...my account of Blogtoberfest 2007.

As expected it was a lot of fun. There were a ton of people there, far too many to be able to actually have any sort of real conversation with even most of them. In addition to our illustrious host Jenny, I was able to meet a number of area bloggers for the first time including: Dana Zemack, Michael Krigsman, Jesse Baer, Andrea Mercado, and a few others whose names and/or URLs I sadly can't remember. All in all, there were actually only three bloggers that whom I had met before: Jesse Legg, Steve Garfield, and Adam Gaffin. From the sound of things most of the people there were meeting a bunch of new people as well.

The highlight of the evening was probably the raffle. Everyone who attended put their name in a hat (well, bowl) for a chance to win a number of prizes including a beautiful print of Fenway Park shot by Jenny herself. As per usual, I didn't win a thing, although both of the two people standing to my left at the time won things, as did at least two other people I had been talking to throughout the night. I'll just try and claim credit for that.

Afterwards Jesse (Legg) and I made our ways back to Somerville via TC's Lounge and the Newtowne Grill. A good night, I think, was had by all.

In other news, I think it's safe to say that it's officially starting to get almost kinda cold here. It looks like Monday will be the first day that the temperature doesn't even break 50°, although overnight temperatures appear to be remaining strictly above freezing for the foreseeable future (at least according to the weather widget in my dashboard). I did, however, actually turn on the heat today for the first time in months. The furnace hasn't actually kicked in yet as the residual heat from the day is still keeping us above the 65° I set the thermostat to, but it probably will within the next 30 minutes or so. I also bothered to take the time to figure out how to program a schedule into the thermostat. It's a much more useful feature than I thought, letting me program in 4 distinct periods for weekdays (delineated by Sleep, Wake, Leave, and Return), and 2 periods for weekends (Sleep and Wake). This actually works out rather well since despite the fact that I work from home and so will want the heat to be on during the day, I prefer a much cooler temperature than Jessi does. Thanks to the programmed in schedule the condo will only be too warm before Jessi leaves for work in the morning and after she gets home at night leaving it nice and comfortable for me during the bulk of the day.

So when I first put my computer up on Craigslist to sell I received a very interesting offer: a year of unlimited free travel on US Airways. Being a big traveller this was an extremely appealing offer on the face of it, and I let my imagination run away a bit on the possibilities. I came up with various ways of doing it, from simply hopping from city to city having fun and taking whatever flight I could get out when I was done, to a more commercialized plan of attempting to get corporate sponsorships to pay for places to stay and places to eat (and maybe even the flights as I'd much rather do this sort of thing on JetBlue than US Airways) in exchange for the marketing they'd get from me putting their branding on my blog, writing about their services, having my picture taken using their products and services &c.;

After thinking it over, I decided that the first option is just untenable. At least for right now. I have a business to run and build, and a number of opportunities on the horizon to expand that. I've got a home to take care of an a mortgage to pay. I've got bills. I've got all sorts of responsibilities that, as much as I might sometimes like to, I can't just walk away from (unless I can find a place to walk to where the IRS can't find me, that is).

The second option might very well be doable. With a good enough pitch, I could probably get sponsorship to do this sort of thing. There would be all sorts of sponsorship opportunities as well: national sponsorships from whatever airline and whatever hotel chain I can get, regional sponsorships from state tourism boards and regional chains, local sponsorships from local restaurants, attractions, and what have you. And of course I could sell advertising on the site as well. If you think of the whole venture as a year long online and physical marketing campaign for the various sponsors, it could pretty easily lead to a 6 figure income when all is said and done. So I considered that, and I considered who I could approach, and how much money I could reasonable expect to get, and what I would have to promise in return. And I decided that, while it may be doable, and I might even be able to convince the sponsors that they want me to do it rather than to just steal my idea, fund it the same way I would with sponsorships from other companies, and then just hire some actor to do it better than I ever would and only pay him a small fraction of the money because it's just a job for him, even if I could do all that I don't think it would be worth it. I'd love the opportunity to travel around the country. I'd especially love it if I was not only not paying for it, but was making a lot of money off it. But the things I'd have to do to make that money would, I think, take all the fun out of it. I like to travel on my own, and see things and do things and even write about it, but as soon as it becomes a big corporate thing there's just too much planning and negotiating and crap like that I don't want to deal with. I'd want to be spontaneous and have fun and deviate from whatever little plan I have whenever an interesting opportunity comes up, and I'd never be able to do that if I had and airline and a hotel chain and who knows who else footing the bill.

Unfortunately, I came to the conclusion that the traveling idea would either be really fun but impossible, or possible and lucrative but not fun at all. So instead I sold my computer and monitor for cash and ordered a new iMac to replace them.

Expect a write-up of Blogtoberfest 2007 later today.

Well, I'm off to the Pour House for Blogtoberfest 2007. It'll be a great chance to meet some more of my fellow area bloggers, as well as catch up with the ones I've met before. Expect a post summarizing the night ...assuming anything interesting happens.

Last night I sold my PowerMac G5 and 24" Dell monitor. I bought the G5 almost exactly four years ago on October 20, 2003. At the time it was the top of the line Macintosh with all the options, but since I had an Apple Student Developer account, it only cost me about $2500, the cost of the low-end PowerMac. Despite being four years old, it's still a great machine. It's perfectly capable of doing just about anything you might want it to do including video editing (which is what the guy I sold it to is going to use it for). The only thing it really has a problem with is playing HD video. It had problems decoding 720p H.264 content fast enough and would often stutter. 1080p content was completely unplayable. If it hadn't been for the fact that watching video was my main use for it (I can do all my work on my MacBook just fine) I would have kept it until it either failed catastrophically or simply was no longer able to run the software I needed.

I'll be replacing it with an iMac. It seems like a bit of a shame to replace a PowerMac with an iMac, but a 24" 2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo iMac will be completely paid for by the money I got for my 2.0 GHz G5 PowerMac and 24" Dell LCD monitor, so I'm essentially upgrading my computer for free. The iMac should have no problem playing even 1080p H.264 content, as my 2.0 GHz Core Duo MacBook plays it about as well as my PowerMac played 720p. The screen in the iMac should also be slightly better than the one I sold, so this turns out to be a pretty good deal for me. Actually, it's a really good deal for me. The only out of pocket expense when getting the iMac will be AppleCare, which I definitely think is worth it. Oh, and I also have to get a new hard drive enclosure. Before I was using a SATA to eSATA enclosure along with an eSATA controller card for a 500 GB RAID, but the iMac won't have eSATA so that's out (and I sold the enclosure along with the G5), so I also had to order a SATA to USB 2.0/FireWire/FireWire 800 enclosure to replace it.

Until I get the iMac I'll be stuck with just my MacBook. It's a little odd right now having nothing but a little laptop sitting on my desk, but, to be fair, it's just as capable of a computer as the PowerMac was, so currently I'm not actually missing out on anything other than the bigger screen (and the use of my 500 GB RAID) in the meantime.

Treehugger just posted a quote about the relative efficiencies of various modes of transportation. Basically, biking is the most efficient way for you to get around. Walking comes in 2nd, then trains, then cars. This is hardly news for anyone who pays attention to such things, but I think it's still worth pointing out.

Boston is America's walking city, and it's true that this city is very friendly to walking. Sure it may be a bit of a hike from the North End to Kenmore Square, but it's certainly within the realm of possibility, and the more you do it the easier it will be. Really, unless you're making a delivery there's very little reason not to walk everywhere in Boston. Even when I was living in Central Square I'd often make the walk across the river into Boston to go to the Boston Public Library. But really, what we should be is America's biking city (currently Sparta, Wisconsin is the Bicycle Capital of America; I say we should take that title). Not only is biking more efficient than walking, but it's much faster as well. The walk from here in Somerville to Boston is a little more than I'd want to undertake on a regular basis (though I've done it once or twice). With a bike, however, Boston suddenly become mere minutes away. It takes me about 30 minutes to bike at a fairly leasurely pace from Porter Square to the Broadway Red Line stop in Southie. According to the MBTA it takes the Red Line 20 minutes to make the same trip, and that's if the T's being friendly that day. On average, I'd say biking that route is as fast or faster than taking the T. To drive that same route, according to Google maps, would also take 20 minutes, though that doesn't account for traffic (and Google says it could take up to 30 minutes with traffic, though on some days it would certainly take even longer). It also doesn't take into account the amount of time it takes to find parking. Some days it could take just as long to find parking as to drive there.

So not only is biking more efficient, it is easily just as fast and often faster than taking the T or even driving. When you're talking about the shorter distances actually within Boston (say from the South End to the Financial District or Fenway to Copley Square) the advantages of biking will just be magnified. With those shorter distances the small amount of time it takes for you to walk to the T station and wait for the train, or to walk to your car and then deal with traffic, become even more significant. With a bike, you just get on and go and can, for the most part, ignore traffic.

Biking is cheaper too. I got my bike for $10 off of Craigslist. It was in good enough condition when I bought it, though not perfect. For $20 I probably could have gotten a bike that was in perfect condition. But even if I had gone and bought a brand new, top of the line bike, I could have gotten one for as little as $1500, and most people would be more than happy with a $300 or less bike. Once you make that initial investment for the bike, helmet, bike lock, and maybe saddle bags to carry your stuff and some lights for biking at night you've still spent very little money. And when biking you don't have to worry about paying for parking or paying for T fare.

Even at longer distances, biking can make sense. When Jessi was working in Lexington she could still bike to work. The Minuteman Bikeway goes from right here in Somerville straight to Lexington and beyond. It's about an 8 mile ride from here to Lexington, which takes 30-45 minutes depending on your speed. Public transportation requires you to take the T and then transfer to a bus which actually takes longer than biking. So she could leave later and still get to work on time all while getting some exercise. Really, if you ask me, biking is the ideal form of transportation for Boston, or most cities for that matter. Obviously it won't work so well for everyone, but it does for a whole lot of people who probably never even considered it.

The only drawback to biking is the weather. Biking isn't so much fun in the winter. But even if you take the T or drive in the winter and bike the rest of the year you're still going to be saving a ton of money and getting a lot more exercise all at the same time.

For me, my bike is my favored form of transport. Weather permitting, I'll use it over any other method. Of course I do have a bit of an advantage in that I do all my own work on it which means I can keep it in tip top condition for no cost other than the occasional replacement parts. But if you want to keep your bike in good condition without getting your hands dirty and without spending a fortune on over-priced maintenance, I highly recommend you take it to Quad Bikes. They're a non-profit bike shop that services the Harvard Community and does all the work on the Harvard Police Departments bike fleet. I also happen to volunteer there in my free time, which is something else I'd recommend to people interested in bikes. Their volunteer program is great, basically they just teach how to work on bikes by having you work on bikes. After a few weeks there you'll be competent and confident enough to do all the basic work on your own bike, and you'll have a great resource in the people who work there to help you with the more complex stuff. Plus, they have all the tools so you don't need to buy your own. And they rescue and refurbish old bikes so you can get a great deal on a perfectly serviceable bike. Or even, if you wanted, get a bike custom built for you. As an additional benefit, I find that getting my hands dirty and actually producing tangible results (unlike web development, which offers it's own rewards to be sure) is extremely satisfying. It's a great way to relax, unwind, and still get something productive done.

Currently my main computer setup is a PowerMac G5 with a 24" Dell monitor. It's a great computer, but is getting to be a bit dated. So this afternoon I listed it on Craigslist. My plan was, if I can sell it for enough, to replace it with a 24" C2D iMac. So far I've gotten one offer that's very different from what I was expecting, but has filled my head with all sorts of fun and tempting ideas.

The offer was from a guy who works for US Airways. As a US Airways employee he basically gets unlimited free flights whenever he wants them. He also gets a companion pass so that other people can fly with him. Apparently the holder of this pass doesn't need to fly with him, so he can just give it to someone and they can fly for free. His offer was to give me one calendar year of unlimited free flights in exchange for my computer system.

Obviously a year of free flights won't pay for a new iMac, but it gave me an idea. If I took this, I could spend the year being, basically, an air-hobo. If I wanted to be really hardcore about it I could spend the year sleeping in airports and eating nothing but airplane food, but I think I'd probably end up missing out on a lot of fun opportunities that way. But think of it this way: there are 52 weeks in the year and 50 states in the union. I could spend just over a week in every single state. But how would I pay for food? Not to mention our mortgage and bills. Well, I could blog about it.

There's plenty of interest in travel blogs, and this would certainly be a travel blog with a twist. Might it be able to generate enough traffic and interest that I could make enough money off it for a year? It may well be able to. Maybe I could even get US Airways to sponsor me somehow to help make it doable, or a hotel chain to do so and give me a place to stay during my travels.

At first I just dismissed the offer out of hand. But travel is absolutely my favorite thing to do, and the more I think about it, the more tempting it is. (I actually even considered trying to do something similar on my own without the free flights after college.) I was just going to delete the email, but now I'm seriously considering calling the guy and getting more details on the limitations of this pass. This could be very interesting and very fun. And Jessi's already given it the green light. So if I can figure out some way for this whole thing to be financially viable, I just might do it. The money thing, of course, is the limiting factor here, so I leave this with a question for you: should I do it?

The power is out in much of Somerville and has been for about three hours now (since most of the way through the top of the 8th inning of the Sox/Indians game). The Porter Square area has power fortunately, but I recently returned from eminent local blogger Jesse Legg's house where we had been watching the game until the power went out (afterwards I contented myself with cleaning everyone else out at poker), and from my bike ride back (not very fun in the pitch dark, even with a headlight) it appeared that pretty much everything on the other side of Elm St. is dark. The Ball Square area certainly is at any rate.

Power outages in and of themselves don't really bother me, but several hours of nothing but candle light can start to get annoying. I can only imagine that for the power to be out for this long it must be a downed line or something similar that can't just be routed around. Of course the wiring in this part of the country is probably so old that it could be just about anything. Hopefully I'll know more soon. In the meantime, I just hope it isn't another days-on-end without power scenario like we had in the Bay Area when I was a kid...

Edit: I just took a look at the City of Somerville website and apparently this is a 'scheduled emergency power outage', whatever that means. It appears that the power will be out until 8am for the 100 through 400 blocks of Highland Ave. Of course it also said that it wouldn't start until 12am, so who knows what's really going on. Also, my Verizon DSL went out about 30 minutes ago. I wonder if that's related.

Edit 2: Thanks to Boris for pointing out that the notice I found on the Somerville website was from 2002. Oh well, guess it was an unscheduled emergency after all.

Edit 3: Cool, if you do a google search for 'Somerville power outage' this post is the number two result.

Next Monday (October 15th) at the Somerville Theater in Davis Square Mayor Joe Curtatone of Somerville will be holding a State of the City address targeted specifically at the 21-35 year old demographic. Topics will include: the Green Line Expansion, redevelopment of the city's website (sadly I have nothing to do with that), the Somerville school system, and many other things. There will also be a question and answer session with the mayor and city department heads following the address. Food will be provided, it'll be a great chance to meet other young people from around the city, and apparently the Somerville PD will be there so you can register your personal electronics. I'd post the flyer they sent out to those of us on the Young Somerville Advisory Group, but ...let's just say it would clash with the design of my site.

If you're in Somerville you can call 311 for more information.

Vital info:
Monday, October 15th
6:00 - 8:00 pm
Somerville Theater
Davis Square

It's been a while since I've written about anything political, but this seems like a good topic to start back in on. I'm going to start by making an admision—one that's pretty much guaranteed to earn me a phone call as soon as my dad reads this: I don't have health insurance.

Just to be clear, let me expound on that. I live in Massachusetts, a state that requires by law that all residents have health insurance. I am currently, as I type this, breaking the law just by sitting here minding my own business and daring to make my own decisions about my life. Starting in December (and I think it's important that it be made more widely known that even though it's currently illegal to not have health insurance in Massachusetts, you won't actually start being punished for it until December) the state will theoretically even begin to fine me for not having health insurance (although, to be honest, had I not just make a public admission of it how would they even know?). And yet, I am among America's uninsured. Funny how outlawing a behavior (or, in this case, a lack of behavior) doesn't actually stop people from doing it, isn't it?

There are a number of relatively cheap insurance options available to me, although not as cheap as I'd like since Massachusetts' wonderful law making health insurance mandatory only focused on lowering health care costs for people older than myself. The truth is that I could afford health insurance. When I did some research a few months ago I think the cheapest plan out there was around $125/month (and I'm sure it would be possibly to get those rates even lower if I went with a high deductable plan that would actually save me even more money in the long run; more on that here). I can afford that. I just don't want to. And why should I have to? I honestly can't remember the last time I went to the doctor's office. I can't remember the last time I was sick for more than 3 days. I can remember the last time I went to the emergency room: it was when I was 12 and I broke my pinkie in a karate mishap. If there is anyone who doesn't need health insurance, it's me. Of course Massachusetts says I do. And they're going to start fining me if I don't get it by December.

Some might say that this is a travesty. Some might say that someone should intervene to protect me from myself. Some—and I think everyone knows who I'm talking about at this point—might say that the government should step in and provide me with a service I'm not asking for and actively refusing despite being legally obligated to avail myself of it (the position of universal healthcare makes a lot less sense when phrased that way doesn't it?).

Some might want to know why I'm bringing this topic up now. The answer is that I just read this post over at Clasically Liberal (a favorite political blog of mine) and it really gave me pause to think. Most of the information in there is pretty old news to those of a more libertarian bent: the cost of health insurance is so high not because of greedy insurance companies, but because of lazy consumers and moronic government policies that encourage that laziness. And it's not a problem to be solved through government regulation, which repeated evidence in massive experiments carried around around the globe to the detriment of millions of unsuspecting and undeserving subjects shows only decreases the cost of health care by not providing it in the first place. Amazingly enough in this era of enlightened liberalism, and this is the part that really caught my attention, the market has actually provided a better solution.

Enter Dr. Jay Parkinson. Dr. Parkinson has introduced a totally new kind of health care: the kind that doesn't cost a whole lot of money. When you sign up for his service he becomes your personal physician. He handles just about everything for you, but for very low costs. He keeps his costs down by not having an office: he makes house calls. But more than that, he'll talk to you over the phone, or by email, or even a video conference to determine if you actually even need to see a doctor. And of course he charges less for that than for a house call. He also only takes patients between the ages of 18 and 40 (hey, that's me!). When you need to see a specialist, or even go to an emergency room, he'll help you make the arrangements. And more than that, he's already done the price comparissons for you so he can make sure that you're not getting overcharged by a hospital or doctor that's used to people who don't question their high prices. Basically he'll help make sure that you get the best care you can for the least amount of money. He's even done the research to let you know which pharmacies charge the lowest price for the medication you need. All in all, he saves you a ton of money by not making you pay for things you don't need. For most people in the age bracket that he services, they'll only be paying about $500/year, just 1/3 of the cost of the cheapest traditional health plan I could find that doesn't provide anywhere near as good service.

There's only one problem: he live in New York, and therefore only takes patients in the New York area. If he, or anyone else for that matter, set up a similar practice here in Boston I would sign up in a heartbeat. As, I'm sure, would a ton of other people. (You here that, Massachusetts doctors?) I'll even help them out with their web page! But for now, I'm sitting here with no health insurance, breaking the law, just because the only guy out there who's offering a service that would be worthwhile for me is a couple hundred miles away.

Apple has surprised me again and really come through. Apparently it's no longer the case that all laptop repairs are sent in; they now do about 95% (according to the woman at the Genius Bar that I talked to) right in the stores. They had the right size hard drive in stock, so I was in and out in less than an hour with a fully functional MacBook. Also, for the first time since the Genius Bar concept really took off (it took about a year, really) I didn't even have to wait in a long line for service and even got in before my scheduled appointment. So apparently they've done something to vastly improve the appointment system.

On top of all that, since they had to replace the hard drive I got a fresh OS install. And the version they installed is 10.4.8. Ordinarily I'd be a little annoyed about the forced downgrade, but in this case I'm rather happy about it. I've been one of the unfortunate few who's been experiencing AirPort problems in 10.4.10 (although I was only having intermittent dropped connections and not kernel panics like some people), so I'm leaving it at that version for now. Hopefully the 10.4.11 update that should be available in the next day or two will fix those problems, otherwise I'll just wait for Leopard to update.

In other news, the Indian place in the food court at the CambridgeSide Galleria is extremely disappointing. At first I thought their prices were ridiculous. Then I saw how huge their portions were and though the prices might actually be fair. Then I tasted the food... Needless to say I won't be going back (not that I often eat at mall food courts anyway).

I've been getting bad about updating regularly, and I'm trying to fix that. I have, however, been very busy lately. Here's a quick rehash of what's happened since my last post:

1. It turned out that the work I was expecting to have to do while I was in Illinois ended up getting pushed back by my client. So I never really had to test out my Parallels/Gentoo/Lighttpd/SQLite setup for web development (although I did some very basic tests that worked out just fine).



2. I got to meet Jessi's sister's new daughter, and basically my niece, Maura, just hours after she was born at around midnight on Sept. 28. Here are some pictures of her meeting her aunt Jessi, her grandma, her great-grandma, her mom, and, of course, me, all taken on my iPhone (the one to the right is my favorite of the many funny faces she made).


3. Went to the wedding of some of Jessi's friends from home.


4. Flew back to Boston.


5. Had a whopping 4 or so days before some other friends came from Illinois to visit us, and then got to show them around Boston and expose them to some of our favorite things here (like G'vanni's in the North End and Tacos Lupita in Porter Square). Though in the process it finally dawned on me that since we have a car now the Providence and Manchester airports are within range so we can actually fly on SouthWest and save some money when we go places that JetBlue won't take us (they flew SouthWest into Providence).


6. Finally sold the Mercedes. I didn't get quite as much for it as I wanted, but I still got enough that it was worthwhile having repaired and sold it rather than just junking it when it died.


7. Finally got that project that I had expected to be working on while I was in Illinois. Ended up having to do the whole thing in two days (ah, the joys of sub-contracting).


8. I lived out my 9,125 day, remarkable only in that it's a multiple of 365. This was the same day we ate at G'vanni's, and afterwards got pastries from the North End's Modern Pastry.


9. I put off development of my WiFi database site in favor of a different project. This one will be less flashy, but will have much greater personal utility. It will also probably be useful for a lot of other people too, so my plan is to make it a hosted (free) service and open it up for anyone to use. I'm considering the possibility of maybe some premium features that you have to pay for, but that will have to wait.


10. My MacBook, which I've had for approximately 17 months now, died. I'm fairly positive it's a hard drive failure as when it happened there was no kernel panic or any other sort of error message. The computer was still running, but any processes that were trying to access the hard drive locked up. Then the hard drive started making a pleasant clicking sound. Upon attempting to reboot I sill get the starting chime, but then it just goes to a white screen and clicks. This all seems consistent with a hard drive failure as when it happened most of the system would have been running in RAM and so unaffected, and the startup chime is stored in firmware and so also unaffected.

And that brings us to today. Currently I'm waiting until it's time to head over to the Apple Store in the CambridgeSide Galleria to have them look at my MacBook. The problem is such that they'll spend a few minutes looking it over and then tell me that they'll have to send it in to the service center for repairs (they only do work on desktop locally, laptops are always shipped out). It should be a fairly quick repair though, so I should only be without my laptop for probably a week at the most. Fortunately I bought AppleCare for it, so the repair will be free.

I'm also working on designing a home theater setup for the condo. Currently the only screen we have to watch the few tv shows and movies we watch is my monitor. This isn't as bad as it sounds, as it's a Dell 24" LCD with greater than HD resolution (1920x1200), but it does mean that we have to sit in the office on our desk chairs which isn't as comfortable as it could be. The other day we tried moving my computer out to the living room to see if the screen was big enough to use as a tv in there. It isn't quite, but it wasn't actually all that bad. However since my MacBook just died I had to move the computer back into the office so that it would actually be useable. So now I'm planning out what will become our home theater system. I'm fairly positive that for the screen I'll be getting the Olevia 342i, a 42", 720p tv without an HDTV tuner. This may seem lacking, but it isn't. At about 8-10' away, the difference between 720p and 1080p on a 42" screen won't really be noticeable. And we dont' need a built-in HDTV tuner, because I'm going to be using the TV with a SiliconDust HDHomeRun. The HDHomeRun is a much better choice for us becaues it's a dual-tuner device, and it's compatible out of the box with MythTV, which is what I plan on using to manage our video library and for it's DVR capabilities. That leaves only the question of how to implement the MythTV system. I've narrowed that down to two options:

1. A Mac Mini. Actually, that's a vast oversimplification. The Mini would only be running the MythTV front-end. The back-end would be running on a Linux box. I already have a suitable machine to use for the Linux box (I built it a couple years ago as a gaming rig, and it's more than up to the task), I just need to reformat the drives and install MythTV. So the only cost there would be the Mac Mini (about $600) and the drives for storage ($330 for a 1 TB drive to start). So the total initial cost of that MythTV setup would be around $1000.


2. A TVease Zodiac. I'd get the $900 base model, because I don't need/want the analog tuners and it's cheaper to use the HDHomeRun than to get a model with HD tuners; also it's cheaper to add more storage myself. This ends up being a little costlier, but significantly easier in terms of setup and usage. It also reduces the number of components the system has by allowing me to put the MythTV front-end and back-end in the same box without significantly reducing my storage capacity (it has room for three drives, so a maximum of 3 TB, but I can always add external drives as well so the maximum storage capacity is essentially infinate). I probably wouldn't get a new HD for it right off the bat. Even though it will only come with a 250 GB drive, I can point it to the 500 GB RAID that I currently store my digital video collection on over the network so I think it will be sufficient for now. Of course eventually I'd probably want to put another TB or more into it. The total initial cost of this MythTV setup is also about $1000, but much easier to accomplish.

So I have to figure out which setup I want to use. The Mac Mini will look better, but the Zodiac doesn't look that bad, and the eventual plan is to recess it into the wall anyway which will look pretty cool no matter which I use. I'm really leaning towards the Zodiac right now, but I want to do a little more research before I make any sort of decision like that. In the mean time, I can at least get the TV and see about hacking it into the current setup (perhaps using KnoppMyth on my PC (the reason I'm not going to just go with a plan like that is it won't look as good and will be loud, should be perfectly fine for a temporary setup though).