It's a High Tech Christmas

Merry Christmas. Blah, blah, blah. Peace on Earth and all that, but let's get to the loot! Let me just start by saying that we spent way too much money this year. You can tell that it was way too much, because I had to bold AND italicize the word way. I'm almost tempted to go back and capitalize it too, but we'll wait until the bills come in. We didn't go into debt or anything, but we could have restrained ourselves. But really, why? We're certainly doing our part to stimulate the economy, post-September 11th. Are you ready? Here we go:

New Computer: Technically, this was a couple of weeks before Christmas, but we got it early so we could put our old computer under the Christmas tree for Jake. He's a little too smart to accept Santa just happened to bring that the exact same computer that was in his Dad's office. The copmuter that isn't there anymore. So we told him it was from us. But with our new computer was a 21" inch monitor, digital camera, and photo printer. And dammit, I need to be able to watch DVDs while in my office. And burn CDs. And do video captures. And play The Sims. And... well, I'll just stop now.

Cable Internet: About a two weeks before Christmas, I weakened and gave in to a phone solicitor selling DirecTV DSL service because damn Cablevison was taking its damn sweet damn time getting damn Internet access through its damn cable system. In Dec of 2000, I was replacing a cable box and the woman at the desk told me about the exciting new offer of Internet access through the cable system that was going to be available in January of 2001. "Excellent!", I said, "how do I get it?" She told me to go to the web site and type in my address and I can place my order that way. Well, when I typed in my address, it told me that the service would be available in my area in the 2nd half of 2001 and I could leave my phone number and e-mail address so they could contact me as soon as it was available. I checked back as the year went on, always leaving my e-mail address. In June, the screen changed to say it would be available in the "4th quarter of 2001". Oooookaaay. I left my e-mail address. In September, I checked again. Now the screen said it would be available in my area "in 2002". Just that. No month, no quarter, no half year. Just 2002. Crap. So I weakened and accepted the DirectTV DSL offer. On December 7th, four days after I placed the order with DirectTV, Cablevision sent me an advertising form letter in the mail saying "we're surprised that you haven't taken advantage of our great offer. Internet access has been available in your area and we thought you'd be one of the first to subscribe." WTF? So as much as I hated Cablevision, I love high speed access more. I ran right out and bought the cable modem and signed up. I'm a Internet access junkie. And of course, trying to cancel the DirectTV DSL has been a nightmare in itself. When they initialled tested the circuit, it knocked out our Caller ID. We still don't have it back. But who cares? I have high speed Internet access. It's not like I'm going to answer the phone anyway.

Home Theater System We don't (I mean, didn't) have a DVD player. Uhm... before we got the computer that is. But I don't want the family to sit around my computer watching movies. And really, if we're going to get a DVD player, why not get one with a 5 disc CD-DVD player / radio tuner in it? 'Cause the CD player that I had in the family room has the annoying habit of allowing you to put CDs in the tray or 6-Disc changer cartidge, but not letting you get them back out. So I would have to unplug the mass of wires in the back of the wall unit, take the CD player apart and extract the CDs. Then I would fiddle around with the mechanism (getting my fingers caught a few times for good measure) and then it would work for a month or so. Then it would happen all over again. Rinse, lather, repeat. So let's get a system that would replace all that and while we're at it, lets get a system that involves putting 6 speakers in various positions around the room. Speakers that sound great, but we can't really use, because the family room is directly under the kid's bedrooms. Duh. Don't care... gotta have it! This this also plays MP3 discs too. So since I can finally burn MP3 discs (see above), I can load 5 MP3 discs in this thing and never have to hear the same song again until Bobby is graduated from high school.

TiVo This one is Claudine's baby. Because of her schedule, she always gets screwed up in regards to T.V. Nights that have great shows (in her opinion) she has to work, and nights she is home are nights that have crap shows. Also, it will work out well for the kids. Bobby in particular. no matter what show is on, he whips his head around and says "Dora?" (Dora the Explorer, it's a kids show on Nick) When you say "no, it's not on right now" it is a 50-50 chance that all hell will break loose. Sometimes he will accept that answer, but other times his little world seems to be crashing down around him because Dora isn't on. Of course, as good parents, we want to placate our son with the T.V. shows he wants to watch as often as possible. 'Cause we're lazy, dammit! But don't get me wrong, I will use this thing too. It's a gadget. Why wouldn't I use it? I don't really like T.V., but now there is the gadget connected to it. I see a whole new hobby opening up for me.

New Upstairs T.V. The T.V. my brother gave us finally bit the dust. He was giving it away last year, because it took forever for the tuner to lock onto any channels when you first turned it on. Also it had an interesting habit of blasting at full volume if you changed the channel. You get very nimble fingers on the remote when you have to be on the lookout for the intermittent volume blasts of a finicky T.V. But it finally got so bad even we couldn't handle it anymore. Sometimes it would take 20-30 minutes to lock onto the channel you wanted. By then the show's over, why turn the T.V. on? Besides we just ordered new bedroom furniture so when that stuff gets delivered, it deserves to have a nice, new, functioning T.V. be placed on it. How's what for a disgusting rationalization for gadget-lust? I would list the furniture as a separate item, but really, it's not high-tech enough. It's wood. About as low-tech as you can get.

Claudine also bought a Palm Pilot for work, but I don't get play with that. go read her journal, if you want to read about that. Except, she doesn't have a journal so I thought I'd mention it here. On our coffee table we now have 5 remotes. One for the T.V., one for the VCR, one for the DVD/CD player, one for the digital cable box, and one for the TiVo. And for any one operation, you need at least two. You can't do any one thing using just one remote. That's about as close to heaven as I'll ever get. Merry Christmas indeed.

Oh yeah, the kids got some toys too, I think. I'm not really sure...