It’s Friday the 31 – a day that will no doubt bring bad luck to dyslexics everywhere. I had the foresight to take the day off, which I’m quite happy about at the moment. I’d rather have taken Monday off (Mondays just seem eminently better to miss than Fridays), but I’m on call next week, so I went with today to burn one of my use-it-or-lose-it vacation days. Right now, that seems like it was a pretty good idea. In fact, all day yesterday it seemed like a really good idea too – it was all I could do to get through the day.

So I don’t know if you saw it, but they have the “Amazon Fire Stick” available for preorder, and up until Wednesday Prime customers could get it for $19. So I figured, what the hell (it won’t actually be getting here until the end of December, so I guess it looked like a good deal to lots of people). It really won’t do much more than the Roku does, but what the heck.

I’ve also been wanting to get a Chromecast, and since they’re only $28 or so, I ordered one of those, too. That, fortunately, wasn’t a backorder pre-order kind of thing, so I got it on Wednesday. What with me being already so far up Google’s ass highly invested in the Googleshpere, it’s working out quite well. The thing I’ve used it for more than anything else so far is “casting” music to my stereo (both the collection I’ve uploaded to the Google “cloud” and from my all-access music subscription).

My plan, I think, is to drop satellite service when my current contract is up (which, fortuitously, should be right around the time I can get HBO w/o a cable/sat subscription). This means I’ll need to mount an outdoor antenna on the roof for OTA teevee and build a DVR to record stuff (there’s not a lot of “regular” tv that I watch, but there are a few things – and the local PBS station, in particular, has very spotty reception out here).

There are things I’ll miss (SU sports on the cable networks, for instance – though we may be entering some rather bleak times around here), but it’s all just too damn much money for what amounts to at most a few hours a week that would be better spent reading a book.

I’m currently in the final month of all my DirecTV “incentives” so I need to cut my service back anyway. In fact, I’m trying to decide if DIY is worth paying $7 a month for, or if I can live with just HGTV. They both recycle each others’ content, but I like DIY better (mostly for Renovation Realities, where I get to make fun of all the happy homeowners doing stupid shit that thank goodness nobody ever caught me doing on camera).

Well, I’ve got time to think it all over – and, hey, I might not even be alive in a year.

Happy Halloween, if you’re into that kinda thing. I used to sit around with the curtains drawn and the lights out to discourage the little bastids from ringing the bell and getting the dogs all worked up, but now that we’re out in the middle of nowhere and way off the road, that’s no longer a problem.

Unfortunately, it also makes it more difficult for Santa to find us.