TiVo: ACTIVATED!!!

Ok, so I am officially awesome. I hooked up my TiVo ALL BY MYSELF (with the help of a few customer service representatives). It took a grand total of...well, let's say it was less than 3 hours (but not by much), and involved me moving my ~400 pound TV away from the wall to plug in some cables. For those of you that know me, you know that I am not exaggerating when I say I am a bit challenged in the figuring-out-technology department. So this is a major accomplishment for me. I didn't cry, and I didn't give up. It's the start of a new era, I think.

For some reason, most of my channels below 35 are in duplicate, sort of. For example, I have two channel 33's listed in the guide, but only one of them is right. I don't get it. Oh well.

Things I didn't know I could do with TiVo, that I think are way awesome:

• Use my TiVo remote to turn my TV on and off, as well as to switch the TV input (to switch to the VCR/DVD player, for example). I used to have to use 3 remotes: one for the Comcast cable box, one to switch the TV input, and one to use the VCR/DVD player. Now I only need two: one for the VCR/DVD player and one for everything else. Yeah, it's only 2 instead of 3, but that one less makes a difference. Especially since I can now just put the DVD/VCR one in the TV cabinet until I'm ready to use it. I like simplifying my life. One remote at a time.
• Order movie tickets! I haven't figured it out yet, but apparently I can order movie tickets from my TiVo. I mean, I could just order from my computer, or buy at the theatre, but it's still cool.
• I can access my iTunes and iPhoto libraries! So, for example, I can have a slideshow from my iPhoto library playing On. My. TV. Wirelessly. What??? I'm so hi-tech I don't know what to do with myself. I can just imagine having a group of friends over and playing a slideshow of photos from other times we've hung out. Rather than dragging my computer out into the living room and opening up iTunes (which sometimes takes a while), I can just open the photos up on TiVo. Easy Peasy.
• Rent (buy?) movies from some sort of Amazon.com-related service. Kind of like on-demand, I think, but with more options. I don't know yet about pricing and how you actually do it, but I can't imagine it's too difficult, and I'll figure it out soon.
  

And those are just a few things I've learned in the last hour or so. I'm sure there will be more to come -- I'm already loving it.