Every year our internet bill goes up when we roll off the promotional rate, so every year I call Comcast, our service provider, and find what new promo rate I can get us on. See last year’s discussion here.
This year, we rolled off the 25 Mbps for $30/mo and went up to $50/mo. I called in, and the only cheaper plan was a 3Mbps for $40. I could however triple our speed for the same price. So that’s what I did. For the next 12 months, we’ll be paying $50/mo for 75Mbps. We won’t come close to using that kind of bandwidth, but we might as well get more for the same amount of money.
Call to Comcast, 15 minutes.
Next year, things should get more interesting because we’ll be going from two choices, Comcast and Frontier, to three. Metronet, a fiber optic company, will start laying line this year. While I don’t know their prices, I do suspect that the added competition will be good for consumers.
Frugal Boy is getting more articulate and easier to understand. You can even hold short conversations with him now and the dialogue is usually pretty funny. He definitely has his own little perspective on the world.
Have you ever wondered how advertisers such as Facebook can seemingly know so much about you? The answer boils down to 7 simple questions that can place you into one of 70 Clusters and 21 Groups in the PersonicX model developed by Acxiom. As a happy coincidence, Facebook employs this very same model.
What is PersonicX?
According to the Acxiom website, “Personicx segments U.S. households into one of 70 distinct clusters within 21 life stage groups.” The goal of categorizing individuals into different clusters and groups is to make advertising more effective. You can try out the demo on the Acxiom website (they say that the results won’t be used for anything besides the demo purposes).
I inputted our answers and got Cluster #21: Children First.
Generally, the lower the Cluster #, the more affluent the individual happens to be. Cluster #70 “Resilient Renters” describes unemployed or temporarily employed renters living in mixed housing. Cluster #1 “Summit Estates” describes the wealthiest group.
The methodology, and descriptions of all 70 Clusters is available here. Scroll about half way down to see the Clusters.
What Cluster do you belong to? Was it eerily accurate?
Back in October of last year I took our car to a dealership mechanic who moonlighted from his house. He replaced the original spark plugs on our V6 car and gave me a list of things to keep an eye on.
One of those items was the front passenger wheel hub assembly. The assembly houses a set of bearings that let your wheel spin around smoothly. Over time those bearings will get beaten up and pot marked. Eventually you’ll start to hear a little noise from them while driving, then a lot of noise as the problem gets worse.
On our way back from Blackhawk Springs Forest Preserve, cruising down the interstate at 70 (ish) mph, the passenger front wheel well sounded louder than it should. I figured it was time to change out that part.
I did a little price shopping and found out the following:
I had a mechanic replace this part on a different car to the tune of $270. They just did one wheel.
RockAuto.com, my usual favorite, was not the cheapest for an OEM quality part (approximately $100).
RockAuto had some parts listed at a mere $30. Yikes!
Amazon had the cheapest OEM quality part with free shipping.
I went ahead and ordered two hubs so I could replace the front driver and passenger sides at the same time. I like to replace parts in pairs. If one side of a symmetrical system is causing problems, it stands to reason that the other side is deteriorating as well.
The total cost was $206.
Jacking up the front end of the car and removing the wheel, axle nut, and disk brakes revealed the hub assembly.
The big center bolt is the drive axle. There is a black half moon shaped piece and that is the brake dust cover. The light blue electrical connector in the top left corner is the ABS sensor harness. The wheel hub assembly is the orange rusty looking part with the 5 bolts sticking out of it.
I borrowed a couple of specialty tools from the auto parts store. One was a 36 mm socket to take off the big axle nut. The other was this drive axle hub puller doodad.
It was suppose to pop the wheel assembly hub out from the drive axle by pressing the drive axle in. In 10 year old car reality however, it didn’t cut the mustard.
After a couple of hours pounding away at the assembly with a 2 lb hammer, and later on with a big cold chisel (meant for masonry), I eventually separated the two rusty parts.
Above is a picture of the drive axle without the hub assembly. The little spindle grooves fit into grooves on the assembly. That is what turns your wheel.
After wire brushing off a lot of the rust and gunk on the car, the new shiny wheel assembly was ready to go in. I lathered up the new assembly with anti-seize compound. In theory, that should prevent the parts from rusting together again and some future car owner will have a much easier time replacing this part. I also applied dielectric grease to the electrical ABS harness. All that does is help to keep out moisture because water and electricity should never mix.
Installation is pretty much the reverse. My Haynes manual listed disassembly as 6 steps. Youtube videos abound to help fill in the details.
The first side took 3.5 hours. The other side took 1.5 hours once I knew the secret of cold chiseling. Mechanics bill would have been $540 ($270 x 2). My parts cost was $206, so my labor cost was $334 or $66.80/hr. That seems more than worth it to me!
I have been keeping a spreadsheet repair log for this car since late 2014. To date, we have spent $1289 in maintenance on our 2006 Pontiac G6. It helps that we are a below average mileage family.
Yesterday for Mother’s Day, we loaded up in the car and drove to Blackhawk Springs Forest Preserve for a picnic lunch.
It was a nice sunny day and several other families had the same idea.
Frugal Boy enjoyed sharing Grandpa’s cupcake.
Grandpa was a good sport.
After eating a big lunch, we went for a hike. There are paved and grassy paths totaling over five miles in the preserve.
In a couple of months there will be a ton of blackberries along the trail. I saw a bunch of thorny canes just starting to set their fruit. For now though, we settled on picking some bouquets for mom.
Have you ever wondered how dandelions manage to carpet an entire area. Shae captured the process in slo-mo.
After we were finished spreading an invasive species, we found the jewel of the trail, a natural spring bubbling up from the ground. Frugal Boy got very excited and started pulling on my arm to go ‘swimming’. I indulged him and in the process gave his grandparents and aunties a show they probably weren’t expecting.
The water was very cold, but he still went back a second time before declaring all done.
Dried off and dressed, we finished up our little hike.
After some more time on the playground, we loaded back up in the car and drove a bit south to a seemingly out-of-place Buddhist temple. It was surrounded by corn fields and looked to be built on an old farm homestead.
A man came over and started to talk to us about the temple. Construction started in 2004 and lasted about 3 years. Everything has been done by volunteers. I was a bit surprised to see the sign on the door.
I had visited several temples in Taiwan on a college sponsored trip and they did not have that kind of restriction. From talking with the man, it seemed that this was more of a Thailand/Laos sect.
Frugal Boy liked the decorative dragons.
Leaving the temple behind, we drove to the other side of the forest preserve to look at the big pedestrian bridge.
I was impressed with the living room sized inflatable ‘raft’ that came cruising by.
