Broken

My TiVo remote is broken. Ryan disagrees. He thinks it needs new batteries and I think he's wrong. The remote worked fine for well over a year on one set of batteries that we changed out last month when the remote started acting up. Here it is one month later and the remote only works at random which kind of sucks when you try fast-forwarding through commercials and it just keeps fast forwarding long after you hit the play button. Of course I don't just press the play button once or twice I jab it over and over with my thumb each time with a little more force. After many attempts the next logical step is to hold the remote at a different angle, then stand up and move closer to the TiVo box.

Nothing worked.

I just wanted to veg and watch a little TV before I went to bed. I could watch TV live but I don't want to watch just any show that is playing, besides what is playing on a Saturday night that is any good? My real beef is that I would have to endure commercials. Lame-o.

Hm, I'm feeling a tad grumpy so I think I will take this time to vent about some stuff that in the grand scheme of things are really not that important.

A person who buys a TiVo, or any brand of DVR, usually does so because they want to skip commercials. They don't care about the products being pushed. Of course ad agencies and the companies selling their products get concerned that they are spending big bucks to promote their product during a TV show that we would otherwise die without and we the viewer/consumer are just going to see the commercial in a blur as we fast forward past it.

What is their solution? To put advertisements in the TV show folders (kind of like on your computer - if you watch "Lost" and have more than one episode recorded it will have a folder labeled "Lost" and when you go into the folder each episode is labeled and at the end of the list of the episodes will be a star and an invitation to view a cool new product).

TiVo is not a free service. We pay for it. We pay to not watch commercials. Then TiVo, while charging us for its service to have this great technology where we can skip commercials, allows advertisers to sneak their propaganda in anyway. Sure, we don't have to open the advertisement but it is still annoying - like pop up ads on the Internet.

So, if you happen to watch a commercial that is advertising another show you will often see a green thumbs up picture in the corner of the screen that says, "Push (thumbs up picture) to record". Nothing will make that thumbs up picture go away, not even pushing the thumbs down button.

Then, the last in my little list of rants, is the ever irksome pop ups that spring to life at the bottom, or top or side of your screen while you are watching a show. We all encounter the pop ups. I hate the pop ups. They are distracting and if they are big enough they can obscure subtitles at the bottom of the screen.

See, none of the annoyances are life shattering.

Ryan needs to fix the smoke detector in the downstairs bedroom. It keeps chirping. It may need new batteries but I don't know where the batteries are. Besides, I'm afraid if I try to put in new batteries I will set the alarm off and wake up Gavin. I'll just have to live with the incessant chirping until I go to bed and hopefully the sound of the fan will drown out the sound.

Know what else is annoying? Animal fur. Seriously. Do they have to shed so much fur all the time?

We have two cats, Gwen and Bob. Gwen is a beautiful white cat; a beautiful fat white cat with long fur. Bob, Gwen's sister, is a tortoise shell calico with even longer fur than Gwen. Then we have Kea, the yellow lab. She deposits lots and lots of short yellow fur and the fur from her soft white fuzzy undercoat.

I sweep the floors every couple of days and collect enough fur to knit a small sweater. OK, I've never knit a sweater, small or otherwise, but it looks like it would be a sufficient amount. Heaven forbid I neglect to sweep midweek for if that happens we have tumbleweeds of fur floating about the house. It is too much.

One day our pets will die; hopefully not all on one day - that would be very, very sad. We figure Kea will go when Gavin is between 7 and 10 years old and the cats will be a few years behind the dog although Gwen is such a lard bucket that she could go when ever. Anyway, after the pets die and teach Gavin about life and death, he and his siblings will eventually want more pets. They can have more pets but they can not have a long haired cat! They can not have a dog that sheds!

I'm very tempted to shave the cats. Very. Our local PetCo doesn't do cat grooming so I need to find someone who does and take the cats in for a good trimming. I don't want to make them bald. OK, I want to make them bald, save their head and tail, but I won't go all the way to skin. We won't bic the cats.

I just heard a car door; Ryan must be home. He is not going to like the state of the TiVo remote since he is going to want to watch TV after a grueling game of soccer.

Turns out he is also annoyed by the smoke detector. Also a little annoyed at me since I didn't do anything to the smoke detector and that I didn't try new batteries in the remote.

Eh.