BigMoneyJim

Back when I was tighter on cash flow I paid bills as close to the due date as practical. But now that I have more cash lying around I’ve been paying them whenever I think to check on my money. That is to say, if the statement is ready I go ahead and pay the bill, even if it’s not due for another 2-3 weeks.

Clearly I could make a little more interest by waiting to pay the bill, but I think I’ve decided I’ll keep paying whatever’s been invoiced just so I don’t end up paying something late because I wait another 2-4 weeks before checking on bills again.

My first year in this apartment I had a rate deal, but the two times I’ve renewed I was ambivalent about how long I was staying in the apartment, so I’ve been paying floating monthly rates since due to procrastination and indecision.

I recall my bills didn’t always go over $100 at first, but lately they always do, and the past few months they’re nuts. I never looked closely enough to know if it’s usage or rates that’s more responsible. But I pulled up my usage history. The first two years look pretty consistent, and I presume December 2009 is when I left the door open for a week while out of town, but since then every month but April has been relatively high.

If it weren’t for April 2010 being the 3rd-lowest month of the past three years I’d think something was going haywire in here. As it is I suppose the weather has just been colder then hotter than usual.

So I guess my answer is that both rates and usage have gone up.

(I wonder what happened to January 09?)

I suppose it should be noted that from April 2008 through October 2009 I generally spent more time traveling for work than at home, but it doesn’t seem to have made much difference.

What’s worse is I’m still very ambivalent about staying here. My lease is up at the end of September, and I vaguely want to move but have no compelling reasons to, just minor things like not getting good TV reception here and traffic annoyances (but there’s really no getting away from them).

Over the past few months I’ve flip-flopped between job security paranoia and a desire to hoard money and wanting to buy a house and start spending more money in leisure pursuits. And I really hate making big money decisions when I’ve been flip-flopping like that.

I’ve gone years without buying music. I was ticked off at the music industry for suing their own customers, jacking up CD prices and complaining they’re losing money. And for a while the only music downloads were restricted use.

Well, there are a few newer songs I like, and the current playlist of my radio stations is annoying me, and at least twice a day I’m finding the same song on two different stations and occasionally three stations simultaneously.

So I did a quick check on whether restriction-free MP3 purchases are available now. Yup, from Amazon, and they have an app I can use on my Droid. I can download them on the PC and transfer them to the Droid, also, but it’s nice to be able to buy on the go and then copy it back to the PC.

So I spent $10-$20 today on music that I can play on any of my devices and as many devices as I want. Now I just need a better way of playing them in the car.

I guess I shouldn’t complain. My car will play MP3′s off of a CD, but for some reason they omitted the aux jack. Newer Hyundai’s have them.

The FM transmitters give poor sound quality.

My brother has an aftermarket stereo with a USB jack on the front…just stick in a USB drive with MP3′s and off it goes.

Update: Amazon has been emailing me multiple times a day for a while, and it’s really getting on my nerves. Apparently when signing up for MP3 or Kindle or VOD it reactivated all the categories for “hey, look at this stuff you can buy”. At least I have it turned off again. It was really hounding me about car audio deals since I bought the mounting kit.

My apartment is down a hill and gets bad reception. There’s only one spot in my apartment where I can get somewhat reliable cell signal. While searching accessory reviews and prices I found Verizon also sells a “network extender” (femtocell) which hooks into your broadband and gives you your own private mini cell tower. They were priced at $200, but I was hoping my corporate discount would apply. It didn’t, but they have a $100 rebate right now, so I got one.

Interestingly the femtocell has a GPS receiver built in, so it needs to be able to see the GPS satellites even though it’s an indoor device. I placed it by a windowed door, and if found them in a few minutes. This particular one is tied to Verizon’s service and was pre-activated, so it just got on the broadband, found the GPS, and now I can go to my account on Verizon’s website and manage the cell. It has 4 channels, one reserved for anybody’s 911 use (complete with E911 GPS capability) and 3 available for general use. I can let anyone use it, or I can give up to 50 Verizon numbers priority use. I did that and put my number and some family on there. And I have really good signal throughout the apartment now. I expect that will be more beneficial when I get the Droid tomorrow. There is a brief dual tone whenever I start a call that lets me know I’m on the extender, and if I dial #48 a message repeats telling me I’m on my extender. The manual says it uses 120kps per active channel.

I’m torn between my having to improve their service in my little dip in the earth and at least having the ability to do so. It occurred to me they should put femtocells in all FiOS broadband routers; they might be able to do away with cell towers in many places.

I wandered out of range (apartment parking lot) of my femtocell while on a conference call, and the audio kept cutting out while on the main cell. When I came back in range it didn’t reconnect to my femtocell until about a minute after my call dropped from bad signal.

I’m not sure if that means in won’t hop to the femtocell while a call is in progress or if it just takes time.