Friday night, I stopped off at Cox after work to pick up a HD-DVR box. This is their version of a TiVo -- at $4.99 a month, its considerably cheaper however. I've had DVD recorders for years; I was one of the early adopters to the technology, back in 2002. The one I've been using for the past year and a half has a hard drive in it, so you can record shows without a DVD. But you have to set the timer manually. What fun is that?
So I bring home this new box, hook it up, and...it doesn't work. I can get the High-Def channels, but nothing else. So like 10 of my 200+ channels come in. Great. I call their tech support line, and they're typically clueless. After trying one thing, they gave up and wanted to send out a tech. Whatever.
After we hung up, I toyed around with it for five minutes or so, and ultimately figured the problem out myself. Pretty bad when you're smarter, or at least, more tenacious than the tech support people...
Basically, there was a secondary menu only accessible when the box is OFF (this is not described anywhere in the manuals). You turn the box off, hit Menu twice, and you get a screen where you can change the output settings. I played around with those, and presto, it worked. You bet.
So is this thing all its cracked up to be? Yes. It records in HD, first off. Second, it will record all episodes of a show -- so say I tell it to record Conan every night because I'm rarely home to see it, and it will. Great, cos I never remember to do that manually. And it can record two shows at once.
Fresh off getting that guy set up to record both the Iowa-Iowa State basketball game AND the Northern Iowa football game, I was off to the bar.
***
On the way to the Dundee Dell, I get a call from my brother. He's out to dinner with his wife, and they had just turned the only TV in the entire place showing the Iowa-Iowa State game over to Nebraska Womens Volleyball. Pissed, he called, and our entire phone conversation went like this:
Matt: "Brother. They just changed the channel from the Iowa game to Womens Volleyball. Thought you'd want to know."
Me: "Nebraska volleyball? Wow."
Matt: "You bet."
Love those 20 second phone calls.
***
Over at the Dell, the beer was colder than the weather outside. Good times, down there at the Dell. That place was packed -- we had a barter system going with the table next to us for chairs. They borrowed a chair, and when someone new joined our group, we got the chair back. Then when they left, we gave the chair back. On and on this went.
Other than that, just your routine night-at-the-bar with the guys. I think at one point one of us called Cliff to find out why he wasn't there; reading his impressive document on Be A Design Group bragging/complaining about staying at work until 5 am Thursday night, I think I have an idea why...
Sometime while I was at the bar, my phone apparently rang. My brother's phone, again, only it was his wife on the message, followed by him. They were at a kegger, and there was many, many, many single ladies. Being married, he wanted me to do him a favor and come take them off his hands. I missed this call.
Barf.
***
Saturday, I watched all the great stuff my new DVR had recorded for me. Iowa-Iowa State, Northern Iowa, and Late Night with Conan. All sans commercials. Why I stuck with the manual DVR so long, I'll never know.
That night, I met my brother and his wife for dinner at Fuddruckers which is the best burger anywhere and I will not argue this. I got so much crap for missing that party, it wasn't even funny. Really, no amount of "you should have been there!" makes me feel any better about it. The hell of it was, they were there until 3 am, so I totally could have gone straight from the bar. I could have stayed and talked to ladies until 5 am, and given Voss a run for his money on the late night posts category. But alas.
***
Sunday was the big Creighton-Nebraska game. I'm still hoarse today, which should be interesting as we enter the recording studio tonight to record the podcast. <a href="http://www.polyfro.com/creiblog/">You can read all about my thoughts of Creighton's 70-44 blowout over at my Jays blog.</a>
You bet.
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