Posted by onetruebob74 on January 26, 2009
So, it’s been a while since my last update. Not from lack of things to talk about, but lack of time to post. I’m going to try and be better and make time to post. I have a few in the oven right now that I will hopefully release over the next few days.
Anyway, the reason for this post is to talk about my two-year old and her sleeping habits. So, my wife and I have been pretty spoiled over the first two years of our daughter’s life due to her sleeping fairly well. There really hasn’t been many problems related to sleep. In fact, she got to the point to where she was regularly sleeping until 7:00 in the morning. Unfortunately, something changed around four weeks ago, she decided 5:30 was the time to wake up.
Now, for people who enjoy sleeping late, 5:30 has been rough on us. I did the requisite googling of the subject and found primarily three reasons/solutions. One was that she was going to bed too early. Well, she typically goes to bed at 8:00 at night and pushing that out would be hard since she’s exhausted by that time, so pushing the bedtime out is a no go. Another was that she wasn’t going to bed early enough and that her brain was all wired up. So, I started putting her to bed early. The first night I backed her bedtime up to 7:30 resulted in a 6:30 wake-up the next morning. I thought I had it. Unfortunately, future attempts resulted in the same 5:30 wake-up as before, even when I tried making bedtime 7:00.
It seems the third reason is the one that applies to my daughter, and that’s just that she’s an early riser. So, my wife and I are just having to suck it up and get up with her early in the morning. Luckily we can alternate mornings so neither of us is perpetually sleep deprived. At this point I’m just waiting on the time change and hoping my kid’s body won’t readjust sleep-wise to the new time.
Posted in Parenting | Tagged: kids, Parenting, sleep | Leave a Comment »
Posted by onetruebob74 on September 23, 2008
I’ve been a DirecTV customer for over 5 years now. I’ve been a happy user of the DirecTV Tivo units for that whole time. Anyone who has ever used a Tivo knows what a joy they are to use. Well, a few weeks ago the Tivo unit in my living room started showing signs of failing. Many shows it recorded ended up garbled, and one show would reboot the system when you reached a certain point into it. So, I decided to call in my 5 years of being a customer without receiving any free upgrades to see what I could get. I knew I wanted to go HD since I’ve had a HD TV for a few years now and haven’t had any programming to make use of it. I managed to get a 5 LNB dish for free and their HR22-100 HD DVR for $69 (they normally ask $199 for it).
This past Saturday the installer came out. Unlike my previous two installers, this guy knew what he was doing. He did have an accident and step through my ceiling, but other than that no complaints.
So, about the HR22-100… the HD is nice. It’s a big difference in picture quality (my wife doubted she’d be able to tell a difference, but she can). The interface is just okay. It’s probably due to my being spoiled by the Tivo, but I do have some issues. First up, the 30 second skip. On the Tivo, this instantly moves you forward 30 seconds. On this unit, it’s like a super fast forward for 30 secs. Maybe it’s a concession to the advertisers so you still get some sort of ad impression, but i don’t like it. Push the 30 sec. skip 4 times and it takes a good 6 to 8 seconds to get to where you wanted to be. Hitting the 30 sec skip button twice is supposed to take you to the end of the program, but that’s only worked once for me. Also, the unit feels a bit sluggish. The Tivo seemed to respond instantly, whereas I can detect about a half second delay when trying to do something with this unit. So far it handles basic DVR functionality just fine, it pauses, fast forwards, records, but I don’t like it as much as the Tivo. Finally, the remote. The Tivo’s peanut was a masterpiece of functional design for me. Everything was easily reachable by my thumb and getting anything done with it was quick and simple. The remote for the HR22-100 seems too busy to me. It seems they could have condensed some of the buttons functionality so the remote wouldn’t be so busy.
Overall I think it was a win for me as the quality of the HD image overcomes the shortcomings of the unit as a whole, but I just wish the recently announced new DirecTV HD Tivo unit was already available.
Posted in General Minutiae | Tagged: DirecTV, Entertainment, Gadgets, Technology | 1 Comment »
Posted by onetruebob74 on September 5, 2008
Sorry for the delay in getting a new post up, but the whole family has been under the weather recently. I have a few topics to cover, so you can expect more soon, but for now let’s touch on the most topical. I’ve now watched both Obama’s and McCain’s acceptance speeches and thought I’d give some feedback.
First up was Obama last week. I’ve liked Obama for a while, but have never been really excited about him. My first choice for the Democratic ticket would have been Biden. He never really got any traction, so I backed Hillary in the primaries early on. She started to lose me when she really started to go negative against Obama, but by that point I’d already voted for her. So, while I’ve been supporting Obama for a while now, it’s been more of a default stance than an excited one. However, after listening to his acceptance speech you can now put me in the excited column. He took it to the Republican party in a way I wish Gore and Kerry had. He talked about what was wrong (though not all… hello torture?) with the current administration and what he would do to fix things. It’s one of the best political speeches I’ve ever heard.
Last night we had McCain. Granted, he’s not the greatest of speech givers, so I had low expectations going in, but my reaction really surprised me. Given the stances he takes, I expected to be really angry about the speech, but it was even worse… I WAS BORED! Dear god, how I was bored. My eyes started to glaze over at the same old tired rhetoric the Republicans have been using for years. It was really hard to not just drift away and think about something more exciting, like cutting my fingernails. If had been straddling the fence about whom to vote for (and admittedly I wasn’t), I can’t imagine McCain’s speech convincing me of anything besides the fact he was going to keel over soon. That would leave us with Palin which sends a shiver down my spine.
So, to sum up, Obama was inspirational, McCain was tired. Obama was engrossing, McCain was boring. I don’t like being bored.
Posted in Politics | Tagged: Barak Obam, John McCain, Politics | Leave a Comment »
Posted by onetruebob74 on August 16, 2008
So I finished watching the “Forum on Faith” attended by both Obama and McCain and thought I’d share some of my initial impressions.
Obama was up first tonight, and I thought it was an okay performance. Actually, performance was the wrong word. I think unlike McCain, Obama sat down and answered the questions with what seemed to be his honest beliefs. I did not agree with all of Obama’s answers. His stance against same-sex unions (even though he’s for civil unions) seems intellectually untenable to me. Also his support of faith-based initiatives makes me uncomfortable as I’m for a very rigid separation of church and state. Overall, I thought he was very direct and honest about his religious beliefs (which was the main focus of this forum anyway) and if nothing else hopefully finally put to rest the rumor that he is muslim.
McCain, on the other hand, seemed much stiffer and gave his answers in a much more “stump speech” fashion. Instead of addressing his personal faith, he seemed to try to hit the talking points much more than Obama. Like his response to wise people he would look to for guidance, he named Gen. Petraeus. That was his first answer and seemed like a very political answer to me. Another was his response to the Supreme Court justice question. He listed the four “liberal” justices and said he didn’t like them because they legislated from the bench. That’s straight out of the republican party talking points. Maybe it should be called the Straight Talking Points Express?
What surprises me a lot is how (almost unanimously) most of the talking heads on TV think McCain was great tonight and that Obama was too long-winded. I understand the need to give short answers sometimes, but this forum didn’t strike me as one of those times. I guess the bar was set so low for McCain that the fact he didn’t enrage and rip Rick Warren’s head off means he was the winner of the night.
Maybe it’s just their natural speaking patterns, but I was much more comfortable listening to Obama talk as opposed to McCain. McCain never really went into depth on a lot of the answers he gave; whereas, Obama had a lot of nuance with his answers. After eight years of Bush, nuance is nice. Being able to give detailed responses about how your beliefs/opinions came about is rather refreshing.
Posted in Politics | Tagged: Barak Obama, John McCain, McCain, Obama, Politics | 2 Comments »
Posted by onetruebob74 on August 15, 2008
Is it just me or has ABC News drank the McCain kool-aid? I used to be a big fan of ABC News and This Week has been my favorite Sunday morning news show for as long as I’ve followed politics (I always thought Russert over at “Meet the Press” asked way too many asinine questions). Now though ABC News is just starting to get on my nerves with their treatment of McCain over the past few months.
If you watched George Stephanopoulos’ past two interviews with McCain on This Week you’ll notice he really soft-balled McCain and didn’t challenge McCain on many of his suppositions, just went ahead and treated them as givens. As for ABC News’ presence in the blogosphere, there are some very stupefying comments by ABC’s Jake Tapper (late of “The Note”) on Political Punch, and I’m not the only one who thinks so.
Posted in Politics | Tagged: Media, Politics | Leave a Comment »
Posted by onetruebob74 on August 14, 2008
So why is it that becoming a parent turns you into a sap? While not everyone may agree with me on what constitutes good music, I’d be willing to defend most of my musical choices. Now though I find myself getting worked up over the most sentimental drivel out there.
An example… I station hop around the radio often when I’m in the car. While doing so I have come across a couple of songs that just totally get to me: “I Loved Her First” and “Stealing Cinderella.” While I am listening to them I consciously realize that these are not quality songs, they are very simple and schlocky, but yet I inevitably find myself getting all emotional over the lyrics. All this because I’m the father of a little girl.
It’s not just me… is it?
Posted in Parenting | Tagged: Parenting | 1 Comment »
