Preface: Do to the confusion that has come upon some of you readers (namely me) concerning the names of my children and me not posting names but referring to them by general terms I hereby give notice that I will be naming my children with pseudonyms and not their actual names. T is the oldest followed by D, K comes next and L is last. So this should clear up how many children I have (or the ones I love enough to blog about)
FIRE!!!
We sent D to vacation for a week with my wife's cousin way down south at the boarder of Mexico (well close anyway, Sierra Vista). All was well until D went camping, or maybe it was hiking, and started what is now known as the Monument Fire (it could have been her, I mean she really likes sparklers). Her trip was cut short (by one day) because the fire had moved on close enough the you could see it and the firefighters working to put out the flames. The smoke was so bad the turning on the a/c would bring it into the house.
Replaytv the DVR of the future from the past...
Back before anyone knew what a TiVo was, there was something called replaytv. It had so many advanced features its a wonder how TiVo ran them out of business. Some of the included features were: networkable -- if you have more than one you can watch something from the other. In the recorded shows you can setup your own sections for the shows to display in ie. I have my own section with the shows I watch and my wife has hers we never have look through another's shows to find what we want. Set up your dvr to record online from myreplaytv.com (I never use this feature but its cool no one else had that).
As time went on replaytv sold its technology to directv. Directv doesn't include any of the neat features except the remote scheduling and multi-room setup (with a few tweaks). It was about this time replaytv was out of business and the handling of our set top boxes was given to a third party. They are no longer going to service our boxes, they will turn into basic VCRs with no TV guide built in manual recording only.
Oh no now what do we do?!
Having already decided against DVRs put out by cable and satellite providers (because ours is so much cooler) I searched them out anyway. Uhg?! When did TV get to be so expensive? We don't have high definition TVs or plan on getting them anytime soon.
I began searching the web for hacking the replaytv found quite the following with that. Turns out this problem was foreseen by a few and and been prepared for years ago. Had I only known I wouldn't have done this sooner. Just download a small program and pay an annual fee of $20 to a separate group for the tv listings. The program acts as a server that intercepts the replaytv as it is reaching out to get the new TV guide information, then gives it the info instead. Nice! Problem solved and a whole slew of new features were unlocked for me I can now download the recorded shows to my computer and burn them to DVD.
TOYS...
Something cute and funny to end it (if you are still reading then this is for you, if not, you will never know why I put TOYS in the heading) .
While the wife and T were off getting D (from the fire), I took the remaining children, K & L, to McDonald's. While there, L saw a kid with a Buzz Lightyear and Woody doll his immediate response while point was, "Mine!" I told him that those weren't his, he got a little sad and said, "why?"
"Because yours are at home you didn't bring them, those are his."
Amazingly after the second time though he stopped asking and pointing.
