The big DVR (digital video recorder aka TiVo) experiment begins today. I decided to go with a rental DVR supplied for $10/month from our cable company (I know Feff's eyeballs probably just popped out realizing that I'm volunteering to send more money per month to our evil cable company, which is also providing our internet). I'm banking on the idea that the technology is evolving quickly enough that in a few years, it will be more cost-effective to buy one of our own. Either that, or the cable company will upgrade our box as we go as they've done with our converter (on the other hand, I bought, rather than rented, our cable modem, and that has already paid for itself).
The cable guy is supposed to bring it by this morning, then I'll learn how to use it and start recording stuff. I'll probably subscribe to "The Daily Show", which I almost never get to catch (and last night's was very funny). Michelle will want "Baby Story" and "7th Heaven". The kids will want all the new "Yu-Gi-Oh" and "Pokemon" episodes, and that's fine, but that'll be the first thing erased when we need space, I'll tell you that much!
In other news, every year at about this time, I give practice interviews to aspiring medical school applicants from our university. That's part of my role on the pre-med committee, to help our students prepare for the interviewing process. The interviews are usually fairly interesting. This year, committee members are asking a bit more about current events, since I guess that seems to be a trend among med schools now, to have more informal and less technical interviews. Maybe I'll ask them about the Iraq war! That should result in some pretty funny answers. I've got interviews set up for this Friday and next.
I also had lunch with the people who set up my weekend teaching thing from about a month ago, when I got paid a few hundred bucks to teach a 16-hour-long class to some 9th-grade (+/- 2 grades) students. I told them that the experience was interesting, but if I'm going to sacrifice another weekend of my life away from my family, the pay is going to have to go up dramatically. I was surprised at how vehemently the other faculty who were there agreed with me (but they also had more difficult experiences than I did, mostly due to weird behavior problems from their students).
One guy said he sat down to lunch with his students and started talking to one kid. After he had asked two questions, the kid said, "I don't have to talk to you, do I?" Another guy said all of his kids were sitting around the lunch table playing cards, and he couldn't get them to leave to go back to class! It took him 10-15 minutes to get them going. Some kids were dropped off there for the weekend kind of against their will, and boy did they act out. None of mine, though, so I guess I should count my blessings.
Posted by Observer at May 13, 2004 08:16 AMComments on entries can only be made in pop-up windows while those entries are still on the main index page. Sorry for the inconvenience this causes, but this blocks about 99.99% of the spam the blog receives.
About paying more money to the cable company ... all I can say is that parenthood drives people to strange, perverted things.
(I had to live with a few weeks of wailing and gnashing of teeth when our bootleg cable tap, left thoughtfully there by one of the people who rented our house while we were living in Pullman, was cut off when they replaced a utility pole next to the house. But given that all that's on cable is ads, brain rot, and god channelz, I'm not sure I'd allow it my house even if *they* paid *me* for the opportunity to infect my kids with their drivel.)
Posted by: Feff on May 13, 2004 03:11 PMIt's not true that all that is on cable is ads, brain rot, and god channelz.
Posted by: Humbaba on May 13, 2004 03:46 PMGranted that the choice of wording is a bit terse, but do you think that there is all that much that is redeeming about cable?
Don't get me wrong, I watch some TV... Sports, for which cable is a necessity these days. Some stuff on the cooking channel which is, all the same, very commercial. Can't say that I am impressed with anything that is there though.
CNN and CNN Headline News are a waste of time as they have become nothing more than shock-TV and quite often another White House mouthpiece. Even the History Channel and other such "informative" channels have been known to run "theme" weeks accompanied with ads for the travel and tourism indutries.
Since this is just good marketting I can't say that I am surprised that it is true. Just doesn't seem like a good use of my entertainment dollar (fortunately my wife is entertained by it so I get my occassional sports event out of her dollar).
Posted by: Seattle Astronomer on May 13, 2004 06:00 PMHaving TiVo, I have it record shows and movies that I enjoy, and I watch them when or if I have time, plus I skip the obnoxious advertisements. There's no comparison.
I'd rate having TiVo, a comfortable mattress, and a fat pipe (aka high speed internet connection) as more important than owning an automobile.
Posted by: Humbaba on May 13, 2004 06:18 PMLOL that's because you ride your bike to work hummer!
Posted by: Felicity on May 13, 2004 08:42 PMYeah, easy to say a car is unimportant when you live in a bike-friendly city with really good mass transit. We live in a place where mass transit is looked upon as creeping communism, and nobody in their right mind would rely on it unless they were flat broke (because it is unreliable and very sparse).
It's funny, because both sets of my (Bush voter) parents went on trips last week (one to NYC, one to DC). Their common theme was, "Wow! This mass transit system is absolutely wonderful! So convenient." I neglected to point out the irony since I swore off political conversations with family after the 2000 election.
Posted by: Observer on May 13, 2004 08:52 PMAnd for my part, the only thing on cable TV that is at all worth seeing is the Weather Channel, and that's not worth the rest of the junk.
As far as movies go, I have ... peculiar tastes, so I prefer to build a colleciton of dvd's that I like. It is (and always will be) a small collection, and the building is On Hold right now.
Posted by: Feff on May 13, 2004 11:52 PMWean yourselves from the glass teat!!!! You will have so much more time for stuff that matters. :-D
Posted by: Perkusi on May 14, 2004 02:35 PMHa! You are talking to two people who together watch a grand total of 3 hours of TV per week. My big selling point on TiVo is that when I feel like watching TV, there will definitely be something I want to watch. This is serving as sufficient incentive for me to get on the exercise bike for the first time in months (I just finished a 30 minute ride while watching a Seinfeld rerun).
Daniel also enjoys watching me ride while he toddles all over the living room in his little walker car. It beats spending that half hour on the computer getting more depressed about world events!
Posted by: Observer on May 14, 2004 03:20 PMAmen to that, brotha! If you can afford it, do it!
Posted by: Perkusi on May 14, 2004 04:29 PMSeattle is hardly bike-friendly. Narrow hilly streets does not make for bike friendlyness.
I'm specifically paying a lot more for a house near work to reduce my commuting time and costs. I could get twice the house for half the price if I went 10-15 miles north.
Posted by: Humbaba on May 17, 2004 05:37 PMIt's all relative. Try living in the South with a bike, and you'll come to appreciate Seattle's attitude toward bikes (not to mention pedestrians).
Posted by: Observer on May 17, 2004 06:18 PM