Since the last two music posts I have written went straight down the tubes, as these things are wont to do, I am not too worried about this post being read at all. It might have something to do with the new version of Wordpress, but after Repoohblic of Dogs was stricken with some mighty affliction I am not eager to switch to any new version of Wordpress. As I am not an administrator I know it isn’t my choice, either.

The Federal Reserve is a group of bands and musicians or musicians and bands. I am not really sure how many people are involved in this fantastic endeavor but there are eight bands and their relationships have been described to me as “kind of incestuous, really.” On the first Monday of the month, The Federal Reserve and many other local indie darlings/rockers/wannabes gather at Iota Club and Cafe for an evening of music. The atmosphere is relaxed and fun and seems more like a house party full of musicians. A guy may be up on the stage playing a slow rambling song about his horrible family with only a backing guitar at the start of the set and have a drummer, bass player and backing vocals by the end of a song. A lot of the music can be described as indie-americana, despite the cringiness of that term, but how else would you describe a sound created from a blend of bluegrass and rock without being country?

Last night, my ladyfriend and I arrived shortly before Anchorage started their set. Though not part of the collective, they are pretty good and I am looking forward to seeing them again. John Bustine came next and he started with an awesome song about people called “Tough Shit.” I didn’t catch the name of the last group of three guys but they^* The Moderate went on next and were also good. The guitar was more blues inspired. My ladyfriend and I had to take off because it was getting late and work ruins our fun rather consistently. The exhaustion I feel now is totally worth it.

I hesitated to write about this wonderful event because it has become one of the highlights of my month and feels almost like this little secret place I know that none of the cooler than thou indie bitches from my side of the river would dare go. I like being able to ask a musician a couple questions while I get a beer. I will freely admit that I am a complete wannabe and the closest I get to rocking is air guitar and the medium setting on Guitar Hero.

*I am a frigging doofus. I was reminded that these guys are The Moderate by the lovely ladyfriend and the band only had to say that like four times for me to totally space on it less than 24 hours later.

So last Sunday, a week and a half after I received confirmation that my TiVo had arrived at the TiVo service center, I started getting annoyed that I had not yet received my new TiVo. Frustrated and wanting some confirmation on the status of my replacement TiVo, I called the customer service number.

After about 10 minutes on hold … during which they played annoying hold music the entire time. An operator comes on the line and wants to know what I’m calling about. Never mind that I went through thes stupid phone prompts to give them all this information before I ever talked to a human, they are then asking me for it again.

After I give her all my information, she says she’s going to put me on hold for a second and look it up. About 5 minutes later she comes back on the line and says, “Now this is the TiVo that we just received on January XX, right?” I confirm and she asks me some more unrelated questions and then says that she’s going to need to put me on hold for 2-3 more minutes to check on the status.

About 5 minutes later, she comes back on the line and is like, “Ok, it says here we just got it on January XX.”

Too which I can only think, “Right, you said that before you put me on hold 5 minutes ago.”

Then she continues on and says, “Well, our system says to expect to wait 5-7 business days from when it was supposed to ship out before we can take any action.”

Argghh, did it really have to take 25 minutes of my time just for you to tell me that you can’t do anything? So I ask her, “Well, my TiVo broke over two weeks ago and I’ve now lost at least 14 days off my warranty period because of your faulty product and poor shipping choice, could you at least reset my warranty back a couple days because of this?” To which, she obviously answers no and further clarifies that there is exactly zero things she can do for me.

So I hang up the phone frustrated and annoyed.

The next day though, I get another email from TiVo telling me that my unit is going to ship in 1 -2 Business Days. That’s strange, I think, because I thought my TiVo was supposed to arrive in 1-2 days. Was that nice useless lady on the phone lying to me? The answer I think, would be yes.

So Early Wednesday morning I get another email from TiVo, this one has a tracking number for FedEx ground and an item list. It shows a scheduled arrival date of Friday, February 10. Great, I think to myself, it’s going to come while I’m out of town. But as I check it out further, it says that the item they are shipping to me is an 80 hour TiVo. The original unit I sent in was a 40 hour unit. So I think they just bumped me up to a better unit.

I won’t be able to comment for sure until I inspect the unit that actually arrives but I’m cautiously optomistic. If I just had to spend $8 for shipping and 2 weeks of non-TiVo-ness for an extra 40 hours of storage space, I’ll be quite happy with the deal.

So a week and a half ago, I come back from going to the gym on Sunday and try to watch the episode of Meet the Press that my TiVo was supposed to record. Instead, when I turn on the TV I just see the screen frozen on what looks to be an episode of the Power Puff girls. I try changing the channel with the remote but nothing works. Getting desperate, I unplug the TiVo and plug it back in.

After plugging it back in, everything seems to be working fine (well, except that it didn’t record Meet the Press … it had been stuck on Cartoon Network since sometime after it recorded an Episode of Big O). I was going about my day as usual when my roommate comes up to me and says, “Your speakers are making a buzzing noise.”

The speakers are just a year old and are well taken care of so I didn’t really believe him. I assumed that he had messed something up and that his Xbox was probably causing problems or vibrating or something. Still, when I went to go investigate I could definitely hear the buzzing. Then as I slowly unplugged components I was left with only one device … the TiVo.

I could hear it buzzing and it stopped when I unplugged it so I thought maybe the fan is just rubbing against a cable. So I stick the eraser end of a pencil into the fan vent stop it from rotating. The buzzing continues though. The next step was to take the TiVo into my room and try plugging it into a different circuit (a solution that some people on the TiVo support bulletin boards suggested). Unfortunately that didn’t work.

Still curious as to what exactly was making the buzzing noise, I popped the cover off the TiVo and took a look. It was pretty obvious that the noise was coming from the hard drive (which was only a 40GB drive … I should totally replace that, or add a second hard drive or something). The weird thing was that if I turned the TiVo on its side, the buzzing stopped.

Anyway, I quickly called up TiVo support and explained the issue to them. They said it was most likely a hardware problem and that I needed to RMA it. Unfortunately for me, even though it was under warranty, they weren’t willing to pay shipping to get it back to them (and since it was a gift, I didn’t have the receipt to just take it back to the store).

So I FedEx Grounded the TiVo back to them and got an email on Thursday saying that they’d received it and that my new replacement TiVo would be sent out in 2 business days. Now I’m just trying to kill time until I get it (at which time I’ll have to go through the whole initial setup thing again … ouch).

Anyway, cross your fingers and hope that the new TiVo will be arriving in the not too distant future.

[Update 12/30/2005 6:30 PM]

The TiVo has arrived … too bad I don’t have a ph
one line to activate it yet. Stupid TiVo!

Oh well, I’ll figure something out.

[Update 12/30/2005 2:46 PM]

Ok, I spoke with my brother yesterday and he said that the package was shipped via Parcel Post. Doing some quick recon on the USPS web site (and their rate calculator), I can see that they estimate an 8 day transit time for the TiVo.

I know it shipped out last Monday morning. That would mean that this Thursday would have been the earliest that it would have arrived (with Monday having been a holiday).

Hopefully, it’s safe in its journey and will arrive to its loving home soon.

[Original Post]

As we enter Day 4 of TiVo Watch, I find myself becoming more and more accustomed to waiting for the TiVo and less and less thinking about whether the TiVo will arrive. When it does get here now, it will seem quite serendipitous and out of the blue.

I’ve learned to start coping with the waiting by stealing my roommates Netflix DVD’s and watching those. Of course, it doesn’t help when he rents movies like The Punisher (not because it’s bad, but because I’ve already seen it–twice).

I did manage to catch a rather funny film by Michael Showalter though. He was in The State and Stella (which was on Comedy Central this summer). The movie is called The Baxter and is essentially a tale about the other guy in romantic comedies. You know, the one that always gets dumped when she finds her one true love at the end. It’s got an excellent cast, a good soundtrack, and a clever premise. It’s very well executed and quite enjoyable. I recommend you check it out. Well, either that or an excellent movie like The Thunderbirds … that’s good to.

Anyway, back to waiting for the TiVo.

[Update: 12/28/2005, 10:28 PM EST]

Still no TiVo. I am really hoping my neighbors didn’t steal it. I didn’t get any mail at all today though, so maybe the mail carrier was just being lazy.

Hmmm, to read this post and its updates is slowly watching my descent into madness.

[Update: 12/28/2005, 10:30 AM EST]

No TiVo yet. Why do you hate me post office and mail carrier?

[Original Post]

No, this isn’t about my impending visit to see Butterstick. Instead, it’s waiting for a recently shipped package. During my trip home for Christmas–Christmas Eve to be exact–I was informed by my brother that I will now be the proud owner of a TiVo.

Needless to say, I was speechless. Hopefully the goofy grin I had on my face expressed how awesome of a gift it was.

It is unfortunate that I was only able to come up with a gift that was quite pedestrian (a CD and a couple of DVD’s … one of which he already had). I’ve got 6 months to come up with something cool for his birthday.

As I said earlier though, I will be the owner of a TiVo. You see my brother (quite wisely I now believe after an earlier luggage mishap) decided to ship my gift to my apartment at home instead of bringing it across numerous state lines to my grandparents only to have me lug it across numerous state lines back home (on an airplane). So I will be getting a TiVo, that is, when it gets delivered. And with that knowledge, the worrying began.

Let me state first about things getting shipped, that I’m horrible about it. If there is an online order status page, I’ll check it compulsively. Waiting for things that I know should be coming drives me insane.

To exacerbate the situation though, it came out in a conversation that my brother didn’t put my apartment number on the package. I don’t think this should really be a problem, there are only 7 apartments at my address and I get plenty of other mail. But still, I’m now stressing out that they won’t deliver it. Add to the fact that I’ve seen delivered packages sitting in front of my neighbors’ doors for days at a time and I get afraid that someone has stolen the package after it was delivered.

I mean, I also know that the package has been insured so, if in case it doesn’t come in the next couple days, we can inquire with the post office and hopefully my brother can get reimbursed for it. Once he has cash in hand we can quickly begin the quest to acquire another TiVo.

Until then though, I get to sit in my office at work and wait. And wait. And wait ….

While doing this, this should be great. I’ll be able to TiVo all the shows I’ve been missing by spending time at the gym. I’m so excited!

Now I just have to figure out how to keep my roommate from using it …