A smartphone cost-savings alternative

I’m all for spending money where it matters.  For some people, that might be cars or vacations.  For others, fine dining and bottles of wine.  For me, I don’t mind spending money on live musical acts or my yearly pilgrimage to Lambeau  Field.  But I hate spending money on stuff that I don’t particularly value in the first place.  I’ve managed to avoid paying for cable for the past fourteen years, so that’s something, but I still piss away about $90 on a landline and Internet service each month, which irritates the hell out of me. 

Three years ago I purchased my first cell-phone – a dumb phone – and paid a monthly fee of $15 for its use.  Not too bad, but after three years it finally started going on the fritz, so I recently took the plunge into the smart phone waters, hopeful that I could do so without signing away my firstborn to one of the big providers.  A couple of years ago, this might have been an impossible task, but today there are a number of no-contract cell phone plans that are nice alternatives for certain consumers. 

I chose to go with Republic Wireless, a company that customizes the one phone it offers – the fabulous Moto X – so that it utilizes WiFi as the default, switching to a traditional cell network only when necessary.   This means that when you’re at home or in the office, you can use the WiFi available to you, which ultimately allows Republic Wireless to offer packages that are far cheaper than what you’ll find at Verizon, Sprint and AT&T.  I looked at the big providers, and generally the cost was $40 a month for the phone, plus another $50 or so for a data plan.  There are economies of scale, however, so adding another phone or two to the data plan improves the per-phone cost.   Also, the phones are free (or close to free), but that’s only as an enticement to lock you into a long-term plan.

Compare this with Republic Wireless.  Yes, there’s an upfront cost: I paid $299 for my Moto X, which seems like a lot compared to the free phone I could have gotten from one of the big providers, but it’s an excellent price for an excellent 16 GB phone, and now – here’s the best part – I only pay $10 a month to use it.  This includes data, text and phone when I’m in a WiFi network (including internationally), but only text and phone when traveling - no data.  For me this is not a big deal, as I spend most of my time at home.  But if I DO want data everywhere, Republic Wireless offers this for just $25 a month by piggybacking off of Sprint’s network.  And what's really fantastic is I’m allowed to switch plans twice a month, so if, for example, I decide I need data while traveling on vacation, I can bump my plan up to include data for a week or two, and then switch back to my normal $10 a-month plan.  Pretty cool.

Comparing costs long-term, I’ll start saving money with Republic Wireless after only four months.

Month:                 Total cost with normal plan          Total cost with Republic Wireless

1                            90                                                       310

2                            180                                                     320

3                            270                                                     330

4                            360                                                     340

Even if I decide to up my plan to include cell data service, I’ll start saving money after only five months.

1                            90                                                       325

2                            180                                                     350

3                            270                                                     375

4                            360                                                     400

5                            450                                                     425

Over three years, I’ll save between $2000 and $2600 depending on which plan I use at Republic Wireless.  Not too shabby.

If I add a second phone, the savings become slightly less per phone, since on a traditional plan you can combine data between phones.  With two phones on a traditional plan, I’d be paying $40 per phone plus another $60 for a monthly data plan – so $140 per month.  That’s compared to $20 to $50 a month with Republic Wireless (plus an initial investment of $600 to purchase the phones).  Over three years, that’s still a savings of between $2600 and $3700 total.  Again, not chump change.

Republic Wireless clearly isn’t for everyone (anyone who wants a phone other than Moto X, for instance), but it's an excellent alternative to the way things are usually done.  I suspect that in the next year or two, more and more plans will be made available to consumers that slash the cost of phone use, allowing us to spend more money on cars, fine dining or Packer tickets.

Now the question is: do I get rid of my landline?  

You think this is cold? Remember the winter of 1994?

By any measure, it’s been a cold and snowy winter for the upper Midwest.  As of the end of January, Chicago was hovering around the thirteenth coldest winter on record, and this week continues the trend of below average temperatures.  We’ve had four school days cancelled already, and our kids will be paying dearly for it come June, exhibit A of how delayed gratification is often the better bet.

The cold has naturally brought about bragging rights of those old enough to recall, say, the blizzard of ’79 or the cold streak of ‘85.  I’m no exception.  For me, this winter brings to mind January of 1994, when I resided in St. Paul, parked my ’85 Tercel outdoors and wondered why I hadn’t gone to grad school in Arizona.  I was working at Federal Cartridge Company in Anoka about forty minutes away, and my poor car had to be jumped multiple times at the end of the work day.  This was standard procedure for the folks in Anoka, as they had a truck available specifically for this purpose. 

January 2nd began a 22 day cold spell of temperatures remaining below freezing.  In the midst of this streak, my friends followed what is normally sound advice in such circumstances: get the hell out of Dodge and head for warmer pastures.  We decided to take a road trip to Kentucky, my roommate’s home state, and take advantage of an opportunity to watch the Kentucky-Tennessee basketball game, ogle at young coeds and enjoy some warmer weather.

We succeeded in the first two goals.  Warmer weather was not to be. 

On the drive down, the moisture from our wretched breathes condensed on the windows, forming a thick sheet of ice that provided an outlet for the artistic endeavors of the passengers.  Arriving in Lexington on January 15th, we were greeted to a high of 9 degrees and a low of 2 below zero.  Returning home two days later only made matters worse.  Here are the temperature highs and lows for Minneapolis during the cold streak of 1994.

Jan 14 -18, 6

Jan 15 -25, -9

Jan 16, -25, 0

Jan 17, -17, 0

Jan 18, -27, -7

Even the University of Minnesota cried “Uncle” that day and cancelled classes.  My Tercel also acquiesced to Mother Nature.  It wouldn’t start without a jump from my buddy’s El Camino.  Still the streak continued…

Jan 19 -27, 1

Jan 20 -27, 2

Finally, on January 21, we made it to a high of 28 (but still a low of 3 below zero).  Temperatures didn’t make it past 32 degrees until two days later, and even this respite was short-lived.  Beginning on January 29th, we endured 18 consecutive days of below normal temperatures.

So yeah, it’s been a cold winter.  Our heating bills are going to be high.  And my back – twenty years older than it was in 1994 – it about ready to call it a winter.  But at least I have a garage this time around and a car that’s less than ten years old (and money to purchase a new battery if it comes to that). 

Perhaps in twenty years time, the young whippersnappers of today will blog about the Winter of 2014 with fond recollections.

Aging Like Peter Gabriel

Aging can be scary.  Just ask my daughters about Peter Gabriel.  But first, a little background…

In 1994 I mentioned to my friend Julie that I thought my hairline was starting to recede.  “Well, duh!” was her response.  Apparently, I was the last to know.  Or maybe the last to know was Alice, my wife, because I managed to snare her prior to my long descent into baldness.  2013 helped spur the aging process, as I put on about seven pound and purchased my first pair of reading glasses.  I figure it’s only downhill from here.  There are exceptions to men aging in unattractive ways: say, George Clooney, Cary Grant, and every man who’s ever played James Bond.

But for me, I think I’m going to go down the path of Peter Gabriel (except for the world stardom part).

Gabriel didn’t really reach world stardom until his album So in 1986 when he was thirty-six years old, a fairly elevated age for a rock performer’s peak, but even six years later, when he toured behind his follow-up album Us and sang about aging issues like divorce, he looked good.  Svelte.  Tireless.  Exuberant.  When my daughters were young, we would play Gabriel’s Secret World DVD over and over, mesmerized by the visual spectacle of the show as much as the musical performances.  Still own it.  Still love it.

And then…

As Gabriel is wont to do, he stayed largely hidden from public view for a number of years, but appeared in 1999 at the Academy Awards to sing Randy Newman’s song “That’ll Do” from the movie Babe - Pig in the City.  You could almost hear the audience gasp as he came onto the stage.

Check out the reaction that people shared on-line immediately following the Oscars (under the heading “Peter Gabriel YIKES”).

My favorite line is: “My husband came into the room and asked me why Marlon Brando was singing.”

Big deal, right?  People age.  Except it was only SIX YEARS AFTER the Secret World tour!  The man went from this…

…to this…

...from the age of 43 to 49!

I’m 45, smack dab in the middle of the road that goes from “tolerable looking” to “ewww”.

Four years after Gabriel’s Oscar performance, I rented the DVD of his Up tour, excited to once again show my daughters an inspiring Peter Gabriel concert.  I don’t want it to sound like I’ve raised two shallow-minded girls, but they practically cowered while watching the hairless, bloated figure on screen.  They were only six years old, but they knew a cover up when the saw one.

“This is the same man?” they asked.

“It is.”

“Are you sure?” 

I wasn’t.  They went back to playing with their Barbies, and I finished the DVD, searching for a melody in tunes like “More than This” and “Growing Up.”  It was as if the songs had suffered the same fate as their creator, plodding along, suffocating beneath their own weight.

It’s said that people see themselves at a certain age, frozen in time, and are shocked and betrayed when the mirror shows their true age.  But better to live by that internal age then the external one.  Better to be surprised when looking into the mirror than validated.

I guess that's the trick.  So I've decided I'm going to live like I'm twenty-one and see what happens. Should be divorced and homeless within a month's time.

Misuse of "Literally"

On TV last week a sportscaster who shall remain nameless said something along the lines of the following: “When they pulled him from the game, he was literally scratching and clawing the floor.”

Yep.  The guy was actually digging his finger nails into the basketball court.

You might be willing to give a sportscaster a free pass.  Call it a minor variation of the old Woody Allen joke from Annie Hall:  “Those who can’t do, teach; those who can’t teach, teach gym.”  But yesterday my daughter’s teacher who shall not only remain nameless but whose subject will be withheld to protect his/her identity said, “You are literally shooting yourself in the foot if you don’t study for this exam.”

Now, we all say dumb things sometime.  Goodness knows that if compiled all the stupid, erroneous or regretful things I’ve said in my lifetime and shared them on a blog for all to read, I’d be in prison, divorced and friendless.  And in this day and age, when so much of what we do is recorded in some fashion, the occasional flub should be forgiven (Dan Quayle’s misspelling of potato back in 1992 caused him endless grief, but heck, for years I was convinced that there was a silent ‘n’ in the word dilemma.  Fortunately, I’m not alone in this mistake.  Back in grad school my friend Don was convinced about the silent ‘n’ as well, and according to this website, there are thousands among us!).

Flubs are one thing.  But when our high school teachers and news broadcasters consistently promulgate an incorrect use of a word (irregardless, anyone?), then we have a bit of a problem.

Or do we?

Martha Gill of The Guardian recently wrote a post about the word literally and cites several instances of the word’s mishandling over the years.  It might be of some comfort to learn that the misuse of the word literally has occurred for – literally – centuries.  But in the Internet Age, when mistakes are repeated and amplified at the speed of light (figuratively, not literally), it's become so rampant that some dictionaries are officially changing the word's definition. 

Gill comes to the conclusion that we should simply avoid the word entirely.  She writes: “At the moment (literally) is irredeemable. It is a moot word. We just have to leave it up in its bedroom for a while until it grows up a bit.”

She may be right. 

Sure, you can fight the trend and correct your friends when they say things like, "Oh my God!  I literally died!"  Alternatively, you could opt for a more passive approach:

Or you can simply avoid the word altogether and move on, accepting that language is fluid, confusing and, at times, infuriating.  After all, doing otherwise could cause your head to figuratively explode.

MLB and NFL Parity

As the MLB playoffs roll on with the usual suspects, I’ve pondered what has often been passed for conventional wisdom when comparing professional baseball to professional football.  For years, the argument went like this: parity in NFL football allows for more teams to have a chance to win a Super Bowl, therefore generating greater fan interest, while MLB baseball has too many teams that are eliminated from a World Series hunt before the first ball is pitched in April.  I remember spouting this argument myself in the 1990s as my lowly Brewers were relegated to a perennial loser.  But a review of the champions and runners up of baseball and football since 1966 – the season of the first Super Bowl – tells a different story. 

Out of 30 MLB teams, 10 haven’t won a World Series since 1966, and of those, six are franchises that weren’t around that year (though all have been in existence for at least fifteen years):

Washington (1969, formerly called the Montreal Expos)

San Diego (1969)

Milwaukee (1969, formerly called the Seattle Pilots)

Seattle (1977)

Colorado (1993)

Tampa Bay (1998)

The other four teams are the Chicago Cubs, Cleveland, Houston and Texas.

Although some recent teams haven’t yet won a World Series, many winners since 1966 have been from franchises that started after that year:  Kansas City in 1985, Florida in 1997 and 2003, Toronto in 1992 and 1993, and Arizona in 2001.

Of the ten teams who’ve not won a World Series since 1966, 7 have at least appeared in an October Classic.  The only three teams that have been excluded entirely from the World Series are the Chicago Cubs, Seattle and the Washington Nationals/Montreal Expos franchise.

Compare that to the NFL.  Of thirty current NFL teams, 14 have never won a Super Bowl.  Of those, six weren’t around in 1966, though all are now at least eleven years old:

Carolina (1995)

Cincinnati (1968)

Houston (2002)

Jacksonville (1995)

Seattle (1976)

Cleveland (1999) – note: for the purposes of this analysis, I’m considering Cleveland an expansion team from 1999 even though they kept the franchise statistics from the Browns team that moved to Baltimore in 1996.

The other teams are Minnesota, Detroit, Atlanta, Arizona (formerly the St. Louis Cardinals), Philadelphia, Buffalo, Tennessee (formerly the Houston Oilers) and San Diego.

Only one team that didn’t exist in 1966 has won a Super Bowl – the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2003.  Again, I’m not including the Ravens’ victories of 2000 and 2013 since they inherited the players from the Cleveland Browns in 1996, and therefore aren’t a true expansion team.

Of the fourteen teams who’ve not won a Super Bowl since 1966, all but four have at least appeared in a Super Bowl.  Those that have been excluded entirely are Cleveland, Jacksonville, Detroit, and the Houston Texans.  It should be noted that three of those four teams are relatively recent introductions in the NFL if you include Cleveland as an expansion team in 1999.

The following summarizes the above statistics:

SINCE 1966
	MLB	NFL
% of teams not winning a championship	33%	47%
% of teams not appearing in a championship	10%	13%

Couple these stats with the fact that new franchises are more likely to win a World Series than a Super Bowl, and it might be tempting to disagree with the usual argument about parity between the leagues.  The World Series has actually been more inclusive than the Super Bowl.

What if we focus on the last 20 years?  After all, profit sharing and free agency changed dramatically since 1966, potentially affecting championships.  Let’s look at the same statistics for 1995 to 2012 (I’m choosing these years since there was no World Series in 1994.  Also, revenue sharing was first introduced to baseball in 1996).

SINCE 1995
	MLB	NFL
% of teams not winning a championship	67%	60%
% of teams not appearing in a championship	40%	30%

Counter-intuitively, here the stats change to favor the NFL, though not dramatically.  If we shorten the timeline further and take into account only the past decade, which also coincides with the 2002 baseball negotiations when revenue sharing was fine-tuned, the MLB has 7 different winners plus an additional 5 who've appeared in a World Series  – a total of 12 teams out of a potential 20.  The NFL has 7 different winners plus an additional 6 teams who've appeared in a Super Bowl  –  a total of 13 out of a potential 20.

What conclusions can be drawn from this?  Perhaps nothing definitive, as you could continue to crunch numbers that help fine-tune or perhaps even contradict some of what the above reveals, but I think you can say that under current rules, parity within the leagues is about the same in the MLB as it is in the NFL.  What was surprising to me is how historically the MLB wasn’t as lopsidedly in favor of the big market teams as I originally thought, even before revenue sharing and playoff expansion.  Outside of the Yankees’ run in the 90s, there has been a good deal of turnover in the World Series, and expansion teams have had success, sometimes fairly quickly.