Tivo? It’ll Never Take Off

I am about to confess something horribly silly: I first heard about Tivo in Indiana at my father-in-law’s.  He had a shirt that said Tivo on it.  I hadn’t heard of it, but he had been to their demo somewhere near IUPUI’s campus was (where he worked at the time), so he explained it.  I laughed and said (boldly and stupidly) I can do that with my VCR.  Oh, the queens of the stone age will rule with an iron fist – for about 2/3rds a second.

Jessica is now on the phone with her mom explaining to her how her mom’s DVR works.  We have one and we love it and use it, its not Tivo brand, but its the exact concept my father-in-law explained to me.  The one I mocked.  I’m such a goober sometimes I scare myself.  I’m hopeful that I wouldn’t have been so brash as to say that movies with sound were just a fad [Joseph Schenck did].

There are Times I Wish I Lived in Indiana…

Just so I could participate in local culture there.  Local culture romance that is.  Sweet googly-moogly, why don’t they have a restaurant in Colorado?  Whitecastle is having a reservation only Valentines Dinner (details here).  Of course you’ll still have to put up with the jerks honking at the drive-through, but its still an interesting concept.

You can read why I’m so fascinated by Whitecastle here, here, here and here.

Frozen Yogurt

I took Abby out to get frozen yogurt tonight.  Only the shop was closed.  They’re on sabbatical for approximately 10/12ths of the year.  Abby was dissappointed and said, “The lights are out and the people are bummered.”  But I think she was the ‘bummered’ girl.  Such is life.  I love her little phrases that try to hard to speak at an adult level.  Being her dad is awesome – if your kid is half as cool as mine you’re a blessed parent 🙂

Paying Out of Pocket

Have you noticed that we ‘pay out of pocket’ for some things?  I’d like to challenge the readers of this blog to consider paying out of other clothing items’ parts.  For example paying out of sleeve, paying out of hat or maybe paying out of the delicates.  There is so much opportunity here for creativity – because frankly in our modern mostly cashless first world society we’re all paying out of the plastic wether its debited out of our bank account or added to the already limitless [wink, wink – nudge, nudge] amount of debt that we can get into with store specific credit lines, airline specific credit cards or worse: gas cards.

I for one am going to pay out of pant leg patch next time just to see how that feels.

Abby on Snow

“It’s just going to keep snowing forever, mom.”

We’re having a new snow storm here, I think this is the 4th storm in 5 weeks.  I love the snow so this is great, but Abby’s starting to feel like the snow could take a break and let Spring and Summer have a go at things 🙂

Why Dyson’s Suck

My sister brought over her vacuum this evening.  Due to a mixup in communication.  She kindly left it for us to try out.  Here are ten reasons why no one should buy a Dyson:

  1. You like a vacuum that has no suction power
  2. You like to wrestle with suction tubes
  3. You like to leave junk in and on your carpet
  4. You like to wrestle with vacuum bags and get dust all over the place due to that wrestling
  5. You like to replace vacuum bags
  6. You hate to clean your stairs and making it painful will keep that hate alive
  7. You like vacuums that are designed poorly
  8. Easy to clean vacuums that clean easily sound too good to be true
  9. You like vacuums that don’t have a powerful suction power
  10. You’re me and you don’t have enough money right now

I loved this vacuum.  I’m going to save up and get one.

Happy Birthday, Becky!

My sister turned 24 today [the 24th]. That puts her at close to the pinacle of her 20’s as Jessica puts it. Becky got a dress from us any my parents (it was not a cheap dress as the splitting of the gift may imply) and it looked really good. It was weird for me to see my sister wearing something cute and attractive because I’m not sure how to deal with the fact that she’s my sister and a woman. Apologies Becky if that comes across as weird 🙂

I do know that she’s married to a great guy who loves her very much and so I’m thrilled that she’s had a good birthday with a good husband. I’m also glad she invited us over for dinner on her birthday because the food was great and the dessert was even more greaterer ;). I’m not going to try to spell the name of it because I’ll do it wrong and I should be going to bed anyway.

Happy Birthday ‘My’!

WordPress 2.1 Update

I have updated this installation to the very latest WordPress. Its faster for sure. You probably will not, and shouldn’t, see any difference to the site other than it behaves faster. Let me know if you find anything. If you are running WordPress on your own site, you can get the update here: wordpress.org.

My number one reason to upgrade so far?  Re-scanning comments for spam.  If you come back from a trip and find yourself having 200 comments to regulate, you can re-scan them with Akismet in case others have contributed to the akismet comment spam database.

Mandolin

I don’t play the mandolin.  However, I’m going to learn (like the unicycle I have yet to finish learning how to ride – but its hard to practice in the snow we’ve been having).  I got an inexpensive mandolin online.  But its bridge was more warped than Pauly Shore.  That is to say that its very, very much like a human being, only not quite right.  Wait, mandolin bridges are not like humans, but they are like shaped pieces of wood.  Shaped pieces of wood that should probably not be twisted like licorice.  Twisted pieces of rosewood that shouldn’t look like this:

Bent Rosewood bridge

I ordered a new bridge from some online music store (which hasn’t arrived yet).  Total money spent?  $37.00.  Yeah for cheap learning instruments.  Once I get familiar with it, I’ll have to save up and get a top dollar mandolin.  One like one of these.