With TiVo offering huge rebates on new TiVo2 recorders, why put up with the aggravation of a second-rate box that is useless? Mark Frauenfelder described his recent experiences with the Scientific Atlanta DVR that his cable company provides, including the claim that it was a real TiVo device:

Five days later a service technician came with a new box. I asked him if this problem was common, because Google returns a lot of pages from people who think the Explorer 8000 is a piece of junk. He said the system is fine as long as you didn't store too many shows on it. If you fill up the hard drive, the system freezes up, and there's no way a user can undo it. But how do you know when the disk is close to being full if there's no gage to tell you? The service tech's answer: "don't keep very many shows on the hard drive." That pretty much defeats the purpose of a DVR, doesn't it?

I don't work for or speak for TiVo, I'm just another satisfied customer. If you do get a new Tivo, how bout telling them that I referred you by giving them my email address: regis@oscarm.org ?

Update: Fixed a typo pointed out by my sis

Downhill Battle - Music Activism is a "non-profit organization working to break the major label monopoly of the record industry and put control back in the hands of musicians and fans". I'd like to support them by donating but currently the only way to do that is through paypal. Am I too paranoid about using paypal? Anyway, I've written to them to see if there are other ways to contribute.

I dragged a group of co-workers and friends to the United-Colorado, the first one Staci and I have been too since getting married actualy, game last night at it turned out to be a great time. Kudos to Barbara for getting Forum One to sponsor the outing and providing food and drinks. It rained a little while we set up for the tailgait, then stopped, then it rained again but by game time the sun had come out and dried us off.

The game itself was exciting and "dominated by United which really needed the win . After watching the 5-1 loss to dallas and last week's bland 2-0 loss against San Jose, I was afraid they'd stink it up, play some boring soccer, and turn off the non-soccerphiles with us. Luckily, the team set a season record for shots on goals and passed the ball around really well.

They even got Ginger asking "Could it be? Do I like... SOCCER?!" but i think that's more due to the shirt exchange between players at the end of regulation time.