Houston has been overcast and raining all week ... finally got a break today, actually saw the sun for the first time in like 10 days. I don't mind some rain, but it gets really dreary when you don't see the sun for a week or more.
Man, just got through with dinner and made myself the perfect baseball-watching food.
Took some spicy Italian sausage that I've had in the freezer for a while ... cooked it up with a little salt, pepper, olive oil, paprika, basil, and tarragon ... put that on a hot dog bun with chopped fresh red onion and little mustard. Totally awesome flavor ... hits with a zing at first from the mustard, onion, and paprilka, gets into the spicy smoldering sausage, and finishes with the sweetness of the basil & tarragon.
Had the Astros on ... they promptly fell behind and lost to St. Louis, so it felt even more like I was actually at the stadium. 
SomeJoe7777 wrote:
Houston has been overcast and raining all week ... finally got a break today, actually saw the sun for the first time in like 10 days. I don't mind some rain, but it gets really dreary when you don't see the sun for a week or more.
Man, just got through with dinner and made myself the perfect baseball-watching food.
Took some spicy Italian sausage that I've had in the freezer for a while ... cooked it up with a little salt, pepper, olive oil, paprika, basil, and tarragon ... put that on a hot dog bun with chopped fresh red onion and little mustard. Totally awesome flavor ... hits with a zing at first from the mustard, onion, and paprilka, gets into the spicy smoldering sausage, and finishes with the sweetness of the basil & tarragon.
Had the Astros on ... they promptly fell behind and lost to St. Louis, so it felt even more like I was actually at the stadium.
You describe it like the guy on Man vs. Food describes food.
At last the cold front rolled through today and gave us some relief. Last night we had some strange weather and the storms weren't supposed to roll through until noon today. We had one heck of a lightening/thunder storm right over the house and zero rain or hail. Have no idea what all the booming was going on up there without any moisture coming down. Maybe just too darn dry to hit the ground.
SomeJoe, sounds delicious and LOL about just like you were at the Astros game. I've been eating some great brats for half a week and posted this real good recipe here before.
Mentioned in the last WOTT thread my DVR needed replaced and had a very interesting conversation with a young Tier 1 rep named Mike today. He wasn't very knowledgeable but a real nice and helpful guy.
Called the new TS number (866-912-8216) and when answered, "Mike, Customer Care, ID XXXXX, can I help you?". This is the 1st time I've ever heard a rep give their ID # with an introduction. I asked him about this at the end of our conversation and he said all reps are now supposed to do this. Good deal.
Went on to explain that the DVR TV picture was freezing and I was seeing lots of pixelating, even on the recording. Told him I did a soft reboot and hard reboot of everything including the RG. Also told him I checked all the wiring connections and they were tight. Must have convinced Mike I knew what I was doing so he didn't make me jump through all the reboot hoops again. He checked my line status and said it looked OK. Set up an appointment for tomorrow morning from 8-12. Told him I wanted the larger HDD DVR (1225), mine was from 2008, I had the top TV plan and HD. He said it depends on what the tech has on his truck but that might be all they use now. We will see but at least with an early appt they should have the most equipment with them.
I asked Mike about TS splitting off from the CS phone number and him answering using "Customer Care". He said things are really "in flux" there and they are changing lots of things all the time. He had said he wasn't a technical person so I asked him what his position title was and he said, "Tier 1 Tech". But he said they were trying to do away with the Tier system since it really puts customers on hold for a long time while their calls are being transferred around.
Mike said in addition to U-verse services they are now answering lots of questions about mobile/wireless phones, ipads and iphones connected to UV TV, self installs of internet (IPDSLAM Service) and Voice, etc.. Those scripts must be getting huge.
I asked Mike if he was aware of the DD 5.1 audio drop out problems and he was not. Explained it to him and he asked a supervisor about it. The supervisor told him to tell me to use component cables and the problem is with the HDMI cable carrying this signal. Told Mike that is untrue and there are also drops through optical cables when using surround sound. Mike said there were lots of users calling in that were losing all audio through using HDMI. Know we've seen some of these users in the forum.
Overall a good conversation even though Mike was not real well versed on technical issues. Guess his great attitude in being honest and wanting to learn/help made up for that. Pretty wise for a young man too. Told him my wife was really ticked about her soaps being messed up and we better get the DVR replaced soon. He agreed and said, "A happy wife makes for a good life."
Hope the new DVR replacement goes smoothly.
Sorry about consecutive posts but wanted to give an update on the DVR replacement.
Tech called at 7:40 am and said he was on his way and be here in 1/2 hour. Arrived at 8am and didn't even turn his truck off. Turned out he was one of the two techs that did the original install. He replaced the Moto 1216 DVR with the larger hard drive 1225 and programmed in the TV remote code. Gave me a new remote and told us to keep the old one since working fine.
Showed him where the remote in the living room was real slow in turning the volume up/down. Told me the contacts were wore out, gave me a new one, and programmed in the TV remote code. Told him I was also having some problems with the remote codes for the TV in the kitchen. He also auto programmed that remote so it works the TV volume now. Volume was not working correctly before.
Had him look at the splitter/wiring on the outside of the house and I pointed out where some of the runs were old Directv coax and maybe 8-9 years old. He said everything looked fine, they reuse RG6 coax older than that, and the rubber connector boots were still in good shape.
As we walked out to his truck he gave me another new remote in case another wears out. He said he carried 20 on board since they do go bad. Thanked him for all his help and he left at 8:20am.
Without a doubt Central Ohio has some of the best technical support and techs in the country. In 20 minutes the tech replaced the DVR, programmed 3 remotes with TV codes and checked out the splitter/cable connections. I'm a happy camper and these techs are excellent. 
Will do SKP.
But I know one thing. "An unhappy wife makes for a horrible life!"
SKP, does that number replace the old ones or just an addition to them?
We got home about 7:10 PM last evening concluding a 2,000 mile trip. I drove 640 miles yesterday and 400 miles on Saturday. Amazingly I was not super tired last night. Might have had something to do with the copious amounts of caffeine I consumed in Cokes. Which also required frequent stops to empty my holding tank.
I-35 was in pretty good shape......even in Oklahoma. That state is a nightmare to drive through. I refuse to drive over the posted speed limits. Apparently Oklahoma had a big cut in the highway patrol's budget two or three years ago and now there is virtually no speed limit enforcement on their interstates. We did not see one single law officer from the Texas state line all the way to north of Emporia, Kansas. Hundreds and hundreds of Oklahoma licensed cars were driving 5 to 15 mph over the legal limit. We had some highway construction sites which were posted at 60 mph....which is what I drove while going through them. Needless to say I got lots of obscene gestures and even an 18 wheeler angrily honking his horn because he wanted to drive faster in the construction zone. Needless to say I breathed a sigh of relief when we made it through that crazy state. I always dread driving through Oklahoma but going around it is far out of the way for us.
It was good to get home and Alfie has slept most of the time since we arrived. He enjoyed his walk this morning. Had to check out every new odor so it went rather slowly.
I spent a lot of time fixing friends' computers while we were visiting. But I don't mind. I'm happy when I'm successful and sad when I'm not. One fellow's built-in HDD was so full and so thoroughly fragmented that I had to move 7 gb of files off to an external drive to make room for the defrag program to work. However I was unsuccessful even then. I tried two different programs and they could do nothing with it. Fragmentation remained at 59%. Never saw so much red color in all my years playing with computers. His computer worked pretty well so I had to walk away from it. I wanted to format the drive and reinstall the OS. But he would not give me the OK to do that. At my low pay grade I did not know what else to do. I had already deleted about 2,400 temporary files from the TEMP folder. Also I used the EUSING registry cleaner which discovered over 6,000 errors in the registry. Got that cleaned up and held my breath when I rebooted the laptop. Believe it or not it still worked. But still no luck with the defrag operation. I laughingly suggested he purchase a new laptop to replace the 7 yr. old unit. (It still used Win 98).
The other friend's desktop was similarly congested but I got it cleaned up and it was running well when I left. He runs a VERY heavy duty flight simulator program which puts lots of demands on his PC. He needs more RAM and a faster processor. But the one he has does amazingly well. On a previous visit, last year, I had successfully enabled a wireless link through his in-home net and the AT&T broadband modem so that he could access his printer through the desktop...from his laptop in the living room. Somewhere along the line that got screwed up and, frankly, I could not remember how I accomplished that trick so I was unable to get that wireless link up again. Otherwise all was working well when we departed.
We have quite a few recorded TV shows to watch. The UV system worked perfectly....unattended....while we were gone so the HDD is fairly full. It will give us something to watch on Saturday nights when the networks are so terribly lacking.
Seems to be quite a bit to catch up on here on the forum. I'll start working on that. Hope y'all (been to TX you know) are feeling well and keeping Wendy awake.
Glad you had a safe trip and welcome back Phil. Sounds like you had a great time working on computers and hard drives. Yuk.
Had remote access to my Mom's PC the other day and her printer wouldn't work. Was in a chat for 2 hours with HP through her PC while directing her by phone to rip all the ink cartridges (6) out of her printer and replace them. Also had her do a soft reboot, hard reboot and mess with the wiring. Wasn't pretty.
Skp, I just thought those Roman numerals were for a future Super Bowl.
Phil, yes that is the new number (866-912-8216) for TS and they are no longer connected to the CS direct number (800-983-2811). In fact TS answers to "Customer Care" but it is still for technical support.
Thanks for the number guys. I have written it on my little list in my chair-side table drawer.
I was really sorry that I could not get my friend's printer set up to be accessible from his laptop. I tried to talk him into buying a new HP all-in-one PhotoSmart Premium unit like mine because it has the wireless feature. In my own case the printer "sees" the RG and our laptops are able to access all features of the printer & scanner wirelessly through the RG. There is about 40 feet of distance and 4 walls for the signal to pass through. Now I wish my 1 TB external HDD had wireless capability so that I could access it from my laptop. Do any of you know of any external HDD's that have this ability built in?
S.J., can I come over for a snack? I've tried numerous times to persuade my wife to let me buy a bread maker but she says she has enough problems now controlling her weight without that extra temptation of home-made bread. Enjoy the calories S.J.
I have had two bread machines, Joe. My first was back about 1990, ordered from DAK (miss their catalog!). It was the one that looked like a robot. I made lots of bread for work. They would fight over the bottom crust. I gave that old machine to my dad and we got a new one in 2000. I haven't used it in a while. Maybe a Garlic-Parmesean bread needs to be made?
Thanks for the info Ed.
It's about time I back up my files/photos and I've been bit bad before too. Was copying all of them to CD's as a backup and a real pain.
Unfortunately the WD rep said my older version of XP does not have any backup features. He did say that Windows 7, which I have on my laptop, has very good built in back up.
The rep recommended "Softonic" for free external HDD back up software but I'm seeing it's just a clearing house for all types of backup software. Many are just a free trial and some are aimed at businesses. I'll have to look around some more.
Sounds like you are really well backed up Ed. Better safe than sorry and I'd like to be there someday.
Vampiress?
Thanks Uni for the leads. I have two external HDD's. #1 is my Western Digital "My Book" 1 TB unit. The other is one I cobbled together from an older 40 GB drive out of a junked laptop....and a little case and USB interface I purchased from Micro Center for $5.99 which fits the 2.5 inch HDD perfectly. I slip this one into my laptop carrying case when we travel.
I don't do backups in the traditional way...with software that compresses everything. I want all my image files instantly accessible. So I just copy everything, images and documents, to the external units AND to DVD's which are stored separately.....including a set located in the home of my youngest son who lives 10 minutes away. Shirley keeps the backup of our Quicken financial records on an 8 GB thumb drive.
I was just thinking that it would be nice if I had wireless access to the 1 TB drive so I could access any of my images with my laptop anywhere in the house.
As many of you know, I have digitized all my transparency photos and have converted all our 8mm silent home movies to digital form. These are all stored on both the external drive AND on DVD's. This material dates back to 1936 for the movies and 1941 for the transparencies. In my photography hobby I converted to 100% digital in 1999. All my images taken since then are also stored on both formats. Now I'm working on scanning color and black and white prints. Some of these date way back to the early 1900's and there is even a scattering of old tin types with images of family members....great, great, great grandparents and uncles and aunts, etc. I have identified everyone that I can....and all the locations that I can remember.....and documented this information which is included and stored in hard copy with the DVD's. Why am I going to all this trouble? Truthfully....I haven't the slightest idea. Nuts I guess. Well....I keep thinking that age results in deterioration of photo images and movie films. Some of ours are already nearly beyond recovery. This is the result of careless & improper storage over the many, many years......AND poor quality processing that was prevalent years ago.
Kodachrome slides and movies provide the best resistance to fading. There is a reason why National Geographic provided primarily Kodachrome to its photographers over many years. The color system used in Ektachrome, Fujichrome, Ansco chrome, etc. is much inferior to Kodachrome in this regard. They use an entirely different method of recording the image on film and processing chemistry. Don't misunderstand me. This other class of film could provide absolutely first rate image quality, color and sharpness. Just did not resist fading as well as Kodachrome......even when stored in complete darkness.
Now we have digital.....and image fading and degeneration is a thing of the past. Now we just have to deal with file corruption.
A word to the wise: If you store your photographic treasures on CD's or DVD's be sure to purchase name brand blanks and, preferably, blanks which are specifically made for long term storage. Bargain basement blanks are not a bargain in the long run.
There I go again. I hope you are all used to my verbosity by now.
Phil
You are oh so right, SKP. We hold onto our two 25 to 30 year old Quasar VCR's & a newer Panasonic unit because we have a sizeable collection of VHS movies.
At one time I was going to copy them to DVD but WOW that is time consuming. I suppose, now that I have my DAZZLE device to connect the VCR to my computer, Shirley and I should sit down and watch them all while copying them. The oldest son (who's been in so many different businesses I can't keep track) had a chain of video rental stores way back then in the late 70's and early 80's so we collected a lot of movies on tape. For example....a complete collection of all episodes of the original Star Trek series.
