Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Life BDVR - Before DVR

Tonight Addi once again taped a random kid show and threw off a recording we had set on our DVR.  With work and kids and life, we rarely watch shows when they are actually on, and instead catch up on weekends.  DVR is far and away our favorite appliance.

Once I got the recording situation back on track, I thought back to when we got our first TIVO. Jay was working on 2nd shift and was totally out of the loop on anything TV related.  I would try to record shows for him when I remembered on our VCR, but let's be honest - I can barely work a Crock Pot - so getting a VCR to tape when I actually wanted it to was kind of impossible. So for a Christmas present Jay got me TIVO and worked to get it all set up one day while I was at work.  He was excited to have a "guy" day, using power tools and hooking up electronics, and I was thrilled that my tough hubby could do that sort of thing.

Jay called me to tell me that in order to use the TIVO, we had to pay DirecTV an extra $5 a month, then found out that to record two shows at one time we would have to pay another $5.  OK, no big deal - $10 is cheap, even monthly.  Then he had to run to Best Buy to get a new cord he hadn't planned on - and another $40 was spent. 

An hour later he called me from Sam's club.  I asked why he was there and he said, "Oh, I just got a flat tire so I'm here getting it replaced. It's $150 to get one like my others."  Ok, fine. Another hour went by, and I got another call.  While they were changing the tire, his truck battery died and had to be replaced.  Just like that - another $75.

If you are keeping tabs, we are now at $475 if you include the initial cost of the TIVO itself.

That evening I got home and Jay asked me to help him finish up the install.  He had to drill a larger hole in the floor to fit the second cord through, so I stood in the basement with him while he made that adjustment.  He kept drilling and wasn't making any headway so he told me to run upstairs and look down through the hole and see if I could spot the problem.  When I got upstairs, it was easy to see where the issue was.

His drill was caught on our burber carpet and as it spun, it was unraveling our living room carpet.  I started screaming, he stopped drilling, and we were left with a nice 8"x3" row of bare carpet. Very pretty.

At the end of that day, our TIVO was up and running, we enjoyed a cold beverage, and we had moved the TV stand over the new hole in the carpet.  We thought about replacing the carpet but we figured $475 was more than enough to spend in one day.  I congratulated Jay on his day filled with masculine things - drilling, running wire, and drinking beer - and when I went to bed, Jay was happily hitting the "thumbs up" button on the remote, which according to the instructions let Tivo know what shows he liked. 

The next day I found out that although I thought Jay was quite the masculine man, Tivo thought he was gay.  We had 35 hours of Lifetime television ready for us to watch, all from one night of him "liking" things.  We turned off that feature on the TIVO, he made us dinner, and we lived happily ever after.




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