Evil Invention

The DVR is an evil invention! I'll admit that I absolutely love my Digital Video Recorder! I use it all the time, in fact, I seldom ever watch anything in "real time" any more. I can (and have) set-up my "MUST SEE" shows as items in the queue to be recorded and watched at my convenience. If there is something that strikes my fancy when I see a promo, I go to the guide and make sure it is set to record.

On those rare occasions that I do watch something off-air, I can hit rewind or pause when I have to leave the room. It is this last feature, the ability to "time-shift" live shows that is the root of the evil inherent in DVRs. While the ability to rewind if I miss something or have stayed away during a commercial break too long is a good thing, it can also have unintended consequences.

Yesterday, I was watching the morning news when Saga decided that it was time to come and play with me. "Daddy must be bored," I could almost hear her think. "he is just laying in bed and doing nothing." So, she jumped up on the bed and started playing the I can lick your face before you can grab me game.

When it was over, they were finishing a story that was really interesting... I grabbed the remote and re-wound to the start of the story. (It was a five-minute piece about the release of the UFO files from HM Government in the UK. The piece was pretty interesting. (Like Project Blue Book but with an accent.)

After the piece was over, I got out of bed and started my morning.

The problem was that I never hit the [LIVE] button to catch-up to "real time." So when the news said that it was 05:30 it was actually 05:35 and I was late leaving for work. Now, five minutes may seem like a little thing, but for every five minutes I delay, my commute gets longer because that is about the time of the morning that the traffic starts to build. If I leave at 05:30, my trip to the office takes about 20 minutes. At 05:40, it takes half an hour, etc....

So that story about UFOs made me out of sync with the world and it seemed that all day yesterday I was playing catch-up. But it was a good story!

Wherever you are today, I hope that you're having a great day!

Don Bergquist - May 16, 2008 - Lakewood, Colorado, USA