Category: Tech

I ♥ my DVR

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I am a recording fiend. Joe keeps yelling at me to leave the DVR alone, but I can’t. I can finally watch all the shows I miss when I’m working or sleeping. Stuff like Premium Blend, My So Called Life, Street Smarts, and all those trashy talk shows on during the day. I don’t think I will ever watch live television again. It’s so much more fun being able to skip all the nonsense and commercials lightning quick.

There’s so many improvements to the DVR version of the channel guide. Not only does everything load much quicker, but the guide goes out two weeks instead of three days like the old cable box. Our DVR has a dual tuner, so we can watch and record at the same time, or record two shows simultaneously. You can’t accidentally stop the DVR from recording either as it will warn you and make you select “stop recording” before it does anything. It is awesome! I’m hoping eventually you’ll be able to access the box online like Tivo so I can program it from work. I can see Joe rolling his eyes now. ;)

Wedding planning & DVRs

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I actually got something accomplished today regarding our wedding. I contacted one of Florida’s county clerk offices to find out how we could obtain a marriage license via mail since we’ve decided to get married Sunday, October 23rd but won’t be in Florida until Saturday October 22nd and the courts aren’t open weekends. The marriage license clerk was a really nice guy, probably because his name is Joe. ;)

I also called one of the hotels where we’ll probably be staying to confirm some of their amenities. In addition, I found a list of people who perform ceremonies in the area, so I’ll be checking out their websites tonight. It’s about time, right?

But here’s some really really good news. Joe just came home with our DVR from the cable company. I will be playing with it half the night, I’m sure. It’s funny too, because we didn’t know we’d be getting it today, but decided to take the day off from rollerblading. And it’s rainy out anyway, so it’s like the universe is in line just for little ole me.

Firefox Bug

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Over the past week, my machine’s performance was getting worse and worse, and I couldn’t figure out what was going on. It seemed to be linked to Firefox, because it was using 99% of the CPU and way too much memory.

Today while I was using IE to see if I could replicate the problem, I decided to import my Firefox bookmarks. Imagine my surprise when I went into the default profile and saw over 5000 bookmarks.html files (they were numbered bookmarks-01.html, bookmarks-02.html, etc). Based on the create date and time on each file, it looked like Firefox was spawning a new file every 30 seconds since I reinstalled Windows XP.

I removed Firefox and reinstalled it and everything seems to be fine now. That was so freaky! I couldn’t find anything online (not that I searched all that extensively) about this, so I’m not sure what could have caused it. I suspect it had something to do with an extension I installed, so I’m not installing any for the time being.

Dust and turtles

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Work dragged today because there wasn’t anything to work on due to a system problem. Of course, we had to sit around all day in case the problem was resolved, so I had a lot of time on my hands to surf. You know, the internet gets pretty boring after a couple of hours. I did find some cool places to go during the summer, though, so it wasn’t a complete waste of eight hours.

I also visited a local nature center during my lunch break. They have a little turtle pond and one of their turtles seems to be dying. He was underwater (including his neck), floating at an angle, not moving. I let an employee there know, and she fished him out with a net and placed him on a rock. He was barely moving, and I suspect he’s sick. I warned her he could contaminate the pond and cause the other turtles to get sick, but I’m not sure if she took me seriously.

I got really annoyed with my camera too (the Nikon 2100 I carry in my purse, not the Canon) because the macro mode rather sucks. The camera kept focusing on the background when I was trying to get a photo of a flower. I really wish I could make some decent money selling my two old Nikons and buy a Canon Powershot with the money.
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Kinda like Tivo, but not

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Joe informed me today that we may be getting our hands on a DVR very soon because they are doing a raffle at his work (the cable company). Previously the DVRs were only available to customers due to the limited quantities. See? It’s not always the employees who get first dibs on stuff. Even if Joe doesn’t win the raffle, word is by late August there should be enough boxes in circulation that all employees can choose to get one (and we have to even pay for the service too, but I’m not complaining since we get all the cable channels and high-speed internet for $10 a month now).

Needless to say, I’m over the moon about this. I immediately went online and started reading up on how the device works. Right now the on-screen guide used to search and select programming is crappy, but I hear that will be changed soon as well. My only concern is how far in advance you can search for programming. When I worked for the cable company in customer service, 5+ years ago, we were told the on-screen guide at that time went a week into the future. I’ve yet to see it. We’re lucky if we can view listings two days in advance. Typically after 24 hours into the future, all the listings start saying “to be announced”. Very annoying and not user-friendly at all. So keep your fingers crossed that by the time Fall rolls around and all the new seasons start, we’ll be using a top of the line system to record and watch television. It will be nice not to have to live my life around tv or mess with an annoying vcr. Just the thought of knowing I’ll be able to watch what I want when I want is so liberating!