Your interface is a serious stinker. Great idea moving off of iTunes. Gives you a chance to showcase that stinker of an interface *and* force me to listen to the same commercial over and over and over again. Are your advertisers totally hooking you up for that? Because after hearing the same jingles over and over again, I can promise I won’t buy anything being advertised.
That is all. Xoxo, Erik
Sphere: Related ContentI only watch two with any regularity: Project Runway and America’s Next Top Model. The PR finale was last night and I didn’t have a chance to watch… this means I not only have to carefully keep my ears closed at the office, and am more or less prevented from reading blogs all day long, since most folks brainlessly put the winners and losers names in blog post titles, or as the first line of the post without a spoiler alert.
I just managed to blur past a post about the PR winner and haven’t spoiled it for myself yet.
Sphere: Related ContentSphere: Related ContentMartha: So, are you and Captain Jack… [wink wink]
Ianto: We… “dabble.”
Martha: So… what’s his “dabbling” like?
Ianto: Innovative
Martha: Really?
Ianto: Bordering on the avant-garde.
Martha: Wow!
Ianto: [wistful smile] Oh yeah.
Warning: This is a really gay fanboy post that ogles Dylan McDermott mercilessly like a delectable cut of Kobe Beef. He is the hottest man alive, and if you disagree with me, then you are wrong. And possibly a little reeree. Move along, nothing to see here.
The TiVo has an anti-screen burn feature: If you let it sit in any menu area for too long it will switch you over to live tv — whatever happens to be on that tuner. Sometimes I get sucked into crap I would never watch. Like Murder She Wrote. And today, its Yet Another Movie in which the dad moves his dysfunctional family out to the countryside, into a spooky creepy farmhouse being haunted by the previous and late occpuants that only the children can see. I really dislike movies in this vein not only for rehashed storylines, but because they tend to build and release tension with 50dB blasts.
I like a good horror movie, but these bore me and give me a headache, so I don’t watch them anymore. And I think hollywood knows this, and have discovered an effective counter: DILFs (Dads I’d Like To beFriend).
First it was Ryan Reynolds in The Amityville Horror. He’s a good deal younger than me and very much a one off hotness thing for me. The combination of superhero build, cuts all over his face, being angry all the time, and the Best Beard Ever allowed him to slip through my twinky filter.
Dylan McDermott , on the other hand… well, I’ve always been a giggling fanboy for him. First in Steel Magnolias, crawling through that crying chick’s window in a pair of shorts with the hottest legs ever, later in Home for the Holidays (this is going to sound stupid) drinking orange juice from a bottle in a way that made my toes curl, (… everything he has ever been in…) and now in this dumb The Messengers movie.
I can’t look away, because I might miss Dylan (aka my next ex-husband) doing something that will make me feel funny in my dangerzone. Like opening a letter, tying his shoelace, using a styptic pencil, or doing his taxes. Damn you Hollywood.
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I flipped on the TV to tell my TiVo to record an episode of Oprah. NOT, mind you, that I ever watch it (three thumbs down)… but a friend’s wife is going to be on the show, so I’ll ignore my lifetime ban just this once.
When I turned the TV on, Murder, She Wrote was playing. The combination of character actors like Stella Stevens and Donald Moffat combined with generally corny dialog, and jessica’s kitschy western wear sucked me in. I wanted to believe every word Jessica told me. I had to pull myself away to get to the shower.
Awesomely gay and just awesome. I love me some jake and dolly. And that’s totally not an euphemism.
On December 26th, Channel 4 in the UK will air a special called When Jake Met Dolly, in which the Scissor Sisters’ frontman interviews Parton as she arrives in London for her 2008 Backwoods Barbie Tour, and to launch the UK arm of her children’s charity project Imagination. Here are a couple clips from the half-hour program.
Gillette Venus is doing a silly marketing microsite called Manquarium. Pick from “a variety of bodies” (read hairless gym boys in various shades of beige), optionally upload a face pic, and answer a few questions about what “goddess qualities” are most appreciated by your merman. My current TV crush is Matt Parkman (Greg Grunberg) from Heroes
.
Microsite rating: C- (cute idea but shallow execution, particularly a lack of any kind of body and skin tone diversity that might make your guy interesting and representative enough for you to want to send this around to friends)
Greg Grunberg: A++
Earlier tonight on Torchwood Captain Jack Harkness got MAJOR man on man kiss action in the second to last episode.
And just now on Battlestar Galactica Razor it turns out that Admiral Cain is getting a lil cylon #6 love.
HOT HOT HOT.
Sphere: Related ContentCable guys are here, very nice. They dismantled the existing box, then tested my cable connection.
After that, he installed the multistream card (into the correct slot). He had to call dispatch and do some sort of signal and number dance. We saw an “Acquiring channels” yin-yang spinner for a bit, then everything went gray. We were waiting for an error message, but nothing happened.
Eventually, he hit the tivo button to go back and poke around. All the backgrounds on the tivo are now gray. He is now trying a second card. But didn’t ask for signal which seems more than a little wrong. then he switched back to the original card and rerequested a signal.
I am no longer hopeful. He is puzzled to an extent that concerns me.
WOOT
After more fiddling, the tivo repowered itself into the sunrise “Welcome! Powering up…” screen
This could be good right?
OMG it is good. After rebooting I was getting signal to all channels, including the premium and HD stuffs. This took about 45min start to finish. Not too bad. They even didn’t mind my cats helping* with the recabling, helping* them use their cable testing equipment, or helping* to write down 30 digit numbers and transmitting them to the
(* helping: Cody stalking the dangling cables, pressing the buttons, and batting the pen while writing. Pumpkin observing from on top of the TV by licking the gel out of the cable dude’s hair.)
I AM LUCKY. I WIN I WIN!
Still have to repeat guided setup, then hopefully my Tivo will make SPIRIT FINGERS ON JAZZ HANDS.
The guided setup asked me new questions about my premium channels, then went to make the network call. The “Preparing” initial step of this took MUCH longer than before, but the rest was pretty blazing. “Loading info” will probably take a good deal longer.
Um… ok in the midst of the “Loading data” spinner (only at about 20% complete), I got automatically thrown back into the creepy “This screen displayed on behalf of your cable provider”. My only options are refresh and exit. The cable installers are gone. What to do? I’m going to go with exit. Yikes. I hope this is the right choice.
That took me back to the Getting Program Info screen, and the loading is still in progress. Eventually this finished up, and everything seems to be in working order (although it only snagged the first 24 hours of programming, rather than the full monty. Is that a download thing, or a database optimization thing? Whatever. Hopefully back to normal++ tonight. Time to go to work. 
Okiedokie so far…
First things first: My Weakknees.com 1 terrabyte hard drive arrived almost a week ago, so I got that out and installed it in a jiffy. No problems there. I was multitasking on hold with Tivo to get my Lifetime Membership transferred. While juggling the Torx screwdriver and my iPhone with Tivo, I discovered that my credit card was missing. Last seen in the hands of my chinese food delivery dude who forgot to give it back to me last night. So I used the landline to call them to see if they would give it back to me. They claimed I lost it and had I checked my front pockets. Ya. Whatever. While continuing to hold for Tivo, I called the bank to get the card fraud checked, shut down, and reissued. No fraudulent charges at least.
Finally got through to Tivo and got the membership transferred, and finished up the hard drive install. Realized I forgot to order an HDMI cable online for cheapsies, so ran down to BestBuy against my longstanding boycott to grab one. Discovered that the cheapest HDMI cable they sold was $50 bucks, and went up to about $130 after that. No thanks, motherfuckers. Thanks for reconfirming how hard you suck. Will make due with RCA audio and component video for now, and one of the roomies will pick one up tomorrow at Central Computer for about $14.
Anyway, back at the ranch, I have an HD TV (Sony Wega tube) but have never HD’d anything since I had an old Sony Series 1 Tivo. Just plugging the new Tivo HD in was a remarkable experience. Sooo smooth and pretty. Yay.
I don’t have my multi-stream CableCARD thingum yet, which is essentially a PC card that plugs into the front of the box, replacing the cable box and giving me dual-tuner HD capability. That arrives thursday (along with an “installer,” who, by all blog accounts, will not be able to get it working, will blame my Tivo, and leave without fixing it. I will have to schedule a few more visits and spend 20+ hours on the phone with Comcast. Crossing my fingers I am a lucky one). Without the CableCARD there is only so much setup I can do.
The CableCARD will cost an additional $2/mo or so, but I’m losing the cable box rental of $7/mo, so I net ahead. Since we already have the orgiastic top cable package, the HD is already covered once the card arrives.
Heroes is recording on the old box as I do the setup and type this, so I didn’t install even the basic cable into the new box. Just trying to get as far as I can without with the interweb connection.
The lineup setup process is different than the old model. Rather than asking for my cable company name and giving me cryptic choices like “basic extended rebuild” it simply asked me if QVC was on #36 (yes) then it claimed to know all it needed to know. WIthout the CableCARD it assumes I have basic 80 channel cable, so I am unable to start setting up my season passes in advance of the cable “installer.”
The remote setup worked like a charm this time. Having a newer model TV this round made it easy. Power, volume, mute and even TV input source worked on the first code. Hurrah. I am currently without an audio receiver, so will have to wait for that setup for a bit.
I am amused and frustrated to see that Yahoo! Photos is prominently displayed as the first item under the “music photos & more” menu, since Yahoo! photos went away a few months ago. Boo. Y! Weather and Traffic were relatively easy to setup after very painstakingly entering my Yahoo! ID and password—not a fun task using the idiot 1-letter-at-a-time-using-the-remote method required by the tivo.
There’s also the nifty new Podcaster feature. Yay. It won’t seek the feed when you send to any old URL though. Boo. Typing in a phobos.apple.comblahblahblah URL is too much to bear. I found something called Galleon, which will supposedly grab all my iTunes podcasts and transfer them to the Tivo HD using TivoToGo… which doesn’t work with the Tivo HD or Series 3 yet. Boo. Rumored to be coming in November.
And I amused myself for 10 minutes playing “Wordsmith” (aka Scrabble) and SameGame (aka Bejeweled LE).
More setup notes after my CableCARDs arrive and I can start making it do real DVR things.
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