I totally love my TV and my HD DVR. I love them so much, in fact, that the DVR is frequently maxed out, and things don't stay on the hard drive for more than a day or two before they are automatically erased to make room for new recordings. You would think 160 GB would be plenty of space, but it's actually only enough for 20 hours of HD programming. So after reading some online forums, I recently bought a 500 GB external hard drive, one that would meet all the specs other people recommended. I hooked it up last night and voila! Oodles of room. Then this morning, I wanted to rewind live TV to hear something again (Matt Lauer was in South Africa) and I noticed I could not do it. I tried a ton of different things (powering off, etc.) but nothing made a difference. I hopped on the web at work today and discovered a different forum where lots of people reported the same phenomenon. The solution? Don't watch live TV! It's kind of an absurd notion at first, but then I realized I don't watch that much live TV anyway. For instance, last night, I waited until 9:20 to start watching Grey's Anatomy, so that I would always stay ahead of the commercials. It works fabulously. And on the occasions when I do watch live TV, I can just hit the record button so that in the event I want to rewind, I will be able to. It seems like a small price to pay to be able to record lots of HD movies and stuff. I guess it's just one of those quirks that might get fixed in a future patch. (From what I've read, my HD DVR unit was plagued with problems when it first came out, and slowly they've released patches--downloaded automatically while you sleep--that have remedied almost all of the complaints.)
Not much else to write about. Life is pretty quiet these days. The office is slow, but I'm still enjoying my coworkers. Now that I think about it, this is the first job where I haven't had some major complaint within the first year of working there. Wow, that's amazing. For a while, it appeared as if I'd never find the ideal situation, and I started to wonder if I was crazy for job-hopping in my quest for perfection, but now I seem to have found it, and I'm so happy I did not settle! Good lesson for other parts of my life.....
If you ever check out some of the blogs I read, you should head on over to Blueberry Pie and Head Full of Pixies. They've had some big posts recently.
In local news, a Wake County judge recently ruled that it is illegal to require a student to attend a year-round school. This is ludicrous! He cited the state law that says school must not start sooner than August 25 and must not end later than June 10 as his support. I think that law needs to be struck down, because with the kind of growth our county is experiencing, there is no other way to manage the huge enrollment numbers. Unless you want split schedules, where some kids go to school at 7 am and get out at 1, while others go at 1 and get out at 7. Like that wouldn't mess up parents' schedules! Ha!
So I'm having a little bit of a conscience crisis regarding watering my yard. The lawn, especially in front, has lots of brown spots, but I feel bad just dumping water on it because water is such a precious resource. What makes my lawn deserve this water, when so many billions of people don't even have reliable access to water for their daily needs? Of course, me choosing not to water my lawn will not give them access to water, but there's still an irrepressible twinge of guilt involved. Add to that the fact that I have a serious case of "keeping up with the Joneses" when it comes to my lawn. I am constantly inspecting other people's yards to see if theirs is better or worse than mine. Next door, theirs is Ugly with a capital U, while across the street, theirs is lush. I'm somewhere in the middle. I'd love to have a gorgeous lawn, but I don't want to be a water guzzler.
And then there's the fact that I live by myself in a dwelling that is over 1900 square feet. Talk about wasteful! I should be living in something that's 400 square feet, with solar energy and zero carbon footprint. But I know that is totally unrealistic. So what, I'm just supposed to say oh well, I guess I'll just be a guzzler? I saw an article this week about how the polar ice caps are melting much faster than they originally predicted. This global warming thing is dire, people, and we really have to start doing something. I don't know what I can do to make a difference, though. I try my best and do what I can, in terms of turning out lights and turning off the shower when I'm soaping up, using canvas shopping bags, and recycling everything (I'll even bring home empty plastic bottles from a business trip just so I can recycle them at home). I suppose I do more than a lot of people, but I know I could do much more, and I just have to figure out what. I feel compelled to pressure others into greener ways, but I am no proselytizer. So here's my suggestion for today: Please subscribe to Ideal Bite's daily tip. It is so awesome. They give you easy little ways you can make a difference. Not every day's tip will apply to your life, but most will, and it is very well written and user friendly.
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