Beyond TV With Cable Box

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I got my IR Blaster (product is called USB-UIRT) yesterday. it is a little device that plugs into my desktop’s USB port. I then can control my cable box from Beyond TV via my ATI Remote Wonder. After reading the newsgroups I thought I might have some issues doing this. It turns out that I got everything to work just fine on the first try.

I did have to play around a bit with Beyond TV’s program guide to get all my digital cable channels to show up, but after a few minutes I was all set. My next upgrade is to go from Coax, to RCA cables from my cable box to my USB-2 video capture device. I figured I would do that after I was sure that the IR Blaster worked.

Now I can be a bigger couch potato now that I can fill up any hard drive space that I can get my hands on with MPEG-2 video of my favorite shows, movies, or anything else I get lazy and want to record. I am living it up now, because in July the recording flag or whatever they are calling it will screw anyone wanting to record digital TV. More on that after I bask in my recording ability glory today!

The Waiting Is Over, Now More Waiting!

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The waiting is over. The rumors are in fact true. Apple has released a small (cheap) desktop that does not require you to buy an all in one model. The Mac mini is actually real. Rumors were flying for over a month, but they are in fact true. I for one am very happy. I went the iMac route only to sell it because I don’t want to be locked into an all in one unit. I won’t upgrade my monitor so often, but I will upgrade my desktop. I also don’t use my Mac for super power user functions, so a $1500 tower is out. The Mac Mini is perfect for me. Inexpensive small desktop computer. I may get rid of my Powerbook and just get 2 Mini’s. One for work and one for home. What I will probably do is just leave the powerbook at work.

I was one of the crazy ones. I went online and ordered mine already. it took an hour since the apple site was really slow, but I got my order confirmation already. I am told it will arrive on the 22 of this month, but you never know with hardware vendors. My hardware vendor who I usually buy stuff from gets me great deals if I buy for personal use, but he could not guarantee the delivery date. I ended up getting the faster processor model with the extra hard drive space. I will upgrade the ram with 3rd party memory. With shipping and the extra ram I am talking about $800 for the total package. Not bad since the entry level iMac is like $1299 but it comes with a 17″ monitor and I already have a 20″. I want flexibility. This will give it to me. I am very excited. Apple finally listened to what people (me) wanted. I hope they sell like hot cakes. As for their flash music player, I will pass. I am very happy with my 40 gig iPod.

Out of It

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I was out of it yesterday. I left work early (3:30PM). I got a bad migraine. We finally fixed our application problem that plagued us all weekend. Miguel finally figured it out and we were at 100% by lunch time. The lack of sleep, the constant work, etc had caught up with me by then. I started feeling like crap around 11AM. The meds didn’t work even after double dosing on it. I should have left work earlier than I did, but I am stupid.

I took an express train (thought I would hurl on the local) and walked the 10 blocks home from the express stop. The cold air helped allot. I got home and crashed. I woke up at 9PM still in pain. I bairely survived the night to goto work late today. I felt out of it, but I survived. I decided to take tomorrow off. I am feeling better now, but I figured it would be nice to just rest! Hopefully tonight I will get a good night sleep. I may have slept for 16 hours yesterday, but it was not a restful sleep.

T-Mobile Woes Continue

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Called T-Mobile twice today about my phone(s) still not working. The first time I called the CSR put me in touch with the data group because to level 1 support people any problem with a phone like the Treo 600 means that the data group has to get involved. I tried to explain that I had 2 phones and the other one (non-data phone) was also not working right. the did something on the back-end to my account and had me restart the phone.

Then a few hours later I had to call back because the issue was still happening. This time I was told that there was in fact 3 cell sites in my area that were messed up. I asked what they said by my area and they said Manhattan. I was like dude Manhattan is kind of big and there are like millions of cell users on the dam island. Just because 3 sites are down on that island does not mean that I am affected. of course I truly believe that the problem I am having is related to their network, but this guys logic was retarded.

I don’t like talking to so called experts about technology that I am only have a passing (as a hobby) knowledge of, and yet I know more about it than the people I talk to. This genius first tried to tell me that if I didn’t turn my phone off every day that it could cause my problems. I was like that was nice info, but I had rebooted the dam phone like 4 times today and it still does not work right.

T-Mobile’s contract policies are great, but if this technical issues continue I will be looking elsewhere. This is not the first time they have had issues like this.

Show’s Return

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I have been vegging out today (Saturday, this post will go up late). I was zombied out since I was stuck working late last night and this morning, so I decided to sit around and clean out my backlog of TV watching. By doing that I realized that a show I really like (MI-5, or Spooks in the UK) was starting new episodes tonight. I should have realized when A&E played all of last season all day Saturday. Cable networks tend to do that. Since new seasons don’t come out for so long they play all of the last seasons shows in a run up to the new one. Well I was excited (or as excited as I can get over a TV show) that I would get more BBC spy goodness. I also just pre-ordered season 2 on DVD. Should be out Tuesday.

This week also marked the return of new shows on TV. Since I don’t watch TV (i just tivo stuff and watch later) I figured this out because my new tivo actually started to get full with stuff. This fueled my TV watching binge today.

&*%^@# Cell Phones

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I read something yesterday that said the majority of cell phone owners were unsatisfied with their service. That has been traditionally true for me. But I thought hey recently I have not had issues. I should not have spoken. Last night and today I have had huge issues making and receiving calls on my Treo. I think it is T-Mobile. I have had problems like this before, and it was not the phone. I am in an area with great signal and I still don’t get calls. voice mail goes off like an hour after the call was made. That is not good when people are trying to call you to tell you websites are f–ked up. Then I try to place calls and I hit send and the phone does nothing. I do that like 5-10 times before it works.

Thankfully I had the VOIP phone for outbound calls. Maybe I am thinking of switching to Cingular if they get the Treo 650 before T-Mobile. I just am not sure if their customer service is as good as T-Mobile. I like the fact that T-Mobile does not force me into a contract if I make changes to my account since I have been a customer for 3+ years now. Still debating…

Desk Reorg Again

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I am in constant change of my desk setup in my apartment. Up until today I was all set to sell my Apple Cinema Display 20″. It doesn’t work with my PC’s and a KVM like I would have liked. I don’t really want to have 2 monitors (one for my PC’s and one for my Mac) so I figured on selling the Apple display and get a standard 20″ VGA monitor. Well I was looking at the monitor before I packed it up today and I had second thoughts. The wide screen grew on me. Maybe it was using it (and its 20″ imac cousin) for a year and change. I didn’t want to give it up so quick. I just finished reorganizing and recabling my desk to put both monitors (my 17″ Acer and the Apple Cinema display) on my desk. The entire desk is now taken up by both setups. it is kind of like how I have my office desk setup. I figure if it works at work, it will work at home. I like working on my Mac anyway. I try to only work on my PC at home if I need to.

Since all my desk space is taken up by my monitors and keyboards, I have had to spread out onto other desk surfaces. I will get messy as I work but so far so good.

Man this 20″ display rocks!!! Off to bed…

Tivo To Go, Well Almost

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So Tivo launched their Tivo To Go service Monday. Great. I downloaded the software Tuesday and installed it on my PC. Oh, wait a minute. I thought Tivo said this service was active. Well turns out the software is available, but since you need a software update on your Tivo device it may take several weeks for my (or anyone else’s) Tivo to get updated. That last piece of information I had to get from the Tivo support site.

I wait ready to try this service out. In the mean time I am getting happier with Beyond TV. It just creates MPEG-2 files so I can copy them to my laptop and watch the shows anywhere right now. Maybe by the time my Tivo can do that I might decide I don’t need to pay $12.99 a month and just use Beyond TV.

Turns out I am not the only one ticked off by how Tivo is doing this upgrade. News.com had this article. I understand why Tivo is staggering the upgrade, but if I want to get it, and know my risks why shouldn’t I be able to get the upgrade now?

FIghting A Cold, And It Is Winning

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I have been fighting a cold for a few days. It is winning for now, so that is why I have not posted. I am writing up a few things and hope to post more soon. I am contemplating taking tomorrow off since I feel a bit sick. I am not so bad that I want to take off, but I am borderline so I feel if I do goto work I might make myself worse. I am going to sleep in tomorrow and see how I feel when I wake up. That is the joy of living 20 minutes from the office. I can jump down there whenever I want! Or that could be a bad thing…

Free DNS And Bad Cable Modem’s

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Today I stumbled upon a free provider of DNS. I have seen a few before, but they have been really slow or unreliable. This one so far looks good. It is called xname.org. They were a snap to setup, and so far they seem to be working. My problem (until now) has been that I like godaddy.com, but they do not provide DNS for domains I register unless I pay a fee. If I want DNS included in my annual domain name fee I can continue to use Register.com but they are over 3 times as much as Godaddy. Other than the DNS options there is no real difference to me what registrar I use. So would you pay 3x the amount for just DNS? I don’t want to. If I had 1 domain name maybe I would pay. In fact I pay for dynamic DNS hosting of my Scott.ac domain. I just don’t want to pay for all the other domains I own. I have like 10 of them. If xname works I have no reason to continue using Register.com for any domain names. Other options for me would be to have friends host my DNS, etc. I just like being able to make changes to my zone files when I want to. And every so often I do make changes.

Another issue I came across today was that my cable modem provider RCN does not allow inbound access to port 80. That means I cannot host a website on my machine at home even if I wanted to. And I kind of wanted to. Miguel lets me host a site on his server, but until recently he did not have much space on it. I had a ton of photos that I wanted to host. I guess I will just have to use his box for it, or pay for hosting. Since I am paying for the blog (and I think it is worth the money) I don’t want to pay for web hosting when I have all the tools at my disposal to do hosting. If I had less morals I would just put up a web server in my companies DMZ and use that as my webserver, but I won’t. Dam morals!

Monday morning I have to get Miguel to fix some configuration issues on my site on his box so I can once again host a site on his box, or I need to find a cheap web hosting company. There are several out there that look good. I just need to do some research.