Life without Tivo

My Tivo died this week. I think the hard drive went out. I now have to go back to watching TV without Tivo.

It's a weird feeling. Did I really used to schedule my time around when TV shows were on TV? If a show started at 8, did I make sure I was in front of the TV by 8? Did I have to depend on what the networks wanted me to watch at a specific time instead of what I had saved up over several days?

And recording with a VCR? Forget about it. I haven't even plugged in my VCR since I moved 2 years ago, and I'm not about to go back to the days of having to set a date and time and channel, only to realize I was off by an hour or was using the wrong channel.

It's a weird feeling. I may have watched more TV when I had Tivo, but at least it was TV I wanted to watch and when I wanted to watch it.

I missed The Office tonight. But that's ok, it's on On Demand so I can still see it. But what happens when Lost starts up next week? Do I go back to scheduling my time around a TV show?

I want to fix my Tivo, but I'm not sure what to do. Tivo will charge me $150 to swap it out for one that works. I can buy a used Tivo for $50, but then I lose my lifetime subscription and have to go to a monthly subscription. I can try to install my own hard drive, but that's probably $100 unless I find a great deal somewhere. Or I can try to figure out if I can fix my existing Tivo drive somehow. Or I could plop down the $800 for the brand new Tivo Series 3, but I bet I save $200 if I wait a few months for the first price drop...

I miss my "blip blip!" during the commercial breaks...

I'm now a Lost geek

I played the role of a Lost geek on Wednesday. I went to the Acura RDX tour. But I wasn't there to see the car, or to try to win the prizes. I didn't register for a chance at a VIP pass for free beer, food, and wine. I was there on a simple mission, to pick up an Apollo Bar.

A free candy bar? But it's more... the Apollo Bar is the fictional candy bar that is consumed in the TV show Lost. But even more than that, it's part of the alternate reality game called The Lost Experience.

The Lost Experience started out pretty cool. It started out with a bunch of information about The Hanso Foundation, the fictional organization in Lost. Clues were released a few times a week, and if you solved the clues, you learned more about the foundation and a little bit more about the show. I never solved any clues on my own, I always relied on the numerous blogs that provided tips on how to solve the clues, such as this one. However, I didn't get in to the second and third "episodes" of the Lost Experience, though for anyone who wants to see one of the major things it led up to, you can check out this video.

The concept of an alternate reality game is pretty interesting. It's fun to submerge yourself into this type of universe. I suspect that we'll see more of this type of marketing as time goes one and people get better about making it more accessible.

But the big question now is, do I eat the Apollo Bar, or do I save it and sell it on E-bay? I think they are going for around $5 right now...

It is dark chocolate though, which I prefer over milk chocolate, so I might just have to eat it soon.

Breeding for politics?

I thought this was a pretty interesting article in today's paper:

Republicans' fertile future.
Through the past three decades, conservatives have been procreating more than liberals

The summary: republicans have more babies than democrats do. The question: does that mean as time goes on, the dominating political party will be determined by breeding?

The article says 4 out of 5 children take on the political viewpoints of their parents. I think that nowadays, that number may be a little high, due to the rapid spread of information. So maybe things like the internet will help people make up their own minds more often.

It's pretty common knowledge that people have had (and still have) babies in different societies for motives such as prestige, money, social standings, etc. But I guess I just never thought of this particular point of view. Could this have anything to do with the conservative anti-birth control, pro-young marriage, etc., view points? Or is it really more environmental (it's not nearly as easy to raise a family in densely packed urban areas which are typically more democrat)?

I wonder if any studies have been done on this throughout U.S. history? Are the U.S. political changes throughout history largely due to certain populations having more children? That would be quite an interesting discovery...

The stock market scam

I've randomly found myself in a couple of different conversations lately where the question comes up as to whether or not the stock market is just a pyramid scheme for the rich.

The idea of the stock market makes a lot of sense. A lot of people don't have enough money to really kick off a business, but want to contribute to a business in order to share in the profits. If the company does well, I get rewarded, if it doesn't, I lose my investment. At any time I can transfer my investment to someone else if I no longer want it and they are willing to pay me for it.

Seems like a pretty understandable system. But in reality, this isn't what is happening. First of all, if a company earns profit, it doesn't mean that I as a share holder earn anything (unless the stock pays dividends, which it seems like a lot of stocks aren't doing nowadays). Really the only way that I earn any money is by selling my stock to someone else. So now it basically becomes a game of buying stock in the hopes that someone else will buy it from me in the hopes that someone else will buy it from them etc. Essentially, as long as people keep trading stock, money keeps flowing and people are happy. A company's performance usually has an affect on the stock price, but not necessarily. It's really more a matter of a few key people saying whether or not to buy or sell a certain stock.

So to me, the concept of stock at that level is pretty imaginary.

There are some other things that come along with stock, such as ownership of the company. If you were able to buy 51% of a company's shares, you could take over the company. Or if you and 5 friends each bought 10% you could do it. But in reality, does the average investor really intend on doing this? Do they even participate in the voting process that comes with owning shares of stock? Probably not.

So sometimes I wonder if the whole thing will just collapse some day because all of this imaginary value goes away. It seems that if stock were more directly tied to investing in a company, then the system would be more secure. But then that wouldn't be good for the rich investors, because now they are tying their investments into actual performance, and not market whims (which are often controlled by rich investors).

But I guess as long as my investments keep going up, I shouldn't be complaining.

Anniversary in Healdsburg

My wonderful wife and I celebrated our one year anniversary by taking a weekend trip to Healdsburg this past weekend. Neither of us had been there before, and we were looking forward to learning about some wineries outside of the Napa Valley.

Friday night we checked in to our B&B and wandered around town looking for a place to eat. After passing by a couple places, we stumbled across Cena Luna and, with only a 10 minute wait, decided to try it out. The highlight of the night was that the chef came around at the end of the night (there were only a few tables left), which afforded my wife the opportunity to express her extreme delight at the duck entre she had ordered. It's kind of fun talking to the chef at the end of the night, I think that may have been a first for me. The vegetarian entre selection wasn't great, but the appetizer, dessert, and wine made up for that.

Saturday we went on the Getaway Adventures Healdsburg Sip 'N Cycle. We had done the Calistoga one before, and thought it was a great opportunity to mix wine tasting, site-seeing, and exercise, so decided to try the Healdsburg one (which is why we stayed in Healdsburg). The 24-ish mile bike ride stopped at 3 wineries: Lambert Ridge, Bella, and Quivira. Bella was having their harvest party, which is normally open to club members only, but they let the 6 of us on the tour in, and it was quite festive with free food, wine tasting, games, etc. Lambert Ridge had a few great wines, and at Quivira we got to watch them pour grapes through the de-stemming machine.

Saturday night was the big culinary event. We had phoned in ahead and made reservations at Cyrus. Along wth our reservation, we had also informed them that we would like to do a vegetarian version of the 7-course chef's tasting menu. Tasting menus are always fun and a great way to sample lots of different foods, and this meal did not dissapoint. I'm not sure I can describe many of the dishes, but I assure you they were all very yummy. The stand out moment for me was the 6th course, where the waiter wheeled a cart of cheese to the table, asked us about what flavors we liked in a cheese, and then proceeded to cut us a cheese plate in front of us consisting of two goat, two sheep, and two cow's cheeses, giving excellent descriptions of each one. Eating at nicer restaurants is definitely more than just about food, and the service at Cyrus did not disapoint. Combine this with some champagne and wine, and my wife and I had an excellent evening.

After coffee Sunday morning, we detoured through Napa on our way home so we could stop and taste the new releases at Cosentino's where we are wine club members. And of course we had to stop off at one of our favorites, Mustard's Grill, for lunch.

Healdsburg was a great weekend getaway. Lots of nearby wineries, restaurants, coffee shops, boutiques, book stores, a park, etc. Finding an available room that is not extremely expensive is difficult, though during the off season it is supposedly easier.

All in all a wonderful weekend, with a wonderful wife.

To my long lost friend, MTV

I happened to catch about 45 minutes of the MTV Video Music Awards the other night. Most of the 45 minutes can be summed up as... Huh?

There was a time when the VMA's were one of my favorite nights of the year. It was one of the few nights my sister and I would argue for a "tv-tray" dinner, where we got to eat our dinner in front of the TV instead of in the dining room (these were the days before MTV aired the show repeatedly for a week after it first debuted). These were the days when seeing Pearl Jam and Red Hot Chili Peppers perform back to back songs was the highlight of the year, or watching Nirvana's bass player bang his head with his bass guitar, or seeing Jon Bovi and Ritchie Sambora doing a 2-song acoustic set, or seeing Eminem get a hundred look-a-likes to walk through the crowd. Not to mention all the non-music highlights, like seeing Pee-Wee Herman make his public reapperance, or Lil' Kim's scandalous outfit, or Eminem getting in a fight with Triump the Insult Comic Dog.

But this year, when I flipped through, two things came to mind:
1) Who are all these people?
2) This is lame.

The first thought made me a little sad. I always thought I'd be able to keep up with pop culture, especially in regards to music. But apparently my efforts to stay in that demographic are failing.

But even when I did see people I knew, I couldn't help but feel very underwhelmed by what was happening. And I'm not the only one. But then again, when I was growing up, didn't I hate reading the reviews written in the papers trashing the pop culture I loved so dearly?

I still watch MTV. One of my top 5 guilty pleasures is that I still watch The Real World. And I love watching Pimp My Ride for its absolutley ridiculous ideas (and it's also one of the few shows on TV that always has a positive attitude, so it's hard not to feel happy after watching that show). I haven't seen a video on MTV in a long time though... which probably explains why I don't know much about what's going on in the awards show.

But at least now it's easy to watch videos on the internet, so it's never too late for me to catch up.