If you’ve Tivo’d the Oscars and haven’t watched them yet, then cover your eyes and plug your ears for this next annoucncement.

a clean sweep

So last week, my heater in the house went out. This coincided nicely with “Stormwatch 2004″ here in SoCal. The repair man was out by Friday and said that he had mistakingly brought the wrong part. However, I was assured that I shouldn’t worry because he would be back on Monday! At 6pm!

Nice.

Not to worry loyal readers, my concrete-walled home only dipped down to 58 F degrees overnight. Today, I pulled out the DuraFlame’s and built a masterpiece of a fire. So, now an entire half of my dining room is a toasty 64 degrees.

Smores, anyone?

On Saturday, Misty and her kid sis, Laine, took a trip to Disneyland with about a dozen of Laine’s friends. While there, Misty took the PowerShot S400 with her and snapped about 100 pics of the day’s activities. So, if you’re visiting my site to take a look at the pics, then just follow this link to the gallery. You can also visit my moblog and see a few shots taken from Misty’s Moto v300.

I’ll also take this chance to plug Laine’s blog over at lainesplace.com. Head on over and take a look at what’s happening in the life of this young equestrian, and tell ‘er Jeff sent ya.

Despite my recent dabblings with Tivo, I must say that ReplayTV offers the uber-geek everything they could want in a PVR.

Forget about being able to network recorded programming to other local Replay units, ignore the web-based scheduling capabilities of myreplaytv.com and we won’t even mention Commercial Advance. Tonight, I’m blogging about the virtues of storage upgrades. RepalyTV’s Windows-based storage format makes upgrades a breeze.

My 60 Hour Replay came with a 7200 rpm 80GB Maxtor Hard Drive and it just so happens that I had an identical Maxtor drive anxiously looking for a home.

By following a few simple instructions at rtvpatch.sourceforge.org, I had successfully added my HDD to the existing single-drive ReplayTV unit. Adding the second drive doubled my storage capacity and I now have about 160 hours at standard quality. Awesome.

While this news allows me to archive entire seasons of incredible TV (i.e. Curb Your Enthusiasm, Sopranos, etc) it’s really a victory for Misty & Leanne. Future re-runs of Queer of for the Straight Guy and Dawson’s Creek will have a safe home on the newly revived 160 Hour Replay.

Have I lost my mind? Did I just spend $250 + tax for an iPod only capable of storing 4GB’s of my cherished 30 GB MP3 collection?

Well…kind of.

A couple of friends have emailed in asking if I taken the plunge to the “mini” side. After looking at this afternoon’s moblog entries, I can understand the confusion. You see, it all began yesterday with a phone call from The Stone:

[Que flashback music]

“Dude, I want to get my Dad an iPod for his birthday.”

“Word”

[end flashback scene]

After a bit of searching (read: calling every CompUSAwithin a 60 mile radius), we found a sole remaining silver mini iPod at the Montclair CompUSA. The guys there were awesome and held it for us while we made the journey through 5pm traffic on the 10 freeway.

Now, I’ve been very vocal about Apple’s mistake marketing genius with the iPod mini and how insane it would be for anyone to spend $250 bucks on a 4 gig player when for $50 bucks more you could have the 15GB player! Well, after buying one (with someone else’s money) I can attest to the fact that these things are just straight cool.

As for size, the word mini really is an understatement. This player is easily smaller than your cell phone and makes my 30GB pod look like a small apartment. Combine that with the redesigned wheel (the button are integrated into the wheel and provide tactile feedback, unlike their full-sized iPod’s counterpart), smooth brushed metal exterior, and Apple has a real winner on their hands.

Now, the investment clearly is not for everyone, but if you are a casual portable music fan who only needs a small fraction of their entire libary with them, then the mini is an awesome choice. And in all fairness, the mini is only about $50 more than a comparable non-Apple MP3 player. The only question left is what color you should get?

Oh and if you’re interested (and I know that you are), ipodding has some pictures of a dissassembled mini iPod. You can always count on an Apple freak to buy an iPod as soon as it comes out and the to straightway begin to tear it apart. Nice.

In case you were curious, this is what $650 in coins looks like lodged in your stomach. Apparantly, this poor guy just started swallowing random objects one day. 350 coins later he started having GI problems and found his way into the ER. The guys over in the ER always have the best stories.

Click to Enlarge

Read the full story here.

“Thank you for calling DirecTV Mr. Carter, and have a nice day.”

“You too, thanks again.”

A long time fan of the ReplayTV series, I’ve been drawn to the dark side known as Tivo. Going off a hot tip from my buddy, Stone, I found out that DirecTV was secretly giving away DirecTivo units to customers with contracts to be renewed.

In case you don’t know, DirecTivo’s are these shiny boxes that function both as a DirecTV receiver and as a Tivo unit. Unlike standalone Tivo units, they have dual-tuners which allow recording of two shows simultaneously–and more importantly–allow you to watch one program while your girlfriend is recording Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. They also come with a reduced monthly fee. While with ReplayTV, I was paying $12.95 per month for the service, with DTV, I’ll be paying $4.99 for as many Tivo units as I want on my account. What a steal. By chosing the DirecTV route over stand-alone models, I’m giving up the Home Media Option which would allow network sharing of recorded content. However, Tivo is charging $100 to unlock the feature from each Tivo box. Way too much for this dent student.

So, I gave DTV a call and….

“Thank you for calling DirecTV, my name is Megan, how may I help you today?”

After little persuasion, Megan gave me the unit for free, credited me the 15 bucks for s/h, scheduled the free installation, threw in a free multiplex box (for running more than two lines from a two-line dish), and most importantly a $20 credit on my bill each month for the next 6 months! What did I have to commit to DTV in return? Nothing more than being a DirecTV customer for the next 12 months (which I was going to do anyway)!

So, if you are on DirecTV (is anyone still using Cable?) and you are interested in picking up a Tivo, call them up now!

This weekend, I’m going to recruit The Stone and work on upgrading the included 40gb hard drive to a more geek-worthy 120gb drive. Full details will of course be provided to anyone showing the least bit of interest!

I ::heart:: dental school. This week has really been great. But stop! Wasn’t I just complaining about waxing woes and the turmoil of midterms?

True.

However, nothing is better than when grades start rolling in and you’ve done well and made your Mom proud. My strategy in school has always been to do very well on the midterm exam and then just coast out to the final. My logic is that the midterm covers half as much information as the final exam, and quite often is worth nearly the same weight. So, if you can place yourself in high/near high of your class at midterm time, the rest is cake. (Well sort of.) The other secret? Surround yourself with people who are just as motivated to do well as yourself. Chris & David have made awesome study partners throughout this quarter. You guys rawk!

The dreaded occlusion lab went well too. No complaints. No broken cusp tips. And even a “10″ on disclusion. Awesome.

But my new found affection for school is mainly due to the fact that I’m beginning my duties as CDA (California Dental Association) Student Rep for our class. Pretty awesome. The CDA is flying me out to Sacramento tomorrow for a day long Leadership Conference. While on the surface this may sound mundane, it feels very empowering to confront issues that directly affect me as a dent student now and as a professional in the future.

Well, my 4:45am ride to the airport will be here sooner than I think, so I must get packing. A detailed report, complete with color pictures will be up after I get back.

P.S. Misty, I miss you!

My patience/interest in the Martha Stewart case is at an all time low. Regardless of how you feel about Stewart’s culpability in the ImClone controversy, could we all please agree not to use the term “Domestic Diva” when referring to her?

If I never hear the words Domestic Diva again, it will be too soon. CNN, FoxNews, MSNBC, I’m begging you!

Couldn’t we get some sort of online petition going?

You yourself are the mirror reflecting the solution of your problems. The human mind has absolute freedom within its true nature. You can attain your freedom intuitively. Do not work for freedom, rather allow the practice itself to be liberation.

–Philosophical Musings courtesy of Leanne

Polaroid issued an interesting press release yesterday. It seems that the popularity of Outkast’s tune, “Hey Ya“, with its catch phrase, “shake it, like a polaroid picture” is causing customers to damage their pictures.

The press release warns that shaking your freshly captured Polaroid picture can actually distort the image quality. Modern technology has added a clear plastic coat to the top of a Polaroid picture which shields it from the air and consequently eliminates the need for air drying.

As you can see, shaking “it” actually serves no purpose.

So, you’ve been warned loyal readers…resist the temptation!

Fox is crazy. While desperately trying to make sense of tyrosine kinase receptor cascades, I couldn’t help but overhear a Fox promo for “The Littlest Groom“. Yep, it’s like Average Joe for the vertically challenged. The “groom” gets to chose from contestants of similar heights, but in a twist, the folks at Fox will throw in ladies of “normal” height, just to spice things up a bit. Hilarity, and most important, reality ensues!

If only Fox would use its power for good instead of evil…

Mass hesteria swept Misty’s apartment as we found out that Dave Matthews won the Grammy for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance for Gravedigger from his solo debut, Some Devil. Usually, my interest in the Grammy Awards ranks up there with jury duty and watching paint dry. However, when one of your favorite artists actually has the potential of crashing the Grammy party, one’s interest is peaked.

This year, Misty & I were hoping that Dave would win over his fellow nominees (Bob Dylan, David Bowie and Lenny Kravitz) for Gravedigger. If you haven’t had the priviledge of hearing this tune, it really is incredible…whether you’re a Dave-fan or (_gasp_) not. Popular radio–following typical form–didn’t really care for the track, so if you haven’t heard it, do yourself a favor and pickup a copy of the award-winning Some Devil.

We are s-l-o-w-l-y making progress, my friends.

Parts of Patriot Act Ruled Unconstituional

Oh and if anyone from the Democratic party cares, I will vote for any candidate with the guts to repeal this consitutional atrocity.

I never thought that I would be so intimately familiar with wax.

“Wax?”

Yes, wax. As in the stuff that candles are made out of. It is also the material of choice for dental eductation. As dent students, we carve wax, flow wax and–if successful–form beautiful displays of occlusion out of it. A good wax-up is nothing less than a work of art and a bad wax-up is one of the most horrendous things you’ll ever see.

Now, I try not to burden loyal readers with my school day woes, but Occlusion Lab has really gotten the best of me. We take our first waxing quiz tomorrow (a delightful opportunity to wax a tooth to occlusion in a mere 90 mins) and I’m just hoping to have the minimum requirements for a passing grade.

Yes. It’s that tough. At least for now.

You see, something miraculous seems to happen once you’ve taken occlusion lab. It seems that everyone else you talk to is an expert and wonders how you can make such a big deal out of such a miniscule task.

I eagerly (read desperately) await that day.

Until then, where’s my PKT carver? (10 bonus JCDN points if you know what PKT stands for!)

UPDATE: Well, the wax quiz actually went OK. At the end of the 90 mins, I had my 5 points of occlusion that I needed on tooth #4 and I think I survived. This weekend, I’ve got to practice waxing up #4 and #29 into occlusion in preparation for the midterm exam on Monday. Wish me luck!