the crash

silent night
16 April 2001

Clearly, I had been bragging too much. I was too happy with this machine. Maybe it was the four hours of videos I had asked it to tape in the middle of the night. Maybe it just hated Antiques Roadshow. It got confused trying to please both me and Ray at the same time. It couldn't find anything that was a pleasant mix of 21 Jump Street and The Dukes of Hazzard. Maybe we asked too much from it. We stayed up so late every night playing one thing while it taped another. Maybe it just didn't love us as much as we loved it.

The hard drive crashed sometime Saturday night. And after two hours on the phone and Internet yesterday, it turns out Tivo has no idea what happened or how to fix it. I just got a bad Tivo. And I have to send it back to Phillips. Guess what? Phillips is making me pay for the shipping. Ain't that a bitch? They're all, "Well, since we're not making you pay for the replacement, the shipping to your house or the labor (of lifting a different box and sticking a label on it), you get to pay for the box to be shipped here to El Paso. Thanks for buying a broken product, we really like keeping our customer support team in business."

I have a case number contesting that I have to pay shipping. If I'm not the reason why this thing is broken, I shouldn't have to be punished any further. It's terrible enough as it is. This means two weeks without Tivo, at least. I'll have to watch regular television. That's so 1999, people.

Dammit. I'm going to miss so much television now. It was taping all of the Mighty Big TV shows that I haven't checked out yet. It taped Oprah every day so I could work through the afternoon without distraction. It was catching us up on last season's "Sex and the City." It taped BBC sitcoms. Movies. I had Johnny Depp movies on there. Tivo was just starting to figure us out and would tape good shows for us for suggestions. It taped Cry-Baby, for Pete's sake. Now, I already have that movie on tape, but isn't it sweet of Tivo to think of me?

This is depressing. I can't write about it anymore.

Dammit, Tivo. How could you do this to me? To us. Ray's been in the shower every minute since you left. He's a wreck. We all are. Cal just keeps running in circles. The Tivo people are too ashamed to talk to me. I have to figure out a way to put you in a cardboard coffin and ship you to El Paso this afternoon. I had no idea you were from Texas, too. You should have had more manners than that. It shouldn't have just been one strange blip during Saturday Night Live and then the next day you were completely gone.

And what kind of tech support only offers "Reboot?" Besides the Mac, I mean. And what kind of reboot is just "Unplug it and then plug it back in later." Like you're a toaster. It's a horrible noise your hard drive is making when it tries to start up. It makes me sad. It sounds like an empty gas tank.

I said I wasn't going to talk about this anymore. I mean it, too. Today I'm just going to send Tivo back and not think about all of the stuff I'm missing this week because Tivo is gone. I'm not going to think about how Ray and I are going to have to install a new Tivo in a couple of weeks, which took so many hours. I'm not going to think about the tens of hours that Ray and I have now lost teaching Tivo what kind of television we liked. We had programmed in so many movies and television shows. So many season passes lost. I just have to make sure the new Tivo arrives before the end of the month. That's when Gilmore Girls starts back up.

Oh, it's all too terrible to talk about. Yesterday I didn't know what to do without Tivo so I walked down to the bookstore and bought myself this Harry Potter that everyone keeps talking about. I got a sunburn from being outside for so long. And I was up until three in the morning reading about the Muggles last night. And you know what? Eventually I'm going to run out of Harry Potter too. All good things, people. All good things.

It's time I try and talk Ray out of the shower. He's really not taking all of this so well.

Viva la Tivolution!

"I'm so glad I don't live with you."