Spell Czech

I am more than ready to be DONE with this cold. Today it moved to my throat but without leaving my sinuses.

It's been raining since about 10:00 this morning and we're at about 1/2". That means the streets are flooded. Crazy if you're a Seattle native like me.

I was out first thing to get the last five of the seven roses bushes planted. It started raining at #4. I noticed that the little leaves coming out of the canes on the two planted yesterday were all gone. Rabbits! So now each bush is surrounded by chicken wire. I'll probably redo it next week; this was a quick and sloppy version done in the rain.

The DirectTV installer got his outside work done before the rain started. We now have HD to go with the new plasma TV. OK, I'm impressed.
Nate, the installer, told me his order sheet had things I probably didn't want because they try to up-sell by automatically putting extras on his work order. He put me on the phone with their office ("If I tell them you don't want it they think I'm just trying to get out of work.") and the gal was very helpful in getting those extras removed. The best part? The price dropped another $14 a month from what I was told by the guy at Best Buy. And I'm getting a reduced rate for the second year, too. Woot!

Some preliminary observations:

• The volume fluctuations we had with Cox Cable as we went from one channel to another seem to be gone. Drove us crazy. We had to quickly drop the volume when going from the local ABC affiliate to the local NBC affiliate or we'd get blasted. Not now.
  
• Commercials don't seem to be significantly louder, either. That may be a function of the TV. I read that some of the new TV's have a built in volume equalizer. I'll see if that's the case if/when I get a chance to read through the fairly thick owner's manual.
• Our satellite box includes a DVR. I have NO idea how it works. I have another fairly thick manual that probably explains that. But I'm wondering if I can do it via the internet.
• More channels (!) means problems figuring out what to watch. With cable we used TVGuide online set to our locale and provider, and I had marked our favorites so that the channel listing I saw didn't include channels like MTV, Nickelodeon or Spanish language channels. The DirectTV site I'm logged into includes a similar listing, also with the option to mark favorites. The problem is that I now have too many favorites (they limit it to something like 30). Hey, I filled up most of that limit with all the sports channels available.
• That screen on my DirectTV page has a "Record" button next to listings. Does that mean I can click on it and my DVR will automatically record that show?
  
• We have to learn all new numbers. ESPN went from 33 to 206. I have to look at the cheat sheet to find TBS, A&E. and the like.
• And an all new remote with 186 buttons.
  

Which is to say, I'm feeling a little overloaded. I consider myself fairly tech-savvy. But this move to a new TV with all kinds of setting variables and a new provider system, a new remote plus a DVR is a bit intimidating. Learning the Credo in Latin turns out to be a piece of cake compared to finding the second showing of Monday night's episode of "The Closer." If/when I do find it I could record it for later viewing...if I only knew how that works.

I think I need Nate to come back for lunch and a tutorial.

I needed some stress relief after racing against the rain (and losing) and dealing with all this new-fangled technology thingma-jiggies. So I closed myself up in my office and spent some time working on my sermon. Specifically the NT use of homologeo. I like getting lost in my books.