serna's blog: all the posting, with none of the useful information

Still haven't done any work on my book. I'm sure I'll get to work on it any day now... I'm actually doing more work on the book about Microsoft Word than on the Christian book, which is the one I really care about.

I notice that I mention the term "PVR" in my last post, but I forgot to mention what a PVR is. In case you're not familiar with the term, it's short for Personal Video Recorder. Think of it as a combination cable box and VCR; it makes it easier to record your shows with the click of a remote. But the nice thing is that it lets you pause and rewind live TV, too. (Basically, while you're watching TV, it's always recording in the background. So if you missed something, and want to go back and see it again, you can rewind and see the stuff the PVR recorded for you.) The other nice thing, which doesn't sound like a big deal but is, is that you don't have to watch the shows in order, if you don't want. But if you record your shows on a VCR, you pretty much have to watch them in the order you recorded them, unless you really want to do a lot of fast forwarding and rewinding.

It also lets me do picture-in-picture, which I was really looking forward to - I thought that was going to be a great feature, because when I watch TV, I always end up flipping between two shows. So, I figured with the picture-in-picture, I'd know when the commercials were over on one show, and I'd be able to just flip back. But, as it turns out, it's so easy to record shows with the PVR now that I hardly ever watch live TV anymore - I'd rather record it, and watch it later so that I can fast forward through the commercials. Ah well, c'est la vie.

I took my car in for service. Whoo boy was it expensive. It needed a lot of work, partially because it's three and a half years old now, but also because it was so way overdue for service, so I had to get a lot done at once. But the best part is that they fixed the weather stripping on the driver side window, so I don't hear wind coming in anymore when I drive over 70. So it's easier to hear my music when I'm on the highway.

We turned on the A/C for the first time on Sunday. I was holding back, figuring that it would be better to just cool the house by opening the windows, but Sunday was really hot and humid, so we figured it was finally time to switch it on.

And then, of course, Toronto Hydro went on strike at midnight, so for all I know the power will be off by the time I get home tonight.