I find it interesting that while we used to get our data access via our voice lines, we now get our voice access via our data lines.

Saturday, I went to the Eventide prerelease. My lack of preparation wasn’t really an issue, as I was primarily a money-taker again. However, for Shards of Alara, I’ll be up in New Hampshire in charge of a new prerelease location.

Sunday, my brother (who deals with video processing for a living) and I fixed my home digital recording setup that I was having issues with. One of the other things I’d added to my cable system was a distribution amplifier. The amplifier improved the signal for my other digital devices (cable modem, and direct to the HDTV), as well as the devices reading the analog channels, but apparently it was too much signal for the digital tuner on the HVR-1600. We stuck another splitter on just the input to the digital tuner on the card, to reduce the signal by another 7dB, and that apparently attenuated the signal enough for it to work correctly. Rather odd, since the signal level it was getting before should have been pretty close to the level that enters the house, but everything seems to be working for now.

Last night, I managed to use the DVR (now on my wife’s computer) to record and play back HD digital programs, with wonderful quality. This makes me very happy, since doing that was one of the reasons I went with a computer DVR system in the first place.

But, it seems that it has trouble locking onto or getting some (or all) of the digital channels, some of the time. It seems to not work long enough to do a channel scan, or possibly the problem is worse with the channels on higher frequencies. It’s quite odd, and makes little (if any) sense. Sometimes the problem can be resolved temporarily by disconnecting the coax cable and plugging it back in, which seems really odd, since that doesn’t seem like something that should do much with coax cable. (And it took quite a while to figure that out, since I was thinking that my changing the coax cable, changing the ports on the cable splitter, and changing the cable splitter was actually doing something for a while, and then it’d stop working again. Where in fact, I think for some (or all) of my changes, it was merely the act of unplugging the coax and plugging it back in that make it start working again briefly.) It seems that the signal is okay, since my TV plugged into the same splitter can find the digital channels just fine, and I’m pretty sure that this all used to work when it was in my computer (I just couldn’t get acceptable playback of HD content). So, I’m a bit baffled for the moment.

• We recently changed the living-room-DVR computer from mine to my wife’s, since it’s more powerful, and she wanted to be able to play her games while sitting on the couch. We also recently purchased some new hardware for DVR purposes as well, including a 500 GB drive. I remember when 500 KB was a lot. Now, I’m not sure 500 GB will be enough. We also got some additional RAM, but one of the memory modules was bad, so I’ve shipped it back and am awaiting a replacement.
• This weekend, I’ll be working at the TJ Collectibles Hartford Eventide Prerelease. This could be interesting, since my only experience with Shadowmoor was a store release event, and I really haven’t judged since then. I’m looking forward to it
• Yesterday, I received a notice that I have jury duty again. I suppose the last time was more than 3 years ago, but I don’t think it could be much more than that. I found the last time rather interesting (probably because I actually served on a jury), so hopefully this time will be interesting as well. (Update: Last time was 2/10/2005. I thought I would have blogged about it.)

We got new glasses yesterday evening. (The glass portion, not the frame portion. It seems like the word “glasses” should convey that, but it doesn’t.) I’ve had my previous glasses for about 6 years, and apparently my eyes changed significantly during that time, but at a slow enough rate that I never really noticed.

The world is definitely clearer now. It’s like seeing the world in progressive mode instead of interlaced.

So, currently I get Internet and television from Charter. We’re on the most basic television plan, which really meets our minimal TV-viewing desires. However, Charter only has the digital signals from a few local channels, and for those that it does have, they’re additionally compressed and have the PSIP data stripped out. (Possibly some of that is in violation of FCC rules, or will be in violation starting in Feb. 2009. But I’m not sure, and I don’t think Charter cares.)

I am pleased to announce that I just received a copy of prohibitory order 2014665, making it illegal for Smart Shopper to send us mail, starting in 30 days and lasting for 5 years.

All laptops have a built-in UPS, and in fact one that generally can last at least a couple hours.

Why don’t all desktops have a built-in UPS? It wouldn’t have to be any bigger than the one that would be in a laptop. Usually, for the same cost a desktop gives you more features than a laptop, and it’s just silly in this day and age for a power failure to take out unsaved work on a computer.

Shaw’s, among many other retailers, is offering a promotion where one can buy a $330 gift card at a cost of $300, or a multiple of those numbers, any number of times, the theory being that government economic stimulus payments are often in multiples of $300, and they’d rather you spend it at their store.

I suspect that their POS system would allow one to pay for a gift card using another gift card. Gift card is a method of payment, and the cashier likely doesn’t even see what kind of card you’re swiping to make payment. (They just enter in a $330 gift card activation with a $30 store discount.)

A week ago, I would never have thought it possible to be so tired that I could sleep right through a baby screaming right next to me. :)