When I set up the TiVo to record Iron Chef USA, I didn’t realize that it was on at the same time as 24; even worse, I didn’t realize that 24 had a higher priority. So it recorded 24 instead of Iron Chef USA. So I missed the show I wanted and got the one I’d decided not to watch. I’ve since deleted 24 from TiVo’s list, but that still leaves this question open:

Anybody got a spare tape of Iron Chef USA?

Some successes

Last night’s Scholar-in-Residence dinner and services were excellent.

We all liked Harry Potter, too, though I guess I have to say that the best thing about the movie was that it was pretty faithful to the book and to my visualizations of the book. I really liked the Monsters, Inc. trailer, too.

I definitely made the right decision on Monday when I chose not to go to Austin with a broken computer. Many things happened at work this week which I needed to tend to fairly quickly, and I wouldn’t have been able to do them without a computer. Here, I had the option of using my other office computer or my home computer; in Austin, I would have been SOL. True, I would have been a lot more effective in my meeting if I’d been there in person instead of on the phone, but there were several others calling in, so it wasn’t too bad — it’s a different story when I’m the only one on the phone and there are ten people in the room.

On Tuesday, I turned my machine over to deskside support here. They weren’t able to get Win2K to be stable, but they were able to reinstall it on top of itself and then back up all of my data to the LAN (something I’d been derelict in doing — fortunately, most everything valuable was replicated elsewhere anyway). Then they blew away the system and did a complete reinstall.

The bad news, though, was that the reinstall they did wasn’t of a clean system; it was of our customized, locked-down, and modified system. For a lot of people, having that pre-customized system is a Good Thing; it saves a lot of time if you can live within its limits. I can’t (though it might be more honest to say, “I won’t”).

So I went back to the recovery CD that came with my computer in the first place and loaded up a vanilla Win2K system. And now I’m going through Windows Update to bring it up to current service levels. I’m on my fourth reboot so far, with at least one or two yet to come.

And then I have to install my applications. And recover my data from the LAN. And convert the filesystem from FAT32 to NTFS. And probably about the time I get all of that finished, I’ll either get a copy of XP or a new computer and can start the process again.

Ahh, productivity….

But enough about work

Tomorrow, we’ll be getting up early to go see Harry Potter; the IBM Club arranged a 9am showing at a theatre at the Great Mall in Milpitas, and we grabbed tickets. I’m looking forward to seeing the movie, and we might even do some shopping afterwards before the malls become entirely intolerable.

It’s also Shir Hadash‘s annual Scholar-in-Residence weekend; this year, we have Cantor Peri Smilow, who will be delivering a sermon in song at tonight’s services.

And sometime this weekend, we’ll watch Iron Chef USA. The Merc’s reviewer didn’t particularly like it, but we’re gonna watch anyway.

Shabbat Shalom!