Off the Top

C was eating out the other night and noticed this curiosity. A father and mother were seated at a table with their six-year-old daughter. So far so good. But here is the problem. The whole time the couple ate, the six-year-old watched a movie on a portable DVD player. How sad!

A friend recently said that he liked the traveling, consulting life but his wife made him quit that life so he could help raise the children. Here we have a member the new castrati. I propose that the reality behind his statement is one of these three:

1. He really did enjoy life on the road but was not man enough to work that out with his wife; so his wife changed his mind for him.

2. He really wanted to help his wife raise the kids but was not man enough to tell me that; so he passed the buck to his wife.

3. He really wanted to get a different job so he could help raise the children, but he wasn’t man enough to take the initiative and do that; so his wife had to lend him some of her backbone.

Or maybe none of those is the case at all and my perception needs fine-tuning. Maybe he really has brass but (like most of us) isn’t in the habit of talking like it.

You know what’s a pain in the head? Trying to build a DVR computer and plan for the future addition of an HD TV at the same time. I was ready to pounce on the $130 HD tuner card from ATI when I realized that that card will only receive HD broadcasts over the air. Anything in HD on cable and even regular digital cable channels are going to require the digital cable box and be unreadable with the tuner card. It’s not that I have digital cable now or an HD TV now, but I fully expect that I will someday.

To top it off, I got a call from Charter on Friday and it turns out that they’re not even providing DVR anymore. They just give you the digital decoder and every show ever broadcast “on demand.” They wanted me to try it at a discount for three months and I told the guy I wanted to try it but I wanted more of a discount. To my surprise he wasn’t playing that game; so I passed.

Anyway, I don’t know where this technology is going right now so I’m going to stick with the tried and true VCR for now. It looking like I may actually be able to skip an entire generation of technology (that is, the standard definition DVR).

Only a few years behind my assertion that doughnuts are more deadly than cigarettes, New York City is thinking about banning the use of trans-fats by restaurants. As they say, “Doin’ good ain’t got no end!”