It’s hard to drive in Austin’s Friday evening rush hour traffic and take photos of redneck trucks.
Git Sum
TiVo setup
I have our TiVo 95% setup.
The Good:
- I can do that TiVo thing
The Bad:
- No RJ-45 input?!? You have to either 1) purchase a separate USB to Ethernet adapter 2) use a standard phone line (this would be a pain as we have digital phone service and only 1 “live” phone jack on the other side of the house. Plus the feed would be slow as hell) or 3) purchase a wireless USB adapter. I opted for #3.
- TiVo doesn’t support WPA-PSK
- Had to encrypt my network using WEP
- Had to reconfigure iBook for WEP
- Had to reconfigure HP DV1040 notebook for WEP (that was a major PITA – took me half an hour)
- Had to reconfigure Aiport Express for WEP by hardwiring to the router and a manual restart (this walkthrough helped)
- Had to reconfigure second Airport Express (see above)
TiVo doesn’t have a universal remote code for my Quasar model TVCover TiVo remote with hand, Hold down the TiVo and TV POWER buttons simultaneously until the red light on the remote control remains on, enter code 0999, press Channel Up button 463 times until TV turns off. Press Enter- Currently no TiVo Desktop for OS X 10.4
It felt good to do this
This Tae Kwon Do belt display has been long awaiting the top rung to be occupied by my black belt. No, I didn’t quit. No, I didn’t get my second degree (although I will in the coming months). We left Unified Tae Kwon Do and have become Eclipse Tae Kwon Do under masters Gus Pennison and Rick Wescott. I received a new black belt and uniform tonight and was able to retire my old belt.
The Janiceks get TiVo
I don’t really keep up on television technology. I attribute this to my not watching that much TV. Early this past Spring our VCR suffered from lockjaw which lead to surgery and eventually, euthanasia.
Weeks passed and Elise got on to me that we needed a way to record television shows. Since I am Chief Technology Officer of the household, it was my job to materialize a solution. During my lunch break I headed over to Wal-Mart to purchase a VCR. I wanted an plain, cheap, old-school VHS VCR because, well, that’s how I roll.
I couldn’t find a VCR. All that Wal-Mart offered were VCR/DVD combos and DVD burners for more than what I was looking to pay. I just wanted a $20 programable VCR. I spent ten times my budget on a DVD burning Pioneer DVR.
I hooked up this newfangled gadget to our entertainment center’s head unit and did what most men never do, I handed the remote to the wife. I still don’t know how to operate the DVR. Any time I want something recorded, I have to get Elise to do it for me.
I went to Amazon.com last week to see if there were some must-have items that I could put on my Christmas wishlist and found a good deal on an 80-hour DVR with TiVo Series 2. It was delivered yesterday. Now I’m looking forward to getting it hooked up with TiVo service and using TiVo Desktop wirelessly.
This rig should make for a cool pairing with the Monster iTV I recently hooked up. Last night we watched Batman Begins on the TV from the iBook.
“Sure, the World Wide Web is great
but you, you make me salivate.
Yes, I love technology.
But not as much as you, you see.
But I still love technology.
Always and forever.”
For Whom the Dell Tolls
Dell has been on my blacklist for just over two years now (read here, here, here, here, here and here).
This is from an article posted yesterday on BusinessWeek Online:
Many observers, including customers, partners, and analysts, fret that Dell may have been cutting costs so much in order to hit financial targets in recent quarters that it has compromised other measures of performance, including customer support and, possibly, product quality. “The key is to keep customers happy in an efficient fashion,” says Maxwell. “Not getting the processes right can really snowball through the system quickly.”
Meantime, companies with more innovative products and better support, such as Apple (AAPL), are growing at a faster pace. Even once-beleaguered rival Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) grew faster than Dell last quarter.
And this exerpt from the article entitled “Hanging up on Dell?” hits home:
Armed with an extended warranty that cost him an extra $300, the Pasadena (Calif.) retiree got on the phone and waited. After sitting on hold for 45 minutes, a technician whom Ulyatt could barely understand came on the line and diagnosed a “software problem.” Ulyatt’s call, transferred to the software technician, was dropped. Calling back, Ulyatt waited on hold another 45 minutes, asked for the software desk, and waited a half-hour more before hanging up. “At the moment, I’m not high on Dell’s service,” says Ulyatt, who plans to buy two new PCs in a year or so. “When I buy again, I will look at others beyond Dell.”
In the past two years I’ve managed to consolidate most data from two older, barely breathing (this is an obvious Windows issue but I’m on my Dell tangent) Dell desktops and transfer the files to a server. It wouldn’t cross my mind to call Dell for support. If I can’t fix it, I salvage what data I can and move the computer to my Dell boneyard. If the day comes where it’s necessary that I buy a new computer for the office, I’ll shop elsewhere unless Dell straightens up.
My good ear
Rarely do I get a case of the Monday’s. It’s usually a case of the Tuesday’s for me. Today has turned out to be one of those Tuesday’s. My morning started out with the loss of hearing in my right ear. I don’t know the technical or medical details, but I don’t have Grade A ears. When I was a wee lad I had “tubes” in my ears. To date I still don’t really know why I had these tubes in my ears. Brief research lends me to believe that I had tympanostomy tubes.
I remember once losing hearing in one of my ears during my adolescence. My mom took me to our family’s general practitioner to find out why I lost my hearing. He took a large syringe with a soft plastic tube on the end, filled it with a warm water and hydrogen peroxide solution and forcefully irrigated my deaf ear. To spare you the details, chunks of orange, grease-like material spat from my ear hole. Alas! I could hear. I could hear very well too.
Now keep in mind, I’m very concious as far as hygiene is concerned. I clean my ears regularly but there’s only so far one can go spelunking with a washcloth or foreign object into the ear canal.
Every six months or so I lose hearing in one of my ears. I couldn’t “fix” my hearing loss a couple years ago so I visited the medical supply store. There I purchased a 20ml plastic syringe and have since performed my own earrigation.
This morning I woke up with total loss of hearing in my right ear. I pulled my earrigator and hydrogen peroxide from the bathroom drawer and got into the shower. I tried flushing my ear to no avail.
Not being able to hear out of one ear is extremely frustrating. My equilibrium is off and, well, I can’t hear out of one side of my head. While driving to work I completely missed my mouth while trying to take a drink of water from my 34 oz. Bubba Keg and poured a liberal amount of H20 onto my crotch. I’m not sure if that has anything to do with equilibrium. It may be due in part to Daylight Savings Time or plate tectonics.
Listening to my iPod during the commute was pointless. I had my stereo volume up to the point of rattling and all I could hear was, “Verumm arrm mmm nurrr mooom”
I’m going to go to my boss’s pharmacy later this afternoon and see if someone can dispense some sort of solution for my problem.
As you’re reading this, be glad that you have your damn hearing. I take back what I wrote previously about having to choose a sense to give up.
UPDATE: I went to the pharmacy later in the afternoon. I was sold on a few ear candles (cool name for a band). Some people think ear candling is a good thing. Others think it’s not such a good idea. Either way, I just wanted to hear again.
Wanda also gave me some herbal ear oil that is supposed to loosen up any compacted junk in the ear canal. I put a few drops of the ear oil in the ol’ ear hole immediately. I couldn’t wait much longer before I had to try out the ear candle.
The ear candle isn’t really a candle by conventional standards. I thought it would be some type of low heat candle that gently dripped candle wax into your ear and would slowly solidify and the gunk in the ear would afix to the candle wax and be pulled out when removing the melted wax. Instead, an ear candle is a gause like material, formed into a long cylinder that is dipped in wax to mantain a tube-like structure. The narrow end of the tube is placed in the ear canal, lit and the flame pipes a low heat into the ear canal and creates a gentle vacuum that is supposed to “lift” dirty little deposits that reside in the ear canal.
One of my staffers caught me ear tubin’ in the break room
The tube didn’t work. My equilibrium was non-existent and I was severely frustrated. I went back to the pharmacy and they gave me a 20ml syringe. I drove back to the office, microwaved a cup of water and earrigated the hell out of my right ear with the new syringe. After another 20 minutes of forcing hot water into my ear, I finally regained my hearing (see chunks of orange greasy material spewing above).
I hate losing my hearing as much as strangers sitting across from me when I’m eating along.