Great TiVo Deal
/I've been a TiVo user since 2000, and I've loved every minute of it. I saw today that if you buy $100 in Dockers clothing from JC Penney, they'll give you a free TiVo. Hmm, I could use some new pants...
R.I.P. Six Feet Under - No Spoilers
/One of the best shows ever on TV goes out with one of the best finales I've ever seen, making us laugh through tears and feeling sad and hopeful all at the same time. I'm going to have the music from the last several minutes in my head for days. Fortunately, Holly already purchased it from iTunes, though you have to do the whole album (which is great) to get it. Now pass the Kleenex...
Six Feet Under - No Spoilers
/Without spoiling it for others, let me just say that tonight's episode of Six Feet Under was some of the best television I've ever seen. I'm going to be sad when this show goes off the air, what other show uses a word like Ecotone?
The Greatest American
/The Discovery Channel is running a series about deciding who the "Greatest American" is, and we, the people get some voice in deciding. To me, it's all bogus though, as their list of nominees doesn't even include Norman Borlaug.
He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for his work in increasing wheat yields, and is widely credited with saving more human lives than anyone else in history. I'm not talking about saving a dozen people, or saving a thousand people, or even saving a hundred thousand people. Norman Borlaug's work has probably saved the lives of more people than live in your entire state. His work is what has kept millions of people from dying of starvation worldwide.
To see that somehow Borlaug isn't even ranked in the top 100 Greatest Americans is extremely depressing. To see Borlaug left off in favor of Tom Cruise, Bret Favre, Mel Gibson, Michael Jackson, and Donald Trump makes me profoundly sad.
We, as a society, value two religious nutjob actors, a football player, a pedophile weirdo, and a slezy real estate developer more than Norman Borlaug? Where's the "culture of life" crowd now?
Did I also mention Borlaug is originally from Iowa?
Value of Various TiVo Rewards
/I was feeling bored while I installed a server today, so I took the opportunity to calculate the various values of the new TiVo Rewards structure. You get 5,000 points for referring someone to TiVo, but the actual “value” you get from that referral depends greatly on what you spend your points on. Unless noted otherwise, all prices came from Amazon.com:
| Item | Points | Price | $/100 Points | $/Referral |
| 20GB iPod | 25000 | $299.99 | $1.20 | $60.00 |
| Bose QuietComfort 2 (Crutchfield) | 25000 | $299.00 | $1.20 | $59.80 |
| Creative Zen 20GB Portable Media Center | 45000 | $471.99 | $1.05 | $52.44 |
| Nikon Coolpix 5200 | 35000 | $349.99 | $1.00 | $50.00 |
| 140 hour tivo - Rebate | 25000 | $229.99 | $0.92 | $46.00 |
| Humax DRT800 - Rebate | 35000 | $319.99 | $0.91 | $45.71 |
| iPod Mini 4GB | 20000 | $179.99 | $0.90 | $45.00 |
| Colored TiVo remote (TiVo.com) | 4000 | $34.99 | $0.87 | $43.74 |
| Pro Installation (TiVo.com) | 15000 | $129.99 | $0.87 | $43.33 |
| Delphi MyFi | 35000 | $299.99 | $0.86 | $42.86 |
| Phonex PX-441 | 7000 | $49.99 | $0.71 | $35.71 |
| iPod Shuffle 512 | 15000 | $99.99 | $0.67 | $33.33 |
| DWL-122 (Buy.com) | 7500 | $41.76 | $0.56 | $27.84 |
| 40 Hour TiVo - Rebate | 20000 | $79.94 | $0.40 | $19.99 |
| Linksys USB200M | 7500 | $24.99 | $0.33 | $16.66 |
