doodledee

A week or so before the baby was born I went down to Best Buy and picked up a Tivo. I'd been thinking about doing it for maybe a year, but never really had the guts a good enough reason to pull the trigger. With a kid on the way, however, the window of opportunity threw itself open and I grabbed it by the horns. Yee-haw!

The reasons for having a Tivo when you're a new parent are pretty obvious. It timeshifts live stuff, so when the baby starts crying or whatever, you can just hit 'pause' and take care of problem and not miss anything. It also records super easily and can hold a bunch of stuff, so when you wake up in the middle of the night, you can just fire up one of the 50 odd episodes of Good Eats you have archived and learn [again] how to make a giant pot of baked beans even though it's a waste of time because Libby won't let you make them because she says you can't just have beans for dinner and that's so wrong but I guess maybe kinda right.

The reasons for not having a Tivo are also pretty obvious. It's expensive. It can only record one channel at a time. It's expensive. If you're recording one channel, you can't watch a different channel. It's expensive. Blah blah blah.

Long story short, I had the Tivo in my house for about three hours before I brought it back. Primary reason: it's expensive. Secondary reason: My cable company has [basically] the same thing for way, way cheaper. Sign me up.

So now I have the cable company version. It's ok, but it's not as cool as Tivo probably would have been. At least I have digital cable now, which means I get like 100 more channels including highbrow stuff like BBC World and Discovery Times and lowbrow stuff like VH1 Classic, and CSPAN 3. I think I can even get premier league soccer games now. And lets not forget the on screen program guide and impossibly long channel change times! Wee!

In summary, I will also be using the kid as the primary justification for: upgrading my computer, drinking more margaritas, and - if everything goes according to plan - for building a pair of rocket skates.