- A good book on a rainy day.
- A cup of hot chocolate after being outside in the snow.
- A walk on a crisp autumn day.
- Your baby falling asleep in your arms.
At work, we use business-class Roadrunner service for our Internet connectivity. This morning, they are having massive troubles with their connection, and anything I do on the Internet is either (a) impossible or (b) incredibly slow (think 1200 baud modem speed). It is amazing how much you come to completely rely on the Internet until I realized that I had 4 systems waiting for various updates (only downloadable), and several projects for customers that also required the Internet to research.
Our business is at a practical standstill. I've come to realize that at this point, the Internet is more critical than the phone for our business to function. Not that this is a new revalation to any of you (or to me), but not having it for a morning really drives the reality of it home.
Technical note: I wrote this in Notepad, so I could post it later.
So, I go out to get the newest Barenaked Ladies album today (Everything to Everybody), around lunchtime, fully expecting to buy the Special Edition of the release (which includes a DVD disc with some extras - a bit more expensive, but I like the band). Only problem is - nobody has the disc. And I don't mean just the Special Edition - I mean nobody has it...in any form (normal, limited, special)... period. I end up scouring the mall for over 35 minutes, asking one clueless clerk after another, until I finally find somebody who has it - only it is the Limited Edition, with just a few extra tracks. At this point I've had it, and just buy it out of defeat.
I've had it - if I'm planning on buying it when it comes out, I'm just preordering it on Amazon. I like the feel of having something in my hand and buying it directly, but enough is enough.
One of the things that drives me crazy is how I often seem to think of decent ideas for a blog entry in places where I can't actually get to a PC to write it down. Most of the time this seems to happen when I'm in my car. I come up with a great idea, then by the time I get to where I'm going (majority of the time is either home or the office), I get tied up doing stuff and can't get to a PC right away. By the time I get to it, the idea has passed, or I can't shape it into decent form because of the amount of time that has passed and end up discarding it. It drives me crazy - so many great ideas, all slipping away. The only chance for these entries to survive is if I keep thinking about them.
Like this blog entry, which has literally been in my head for 3 weeks!
A snippet of my day yesterday:
1) 11:15am - working on a small inkjet printer for a grandmother, trying to fix it so she can print pictures of her grandkids she got in email. Ripping unit apart, cleaning out gunked up ink, relubricating parts, etc. Being thanked incredibly profusely for helping her.
2) 1:15pm - emergency callout, fixing a completely crashed Exchange 2000 server for a decent-sized (60 people) organization. Pulling the database, recreating the DNS zones completely on the server, clearing a backed up queue, reestablishing proper operation to the server. Getting nothing but shit about how long it took to get things back up, how critical email is their operation, etc.
When anybody asks me why I don't just do business accounts, I only have to think of a day like yesterday to remember why.
Well, I have been meaning to write this entry for several days, but have been holding off as I gathered some of my thoughts about the unit. This is a long entry, so read on if you're interested...
We have now had the unit for approximately 2 weeks. It is truly a mixed bag. As for the whole "DVR/Tivo" thing, I couldn't possibly be happier. This thing is a breeze to work with, and to say that our TV viewing habits have changed would be an understatement. We simply won't watch anything live anymore - we wait for the DVR to catch it and watch it later. Just last week, I waited 1/2 hour into a show just so I could watch it without commercials. In some respects, my wife and I feel like snobs - "who would want to watch TV *live*? Yuck!"
The other thing that we find interesting and great is that we are finally getting a chance to sample shows that we never really watched before. We see an advertisement that catches our eye, we talk to somebody who mentions a really good show - *bang* we add it to the record list, and give it a chance. Already we've found a couple of good shows (Playmakers on ESPN, Joan of Arcadia on CBS) that we would have never watched before. The opportunity to simply say "that might be good - record it and I'll see" has made such a seismic shift in our TV viewing habits that it is truly hard to describe - and yet, for anyone who has a similar device, they all know exactly what I'm talking about.
The downsides? The interface, to put it mildly, sucks. Actually finding something to watch isn't that big of a deal - the guide for shows works just like our old digital cable box, so it is easy and quite familiar to work with. The problem comes when you know *what* you want to record, but not *when* it is on. Finding a show by title is nigh impossible - you select the first letter of the show, then have to scroll through literally hundreds of shows to find what you want. It doesn't even collapse shows with multiple runtimes into a single entry - with some shows, you can flip through a dozen pages of the same show, all at different airtimes. Quite annoying.
The list of already recorded items is a pain to work with as well. It shows all the shows in reverse chronological order (oldest at the bottom), and has absolutely no method for sorting, even temporarily. We often find ourselves having to flip through several screens trying to find a show that we know it recorded. You can move shows around on the list if they are set to "Save until space is needed", but then you are changing the order at which items will be deleted as space runs out. Not exactly ideal. I also wish it would sort permanently saved recordings ("Save until Manually erased") to the bottom, as you can watch them as you find time. The idea, of course, is that anything that isn't marked that way is fair game for removal (non-important shows), but we still find this to be awkward at times.
There is absolutely no way to know how much space is left on the hard drive, or when it will have to start deleting shows. The list of recorded shows will tell you on "Save until space is needed" recordings the amount of time that a show should stay on the DVR, but it is an approximate value only - "About 2 days", "Less than a day" - that sort of thing. Not particularly helpful.
The scheduling software is not as bad as some people have made it out to be on the Internet. Series recordings (Season Pass in Tivo parlance) can be configured a number of different ways, recording any instance of that show or any number of limiting factors (only one channel or all channels; only one time or all times; any combination of different days of the week; first-run or all shows). "First run" seems to be a bit buggy, so we haven't used it (it refused to recognize a new "CSI" as first run). The limitations work fairly well, but we end up catching a ton of repeats which is annoying (esp. on channels like FoodTV or TLC, which often air the same show 3 times in one day - and since they don't run the same show at the same time each day...) The scheduler conflict for series recordings works okay, handling priorities fairly decently. We do have a problem right now with Tuesday night's schedule - we have a 9pm show set to run one minute overtime, which conflicted with 2 shows to be recorded at the 10pm - 11pm slot. we fixed the overtime issue by telling it to end on time, but the box still hasn't figured out that there isn't a conflict anymore. I think we can work around that, but it shows the relatively immature software being used.
The scheduler also does get "behind" - as we delete shows, or even remove shows from the scheduled recording lists, it often takes as long as 15 minutes for it to update the length of time before stuff will be deleted in the main list.
Absolutely no "suggestions" or other cool Tivo features - a definite bummer, as I think I would enjoy it finding new things for me.
So, my overall feeling? It is a decent starter box, but I am definitely looking forward to seeing the new Tivo boxes that are (supposedly) coming out. I'm desperately hoping they include 2 tuners in these new boxes - I'm not sure that I could live without 2 tuners at this point, no matter how much I think Tivo's software is better. Even if I would be limited to only being able to record one digital channel (as it would require a digital cable converter box and an IR blaster) and one analog channel (or 2 analog channels), I could manage.
I would still recommend this box to somebody who just wants to get a feel for how it works - no hardware purchase, just a monthly fee makes it a bargain for somebody getting into this to see if they like it.
As has been heavily reported in the media and elsewhere, a student named John "Alex" Halderman determined that holding the "Shift" key down when inserting a new copy-protected Audio CD disables the autorun feature that installs the anti-piracy software to begin with.
Now the company that created the technology, SunnComm, is planning on filing a lawsuit under the DMCA, both civillay and possibly criminally, for making this information "public" (See http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104_2-5089168.html.)
So, it is now (apparently) a criminal act to use the Shift key to stop Windows from automatically running a CD's software. So, next thing I'm wondering is when Microsoft will release a "patch" for Windows that will disable this function, and more importantly, why SunnComm isn't suing Microsoft in the first place for allowing a technology in Windows that can obviously be used for such illegal and criminal pursuits?
And I'm also wondering how much jail time I'm going to be doing - heck, I've used the "shift" key to disable autorun thousands of time! Think they'll use this public admission against me in court?
I'm having a problem - I can't get a decent night of sleep anymore.
For the past couple of months, I've been having difficulties with my pillow(s). I can't seem to find that magical combination that feels comfortable, yet supportive of my head and neck. I've tried one pillow, two pillows, hard pillows, soft pillows. Nothing seems to be working. I'm waking up feeling lousy, or my neck and shoulder muscles are massively cramped from sleeping "wrong". I've actually hit the point where I dread going to sleep - even though I need it - because it just ends up being such a painful and uncomfortable experience.
I have got to get this fixed soon - I feel like a zombie, and it isn't my daughter's fault anymore!
I'll have more to add as the week progresses, but a quick update on life in our house with our new DVR.
The picture quality issue that I talked about yesterday was actually a channel issue, which I wasn't aware of at the time. Watching the channel later last night, I realized the colors were soft and kind of screwy watching live TV, so (of course) the recorded show wasn't any better. Having watched several shows that it recorded last night and earlier today, the picture quality is quite good - on most things, I really didn't see any different from live TV.
My wife is enjoying it as well - helps enormously that watching live TV is a no brainer, as it works just like the old does. I'm fairly sure that some of the more esoteric functions of the box will take a bit for her to get used to, but I would expect that.
As I stated before, I got a chance today to watch a couple of shows that I normally never get to see because of my work schedule - a couple of episodes of "Judge Judy" and an episode of "Good Eats". Guilty pleasures to be sure, but the ability to watch shows like these over dinner instead of "whatever was on" was nice.
Already ran into one interesting dilemna - what to do with shows that have been recorded when you have two TV watchers in the house? Some of the shows that we have asked it to record are fairly easy - only she or I watch them, so we can delete them when we are done with them. Others (like "Good Eats") we both enjoy watching - how do you handle when they get erased, particularly if you aren't watching the shows at the same time? Interesting problem, one I hope to figure out soon (before we both get paralyzed and never delete anything).