Frustration, thy name is TiVo

I must not be very bright, I imagine. I know there are countless people out there with TiVo, yet I find it increasingly difficult to set up my service. Whether it's a matter of the fates conspiring against me again, or simply an issue of sheer incompetence, the fact still remains that I'm incapable of making the TiVo gods appreciate my desire for their cooperation.

We set up the box, but it seems that the cable signal is a sometimes friend. Don't ask me why... to the best of my knowledge, everything is hooked up properly. On top of that, I have to wait until people in California wake up before I can actually activate the service, since I have a gift subscription and need special permission to so much as blink in the general vicinity of the TiVo box. Again, it could be my own genius that's making this all so difficult, but at this point there's no telling. Meanwhile, the wires in my apartment are multiplying... it is more machine than apartment now...

Speaking of which, Cinemax is doing a Star Wars marathon thing, showing all six episodes back to back to back to... well, six of them, naturally. This, suprisingly, matters. I can't say I've ever seen the damn things all at once and in their proper sequential context, so I figure it might make for good times. Besides, I married a walking trivia box when it comes to Star Wars, among other things. I can ask all sorts of random questions about the film... the movies, the related publications, the merchandising, George Lucas' dietary habits at the time of filming... and John will likely know the answer. Adds an enjoyable element to the whole thing, really. Besides, it gives him a reason for wasting so many years on learning so much otherwise pointless crap.

Oh, and as for the Halloween parade... there are indeed pictures, which will be coming along before too long. John's got them in his camera, or in his computer, and that means that I've yet to get my hands on them for posting. Not that anyone's waiting on baited breath for these things, but at least the word is out that they're en route. As for the rest of everything, we're busy as always. Nothing particularly dramatic going on (save my epic battle with the TiVo box)... school is insane in both our camps, working out at our posh gym gives us much needed solace, and New York is still very much New York (particularly now, being election season).

A bit of news that no one will care about... I got my IRB approval, which means I can finally start collecting data for the quantitative portion of my thesis. I still hate that I have to do things this way, but I'll do what I must. Mind you, I won't go down quietly; I still plan to refute my need for that sort of data in exploring my selected phenomenon. Sorry, but there's no way they're nudging me off my soapbox. I've also finally landed my placement with CASA (the Natioanal Center for Alcohol and Substance Abuse at Columbia University) as a research assistant on their LEAP program... I've been gunning for this position for a year now, and it's finally paid off. We're doing work on constructing a measure at the moment, and, once again, I have huge problems with the methodology. The nice thing about working with these folks, though, is that they seem to care about what I have to say, so my kicking and screaming about this theoretical garbage might not be a lost cause after all. We'll see how it goes. Meanwhile, John's off being impressive, which still makes me sick... sure, he works hard, but COME ON! He walks into situations that don't even seem real! You know what... I don't even want to talk about it right now. Ugh.

Of course, it couldn't be a day in the life without loss of it. Someone comitted suicide yesterday morning by throwing himself in front of the 1 train over by Columbus Circle, right by campus. If that wasn't enough, I received an email yesterday telling me that one of my friends from high school, Billy (nice guy among a slew of not-so-nice ones where I was concerned), was killed in Iraq. Chances are, no one reading this knew either of these people. Hell, I only knew one of them, and never very intimately. The point, I suppose, is that they weren't so far from me somehow. Death never is, one could say. We don't like to think about it, but then again, we're drawn to it all the same, and somehow we strike a personal balance without losing it completely. That is, unless you decide to end it all by throwing yourself in front of a subway train, in which case you've pretty much given up on balance. I say live, and do it as much as you possibly can. Somehow, at least in my experience, therein lies the balance.