Man, yesterday sucked. I hooked up my TIVO machine(records TV shows) so we could get it on line with the service and have the TV shows I'd recorded two years ago available to watch. I hooked it up to the telephone so it could do it's download of new show schedules. The screen popped up with all the shows that I had recorded. After it did it's telephone update, it tried to load the information so I could see it. I had planned on getting it set up with the converter boxes the government made us all buy. Well, after several hours of downloading the new information, it couldn't load the info so we could use it. I called TIVO to get some help. One was how to hook up to the converter box and two to find out how to correct the problem of the failed download. The tech told me how to hook it up to the converter box. No big deal. I simply needed a special cord to hook the two together. As to the failed download, he told me I needed to put it into a diagnostic mode where the software searches for bad files in the machine and corrects them. So with his help, I pushed the buttons to start it. It takes about three hours to do it's thing. Well, after three hours, it was still going at it. There was a message at the bottom of the screen that if it hasn't corrected the problem and the green screen was still there, to call for more help. I did just that. Hey, guess what? The wonderful tech at TIVO had just burned up the hard drives in the unit. What he didn't tell me was that if it didn't correct the problem, the process that I had started runs in a loop and just keeps doing it over and over again, There is no way to stop it so that you can see what the machine has on it's hard drive. For all intense and purposes, they had just destroyed my machine. BUT, they would be willing to sell me a new one for a couple of hundred dollars. Oh, plus as far as the subscription to their service went, well the life time subscription to TIVO that I had had just expired when the machine died. They would be happy to sell me a new subscription too!! Boy, did I get taken. The techs I talked to after the first one did the job on my machine had no idea why he had had me do what I did and apologized, but I would still need to buy all new gear if I wanted to continue with TIVO. So my TIVO is officially dead.

Next, I plugged in my IMac that I had used for several years. A great machine that has worked just about flawlessly. It booted up just fine after over two years of sitting. A list of updates popped up on the screen since it hadn't been used in so long. I, of course, being a good geek, clicked on them to do the required updates. First, Microsoft Office. Downloaded just fine. Then the screen popped up with more updates. Well, once it started them, it locked up with the "I'm working" rotating ball on the screen. I couldn't get it to stop so I could stop some of the downloads. I could get anything to respond. So, I did a hard shut down by holding down the power button. Off it went. When I tried to restart it, hey, guess what? It would start!!! It tries to and then shuts itself off. So, being the the smart guy I am, I made an appointment at the Apple Store to have it looked at in the afternoon. Guess what? The hard drive is fried on it too. I guess doing the updates didn't do me any good but did me a good bit of harm. And it had all started so beautifully.

So, now I have a dead TIVO and a dead IMac to store in my basement till I can figure out what to do with them.

As to the TIVO, there is a company out in California(Weaknees.com) that can fix them. They sold me two hard drives for the TIVO a few years ago when I wanted a larger storage capacity for the machine. I'll be emailing them to see if they can help. As to the IMac, well that will just have to wait for a while as replacing the hard drive isn't the cheapest thing to get done.

So that's how my day was yesterday. If you were a piece of electronics in this house, you had a bad day.