My new toy

I got myself a TiVo this past weekend.

I had been tempted to get one for awhile now, but kept pushing it off for various reasons, but last weekend was the straw that broke the camel's back. Last Sunday I went to Phil's for the WWE PPV but that night was also two hours of 24 and Desperate Housewives and Boston Legal, all at the same time. So I wound up setting a tape for 24 up in my room and for the other shows down in the living room.

But then the next day my mom got all pissed with me for using up the TV in the living room so she and her husband couldn't watch anything. She was even less pleased when I announced to her my plans to do the same that night as I planned on watching Raw in my room while taping 24 downstairs.

Problem is, the 24 and Raw thing is gonna be a season long issue, and so in order to avoid more fights with my mom I ordered a TiVo the very next day.

The TiVo wound up arriving sooner than I expected (Friday). So I installed it on Saturday, which was an adventure in itself considering my TV is ancient (like 20 years old) and has a billion things hooked up to it (cable box, vcr, modulator with 4 video game systems in it, and now the Tivo). But I somehow managed to figure out how to get it to work.

Or so I thought...

Turns out, I DID hook it up in a way that works, but not in a way where I could watch one channel while recording another (which is the whole damn point of me buying this sucker).

So I spent a good 45 minutes on the phone with TiVo tech support and after many different attempts we found something that should work, but problem is I needed an extra A/V cable (that red/white/yellow wire) and it was already late, so I was gonna need to wait til Sunday to go to Radio Shack to get it.

So Sunday comes, I get the A/V cable and I try it it again but it only partially works. Cuz basically to make a long story short, if I wanna watch something else while recording another channel I need to do it through the VCR. But while the VCR was picking up the audio fine from every channel, it wasn't getting the video too well from most channels.

So once again, I needed to call tech support. I was basically told that what I did was correct but considering I have so much crap hooked into the TV that the cable signal was getting weak and I just needed to buy a "cable signal amplifier" which I was told was a small cheap thing (lady said they are about $3) I could pick up at Radio Shack. But this was Sunday night, so I was gonna need to wait for Monday to do this (yeah, this is sounding pretty annoying so far isn't it? Trust me, it was).

I wound up swinging by Radio Shack once again on Monday and asked for the cable signal amplifier, but the dude just looked at me like I had 2 heads. We both went around looking for stuff and he gave me an "inline amplifier" which looked like it should be the right thing (even though it was $12). So I took it home and connected it...

... and nada.

So at this point I was kind of annoyed. I've since looked up on the internet exactly what a cable signal amplifier is, so hopefully I will be able to find it soon.

Luckily, one of the channels that works on the VCR is channel 5, so I was able to watch 24 while recording Raw with the TiVo so that was cool.

Let me not make it sound like TiVo is evil though. It's actually quite cool, I'm only having problems b/c my TV is too damn old and lacks the newer cable adapters TVs have nowadays that would have made this process much easier. But I'm having fun with the features on TiVo. I can fastforward and rewind live TV (whee!) and play video games while I'm recording stuff and watch it later, which is pretty cool. And once I figure out this amplifier thing it'll be totally awesome.

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As for the rest of the weekend, went to the movies twice. On Friday we went to go see Elektra at New Roc. The movie was "ehh," it wasn't terrible but not great either. The main gripe we had was that this was a movie about an assassin yet she did not do much assassinating. One thing about the movie though, me and Henry were really drooling for some popcorn throughout it.

Then on Monday, I went with Ariana and my mom and her husband to see Meet the Fockers. I wasn't expecting much from the movie at all (since I didn't think the original was anything great) but it was actually pretty freakin funny. So I was glad we wound up going.

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Oh and I realize I haven't mentioned anything about what's going on in baseball lately.

So of course we all know by now that Randy Johnson has signed with the Yankees making their rotation- Johnson, Mussina, Pavano, Wright and Brown. Not too shabby if you ask me (and don't think they're done yet, I'm sure they will get another pitcher mid-season). And they also got Tino Martinez back to play first base, which is great as he was a main part of the "heart" of the team during their championship runs. So things are looking good for the Bronx Bombers.

And things are looking up over in Queens too, as the Mets wound up winning the Beltran sweepstakes. They also signed Pedro Martinez a few weeks back (thank god, the Yanks didn't really try for him). So they now have themselves a great centerfielder and a pretty good looking pitching staff as well (if they can all keep healthy). So I'm happy for them, the NL East should be a more interesting picture this year (unless the Braves just dominate it again, but here's hoping not). It will at least make the subway series way more interesting than it has been since 2000.

The Marlins are surviving the best they can. They've held on to most of their players (except of course Benitez and Pavano) but acquired Al Leiter from the Mets and are right in the hunt for Carlos Delgado. If they could acquire him or another good bat they should have a chance to stay in the race.

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And finally, I don't believe I mentioned it on the blog yet but Henry wound up picking up tix for me, Ariana, Joe, Marisa and of course Maryellen to go see the broadway show based on Monty Python and the Holy Grail- Spamalot. The play stars David Hyde Pierce, Hank Azaria, and Tim Curry (so you know this is gonna rock).

And to make things even better, we are riding into the theater on "horses." (If we can find coconuts in NY at the end of February that is). Should be tons of fun. I'm really looking forward to it.