HD right?  No no, not HD. 

Eh?

Ok, not much use to me.  Basically outside of a few more channels (and lets be honest, I have 60 channels of crap now) it gave me nothing but another box and remote to deal with and a new interface to change channels with.  So not that great a deal, even for free.  But I told him, if you can get me the same deal with an HD tuner box, let me know and I'm all over that (hey, free is free, and I'd rather watch 60 channels of crap in HD than not in HD you know).  Also I doubt they could do anything for me but it doesn't hurt to ask, especially if there's nothing to lose.  Anyway, they said they'd call me back today.

So in typical big company fashion, communication was off and when I did get the call today I was cheerfully asked "so, you called asking about HD PVRs?"  After I explained what was going on, and what I was offered and what I wanting, they offered me the following deal:

• HD Tuner with PVR rent free for 2 years
• Extra HD movie channels for 1 year
• Shaw home phone service with voicemail etc and 1 year free Canada / US calling
• Home phone number stays the same with no costs for porting it from Telus to Shaw
  

All for $20 a month less than what I pay now.  That's not counting the fact I'd be able to stop my Telus service of $30-40 a month.

Now of course the devil is in the details. If I forget to cancel the various extras added on after 1 year they I get dinged at least a month of them before I cancel, and there are three different programs and two different anniversaries to remember if I want to back down to a lower rate after.  But even if I left things as is after the 1 year promotional "loyal customer" promotion ends, I'm still going to not have a Telus bill that means my costs are at minimum $10 a month cheaper.  And in theory if I nuke all the services back to minimum and either buy out the PVR ($400 ouch) or send it back I'm back to where I was or lower, even after all the promos are ended. 

I asked a bunch of people on twitter and facebook about Shaw home phone and other than one guy who said that he got crappy and spotty service with it, the response was overwhelmingly "it's fine, no problems".  Might even fix the crackly line we get on the home phone too.  Only minor downside is that in a power outage the phone doesn't work (one person mentioned they have a 24 hour battery on theirs), but quite frankly I have that right now as our phone base station is powered.

Even if after a year I switch everything back and go back to exactly how it is now, a year of saving $50 a month means $600 in my pocket, which at the end of the day, makes sense.  Unless someone out there in Blog Land has some really good reasons to not go with a deal like this, I'll probably take it.  Apparently I get a recruiting fee if I pass it on to someone else too, so anyone who might be in the process of moving for example and are planning to get some brand new Internet or Cable TV service at their new home, make sure you make sure to tell them that I sent you :)

As I mentioned a while back (not here, my blogging has been lacking lately), my power cord for my laptop frayed itself down to the wire.  So I made myself an appointment at the Apple Store down the road from my work, and went in today to hopefully deal with it. 

I had a dentist appointment last week that was supposed to be a tooth extraction for a tooth that's been bothering me for a while, actually not the tooth but the gum above it.  Dentist tried a few things, and eventually said the tooth had to come out, unfortunately.  I got two choices, either a bridge of some sort that'd cost an arm, but would also damange the two teeth on either side, or a metal post implanted where the tooth was, that wouldn't damage any other teeth, better in the long term, etc, etc, but costs both the arm and the leg.

I went into the office and he got me all ready, gave me details, etc etc, and just when he's about to start doing whatever it is he has to do (apparently they don't just tie a string around the tooth with the other end on a door knob and slam the door), and asked if I was going bridge or post, and when I said I was going to sell off my first born (if I had one) to do the post he basically stopped and decided I needed to go to the specialist for both the extraction and whatever came afterwards, not just the stuff that came afterwards.  He did manage to use the rest of the time though, taking pictures, more poking and prodding, etc.

So now it's another appointment, another having to explain to my boss why I didn't have all the dentristy done, and so on.  On the plus side, I get another few weeks with all my teeth :D