September 2007 Archives

About 16 months ago I decided that I was tired of having dozens of remotes to control my extremely robust (overly complicated) AV center. After doing a little research, I came to the conclusion that the Logitech Harmony 880 remote was the ideal solution. It's a universal remote with a programmable color screen. You hook it up to your computer, tell it what equipment you have, how they are connected and what you would like o to with them and it automatically programs the remote so you can, for example, press a button (virtually) labeled "Play Xbox" and the remote will send out all the commands to all the components that are needed to make that happen. It remember the state of you equipment too, so if while in "Play Xbox" mode I press "Watch TV" it knows the TV and the receiver are already on, so it doesn't mess with their power, it just switches the inputs, and turns off the Xbox.

This has worked brilliantly. Flawlessly, with a wide variety of hardware.

Until about 6 months ago.

One of the neat things about the remote is that it comes with a built-in, rechargeable battery and a charging cradle. Pop the remote into the cradle, and you never need to worry about changing the batteries.

So, when the charging cradle began to act flaky, it was a bit of a problem. It started out with just needing to jiggle the remote to get it to sit right, this it required putting a book on the remote to get it to make proper contact. Finally it just stopped charging.

I called Logitech and after a short time they determined that my cradle was probably defective and they offered to replace i for free, which was VERY nice, since I am 6 months out of warranty. Then again, after doing some reading on the internet it appears that this is a pretty common problem that they admit to, so I was not too surprised.

No, what surprised me was that today I got an email from Logitech apologizing that the cradle had been on backorder for two weeks (they told me that it would be back ordered on the phone, so no surprise) and that instead of making me wait, they are just going to send me an complete replacement, brand new cradle and a brand new remote. A BRAND NEW REMOTE. To someone that is out of warranty.

So, if you ever need a super expensive remote to tame you AV center, I would have to say I can really recommend the Logitech Harmony remotes. That's it, just felt like sharing.

I'm not sure whether I don't have anything to post about, or if there are simply so many things that I could post about that I am paralyzed by a plethora of possibilities.

I am finally getting around to watching the first season of Heroes, which is very good, but doesn't grab me the way that Lost does. Seriously, Heroes is filled with all these completely unbelievable coincidences and pre-existing relations between characters that are completely ridiculous, while the characters in Lost have intricately detailed and cross-linked back stories that intertwine in surprising and delightful ways. Totally different.

I should probably also have been posting about Bioshock. Not because it's an excellent video game (especially if you haven't already played the two System Shock games that came before it), though it is, but because of the surrounding chaos I have experienced. Shortly after getting Bioshock (about 15 hours into the 20 hours of game play later), my Xbox 360 decided to stop reading Xbox 360 game discs, going so far as to actually scratch up the shiny new Bioshock disc. This is the second time that my Xbox 360 has done this, and normally something like that would be irritating enough to post about it. Not these days though, I don't know why.

You would think that the current political scene, with our forces winning a great victory that will let us go back, a year from now, to a deployment only slightly higher than what we have last year (oh, also we are out of soldiers) would be enough to stir me up to write something. Wrong though. Anyone that does not already realize what a fiasco this whole thing is will not be swayed by another post about it at this point.

Even Larry Craig couldn't drum up my interest.

Even seeing someone for the last few months has not resulted in anything postable, possibly because it's going well, possibly because she is a pretty private person and would be averse to blogging her, and possibly because no one but Marcus could possibly fully appreciate the flat out, mind warping, face melting weirdness of the situation. Trust, it would blow his mind.

In any case, there is no point to this post except to remind myself that there are things that I could be posting about, but that I am not. The thought being that maybe this will encourage me to write more, which I have not been doing much lately. The reality being that, looking over the topics above, there is just really nothing interesting to anyone but me there to post about.

I probably need to just start making up stuff and posting it without labeling it as fiction again. You would be surprised how many people freaked out about the moving into my cubicle story.