Yay! Blog! v2.0
Category: November 2004

• I averted disaster at the grocery this weekend. Not really disaster, but grave disappointment. I'd brought back a lot of leftover turkey from Thanksgiving dinner, and I was looking forward to some good old fashioned turkey sandwiches with fresh white bread, mayo, salt and pepper. I had everything but white bread. I studied the bread in the bread aisle and settled on some Mrs. Baird's "Large" bread (that's large slices as opposed to extra thin). As I was leaving the aisle, I saw the mayo. I knew I had a BIG jar at home, but something told me to buy a little jar anyway. That evening, when it was sammich time, I found that my big jar of mayo had expired. Whew!! I would have cried.
• I also bought one of those new toilet brush systems where you have a plastic handle that you clip some disposable cottony, soapy paper to the end. I usually use one of those wiry toilet brushes, and I've been known to scratch the enamel with it (who thought wiry toilet brushes were a good idea, anyway??). The new thingy worked much better, and when I was finished cleaning, I just flushed the papery thing away. There's another kind that has a more spongy thing to clip on the end, but I figured that would clog my toilet.
• I'm on the brink of adopting a stray cat. She loves my LilyDawg, and LilyDawg tolerates her. She came in the house one day last week, and LilyDawg was licking her behind her ears. I worry about my bird, though. I'll have to be vigilant to keep the kitty cat and the bird separated.
• I'm watching "The Real Gilligan's Island." I don't know if I'll be a regular viewer, but I was excited to see the Gingers are real movie stars! Rachel Hunter and Nicole Eggert. Whooot! I'm only 20 minutes into the show, so I'll have to get back to you on whether it's a winner.

Meet Kevin - KevinDonahue.com

Kevin is one of the bloggers behind Fanblogs and Y'all Blog [no longer going]. I found Kevin a couple of years ago when I was searching for college football blogs. That was before Fanblogs. Kevin's always giving tips on making your toys work better and more securely. He recently posted links about Securing your wireless connection. I usually read the latest news about TiVo happenings on his blog, too.

I'm back to a three column blog. I found that having the blogsnob thingy and the TTLB Ecosystem thingy were causing my blog to load *really* slow at times, so I moved them into their own little space. I'm still working on it. Let me know if something seems terribly broken.

I also added a Gravatar plugin to my comments that I saw over at Rob's. You'll see a generic picture by your name in the comments unless you sign up your email address and upload an 80x80 picture at Gravatar. It's pretty cool.

I'll get back to the posts about the nice visitors here soon. Y'all make my day.

• I've been to Houston to visit my family for Thanksgiving. I had a nice time and had a some great food. My great-nephew is really growing up. He's 3 now, and is becoming a super little man.
• Driving to Houston was a nightmare. What normally would take 3 hours and 15 minutes took 4 and a half hours because of holiday traffic. Gak. I'd hoped to get there before dark, but it didn't work out which added to the stress of the traffic.
• Driving back to Austin was a breeze. I figured traffic wouldn't be as bad, so I drove through downtown Houston. I saw Minute Maid Park, the University of Houston, The Aquarium, and Toyota Center. I didn't know what Toyota Center was, but research revealed it's where the Rockets and the Aeros play now. I haven't been paying attention. It makes me a little sad to find out they moved out of Compaq Center (formerly known as the Summit). I went to the grand opening of The Summit back in the 70s and went to a lot of concerts there.
• I was surfing iTunes for new music today. I found American Idol Fantasia's CD. I was looking forward to it, but I don't like the style of music she's doing. What a let down.
• I also found Kevin Spacey's CD. Wow! I'm impressed with his crooning. Still... I only downloaded one song because that's not my style of music, either.
• Placing in the top 6 overall in the college football pool is a bust. I'll be lucky if I get 4 picks correct out of 15 this week. I went from being tied for 7th place down to 16th place in just one week. My average of correct picks went down below 50%, too. Poop. But I won all my money back on weekly wins, so I can't complain too much. Bring on the bowls!
• Things *finally* picked up on "Survivor." I'm so glad those dadburn women who thought they were running things found out they were vulnerable. How stupid was it for LeeAnn and Amy to let Scout know she wasn't a lock for their final four? I loved Sarge and Chad's reaction when Chris didn't get voted off. Whooot!
• I think I'll put up Christmas decorations tomorrow.

Meet Rob - CrabAppleLane

Rob recently bought bicycles for him and his wife. He hadn't ridden in 30 years, and no... he didn't forget. Rob posts wonderful pictures of the area around his house in Bush, Louisiana. Bush is on the north side of Lake Pontchartrain, and part of his almost daily life is one of the greatest wonders I've seen: the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway (longest bridge in the world). Maybe not so much of a wonder to him anymore because of the traffic. He plays fantasy football, and in the real football world, he hopes that next year is the Saint's year.

Meet Pam - Hurtling towards obscurity

Pam's girlfriend is currently incommunicado due to the release of Halo 2 for Xbox. Pam recently got broadband and found out from a lady on the radio that 30 year olds are "old." She also watched a documentary recently about a high school here in Texas for gay kids. It's a shame there's a reason to even consider sheltering and segregating gay kids. I was hoping that might become a non-issue in my lifetime, but with the ridiculous movement to ban gay marriage, I don't believe it will.

• LilyDawg is a supermodel. Her daycare used her as a model for some doggy jackets someone is selling on their premises. Her picture is in their lobby. *proud*
• I've been real busy at work. So busy, I didn't have time to visit with Kevin when he was in town last week. Poo.
• I was dismissed from jury duty before I ever had to go to the courthouse. It's good, I guess, since I had so much going on at work, and all the rain would have made public transportation an unwelcome adventure. But shoot... I wanted to at least take part in jury selection.
• Best show on TV? "Joan of Arcadia" They played Patty Griffin's "Kite Song" at the end of the show this week. I was crying like a baby.
• Second best show? "Lost" Next week, it looks like we have baby sign. I'm still waiting for Hurley's back story. The brykMan thinks he might be a dot com millionaire. It wouldn't surprise me.
• I tied with 7 people for second place in a college football pool this week. I'm now just $10.50 short of what I put in with one more week to go. I'm tied with 2 other people for 7th place overall. There are 54 people in the pool. For the overall, they pay out through 6th place. I'm out of reach of 1st place, but close to the rest. I've got my fingers crossed.

Searches to my site:

• dallas adult tricycle stores for the sexiest tricycles and tricycle accessories
• cheesey hot crap dip
• nestle chocolate nose bleeds
• kim songs of poo

Kevin requested a review of my new Humax TiVo/DVD Recorder Combo. Rob said to be sure and note the first thing I burned to DVD. So, second things first... The first thing I put on DVD was "Tori Amos: Scarlet Sessions." I burned that per an Irish Kelly request because she doesn't get the station it's on or something. I burned another Tori Amos special, too. The first movie I burned was "The Life of David Gale" which was a super movie that I'll write about soon. I didn't want to waste space on the DVD, so I also burned "Freak Talks About Sex." I haven't seen that one, but I like Steve Zahn, so I think I'll like it.

The Humax box is great. It's very easy to burn DVDs. I think it took about an hour to burn each DVD, but I'm not sure because I just set it to burn and went back an hour or so later to see if it was done. While it's burning a DVD, you can watch TV or watch something else you've recorded.

It only uses DVD-R and -RW (as opposed to DVD+R and +RW). I tested one of the burned DVDs in my other DVD player (a Panasonic), and it worked fine. It didn't work in Irish Kelly's DVD player. She said she has an old crappy one, though. The DVDs also work in my desktop computer and laptop.

Something I learned about the home networking option where you can watch a show on one TiVo that you recorded on the other is that you're not really watching what's on the other TiVo. You have to transfer it. So you have to make sure you have room on the box you're transferring it to. Once transferred, it's on both boxes. One disappointing thing is that you can't burn a show to DVD that you've transferred from another TiVo box. I think you could if you transferred it from another Humax TiVo/DVD Recorder Combo box, but not from a regular TiVo box. That just means I have to plan ahead if I know I want to burn something to DVD and make sure I record it directly on to the Humax TiVo. Overall, it's a wonderful product. And I'm so glad I have a TiVo in my bedroom now. The good news is it helps me go to bed earlier. The bad news is it keeps me awake later! A couple more things (posted 11/21): Gary reminded me of something else. The menus have a longer delay on them than my other TiVo. It's a long enough delay that sometimes I press the button again because I don't think it's going to show up. Only 1 hour of "Best" quality recording will fit on a DVD. You have to plan ahead if you know you're going to burn something--don't pick too high quality or it might not fit on the DVD.

It's depressing here in Austin. It's cold. Cold in an "I live in Texas" kind of way. It's also raining. I haven't seen the sun in days.

So when I clicked on the Niagara webcam and saw the following picture, it made me smile.



Now I'm going to Starbucks.

Just in... ten new pictures I took with my keyring cam. Pictures include a hairless blue chihuahua, a skeleton-y reflection of light, and a smooching cherry.

• There's a cat on my block who likes LilyDawg. On two walks over the last couple of weeks, this cat saw us and came running over. I was worried a fight would break out. They sniffed each others' noses for a second, then the cat rubbed the top of its head on Lily's chin. Then the cat plopped to the ground and rolled over on its back. Lily sniffed that cat and continued with our walk. Yesterday, I was walking by myself and saw the cat. I called for it to come over, but it just stared at me. It only loves LilyDawg.
• It got chilly outside. I don't like it.
• I didn't get to do a Survivor debriefing with my supervisor today as he was out. I like the show, but I'm not thrilled with the women vs. men thing. I was really disappointed that Twila stuck with the girls. I guess things would be different if they hadn't split the teams by gender in the first week. I'd have hated to be with all those women. I think I would have gotten along with Twila the best. I'm also scratching my head about why Chris voted against Sarge. And why did he say that it wasn't a vote against him, but *for* him?
• I delved into a new (to me) programming language today. Irish Kelly and I worked on a Perl script that we use to post form data to a flat file. It was very frustrating, but that's the kind of work I love. When we finally got it to do what we wanted, it was a wonderful "Yay!" moment. More to come on Monday--there's one more thing we need it to do. Then again... when it comes to programming, there's *always* one more thing that needs to be done.

Searches to my site:

• workplace spank·ings
• santa is a penguin No way! Way?
• why cousins fall in love
• star wars subtitles raspberry
• how to teach a grackle to talk is that really possible?
• kim novak's lover non-existent

• I was really glad to see Jake Plummer finally do well yesterday. I just wish it hadn't been against my darling Houston Texans.
• I've been getting some weird comments lately. I'm not calling it spam because it's not advertising anything. The comments just say "Hi" or "I found you from [somewhere] and just wanted to say Hi." The email address is always [someone's name]@ yahoo or msn or another popular webmail service. The url is always www.[the same someone's name].com. The urls don't work. Anyone else getting comments like that?
• I think I might lose my Texas citizenship. I added sauteed mushrooms to my chili last night. It's real good, though.
• I got my jury duty assignment for next week. I'm on a supplemental panel. I have to call a couple of hours beforehand to see if I need to report. I bet they deny me the chance.

Thursday night, I purchased that TiVo DVD recorder combo I've been eyeing from Circuit City's internet site. Between the sale price and rebates, I think I got a good deal. To make it work well, I needed to get another digital converter box from Time Warner. I called Time Warner Customer Care (available 24 hours a day!) and cancelled Cinemax to save money and order a converter box. The lady said I could go to the Time Warner offices to pick up the converter box.

Friday, at lunch, I made my way up to north Austin to the Time Warner office. I walked in and got my converter box in less than 5 minutes. With things going so smoothly, I decided to drive down to south Austin to pick up my new TiVo box. Thirteen miles later, I was told by the Circuit City associate that the internet was wrong... they don't have those in stock, but they have one in stock at the north Austin store. Grrrr... retracing the thirteen miles back up to north Austin, I got my TiVo box. Yay! As soon as I got home from work, I started putting it all together. I connected the converter box, and called a phone number per the instructions to get it "authorized" but it no worky. I moved on to other things.

I hooked up all the cables on the TiVo and started the long TiVo setup process. After 20 minutes, I called to "authrorize" the converter box again. It still no worky. I called Time Warner Customer Care (available 24 hours a day!), and it only took her a few seconds to press some keys on her computer and make my converter box work. Yay! The TiVo setup was going well until I got to the part where I have to try several codes to get the remote to change the channels on the converter box. None of the cods worked. [EDIT: none of the *codes* worked either.] The next screen said to call TiVo Customer Service. I tried the voice response system first for help, and the robot talked me through making the remote turn my TV on and off. That was good, but that's not what I was having trouble with. The robot asked if that solved my problem, and I told him no. He handed me off to a human. Yay!

The first thing the human did was walk me through how to get the remote to turn my TV on and off. It took about 10 minutes to make him understand the problem wasn't turning the TV on and off. He started searching through their knowledge base. During that interlude, I thought of something someone told me at work one time about when you're having trouble with some programming. He told me to never assume anything, including that you've done everything correctly. Somehow that made me think about where I plugged the IR cable in at the back of the TV/TiVo/converter boxes. I looked back there, and saw I had plugged it into the converter box instead of the TiVo box where it belonged. Embarrassed, I didn't tell the guy what I had done. I just told him I was fiddling with things, and it started working. I finished setup with no other problems. There was one more hurdle, though... getting the TiVo connected to my home network wirelessly. This is something I failed at with my other TiVo which is currently wired to the network with an ethernet cable. It wasn't as easy as pie to get the new TiVo to work wirelessly, but I finally did get it to work. Now I can transfer shows from my living room TiVo to my bedroom TiVo and vice versa. How cool is that? I'm living large now. I tested the DVD player, and it plays. I haven't burned a DVD yet, but I don't have the right kind of media. I have DVD+R discs, and it only uses DVD-R.

Good lord... you really read this far?

To christy (who sent me an email through my form mail with some questions): I replied to your mail, but got an auto response that says that email account is not active. Let me know if you didn't get my reply.

• I just came in from walking Lily. There was a guy walking to his car as we passed his house. I said, "Hi." He said, "How ya doing?" He sounded just like Pacey (Joshua Jackson) on "Dawson's Creek." Think it was really him?
• In Austin, we had a light commuter rail proposal on the ballot. Everyone I know who wanted it to pass except one said they were voting for it because they hope it will ease traffic. The only way it will ease traffic, though, is if a lot of other people were voting for it because they want to ride it.
• I have the bug to buy one of those new TiVo DVD recorder combos. I would put it in my bedroom. Besides the DVD recording capability, it's cool because I would have 80 more hours of space. With the networking capability, I could also watch movies and tv shows recorded on either box in the bedroom or living room. It's such an unneeded luxury. But once I get the bug...

It's 7:00 p.m. Central. I just checked the TiVo Guide and on the major networks, I found:

• You Decide 2004
• Vote 2004
• Decision 2004: Election Night
• Election 2004

I'm glad they qualified their shows with "2004." I might have thought they meant some other year.