TiVo - How could we live without it?

Last year before we got TiVo, I told everyone that said it was great, that they must be crazy as it couldn't be all that good. My wife and I watch our fair share of TV, but have watched a lot of junk in our couch potato time. In the year since we got TiVo, we can't really watch TV without it. The summer has a lot of junk on and it allowed us to catch up on some stuff. Now that the new season has started, our TiVo is filled with shows that we want to watch. Being able to skip commercials is great and we now watch TV on our own time instead of when the networks say we want to watch it. We record the news every night and don't have to be home at 5:30 pm and can walk the dog without having to rush back.

I know that every company and his neighbor is coming out with a DVR/PVR, but I'm quite happy with my TiVo. My wife has accepted the technology (she was reluctant at first) and we're both hooked.

More audio wiring

I managed to run some more cable today; the runs were to outdoor speakers and quite straightforward, but time consuming. I need to remember to carefully label the wires at both ends. I ended up having to use an Ohm meter twice to get the correct labels on the wires. I felt real stupid as I already did this once before in my wiring project. I'm trying to find a professional to a bit more of the wiring as many of the remaining 17 runs are a bit complicated and a little more than I can handle.

More audio installation

I made a little more progress today; I pulled 3 more runs. The first being the Cat 6 for my office; that was easy as I was just replacing some Cat 5. The next 2 proved very challenging as I had to spend time in the sweltering hot attic. After a few tries attempting to fish the wires down the wall in the attic, I remembered I had a 3 ft drill bit my dad let me borrow. That did the trick to get the wires where I needed. In this particular room, I decided to use a low voltage add on box that clips to a regular box. Getting it in was a little tricky, but doable. The volume control had to be nudged into the box as the add on box must have been designed for low voltage outlets or something else with lots of wiggle room. However, when I went to put the cover plate on, I realized that the original box was a bit wider than normal boxes, so the cover plate didn't fit. A little work with a drill on another switch to move the mounting holes yielded a perfect fit. Despite the extra work involved, I really like the look of the light switch and volume control in one cover plate. I'm not sure if I'm going to do this for the other 3 that I have like this.

Home Depot

I went to the closest Home Depot today to get some low voltage boxes and covers for my home audio system (I managed to pull 4 runs of cable today!) and couldn't fit a 12 port, 2 gang wall plate. I asked an associated if he could check to see if another store had them before I wasted my time and gas going there. He said that usually all the Home Depots carry the same products and he had never seen it before. He looked it up on the computer and found that they had 21 in stock. Great, I only needed 2. So we go back to the aisle and look at the overhead bins for the stock number and he couldn't find it. Uggh. Off I went to Lowe's (it was closer than the next Home Depot). No luck. Then 20 minutes to the next Home Depot where I found what them! Perfect, wasted an extra 35 minutes and half a gallon of gas (about $1.45 these days) because the guy in Home Depot couldn't find inventory.