DirecTV

It may not be cool to love your satellite provider when cutting your television provider is all the rage, but when you live in the country and put up with slow, capped Internet service, cable-cutting may be several years down the road. I’ve liked everything about DirecTV since signing up with them a couple of years ago. This week I had a tech come out to recalibrate the dish after we got a new roof; both the customer support rep and the technician who did the work were great to deal with–much better than a certain Lawrence-serving cable provider I used when I lived in town. On top of that, DirecTV’s technology actually looks like it came out of this century and not like there’s a Super Nintendo secretly running my DVR.

Anyway, if you happen to see this and sign up for DirecTV, let me know your plans–I think we both get a break on our bill if I refer you.

Public libraries

I don’t think the cool, cable-cutting kids like their public libraries, and that’s a damn shame. I’ll admit that I seldom considered the Lawrence Public Library before my country move, preferring the instantaneousness of Netflix–but again, that slow, capped Internet forced my hand. As it turns out, the LPL is a great resource to our community. In addition to being my first place to check for books and movies, they provide great meeting space for my local Meetups.

They’ve relocated to an abandoned Borders Bookstore during a massive remodeling, and I can honestly say I don’t think I ever saw the place nearly as energetic as a Borders as I see it every time I walk into the “Free Borders” version currently housed there. I hope that when they move back to their regular location a new tenant can enter with the same energy.

Railscasts

Any Rails developer knows Railscasts, Ryan Bates’ long-running screencast series demonstrating how to do just about anything you’d ever need to do in my favorite framework. I can’t think of a bigger influence on my own work than Railscasts. When Ryan began a subscription-based pro level I signed right up, and I’ll happily pay him nine bucks a month for as long as he’ll take my money.