Monday, September 21, 2009

I have met the other woman...her name is Tivo

My husband has had two girlfriends during our marriage.

One was the new vacuum cleaner we bought to replace my 12-year-old Hoover. The day she came home with us, he vacuumed the living room 3 or 4 times. Each time, he would take her out the side door to clean out her dirt trap and filters. Each time he would come in and exclaim "Look at all this dirt!" This repeated almost daily for a week or so, then subsided. I still tease him about leaving me for the vacuum, but I don't believe to to be true. Anymore.

There is a new woman in his life. She's been here for a while, and I fear she's here to stay. We've had Tivo for a while, but she was relegated to the basement with our TV. I don't like the basement, so we didn't watch much down there. We'd watch movies on the computer monitor in the living room. One day, I got the bright idea to get a wireless transmitter for the Tivo. Now? EVERYTHING is available upstairs. I've written about the ramifications on more than one occasion. Mike records a LOT of things to watch on his Zune.

Not a day goes by that Mike doesn't wander down with his lists of episodes to see what's recorded today, clear off old stuff, look through to see what's coming up. You see, Season Pass isn't foolproof. If only I could get him to be this efficient and thorough about washing the dishes...or hell, even vacuuming. I'd be surprised if he doesn't spend an hour a day managing the thing.

I got him LiquidTV for our anniversary. This was supposed to make our computer into a Tivo AND allow him to control the downstairs Tivo box. Well, not so much. He hates it for various reasons. Yesterday, he physically brought the box up to plug it into the tuner card in a LAST ditch effort to make LiquidTV recognize the Tivo box. It didn't work. Not only didn't it work, he killed his beloved Tivo. Dead. As a doorknob. The thing is a second-generation box, so it's OLD. Well, it was old. Now, as I've mentioned, it's dead.

He WAS smart enough to write down everything he has on Season Pass before it died. No kidding? Fifty entries. Fifty. Granted, some aren't showing right now. ONE is mine (Cake Boss). But still. I mocked him. He declared it finally and irretrievably dead last night around 8 pm. He lasted less than 24-hours before he left the house for a 40-mile round trip to the nearest known replacement down in Southcenter. I told him I could order it from Amazon and have it here on Wednesday. He whined that he wouldn't be able to record NCIS tomorrow. When I pointed out he COULD record it from the computer? He whined.

Update:My husband informs me that TWO of the Season Passes are mine. In addition to Cake Boss, he's recording Charmed. Charmed is entirely the dogs' fault, but that's another blog post.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well I guess that means that my Fluffy Bear and I are into three ways because we BOTH love our TIVO. Or whatever the hell you call the satellite equivalent of it.

We NEVER EVER watch live TV. Even if we notice something about to start, we take a break and make tea, leave it for fifteen minutes and then watch it recorded.

Why?

Adverts! Adverts - everywhere. Adverts - every five fucking minutes.

And whoever did the research that made media buyers realize that watchers retain more if they repeat their ads at least three times in one program needs to be hung, drawn and quartered.

We also have access to downloaded old programs because there are FAR too many channels here and it's impossible to know what you should be watching.

Sometimes I really miss advertless BBC and my Radio Times magazine, which laid out all the major stuff for me.

Shotime and HBO are amazing, of course.

I do sometimes miss the fact that we dont watch the same thing on the same night anymore, like in the days of Twin Peaks. There are too many channels and too many ads for us to have community through television anymore.

Still, a Tivo or DVR is a beautiful thing, and if ours died I would be utterly devastated.

I'm with Mike.

Philip H. said...

Yeah, well, to get into a threeway with TiVo I'd have to get cable first. There's enough trouble with the switch to digital broadcasting that I might eventually do that anyway, but until then, I shall remain free of the TiVo temptation.

As to Mike's unhealthy alliance with the vacuum, I did the same thing when we got our Dyson Ball. Even though I think we're sucking dirt from the basement through the carpet into the living room, still can't get enough of her . . . .

Steve Rosenbach said...

Great post, Deb!

With regard to your husband's fascination with the new vacuum cleaner, wow, that sounds just like me! He's my kinda guy!