Time Management Skills Elude Me
I became seriously spoiled with TiVo when I lived at Family Headquarters. I’ve really wanted to get it since I moved, but it just doesn’t fit into my budget right now. It doesn’t help that I’m picky, and I specifically want a TiVo-brand TiVo so I can see the friendly little guy and hear the patented “bu-doop!” sound, and ideally I want DirecTV too so I can TiVo two shows at once. But it makes no sense at all to sign up for DirecTV right now when I’m already tight on money and I’m still getting free cable (fingers crossed).
Upstairs, I have one of those little TV/VCR combos, and now that the fall season has begun and I’m pretty busy, I have to tape my shows with an actual VHS videotape.
This is problematic because I have apparently gone stupid since living with TiVo, and have completely lost the ability to program and use a VCR.
I tried to tape something a couple of weeks ago and forgot to rewind the tape first, so then it taped for about five minutes before reaching the end of the tape. Duh.
And then another night I set the timer wrong. I’m used to starting a few minutes early and ending a few minutes late, just in case the show runs over or my clock is off. So, for an 8 o’clock show, I set the timer to start at 7:57 and stop at…8:03. Those six minutes of television were really exciting.
Last night was the killer, because I’d worked really hard to get the timer set right, and had actually set it on Wednesday night before I went to bed so that I wouldn’t miss Survivor and CSI, because I knew that I’d be out last night and wouldn’t get back in time to see them. I double-checked everything before I went to bed on Wednesday, and checked it again yesterday morning, and when I got home last night I ran upstairs all excited and pushed play.
And I taped two hours of effin’ NBC.
Which would be fine except that Survivor and CSI are CBS programs, and have been for quite some time, and probably will be for quite some time.
And that’s an awful lot of messing up considering that I only watch about three hours of TV a week (not counting news and The People’s Court, which I’ll write about later) right now.
I’m hoping TiVo will save the day this time, because I called home last night and asked Dad to transfer the shows from TiVo to a videotape so I could watch them this weekend, but still. I’m stupid.
I think I need to find a way to get TiVo.
Sounds like you could take a cue from my roommate. Seriously, she has the entire fall lineup printed out and highlighted. She and her friend have the whole week planned out. This includes: shows they will watch in each time slot, shows they will tape while watching other shows in each time slot, shows she will have her mom TiVo in each time slot (should there happen to be a third must-see show on in a given time slot), and a schedule of when the backlogged/taped/TiVo’d shows will be watched so as not to fall behind for the following week. Whew. I’m confused.
It’s good for me, though, because I get so fed up with the schedule and its egregious overlooking of America’s Next Top Model that I boycott TV and get other stuff done.
dude, i was gonna make some huge “you’re so talented, you should write a zine or read a book or do some choreography for flag tossing instead of watching tv anyway” statement, but then you said the magic word:
survivor.
i forgot a new one just started. any chance you can send me that tape? :-)
i will say (in response to the above commenter) that it sometimes blows my mind how tv-centric people are.
of course, they are probably not as internetty as me, so.
there’s so much on TV i’ve never seen simply because i’m typically busy in other ways (i.e. trying to get work done on my online classes). i didn’t consciously cut it from my life, it just doesn’t fit, y’know? when i lived with sam he tried to get me to get direct tv/tivo, and i was like, “you can do that, but i am sure not going to pay for it.” and i kept thinking that when you need to tivo two things at once you might be watching too much tv.
TV seems to absorb a lot of people’s time; we live just outside of good local broadcasting range, so chose to forgo satellite/cable so that we wouldn’t feel driven to “get our money’s worth”.
That allows us to spend more time interacting with real people, reading, enjoying hobbies, going for walks, and surfing for news.
I don’t feel I have missed anything of value being tuned out. Indeed, life is at a more relaxed pace since we stopped watching TV.
However, I wish I had DirectTV to watch the following shows;
DirecTV Channel 375 , Dish Network Channel 9410 Link-TV
First, On Saturday, October 1 @ 8 PM EST
The Oil Factor, Behind the war on terror
Second, On Sunday, October 2, @ 10 PM EST
End of Suburbia (this one I REALLY want to see)
I’m totally doing what Erin’s roommate is. I have an Excel Spreadsheet at home and bought another Tivo for them to use to record things for me. I can’t get local channels on my DirecTV here so I have to do all that from home. I can get some quasi fuzzy CBS and NBC with rabbit ears but that sucks… I’m addicted to TV… and If I didn’t watch it, I would feel that a big part of my life was missing.. I’d die. Seriously
not in the budget?! where are your priorities?
; )