Long story short: DirecTV is bitch slapping Microsoft for not integrating Satellite TV into the Media Center TV Pack 2008 release.  Since it was not integrated, the feature would have to wait until Windows 7. As much as MS is shooting for next year, DirecTV knows better.

It is still very depressing that DirecTV isn't going to stick it out. VMC won my heart when it could integrate many different sources into one UI creating a true 'set-top box experience' through a PC.  Integrating Satellite TV would be one more way to corner the market and provide something NOONE else can.

http://www.gearlog.com/2008/12/its_official_the_directv_hdpc2.php from http://thedigitallifestyle.com/cs/blogs/ian/archive/2008/12/09/no-directv-for-media-center.aspx

Chris was out shopping @ Circuit City and gets excited,"Do I want Bourne on Blu-Ray?" Fortunately, he realized he asked himself the wrong question and decided to snap a picture. I miss the HD format war. Reminds me of my Browncoat days.

I rely on my Nextel for emergency pages from our Police Dispatch Center. Their system pages out to Nextel phones only, but that's a different story.  For the past week and a half, I've been missing text messages. And I am not the one.

Luckily, our department has been semi-aware and we've been calling each other to relay the messages.  After each emergency call, I reboot my phone and all of a sudden the messages come flowing through.  I did a bit of some testing, and I get about 25% of text messages immediately.  The other 75% if have to reboot my phone to receive.

Nextel Customer Care confirmed this problem. They've had nationwide problems with delayed/missed text messages. Their official recommendation is to reboot the phone.

There is a good side to this though: the Nextel Customer Care center I got @ 11PM on a Saturday was in Washington, USA. The lady I talked to was extremely knowledgeable and very understanding.  That was enough to calm me down and make me think they were devoting their resources to correcting the problem!  I don't have a text messaging plan since I do not get enough emergency pages per month to make it worth my while to buy a text messaging plan. So I thanked the lady and asked if I could get reimbursed for all the test text messages I sent to myself.  Got this email a few minutes later

Dear: Peter Fattore

Telephone #:

Sprint has added a credit to your account for $2.80. The adjustment reason is Courtesy Credit. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you.


If you have any questions, please feel free to respond to this email. Thank you for contacting Sprint. Have a great day!

One of my machines is a nice EVGA 680i SLI Motherboard. She's sporting a RAID array of 2 WD Raptor HDDs, Core2Duo 1.86 Ghz overclocked to 2.8 Ghz, and a sexy LianLi case.

She has been my workhorse for a while now and hasn't let me down.

Recently, it has been a dedicated media center that my parents use. My father, becoming as nerdy as me (or maybe i got it from him), purchased a Seagate 1.5 TB SATA HDD: a beauty!  It would NOT take a format under ANY condition. Considering I had a variety of HDDs in there already with an extensive history configurations, I had come to the conclusion that the drive was faulty.  Receiving the replacement HDD, the same problem existed....

I was lost it. How could this happen?  The HDD fails a full format around 73% EVERY TIME, and it would never take a quick format. It also failed the Seagate diagonostics software! The twist: it will format on another machine!

So I decided to try some updated 680i chipset drivers. It fixed the problem immediately. The drive took a quick format, and I started a full format on her just to be sure. I generally expect stability fixes in driver updates, but this is one of the strangest/largest issue I've seen get corrected.

Either way, thanks Nvidia for correcting it.

Every morning to work is a blast. Generally involves school bus drivers clogging up rt 30 and schoolhouse, people not very awake at the wheel, people driving before defogging their windows, etc. Always exciting.

On a few roads, there are children at bus stops separated by only a home.  I've literally seen a bus stop 3 times in 1 block because they didn't consolidate the bus stops.  I had to walk to my bus stop and meet kids from blocks around when I was a kid (up hill both ways). Makes sense!  I'll let someone else to the math on how much fuel their wasting, but I'm honestly more selfishly concerned about having to stop 3 damn times for only 1 out of 3 good reasons. There also are the crossing guards in their cars sipping coffee and reading the paper in their cars while I'm forced to drive 20 MPH because it is so dangerous for kids. But that's a different story.

But, to the point, EVERY morning, I see people talking on their phones while driving to work, I presume.  Who the hell are you talking to?  My buddy Chris said he does that in the morning with his wife, but they're probably in a phase of some kind since they recently got married.  Good for them.  To the rest of you people out there... you suck at driving, you suck more in the morning, and you suck even more with that phone glued to your ear.  But seriously, maybe I just don't get it.  Maybe your radio in your car is broken, so you're calling to get the weather, or news or something?  Maybe you're calling your credit card company so you can get put on hold and listen to some music that makes 90% of people happy for the period of time they're on hold.

Educate me people....