Dano069

Mine's been moved here, http://www.dano069.blogspot.com/ as you can tell in my signature, down there.

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I may look attentive, but I'm taking peeks down your blouse faster than the human eye can follow.

Averett

I'm not even sure what to do anymore. It's getting bad, really bad. I don't know how I'll be able to pay upcoming bills.

I need to go grocery shopping. I need dishwashing liquid. I need soap.

I don't have much food. I have some chicken, pasta, cheese, sauce. I made a PB&J sandwich for lunch today with the last of my peanut butter. I have a full jar of jam that I could use for sandwiches here at work. And dinner too if it comes to that. Luckly I have my parents. I had dinner there last night and I'll be going again tonight. But that causes another problem - gas money. That little bit of distance adds up.

This Friday is my friends birthday. There are plans to go to a local pub to see a band play, but I don't think I'll go. There's the $10 cover charge. And I'd buy her a birthday drink as it would be the only thing I could do in the way of presents, so that would be another $5. Sadly I can't justify the cost. I'll call her tonight, I hope she'll understand. But I don't think she will.

I've mentioned doing this before but I've put it off. I'm going to put up a lot of stuff on Ebay. I have quite a few things that I can sell. When I do that I'll put a link up here, you lovely people here can have first dibs. I'm going to look into used CD stores and get rid of some CD's that I don't listen to. Books as well, I have so many books that I can get rid of. And video games. I bought Simpsons Hit & Run and I don't think I ever played it. And I wonder why I have financial problems...

I've fucked myself over basically. And it's going to last so long. It'll take years to pay off my credit card debts. I'll be lucky if this debt is gone by the time I'm 35.

ShaniFaye

Averett if your friend is REALLy your friend they will understand....and if they DONT understand then they arent worth wasting the money on in the first place. Someone taking the time to tell me happy birthday to me is just as good as any present. I would never ever want my friends to spend money on me when I knew they were having money problems.

Do they have dollar stores where you are? I know at mine you can get dishwashing liquid, soap, shampoo, etc. It might not be the "best" or exactly what you'd want to buy...but it works for now. I'd be very interested in the books you want to get rid of...Im a book whore so PM and I'll see what I can do to help you out with getting rid of them

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I want the diabetic plan that comes with rollover carbs. I dont like the unused one expiring at midnite!!

amonkie

Averett,
I don't know if this'll help you out or not, since you're on the opposite side of the country, but here goes. Another way to scrape up some extra cash, if you've got some clothes lying around, would be to check out a place that resells clothes, but is a little more upscale than a thrift store. Out here, there's a chain of stores called Name Brand Exchange, and they pay money for your clothes. I'm a person who never throws anything away, so that's a good place to clean out my closet and see what they'll take. I think my friend took 3 pairs of pants and a sweater to them, and they gave him $20 for them.

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Calling from deep in the heart, from where the eyes can't see and the ears can't hear, from where the mountain trails end and only love can go... ~~~ Three Rivers Hare Krishna

Averett

Thanks for the replies ladies

Never really thought about the Dollar Store idea, but I think it'll work. I'll stop by there tonight and see what's there. I'll be sure to get together a list of books/cds/games I'm going to sell and post them here before I put them up on Ebay. I'd much rather somebody I "know" get my stuff than a complete stranger.

And the thrift store idea is great. I have a ton of clothes that I want to get rid of, I usually just toss them in a charity bin by a local church. I'll look into that this weekend

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Absence is to love what wind is to fire. It extinguishes the small, it enkindles the great.

maleficent

For getting rid of books/cds and such - look at Amazon.com -- they have a reseller section where you can unload stuff you don't want - and name your price for it... (It's a little safer than Ebay as well)

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Cynthetiq

When I decided to get a home theater system I wanted to do more time shifting than I had previously ever done. Supposedly there were technologies out there that would help me discover shows and programs that I enjoyed to watch but never seemed to find in the sea of cable channels.

If you already have seen a SmartFile VCR you know this ability to find shows is amazing. The SLV-M20HF is unique even among SmartFile VCRs because it has built-in TV Guide Plus+ (yep, two pluses) on-screen guide, VCRplus which was also an option. The system was visually based which made it really easy to figure out what to record and it also handled some basic conflict alerting.

<img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v141/cynthetiq/VCR5.jpg" width=320 height=240>
When you want to record something, you just find it in the guide and select record. No need to specify start time, end time, day of week, channel, etc. Just point to the show and the VCR gets all the necessary information from the guide. Even better, since it has the show names, this is what is written to the SmartFile label when the show is recorded.

<img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v141/cynthetiq/VCR6.jpg" width=320 height=240>
This shows the total amount of things that are queued up for regular recording.

<img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v141/cynthetiq/VCR4.jpg" width=320 height=240>
To watch one of the shows, simply insert the tape into the VCR, highlight the name of the show, and press select on the remote. The VCR will locate the show on the tape, go to the start, and begin playing. If you have a number of tapes, you don't have to put them each into the VCR, you just wave them in front of the unit and voila it comes up on screen. There are even readers for those people who happened to have created vast libraries of SmartFile tapes.

Once we had setup the recordings and got enough tapes and smartfile labels, we were in time shifting business. We watched seasons of Buffy, X-files, Angel, Sopranos and other series. We didn't just watch one episode at a time, since we didn't have to watch it immediately sometimes a week or three would lapse between episodes so instead of watching a movie we'd have a mini-marathon. We watched almost 1/2 of Firefly that way until we heard that it was cancelled then we just erased the rest of the series we had recorded.

I remembered TiVo but was always so hesitant to move to the new technology, mostly due to the price considerations. It was costly to start up and the initial units were like 14 and 28 hour units. I had at least 60 hours worth of (10) VHS tapes that we cycled through. Series one had it's limitations and the talk about Series 2 and it's abilities to do remote scheduling via internet (something sorely missed on the VCR system), ability to play MP3, photos, and also pass items from one unit to another via a home network all conspired against me.

One day when I was in the hospital I found a good deal for TiVo on ebay. I won the bid for an 80 hour unit.

<img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v141/cynthetiq/TivoWishlistCreate.jpg" width=320 height=240>
The most powerful thing that TiVo can do is wishlist. I can tell it any keyword, actor, director, etc, and it will find those programs and record them. It solves conflicts and records second or even third instances if there are conflicts in the recording schedule.

<img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v141/cynthetiq/DTivoIPreview.jpg" width=320 height=240>
After the wishlist the thumbs up feature is supposed to be a great thing. As you watch programs you rate them thumbs up and thumbs down. This example is a commercial that is TiVo enabled and if you press thumbs up it records it automatically. No need to hunt down any VCR+ codes, TV Guide, etc.

<img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v141/cynthetiq/TivoSuggestions.jpg" width=320 height=240>
It takes your ratings of thumbs up and thumbs down and then populates a suggestion list. I don't like the suggestions to record automatically myself, but I do peruse through the listings.

It has truly revolutionized the way that I watch TV, even more that the VCR did. (We even have two VCRs because it was hard not use smartfile, a reason that we now have 2 TiVos as it's hard to not have the pah-kuk-pah-kuk ability) The VCR for the most part is collecting dust. I'm thinking that I'm going to start laying some things off to tape and sending them off to friends in far away lands. Of course TiVo has this in mind for the future with TiVo2Go where you'll be able to record them to DVD and I'll then be able to ship shows to friends for the cost of a first class stamp.

When we first got Time Warner digital service we opted for the DVR service. I wanted to compare the abilities and while it does have dual tuner capabilities, I found it clunky and kludgy to use. The interface was difficult, the lack of simple things like group sorting made it maddening to find shows sometimes. The remote control buttons were the most frustrating, as they put the LIVE button next to the DVR controls so one finds themselves accidentally pressing the wrong button and thus interrupting their show because it now needs to be restarted.

I recently found a good sale at Circuit City of all places and got another TiVo for $50 and that's now in the bedroom. The best thing we can do now is transfer shows from one unit to another facilitating the ability for one person to be in one room and then when needing to go to bed can continue watching that show in the other room.

Initially I saw people putting huge drives into their TiVos and my own thought to it always has been that the TV doesn't own me. I own it. I would always wig out when I knew we had too many hours of programming to catch up with, from TiVo or from VHS tapes. Yet now, I'm thinking that I'm going to upgrade the original TiVo with a secondary drive. I'm going to wait to see just what the service upgrades happen over the next 6 months. Supposedly the new kernel supports hard drives > 137Gb so we'll see.

I've been reading more and more about TiVo's underground hacking community. They are extreme fans and aren't interested in pushing the legal envelope of the product. All topics on how to get "free" monthly service, extract video, or other items that border on the illegal side are frowned upon. Yes, there are some sites out there that do exist but to me they aren't all that interesting.

It's not all that interesting to "steal" the service, or even extract the video. If you really need encoded video there's better ways than TiVo.

I am amazed that people are interested in doing things like listening to <a href="http://www.tivocommunity.com/tivo-vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=194869">Live Air Traffic Control through Tivo</a> or <a href="http://www.zirakzigil.net/tivo/TCSscreenshots.html">looking at weather radar, interest rates, and stock quotes.</a>

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Cynthetiq

i think that we all have the buy it syndrome. we buy things we don't need or don't use, but we buy it to "own it" or "have it" yet it doesn't do much for our lives.

i have plenty of those same things. I even have a brand new unopened Metal Gear Solid 2 game for PS2 and I don't even own PS2. I bought it in hopes that I would one day get a PS2, but I got the game the day that it came out... that was in November about 2 years ago. I still don't own a PS2 and in fact recently found the game in the bargain bin for $10 for Xbox which I do happen to own.

We live and learn.

good luck.

BlueBongo

As long are you are okay, that is really what is important. I'm in the same boat as far as bills myself... don't make enough to cover them, and I hate not paying bills on time.. but I've come to the conclusion that it's better to pay it later when I have money in my account than to not pay them at all or let checks bounce.

You have a car, you have a roof over your head, you have a job, and as you saidyou won't starve... it doesn't sound like things are really so bad. Be happy about what you do have and don't spend so much time worrying about money.. causes nothing but stress and unhappiness. I would say just make those little changes temporarily to help you out now and later things will work out, they always do.

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"Things can only get so bad before they have no choice but to get better.."