HerdingChaos

I posted earlier about my order for a new Tivo Series 3 HD. This is my first post about my new iMac 24″. What do they have in common? They are both really really new.

On the Tivo front: Time Warner cable will not allow you to self install the CableCARDS into your own device. At first I was really upset by this because they are going to charge me ~$30/card for the install. The cards are leased for only $3/month/card so the install charge was almost a year’s lease on the card for the install. Well now that I have seen the install in action I can say that they are going to blow through the $60 some odd dollars I will be paying for the install and then some. The contractor that does the house visits and installs stated that my Tivo HD was the first they had seen. Then the fun started. We inserted the first CableCARD and called it in. It seemed to go okay. Then we installed the second card and it started a firmware update. Tivo kindly told me that this normally takes 40 min and that I could do nothing else while the second card was loading the new firmware. 18 hours later I ejected the second card. The first card is mostly working except some of the channels will pop up a banner telling me I need to call the cable company to get the card activated. And the random channels that do this are not all pay channels. FOX HD is doing it but all the other network’s HD channels work fine. This morning I called the contractor back to report the results (since they recommended the overnight wait for the firmware update). The supervisor seems to think this is an issue with the way the headend is programmed at Time Warner. But since he is just a contractor he is going to have to come out here, look at it, play with it a bit, and then file a work order for a real Time Warner cable dude to come out and take a look. I just want my Tivo. *cry*

On the iMac front: Oh my god I love this iMac. The screen is super crisp and this thing is so fast I am amazed. But this is only around week 2 of the Core 2 Duo based mac’s being released. All of the software from Apple works like a charm and I have no problems with it at all. I planned on using this iMac to replace my old aging linux box, but run a copy of linux within Parallels for Mac (kind of like VMWare for you non-mac people). Well Parallels for mac has a really cool feature that only works on the Core 2 Duo based machines. When you start the virtual machine the kernel panics and your mac reboots! What fun! I found a forum post from the Parallels guys and the internal build that they made available actually fixed the problem. Which allowed me to move onto the next problem. The Cisco VPN client for mac will install and work fine until you reboot. Once you reboot whatever the VPN client installs to run on each start will cause the system to crash and you go into a loop until you boot the Mac in safe mode and remove the VPN startup items. But the good news is I can login to work via ssh and the VPN client is not a must have.

So what is a TWCHDDVR you ask? The Time Warner Digital Cable High Definition Digital Video Recorder is simply the worst executed DVR that I have ever used. However, it was pretty much the only option to get something that even the kids could use that would work in HD at home. Well no more you craptastic monopoly! Tivo has released the Series 3 HD DVR. I own a Series 2 DVR and it has always done what I wanted, never crashed and in general helps me dig through the billions of crap shows and boil my viewing time down to the 2-3 hours a week that I really want to see. I can not wait to take my TWC DVR into the TWC office and ask for two CableCARDS in return. The Tivo is expensive, but they have earned it. I cannot think of any other bit of electronics that I have bought recently that I felt really produced a high quality product for a decent price (except maybe the macbook I bought for Becky). Anyway, once I get it in I will let all two of you know what it is like.

Last night I downloaded the trial/demo for F.E.A.R. It is a first person shooter that has been out a while. While I was playing the game for the first time, in the dark, in a quiet house, I scared the everlivin’ crap out of myself. This game is spooky and it totally got me a couple of times.

We were out today getting lunch and doing some general shopping. I ran to Best Buy and left the fam in the car while I ducked in to buy the game. I was going to get the DVD version, but all they had was the CD version. No big deal. I buy the game and use my 12% off coupon that Becky found in the mail.

We get home and after playing with the kids a bit and installing all the stuff we bought at Home Depot I decided to start the install of the game. I was not planning on playing it until the kids went to bed, but I did not want to spend my precious no-kid-time waiting for the 5 CD install to finish.

Well, probably because of some stupid copy protection Disk 2 has a read error of a very strange type. I looked online and sure enough there are about a gabillizion people with the exact same problem on the exact same file. So tomorrow I will try and exchange of the media. I already sent a problem report to the game company. *sigh*

If I downloaded a cracked version on a bitttorrent network I bet it would work fine…. The whole “treat everyone like a criminal” mentality that has infected all of the entertainment industry is pissing me off. I don’t download movies from the net. In fact I have a bunch of cheap DVD’s I bought at Sam’s Club yesterday sitting in the next room. Does anyone else (that is not downloading movies) get a little offended that there is a “pirating is stealing commercial” at the front of most DVD’s? And you cannot skip over them (well, unless you hack your DVD player). Between coding anti-piracy crap on the DVD’s so you cannot skip it, and making many games refuse to run if you have CD burning software or virtual drive software loaded is nothing short of calling me a criminal right after I have given them money. I bet none of the people who download movies on the net have to watch that anti-pirate commercial. Simple rule of selling to the consumer: If you degrade the customer experience and there is an alternative, then you will lose.