Fezmid

Let me start by saying that I'm not implying you don't know what you're doing or that you steal from your customers or anything. These are just general opinions/impressions of the industry as a whole. Personally, I'm jaded on the whole idea of a planner managing my money. I had a friend who hired someone who had helped his family for years. From talking to this friend, it sounded like the guy didn't actually offer any value-add. I don't think he "cost" much (not sure where his paycheck came from), but I didn't see any advantage. As a whole, they don't seem to have anything to lose if they screw up your finances; they just find new clients (which, agreed, may be more difficult). If they lose all of my wealth, I'm the one who's really screwed. Then you hear about all of the personal finance managers who embezzle funds from their customers, and it turns me off of the whole thing. I could probably benefit from a planner -- but I just don't know if I can get past all of my preconceived notions (some of which are valid, some of which are probably not). Honest enough opinion for you?

Yeah -- I put my couple thousand in the market during the height of the .com days (with ETrade.. ). I thought WebVan was a fantastic idea (still do - if done right, and there are some companies doing that around here now). Didn't pay attention to the fundamentals (and nobody did back then...). Lost it all. Like you said though, great learning experience. Now I actually read the financial statements and make better educated decisions. But I don't do any of that until I max the 401(k) and Roth IRA, and I make sure my "rainy day" fund has enough in it for 6-12 months, in case of an emergency. And like you said - prepare to lose everything because there's no guarantee, even if you've done all of your homework.

Not sure if there's different classes of accounts, but a quick search shows that I'm not alone. A couple of the many links I found: http://consumerist.com/5057127/ http://a-loonie-saved.blogspot.com/2009/02...ivity-fees.html I also only had ~2k in the account, so it may be a "no activity in a quarter and less than $10k" or something.

No, I actually do read all of the fine print that banks send me.... I'm anal that way (I keep perfect tabs on all of our finances -- I can tell you how much I spent eating out dinner over the past 8 years, or how much my wife spent on magazines). They even said that they sent a separate mailing that just talked about that change. Either the post office lost it, or they screwed up. That said, ETrade must've changed their policy in the past few years. I think I left them about 5-6 years ago.

I use Scottrade and recommend them. I do NOT recommend ETrade. I used to use them, but then they changed their terms of service to charge an "inactivity fee" if you don't make a certain number of transactions every quarter. They never actually told me about the change until I started getting billed.

(although I'm a Swarm fan now...)

(belinda)

McKinnie isn't that great. Yes, he's better than Williams. But people are complaining about Whitner not being worth the draft pick, they'd be saying the same thing (or worse) about Bryant. I swear that Bills fans love this guy way more than any Vikes fan.

If he has a family of 3 that goes to watch the game, it's not unreasonable to spend $33/person to watch the game. If that's just for him though....

I wish they played Minnesota IN Minnesota... Last year's game against the Wild was awesome.

Yeah -- they tell you a couple of times during the previous season that you're enrolled in auto renew. In addition, you get a slight discount (~$20) for keeping auto renew on... It's worth it -- especially since it costs you nothing ahead of time and gives you leverage right before football season to say, "I want to cancel if I don't get Superfan free."

A regular receiver has one decoder. A DVR has two decoders. Nothing to crack.

You don't want to watch the games in HD....? Also -- they're giving you a sweet discount (I've read others getting that as well), but remember that you're probably extending your contract for 2 years. That helps you out (cheaper football) and it helps them out (keeping a customer). With the current economy, lots of people are cancelling TV service and going with OTA to save money.

That's a common misconception, but regular film has a MUCH higher resolution than 1920x1080 (HD). So as long as the film exists, the studios can make an HD transfer that will blow your socks off. As for the topic -- SuperFan is free if you ask for it. It is required to watch games online and in HD. The PQ online is very good. You can watch as many games as you have receivers for (plus 1 for a PC). You can't login to your account more than once to watch multiple games (prevents you from giving your account to a dozen people to watch). Price is $269 for early bird renewal, but word on the street is that you can get a discount if you call and ask. Talk to customer retention.

Hey! Stop Stabbing Me! http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0360639/ Very cheesy (done on a budget of about $25 I think). Very funny. And nothing like what you would expect.

Strange... It still plays fine for me.

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2009/0...nfestation.kusa

If it's only affecting a single receiver, then it's almost definitely a cable run issue. I'd have them run a new cable to eliminate that as the issue. Or, if you feel comfortable, you can do it yourself as well. How do you have it setup? Do the cables run directly from the dish into the receiver? Or do they go through a multiswitch? You could try swapping cables at the dish or multiswitch (dish has a built in multiswitch) to see if the problem still follows the cable or if it follows the port on the multiswitch. If your master is plugged into port 1, and the living room is plugged into port 2 (at the dish/multiswitch), swap them and see what happens. I'd agree with Darin and have them come out and test the signal strength along the cable as well.

Yeah, did you read his original post...? "When I was in Dothan we would get hurricane spin off, tornadoes, hail, strong wind, etc. I never lost signal there no matter what the weather was doing." Something is obviously setup wrong with the new installation.

Some very good suggestions already in the thread. First thought is that the installation isn't very good -- you might get a good signal when the weather is good, but if the dish isn't bolted down properly, it may sway in the wind. Have someone come out (or check yourself) whether everything is bolted down properly. Make sure that you have a strong signal in good weather -- the strength of most transponders should be in the low-to-mid 90s on a clear day. You should have new coax runs. Don't re-use the cable TV coax as that's generally not quad-shielded (RG6-QS).

Seriously? Your solution is for him to move? There were no kids in the neighborhood I live in when I first got here 7 years ago. Now there's a ton of them. He obviously handled it wrong, but I can see how a bunch of kids playing right outside your house would get really trying after awhile. I'm also trying to figure out how moaning sounds is "endangering children..."

Agreed. Although you sure it wasn't the bus duct that caused your problem...?

Now there's a shortage! http://www.nypost.com/seven/07022009/busin...eef__177174.htm (I've had a slim jim once... Didn't like it....)

And bus ducts. Don't forget that a bad bus duct can bring down an entire data center!