The Big DumpTruck

More photos are up on the CoffeeCup Software Relief site. I know they've received my shipment from Discount School Supplies. Somewhere in there are 10 elephant puppets (only 88 cents each!), crayons, lacing beads, glue sticks, craft sticks, and other stuff that I can't remember.

I didn't get paid last week because I was on vacation the week before (darned contract job!) so I couldn't send out anything else. This weekend I'll probably pull together something else, or a few more backpacks. Something. Anything.

In other horrible devastating news, the DirecTV Receiver/Tivo in our living room died. Oh. My. God. I joke, but it really is horrible. Do you know how much stuff we had on that hard drive? Gone. The customer service woman, in a move worthy of a ___fill in the blank_______, decides I may be an idiot and says "You know, some people copy things off the DVR onto videotapes."

Really.

Well, hot shot, my VCR isn't even hooked up to the TV any more. I don't really watch video cassettes on any regular basis (we have two of them, but not on the living room TV). Oh, and if you hadn't decided to limit the functionality of the Tivo (apparently taking a cue from T-Mobile, those crack phone company fiends who have turned off some of the standard functions of the SideKick that our friends using other carriers get, like, say, being able to use free ringtones) I could hook the damned thing up to my computer and back everything up that way. Then, if something breaks, I could restore the vital stuff.

Of course, nothing is truly vital, but there were shows and movies that we hadn't watched yet - stuff that won't rerun for ages. And now I have to remember what all my season passes were. Junior was very sad to lose some of the shows he'd asked me to record for him. Nothing like losing your house and all your belongings in a hurricane, to be sure. But enough to make me grumpy.

Oh, and because that means we don't have a DirecTV receiver on that TV (until I take the one in the basement and move it upstairs) we haven't been able to actually watch television. Last night I realized why we let Junior watch so much TV - because if we don't, he will literally talk us to death. I got a 45 minute non-stop explanation of some version of Pokemon that he had invented to play after school with his friends, and the level of detail he provided was beyond what any human should have to endure. I love him dearly, but they could have taped him and then used that to blast out of speakers when they are trying to get people to come out of a building they've commandeered. You know what I mean? I literally begged him to go get a book or a game or something. Anything to stop talking for 2 minutes.

I do love him, I really do. But you had to be there.

The new Tivo is on order. I just hope they put a rush on it.