Technology, a Love/Hate Relationship
The TiVo broke the other day.
Anyone who knows me knows how much I love TiVo. It’s one of the greatest inventions of the last 20 years, and that’s saying a LOT. I’ve gotten so many of my friends hooked on the TiVolution that I should be a goddamn salesman for the company.
And yet, even I hadn’t realized just how much I depended on that little box until it wasn’t working. What, you mean I have to find out when shows are on, and make time to watch them on the network’s schedule? And sit through the commercials? Like a sucker? Are you kidding me? People still DO that?
It makes me shudder, thinking of how constricting that world was. I only watch an hour or two of TV a day, and I like to do it when I’M ready to, not when the Man says I should.
Not to mention that the TiVo is networked, so I can use it to access pictures and music from my computer, and to transfer shows to my iPod. How am I supposed to stock my iPod with video content? BUY it? Please.
Luckily, we have a spare in the bedroom. It’s a measly 40 hour box (as opposed to the 140 hour box that broke), but it at least keeps the shackles off.
Of course, you need a damned map to figure out the 10,000 wires behind the my TV that keep the Playstation, VCR, TiVo, network router, cable modem, DVD player, and surround-sound system all working in harmony. Took me a while to switch out the boxes, but it’s all running again.
TiVo was even kind of nice about it, offering to replace the faulty box for maybe a third of the cost of a new one. I’m still pissed that it broke after only 2 years, but they could have been dicks about it since the warranty is only for 1 year.
Remember when electronic equipment lasted forever? My boom box from like 1984 still works fine.
Yesterday was no better. Our printer (bought the same day as the TiVo) refused to load paper unless you carefully hand-feed it each page, so my father-in-law bought us a fancy network printer for Christmas. It’s got a scanner and a fax machine and a copier and prints 33 pages a minute, which is key when you write 650 page books for a living.
Of course, it took me TWO DAYS of installing, uninstalling, scanning HP help topic sites, and screaming at the computer before I got the damn thing to work…
Argh. I’m gonna go edit with a pen for the rest of the day. I got through 75 pages yesterday. I could never have managed that much onscreen, when I would have tinkered incessantly and stopped 50 times to check my e-mail.
In all fairness, though, I will still have to key in the tons of red ink on every page, so it’s probably not really a time saver at all, apart from keeping me away from the seductive vice of that interweb-net-tube thing.
VCR? What’s that?
Those were almost my daughter’s initials, until I came to my senses. I wonder if she would have been teased, considering her generation will most likely never know what a VCR is.
What were you going to name her? Veronica? Victoria? Vivaldi?
Vivaldi? Isn’t that a boy name? It would have been Victoria, but she didn’t look like one, so I changed my mind.
Vercingetorix is also a boys name. Nobody names their kids Vercingetorix anymore.
Wait. You named the baby AFTER it was born? Isn’t that. . .prohibited in the Bible somewhere?
It’s a good thing noone names their kid Vercingetorix anymore. He’d get his ass kicked every single day.
When would you name the baby otherwise?
I’ve never actually read the Bible, so I have no idea.
OH dude you need to talk to me offline about this TiVo situation. Mine broke too, but for $150 they will send me a new box and let me keep my lifetime subscription.
But for now, the dead TiVo sits like Myke… in the closet.