Odd Cube Decor'

Last night I spaced the fact that I am not 20 years old anymore. I am not a senior citizen for that matter either. My point is that I stayed up way too late setting up my shiny new TiVo Premiere 4. Actually until 2:00 AM to be exact, and I still had to be up and moving by 6:00 AM this morning because of that little thing called "work" - ouch, I paid for this decision all day! Lucky for me the day was busy enough to keep me awake and motivated but not so busy that I had the opportunity to make a shxtload of mistakes due to a self induced, sleep deprived, lack of focus.

Premiere 4 Setup

Over-all the setup on the TiVo Premiere 4 was friggin' seamless and more of a sit-and-wait project as anticipated. When configuring them, once you have the cables connected and the cablecard installed they are pretty much identical to the first models that I setup back in 1999 as far as their "guided setup" is concerned. Even most of the connections are the same other than the introduction of HDMI cables on TiVo boxes around 2005, but that does not increase the difficulty level by any means.

Anyway, around 1:15 AM I came to the dreaded "cablecard" screen and the hair on the back of my neck stood at attention, anticipating the upcoming frustration. I have had nothing but problems in the past each and every time that I have had to set up a single or multi-stream cablecard. I figured this one would be "cake" since I had popped it out of my TiVo HD and plugged it into the Premiere 4. Nope, not the case - it was not recognized. I forgot that they are specific to the box they are installed in, so it needed to be paired to the new hardware - crap!

Cicely picked up the phone and called Charters technical support service. Surprisingly they were working at this crazy hour and the tech was extremely helpful. We went through all of the settings and everything was going smooth-as-silk until the tech tried to ping our card to do the pairing handshake. For some reason after a certain hour of the day they Charter locks the systems out and they are unable to do things like this - crap! Here we go I mumbled to myself.

The tech asked us to call back in the morning, or as early as 4:00 AM Eastern time and they would then be able to take care of it. no problem. Yup, heard that before - I figured the customer service tech simply wanted to get off the phone and get home. Well I am happy to say that I was completely wrong and stand corrected - eating crow does not taste very good but it is what it is.

Cicely called the customer service line at 7:30 AM to try and beat the rush. Phone's ringing, auto service picked up, we navigated through the voice prompts and whatta you know - zero callers in front of us, sweet! The guy picks up the call, asks Cicely a few more questions with regard to our account and cablecard, comments that the technician from last night saved him a lot of time because all of the data was entered and is still in our ticket (awesome) and continues with the setup. Cicely is put on hold for 3 minutes or so, the tech gets back on the line and has her try various channels and whatta you know? Everything works perfectly and my faith in humanity, technical support and cablecards has been renewed for 2013!

Once off the phone I went ahead and setup all of the preferences that we are accustomed to with a TiVo as well as the channels we receive. I went online and copied our current season passes over to the new TiVo, made some adjustments and deleted a few that we no longer watch. There were a few that had a strange message that they were corrupt, but I think it's because they are no longer aired so there is nothing for the device to connect to, verify and setup - no biggie.

Otherwise everything went smoother than I could have imagined and I cant wait to get home and mess with it some more.Then tomorrow I can setup our new Logitech Harmony Touch learning remote. Well, once the cable guy comes out and switches on one of our additional coaxial jacks so I can move the router and modem into the living room. This is going to be awesome for one simple fact - extremely easy access to everything in the entertainment niche'. Yup, I am stoked!

Dirty Monkey

Sorry, don't get excited - Dirty Monkey is not a new flavor of Ben and Jerry's ice cream, although it could be a great name for one - feel free to send me royalties B&J so I wont sue. Seriously though, earlier today I was walking back to my cube after heating up my lunch and something caught my eye. This knitted monkey holding onto his blue boner, wtf? I have no idea if it is a floating prank that peeps are moving around the studio or if it is one of my cube-neighbors newly received Christmas gifts. Either way I was wondering why someone would bring such a thing into the office much less display it on a cube wall. I am not offended by it what-so-ever, and it actually made me laugh out loud when I noticed it. It actually stopped me dead in my tracks and do a double-take.

It's probably important that I mention the fact that this particular cube wall is dead center of the most traveled route to get to our studio's North-side game test bed. Whats-more is that I am absolutely blown away that not a single person has complained about it, people tend to be really friggin' sensitive about things.

This is also a big part of the reason that photo is not that great, apologies. I had to snap one quickly as to not draw attention to the little fella taking care of business up on his perch. Maybe that is the answer that I am looking for? Because there are other things around him maybe everyone has a habit of looking down as they walk, or they are walking and talking to someone else and never really look up to see the perverted monkey.

I am more interested in seeing how long it lasts up there. Once it's taken down or found by someone that it offends, then I can start asking around as to what the point of it was, who brought it in and related hen-housing of the topic. Either way it's still pretty funny in a weird way.

FRINGE

Tonight is the final episode of FRINGE and I am bummed! What a great show it turned out to be. I am glad that I gave it a second chance and took the advice of a few of my coworkers to start watching it. This past season has been so-so but partially because they really need to start wrapping things up for tonight's 2 hour series finale. It's going to be a good one I think, I just hope that the new TiVo records it as expected, I setup the show with one eye open after-all.

Exhausted

Enough thoughts for one day, I am exhausted. Friday is here and I plan to get some rest tomorrow to make up for my late night last night. Yea, I say that now but I will probably stay up late messing with my new entertainment toys or setting up the new controller for my AR.Drone, hell'z yeah!

Photo: Dirty Monkey