Tuesday, March 6, 2012

104. Get Rid of Our Home Landline

Awhile back we got rid of cable TV.  That has been going pretty well.  We use Netflix and Hulu for just about everything that we watch on TV.  The antenna in our attic works great. I do miss ESPN, but I get enough sports online to make up for it.  Plus saving around $35 a month helps to make it a little easier too.
The other day I was reading a blog post about getting a free phone line with free calling.  Melissa and I have talked about when we move we will most likely get rid of our land line. After investigating about the legitimacy of the blog post I found that there are a lot of people who are very fond of the OBi110 system used with GoogleVoice.  When using Google Voice you get a phone number for free (at least until 2013). I ordered the OBi on Saturday night from Amazon and had it at the house on Monday afternoon. All I had to do is plug the OBi110 system into our modem then run a line to our cordless phone base.  We now have a working phone that will call anywhere in the USA for free.  The only number it won't let us call is 911.  This is kind of a big deal but since we had talked about getting rid of our land line later this was a hurdle we were going to have to come to at some point.
The setup was really easy.  I used the directions given here and had a working phone in about 15 minutes.
So far (2 days in) there really haven't been any issues with phone quality.  It is great to now have the freedom to shop around for only an internet service provider rather than a bundle of phone + internet + TV. We did have to get a new phone number, but at a savings of about $25 a month I think we can do a little leg work to let everyone know that they need to change our phone number.

Saturday, March 3, 2012

68. Watch 5 movies that I watched growing up

I have been keeping track of my progress here. I have enjoyed seeing some of the movies from the past.  It has been fun to go into the library and pick something out from years ago.  I am definitely going to keep searching out more movies to watch.  Some have been awful while others have been fun to see again.

1. Harry and the Hendersons - Two moments that I remembered from the movie that never let me down:
"Shoot it!"  Reply - "It's dead."  "Shoot it anyway!"
Harry sticking his head out the window making a siren noise to get traffic to move.
This is a good movie, and it was fun to watch, but it is probably best left in 1987.
2. Last Action Hero
3. Surf Ninjas
4. Honey, I Blew up the Kid! - We're headed to Las Vegas in a few weeks and I wanted to watch a few movies that were filmed there.  This is one I watched a lot growing up. First reason, I liked the first movie in the series.  Second reason, Keri Russell.  Third reason, we watched a lot of movies in the early 90s. This just happened to be one of them.
5. Toby Tyler - All I remembered from the movie was that it had something to do with the circus and Toby riding on a horse. I watched it quite a few times. growing up. I am pretty sure we watched it (and taped it) after seeing it on Sunday night's Disney Sunday Movie.
 I was a big fan of the Disney Sunday Movie growing up.  I remember watching the opening credits:

I always remember when I would watch the credits I would try to see how many of the movies that were included that I had seen.  I looked forward to that movie each week.
After the opening Michael Eisner would introduce the movie.  I think I remember him usually walking along a beach talking about the movie.  Same scene every week.
Just writing this it brings me back to a time that I happily remember. Between the Disney Sunday Movie and TGIF that was some great memorable programming.

30 goals down!