DirecTV...Morons?

Well today was Thursday and our only real plan was a play date with a friend of Grace's. We ended up canceling that because she was playing with some other friends and it would have been a huge struggle to get her away from all of those friends and over to her other friends house. So we'll have to do that another day.

Since we didn't have any other plans and nothing else came up we just hung out at the house today and played with her friend from across the street. "A" came over after lunch and everyone seemed to have a great day playing and whatnot today.

I was supposed to have a "Dad's Night Out" tonight, but as it turns out the only person that was going besides me couldn't go. So I just invited the neighbor across the street over for dinner at our house. We had some excellent burgers on the grill that I think I got from Oberweis Dairy. I would double check but our internet is out right now for some reason - probably weather related. We're getting some pretty good storms right now.

So anyway, these burgers are completely free of antibiotics, pesticides, etc. and the beef was vegetarian fed, etc. And they were very good! We'll have to get some more...as long as I can remember where we got them.

I never did get the lawn mowed today. I just don't feel well enough yet so I'll have to do it after the rains are over and the grass dries out again which should be in a couple of days - probably Sunday. So after dinner I ran to the library and checked out a book that they bought for me. I had asked for them to borrow it through inter-library loan and they said they couldn't get it and that she was going to put a request in to have it ordered but that was no guarantee that it would actually get ordered. Low-and-behold I got an email today that it was in. So that was exciting. It's called "Beginning ASP.net 2.0 in C# 2005" and it's a big book. I'm looking forward to reading it! Unfortunately the library closes at 9pm or I would have stayed there longer and relaxed as a break was welcome today. Our house seems to be the "community" home more and more lately.

So then I ran to Blockbuster and the post office and came home. Julie was surprised to see me back so soon, but I didn't feel like staying out too late as I need to get to bed and get more rest so I can feel better. So Julie turns on the TV and low-and-behold (there's that word again) the DirecTV-Tivo box doesn't work. So I call DirecTV and I'm on the phone with them for 30 minutes fixing the problem. Turns out that when we added the two new boxes yesterday, they deactivated this box. And I don't mean in such a way that they just turn it back on, allegedly it can never be used again. Which stinks because now we can't even sell it. They don't make the Tivo boxes for DirecTV any more. The only way to get Tivo now is with a Tivo box. So they tried to offer us $10 off per month for the next year. I said that's great but how are we going to record shows? So after a little finagling she was able to provide me with a new dual tuner DVR (not Tivo mind you) for free on Monday afternoon. So we'll be without Tivo for 4-5 days and I'll have to burn all the shows off of the Tivo to DVD (that I actually want to keep) and then we'll have to re-setup all the shows we want to record in the new one. The only good thing about this is that the new DVR has 200 hours of record time and our old one only had 70. So that will be nice, but it won't be Tivo which we love. I asked about a hi-definition DVR and she said that would cost me $300. Julie said no; But actually, that's a pretty good price. Especially considering it's not a lease, they would actually sell it to me which they don't really do any more. All their new equipment is by lease only on their website.

So it all turned out OK in the end, but we are without Tivo for a few days (which really stinks) and we won't have Tivo on the new one; it will be DirecTV's proprietary PVR software. I hope this doesn't turn out to be a horrible mistake.