I apologize in advance. This is going to be a long one...

I've been a very satisfied customer of DirecTV since April 2003, subscribing to the Choice Plus package, with HD channels and DVR service. I think they are by far the best provider available in the Cincinnati area for the sheer number of channels, HD or otherwise, at a decent price. They certainly offer the most bang for the buck. However, over the last few months I've been coming to the conclusion that there are over 200 channels and we watch 15 of them. Of those 15, 10 are local. Which we get in crystal clear HDTV over-the-air, using Radio Shack rabbit ears. Why am I paying so much money when most of what my family watches is available freely over-the-air?

I've been a very satisfied customer of Cincinnati Bell, the local landline phone company, since, well, as long as I've lived on my own. I can't recall ever having an issue with their service. We have all the usual services: voicemail, caller ID, call waiting, and so on. However, over the last few months I've been coming to the conclusion that $45 is too much to pay for a landline. Why am I paying so much money when there are cheaper, VoIP alternatives?

I've also been a very satisfied customer of Zoomtown, Cincinnati Bell's DSL Internet service, since June of 1999. Only twice can I remember a serious downtime issue. However, over the last few months I've been coming to the conclusion that the download speed, which seems to max out at 2.6Mbps, while not a snail's pace, hardly feels like broadband. This is especially true when I'm trying to watch Inside Xbox videos on my Xbox 360 over a wired Ethernet connection and it takes over a minute to buffer before it plays, then stops to buffer several times throughout playback.  Don't get me started on Netflix Watch Now or large downloads. Why am I paying so much money for an bandwidth-inferior product?

All of this seemed to create my own little perfect storm. Given the current financial landscape plus the desire to seriously upgrade our Internet bandwidth, which was just not possible with Zoomtown, I decided to basically change everything out except our cell phone service, which happens to be with Cincinnati Bell.

I reduced our subscription to DirecTV to their least expensive channel package - which actually includes things like DIY, Nickelodeon, and Disney - and the DVR service, while disabling all but one set-top box. Of course, this means no more ESPNHD, FSN, or HDNet. Once our commitment term with them ends, I'll be canceling it altogether. I am routing the signal from my rabbit ears to my PC, which has Windows Media Center on it. This is actually a very nice DVR and is accessible through the Xbox 360, so it has a pretty high Wife Acceptance Factor. I can do all the things I could do on our TiVo: pause, rewind, fast-forward live TV, record by title, keyword search, etc. So far, I haven't found something TiVo can do that WMC can't.

I then ordered RoadRunner Turbo, which provides up to 15Mbps download speeds. Holy. Fast doesn't do it justice.

When I called to cancel Zoomtown, I decided to keep our landline with Cincinnati Bell. They reduced our home phone service to just $37.95 a month, which still seems WAY too high for a landline. However, it's only $13 more than Vonage, we stay in the phone book, and I don't have to worry about whether our monitored alarm system is going to work with VoIP.

So far, I'm very happy with all the changes. We can simply rent the DVDs for the series that are only on cable and RoadRunner is simply blazing fast. We're saving roughly $60 per month with our new setup. The only concern right now is that I'll need to figure out how I can watch the PBA Tour or the local sports teams when they are on cable. (My guess: it ain't happening.)

What services have you altered to either save money or upgrade lately?

The Cincinnati Enquirer is reporting this morning that Chipotle has applied for a liquor license for a location on Fountain Square. This is about as official as it can get without a press release or actual signage going up on a storefront.

We still don’t know when the burrito maker will open or exactly which space they will occupy, but color me excited.

Finally, Chipotle is coming to the Square. I can already envision the insanely long lines.

A rather strange thing happened to me the other day when I opened Firefox 3. It seemed the history in Firefox 3 was gone, missing, empty, what have you. None of the tabs I had open when I last closed Firefox re-opened. When I pressed Alt-Home (clicking the Home button, for those that like to fondle their mice), I got the default Firefox search page and not Gmail like I had configured.

Pressing Ctrl-H to bring up my browser history showed a blank sidebar. I started to type gmail into the address bar and I didn’t get the nifty auto-complete feature (because there was no history).

You ever get an odd sensation where your mouth starts salivating, your palms start sweating, and your mind begins racing at warp speed?

Yeah.

So, I went to the Tools > Options… dialog and noticed that none of my settings had changed. This is getting more crazy by the second. But then I finally fixed it.

Here’s the solution (for me, with Firefox 3, on Vista Ultimate 32-bit):

1. Close Firefox.
2. Open Task Manager (Ctrl-Shft-Esc).
3. In the Processes tab, click each instance of firefox.exe (you might want to sort on the image name column to be sure you got them all) and press Delete. Click Yes to the prompt.
4. Once each instance of firefox.exe is eradicated, restart Firefox.

Now, when I open Firefox, all my browsing history is back, along with my tabs and auto-complete in the address bar.

This solution worked for me. On my computer. As with all my Windows Remedies™, your mileage may vary. If this helped you, great. Let me know in the comments. If not, but you found a different way that worked for you, let me know that too so others may benefit down the road.

Enjoy.

Finally, after a long week of manual labor – hey, I have a desk job – our front yard actually has some nice landscaping.

I took a week of vacation from work to do sort of an extreme makeover on our two flower beds in the front yard. I hadn’t done much at all to them since we moved in, save building a little rock wall and ripping out some of the uglier freebies from the builder.

I spent the better part of Sunday and Monday digging rocks out of our back yard, which seem to bubble up every season. Some of the rocks were enormous. Easily 100 to 150 pounds each. I put half a dozen of these in the newly renovated flowerbeds (more on this below), another dozen in an obscure place in our side yard for later use, and the rest were dumped in the woods next to our neighbor’s house. I’m sure I’ll go back from some of those as I add beds to the side yards.

Monday afternoon was spent driving a pickup around the back yard, filling the new craters with top soil. Slightly back breaking.

Tuesday was an off day, yard-wise, for me, since I was bowling in a tournament that night. I took it easy, hung out with the kids, and bought the plants with which to load up the flower beds. I bowled well, too (218, 276, 216, 223). Especially considering my level of Bacardi Limon-induced intoxication. Intoxicated so much, that I had to spend the night at my friend’s house.

Wednesday, was the day to finally start working in the front beds. I spent the morning building a small retaining wall – it was more like edging – in the flower bed closest the garage. My colleague buddy Steve came over in the afternoon, which worked out well, because he showed up just in time to make a run for some garden mix topsoil. I had Alvis load up the back of my father-in-law’s Silverado and when we got back to the house, I backed the truck up to the flower bed to be soiled (heh) and started shoveling dirt from the back of the truck straight into the bed.

This worked, but it was also back breaking and wasn’t very efficient.

Then we lowered the tail gate and stared raking the dirt out of the truck and into the bed. More efficient, but still too slow and not very easy.

After another truckload of topsoil, we discovered that a wheelbarrow fits just so under a truck’s tailgate and raking dirt into it, then dumping the whole load into the bed was so much easier and the most efficient way thus far. We were very proud of ourselves.

We finished up around 6 or so and naturally, our tummies were grumbling. So, I fired up the grill and threw on some steaks, corn on the cob, and hamburgers for the kids. There wasn't much by the way of leftovers.

The rest of the week and weekend involved actually planting the plants and adding the aforementioned rocks.

Now that it's over, I'm quite happy with the results. I'm not much of a green thumb, nor am I a landscape designer, but I think the beds look pretty nice. Peep larger sizes of the pics in this post by clicking any of them. (Sorry for the lousy photos. I'm not the photographer of the family.)

If you're curious, here's what I planted:

• Delphinium, Blue Mirror
• Coneflower, Prairie Splendor
• Coneflower, White Swan
• Daylily, Orange Velvet
• Coral Bells, Obsidian
• Copperleaf Sedge
• Evergold Carex
• Maiden Grass

Rachel and I are finally getting off our duffs to do some landscaping at our palatial estate. We’ll be starting out slowly and are concentrating on the front of the house.

This post is intended to be my staging area for plants I’m considering adding to our landscape and an easy way for Rachel and I to share ideas. Your thoughts are welcome as well.

(Note: this page will be a work in progress, so…whatever that means)

Shrubs

Barberry - Rosy Glow

The Barberry 'Rosy Glow', 'Berberis thunbergii', is an easy to grow shrub that is great for beginner gardeners. This barberry is a vigorous cultivar and is a showy garden plant with its variegated leaves of purple with light pink splotches. With a plant height of 3' and a spread of 2-3', it should be planted in full sun to part shade. Full sun will produce the best foliage color. 'Rosy Glow' needs a well drained area and can tolerate some drought. Yellow flowers will appear in April and they may last until May.

UPDATED: Thorny = no thanks. Sure looks pretty, though.

Rhododendron P.J.M. Lavender

These plants are among the hardiest and most reliable evergreen rhododendrons. This semi-dwarf selection flowers early with lavender-pink blooms. The green foliage becomes purple-brown in winter.

Disadvantage: Attracts bees (but also butterlies and hummingbirds, yay!).

Euonymus - Gold Splash

The Euonymus Gold Splash, 'Euonymus f. 'Gold Splash', a Proven Winners selection, produces big, round leaves that have a bright, bold variegation. It will make a dramatic impact on the landscape and will provide four season color in your landscape. The variegation is very stable and the plant has good disease resistance. The variegated foliage maintains its color all yar long and it is accented by showy, persistant fruit in the fall. Place this plant in well drained soil.

Green Velvet Boxwood

Green Velvet Boxwood is a handsome, rounded, full-bodied, slow-growing shrub with small dark green leaves. Like most modern cultivars, it is a hybrid of Korean Boxwood (for hardiness and compactness) and Common Boxwood (for excellent leaf color in both summer and winter). During late winter the leaf color is best described as dark green with a bronze hue. The noticeable but not showy flowers are cream-colored inflorescences occurring in late April and early May on established plants. The flowers are somewhat fragrant and usually attract bees. It is very tolerant of sunny locations as long as it receives sufficient moisture. It will slowly grow to 3 feet tall by 3 feet wide.

Perennials

Serbian Bellflower

Bellflowers are among the most popular of perennials. This dwarf selection may be grown in rock gardens, used as an edging, or in tubs and pots. Plants form a spreading patch of small green leaves, bearing loads of starry violet-blue flowers beginning in late spring and blooming for weeks on end. Nice when used as a groundcover over a smaller area, especially under shrub roses. Will sometimes repeat flower in the autumn.

Variegated Japanese Sedge

Sedges are grass-like plants, mostly preferring sites with moist, rich soil. This Japanese selection forms a low cascading clump of leathery green leaves, with a bright creamy-yellow stripe down the center. Brownish flowers are insignificant. A choice plant for edging, or in the rock garden. If the tips of the leaves get wind-burn over the winter, they may be trimmed with scissors in the spring. This is a well-behaved, non-spreading plant. Clumps may be divided in early spring. Tolerates dry shade with occasional watering. Evergreen.

Goldstorm Coneflower

Among the best border perennials available, this is a selection of one of our native North American wildflowers. Plants make a bushy, upright clump with a profuse display of brown-eyed, golden-orange daisies from midsummer through the fall. Seed heads have good winter interest. A terrific choice for mass planting, combining especially well with ornamental grasses. Excellent for cutting. Removing faded flowers regularly will greatly increase the blooming time. Plants may be easily divided in early spring. Attractive to butterflies.

Yeah, the sober part, not so much.

I had a 155 my first game. I started out decent enough: 3 spares followed by a strike. Then a missed 10-pin, a missed 7-pin, and another missed 10-pin sent me into the deep end. I finished out the series with a 213 and a 275 for a very respectable 643 series. I ended up high on the pair. The trouble is, that 155 killed all my brackets.

Anyway, I switched from Diet Mountain Dew to Michelob Ultra around the middle of the second game (9:30-ish) and quit drinking around 1:30. Somewhere in there was 4 slices of Papa John's pizza.

Today, we're going to Churchill to play the ponies.

I don't plan to drink much today. But then again, I didn't plan on drinking much last night, either.

I'm in Louisville right now, getting ready to head over to the lanes for my annual donation to the Louisville Derby bowling tournament. Earlier today, I played the Bardstown Country Club golf course and shot a 120. I'm getting better off the tee, but my game from 80 yards and in is horrible. It's a good thing I bowl better than I golf.

We bowl team event tonight at 8PM (which is about 40 minutes away as I type this), so I'll try to report back tonight on how my team and I did. Assuming I'm sober enough to type.

Wish me luck.