HB 1002

Friends and family of Arkansas, we need your help.  This is a serious request.  I don't want to go so far as to say "if you love me, you'll do this" but this is a pretty severe problem being faced by state colleges.  As you know, I work for one of those colleges.

The issue is with bill HB 1002.  The name is the "Capital Gains Reduction Bill of 2011".  It just passed the House by 53 votes.  If this passes the Senate, state-funded colleges will lose an estimated 5-10% of their funding.

I don't think I have to tell you that in an economic climate where more people have returned to school, this is not the time to cut college funding.  At PTC, we have seen record enrollment of over 11,000 students.  As my friend, you may be aware of the extra classes that I had to teach last semester and how stressing and awful it was to have a full time administrative job plus an overload's worth of teaching.  Without administrative duties, a full load is three sciences; I taught five.  Well, most of our instructors will be forced into overload schedules because we will not be able to hire to meet the demand.  That means quality of our instruction goes down.  Our student services and administration is already taxed; our computer systems can't stay online on the busy days.  We simply can't keep our heads above water.

I'm asking you to write your state Senator.  Urge him/her to vote against this bill.  If you don't know who your Senator is, click here.  Please don't just read this and do nothing.  This will affect me on a personal and daily level.

Here is the letter I wrote my senator, if you'd like an example:

Dear Senator Johnson,

I am writing to simply urge you to vote against HB1002, which just
passed the House with 53 votes.  I work in administration for Pulaski
Technical College.  We have experienced explosions of student growth
during these more difficult economic times.  We have barely contained
the record 11,000 students.  Faculty are teaching overload schedules,
administration and staff struggle to stay above water with support
requests; there are days when the computer systems fail because so many
people are on the servers.  If this bill passes and we lose an estimated
5-10% of our state funding, I don't want to even imagine the results. 
The quality of our service and instruction to students will suffer. 
This is a time we need to be expanding our workforce, our student
support services, and our economic development, not reducing it.

Thank you for your time,

Benjamin Peacock
Little Rock, AR

I was surprised to get a reply back within 10 minutes!  Here is what he said:

Benjamin, thanks for writing. I agree with you and plan to vote against the bill. David

I'm by no means any kind of activist, but internal emails from the upper echelons of PTC have notified us about the seriousness of this bill.  I'm just asking for a few minutes of your time to help us out.  Thank you.

Tea

Last Friday, a buddy and I went to the mall and happened to stop by the Teavana store.  I made the mistake of saying "yes" to "would you like a sample" as we walked by.  That turned into a 30 minutes spiel, but it ended up being pretty interesting.  And wow, were those teas tasty.  See the problem, apparently, is that we have been hoodwinked by big tea companies to think that what we all typically drink as tea is really tea.  The difference in a Lipton tea bag tea and what they were brewing was immediately apparent.  Tea is meant to be steeped open leaf, not in little bags with ground up leaves.  I believe it.

Teavana was a little pricey for me; if I had bought everything the guy wanted to sell me, it would have easily topped $400.  They had cast iron pots (that get seasoned with each brew) and matching serving sets.  That was about $300.  Then he scooped out what I told him was my favorite tea--apparently a rarer Chinese white tea--which would have been another $100.  o_O  Yes, it was something like $20 per ounce!

I thanked him for his time, told him I am not really an impulse buyer, and explained that I would need time to think and research.  I happen to watch a tech podcast where the host is really into tea.  He even took a vacation to China last year just to sample local teas.  He really knows his stuff.  He recommended a site called Adagio.  I read their lessons on tea and found it quite interesting, actually.  Here are some of my notes (yes, I took notes): 

Tea, properly, comes from the plant Camellia sinesis.  There are three components to the plant that make the tea.  The essential oils, which give tea its aroma and flavor; the polyphenols, which give tea its astringency and health benefits (which are numerous); and caffeine, which gives an energy boost.  Tea comes in many categories, but there are four main families of them:  white, green, oolong, and black tea.  Each is processed a little differently.  Organic materials undergo oxidation, which more or less causes decay.  White teas are unprocessed, so they keep their fine white filaments on the leaves--thus the name.  They are allowed to oxidize very little, and as a result, are the highest in antioxidants.  Green teas are also oxidized very little but undergo a series of steaming, pan-firing, and/or rolling.  Oolong teas undergo the same processes and are allowed to oxidize anywhere from 20-80%.  And finally black teas are processed like oolong but are allowed to oxidize almost completely.  There is also a class commonly referred to as herbal teas, but they aren't technically teas.  They are called "tisanes" and are caffeine free.  The variety of tisane blends is a bit overwhelming to me right now, but it can be flower, fruit, leaves....whatever can be steeped.

Proper brewing of tea should consist of pure, filtered water.  Approximately 2 teaspoons of tea per 6 oz water.  The water should be boiling for black, oolong, and herbal teas; about 185 F for green and white teas.  Steeping time is about 3-5 minutes for black and oolongs; 2 minutes for green and white teas.  I'm not quite sure what these descriptors mean--seems kind of relative--but they note that "delicate" teas can be enjoyed with seafood, salads, and chicken.  "Bright" teas are best with meat and spicy foods.  "Rich" teas for desserts".  And "Pu Erh" teas for digestive and calming effects at the end of the day.

I'm pretty excited to get into this, if the samples I had at the mall were any indication.  I'll let you know how the tasting goes when my supplies arrive!  I welcome the opportunity to cut back on my caffeine intake, but I don't think I'll quite give up on my "grande white mocha, extra hot, no whip" addiction just yet.

A Case for Cutting Cable...Or Not?

I've toyed with the idea of cutting cable and going with an internet-based TV model and wanted to do the numbers on if it would be worth it.  Let's face it, the DVR has revolutionized the way we watch TV.  It used to be that a station's decision to air a show at a certain time dictated when you had to be home to watch.  Now, I know plenty of people who--even if they are home--wait at least 15 minutes into the show so they can fast forward commercials.  I'm the same way. The only time I ever see commercials is during live sporting events.

There's a couple of other annoying factors.  First is the sporadic breaks that networks take between new episodes.  Especially when a show is heavily serialized, like Lost, it is frustrating to have to wait for, say, sweeps month.  (That's when ratings dictate how much networks will charge for ads based on viewership.)  Some networks heard this cry and the old model of starting the new season in September and running it through May is slowly dying.  Shows like "Lost" and "24" began mid-season (January/February) and ran straight through.  Networks are also introducing new shows staggered throughout the year.  But with a new show, who wants to invest themselves in it and it end up being canceled?

Not only are commercials loud and annoying, but so are the in-show lower third banners.  They are becoming downright distracting and obtrusive.  I watched three seasons of "Big Bang Theory" on DVD to catch up with the current fourth season.  Nice and clean.  Just the show.  Now that I'm watching live, I'm completely disgusted with the network's self-promoting banner ads.  Unfortunately, they are becoming bigger and more frequent BECAUSE we are DVRing and skipping their commercials.

Technology has made it so we have a choice in how and where we view our favorite shows now.  The market is still young and in flux, so who knows what this will look like a year from now, even.  But here's what I would consider except for a couple of problems.  You may think the problem is no DVR, but it's not.  I'll refer to it later.

Cut cable.  The first thing you can do is watch your local channels in high definition over the air. In fact, that is the best quality you can get.  There is no compression from the cable provider.  You'll catch a lot of sports, news, etc.  Yes, you lose the DVR for shows but just wait on that.

Add Hulu Plus for $7.99/month.  This gives you access to limited-ad supported, whole seasons of shows on the major networks.  This effectively acts like a DVR.  You just have to wait 24 hours before the show is available on Hulu.  There's usually 4-5 30 second ads per hour long show.  Hulu is expanding where you can watch, instead of just a computer.  It's on all game consoles and i-devices.  It's also coming to Boxee (a set-top box that allows you to connect to internet "channels" on your TV).  $7.99 is a lot easier to swallow than $79.99, huh?

To supplement Hulu, go with Netflix, which begins with a streaming-only plan at $7.99.  Netflix is so popular, it accounts for 20% of internet traffic in the US at peak times.  That's enormous.  I've only recently tried streaming, when it was added to the PS3.  I'm watching the entire back-catalog of Stargate SG-1 right now.  The first few seasons are only in 4:3 standard definition, so it looks fine on my TV.  But when I've tried to watch a 16:9 SD stream, it was awful.  I'm very interested to see how HD streaming is going to look.  For a few dollars more, you can add disc rental and you gain the ability to watch episodes of a season of your show back-to-back rather than live.  Of course, you have to wait months and won't get to talk at the water cooler with your coworkers about what happened on last night's episode.  I like to talk about shows, so that is a concern for me, but then again, that's where Hulu comes in.  Netflix is for those shows not on Hulu.

Well, now it is time to address the problem I have with this model.  Live sports.  Obviously, you still have the over-the-air local channels, but there are a lot of sports on cable networks like ESPN and Fox Sports.  Well, I see two options right now.  1) Boxee has an ESPN3 channel, which effectively takes care of most of cable's sports.  2) You can buy internet packages for each sport.  Some you get the whole season, every team.  Others you can pick a few teams.  A few examples:  Baseball has MLB.TV, which I found for $99.95 for the entire 2011 season. NBA has a package for $64.95 for all season.  NHL has one for $119.95 for 40 games/week all season.  Unfortunately, the NFL has no internet package due to their exclusive all-access pack with DirecTV.

The quality of the streams would be a concern for me, which is my second problem.  Everyone knows I love hockey; it would be a concern for me if the stream was not in HD.  But not just that, all of the streams from Hulu or Netflix that aren't available in HD, whereas they are with cable.

So let's look at the cost savings here.  That's probably the primary concern.  I pay $74 per month for HD cable and $45 for high speed internet with U-Verse.  That's $1,428 a year.  If we cut the cable and bump up the internet to ensure we get good speed, internet will go to $55 per month.  Add $7.99 for Hulu Plus and $11.99 for a one-disc/streaming Netflix plan (with Blu-Ray, of course).  That's $899 per year without any sports packs.  So savings are $529 or about 34%.  However, I would want baseball and hockey, so we have to add in $99.95 and $119.95, bringing my yearly total to $1119.66.  That's only saving $309 or 21%.

So now I've written this long blog post to only find out the savings for me is probably not enough to justify what will probably be a loss in quality by streaming across the board.  The $309 is arguably worth keeping a DVR, maintaining HD quality, and having the ease of just turning on the cable box.  But if you aren't as picky as me about HD quality and don't need the sports packs, you can potentially save a lot of money. Of course, if you don't already own a gaming console that can do these things, you'll have to buy one which will eat into those savings the first time.

This ended up being a pretty indecisive post, but truthfully I was writing it live as I researched. I didn't know how it would turn out when I began it.  Turns out, it is probably easier to just keep cable for now.  Ha.