PeteCarpenter.com

4/30/2007

• Congrats to the Lovely Suse for her big promotion. She’s going to rule that school with an iron fist!
• The first of back-to-back first birthday parties. From what I can gather, the main purpose of these events is to watch the kid roll around in a big pile of wrapping paper, stuff ribbons into their mouth, and smear cake all over their face. Good times! This one featured the biggest birthday cake I’ve ever seen, about eight inches tall and 18 inches across, with lots of ducks and duck butts on top. And an eleven pound ham. I was not disappointed.
• Speaking of first birthdays, I know of a very cute puppy who turns one on Wednesday.
• After many weeks of back-order, I finally got my flash last week. I’m just stunned at the difference it makes in portraits and action shots. All of a sudden, I can take the photos that I’m actually trying to. Here are some shots of Alex and Rachel (who will be celebrating the big “1″ next weekend) exploring our house. I’m glad that I’ll have the chance to practice with my new equipment before showtime.
• The new Tivo power supply arrives tomorrow. Let’s keep our fingers crossed. We’ve more or less had nothing to watch for the past week.
• I”m enjoying watching the Sox these days. I almost feel sorry for the Yankees fans in my family. Almost. Is there anything better than napping on your sofa on a weekend afternoon with your puppy with the Sox-Yanks on TV, and when you wake up, the Sox lead has grown even bigger?
• How long does a whoopie pie last? The Lovely Suse is working on one that is currently 8 days old. It’s still soft and fresh looking, but that just scares me.

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Sadness

It is a sad, sad day in the Carpenter household. After three and a half years of faithful service and thankless dedication, our Tivo died last night. What started with a curiously burnt out wireless network adapter followed with an unprecedented reboot in the middle of watching a show. While it successfully restarted and seemed back to normal, in the middle of the night, the last gasps of air were heard from the struggling machine. It kept trying to restart itself, spinning its hard disk up and down, over and over. I finally pulled the plug at 12:30AM. The time of death was duly recorded.

This morning, hoping for a miracle, I plugged it back in hoping some rest had resuscitated it. No lights, no spinning hard drive. Just the faint whisper of the fan. I cracked it open, thinking that maybe a hard drive swap would do the trick. Still, nothing. It was hopeless. Our 120 hours of shows (ok, so there were 90 Suggested Shows recorded, but there were still lots of stuff that we actually wanted to watch), our dozens of season passes, years of memories, gone. Or were they?

This isn’t as tragic as it all sounds. A little research tells me that this may simply be a dead power supply, one that can easily be purchased here. If that’s the case, we will be able to bring our much-loved Tivo back to life. There’s still hope. And there’s the fact that we do have a second Tivo in the basement. We just can’t get the shows off the old one in the meantime. And if it’s not the power supply, I’ll try buying a used one on Ebay and just swap out the hard drive. I think that should work. But let’s hope it doesn’t get to that point.

It’s times like these that I realize how much we depend on our Tivo and how much it’s changed the way we watch TV. Never having to think about what time a show is on, never having to watch commercials, and always having something good to watch has become a way of life for us. Watching live TV is just painful at this point. I don’t think we could ever go back to normal TV, and will be glad when our Tivo is back healthy and happy. Keep your fingers crossed.

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