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Troubles with TiVos

My TiVo has been causing me anxiety lately. And not the usual kind of anxiety, which mostly follows from me being a complete idiot. That I’m used to.

(For the record, the ‘usual’ kind of TiVo anxiety usually involves weather reports slipped into the commercial breaks by the local news boobs. Once or twice a week I’ll be up late, watching something on the hard drive and neglect to zap through the ads. More often than not, I wind up hearing something like:

‘Look out, Boston! Big storm on the way tomorrow! Sleet, snow, plagues of locusts! How bad will it be? Tune in at eleven!!!‘

“For every gratuitous palm tree or bikinied ass shot I missed, there were at least three David Caruso patented ‘whip off the glasses and smirk’ quips I didn’t have to hear. So that was a plus.”

That’s when I get my wife out of bed, shove her and the dog and a week’s worth of canned asparagus in the basement, and board up all the windows while shouting, ‘Shit, another storm?! We just had a big snow and locust blizzard last week. What are the freaking odds?!?‘

Eventually, the missus will sigh, punch up ‘Info’ on the remote control, and remind me that the show I’m watching was taped last week, before the storm. Then she’ll bop me on the forehead with an asparagus can and go back to bed.

Clearly, the woman doesn’t understand how traumatizing a tape-delayed weather emergency can be.)

Anyway, the new anxiety is not that kind. Not until the next blizzard hits, anyway.

Instead, it’s the kind of anxiety that comes from your favorite household appliance making a loud ‘*gggggnnnnngggg* *gggrrrrggghhhh*‘ noise while it’s supposed to be doing its job.

Of course, if your ‘favorite household appliance’ is a device of a more… personal sort, I suppose it would be perfectly normal for it to make that sound while it’s ‘doing its job’. But my favorite appliance is the TiVo. So, not so much.

(What?

I was talking about espresso makers. What?

Oh, you people are nasty.)

Now I’m worried that the TiVo is about to go on the fritz. I’ve been down that road before, and it’s no freaking picnic. The last unit didn’t have the decency to make painful gurgling noises when it was about to croak; it just randomly skipped a few seconds here and there in our favorite shows as it railed against the dying of the light. So we’d be engrossed in the climax of a CSI episode and wind up seeing:

“…so the DNA test clearly shows that the murderer is…”

*fifteen seconds of silent darkness*

“Stay tuned for a preview of next week’s episode, which is good… but really, what could beat that blockbuster bombshell you just witnessed, folks? Now, that’s once-in-a-lifetime entertainment!”

(On the bright side, watching CSI: Miami was a little easier. For every gratuitous palm tree or bikinied ass shot I missed, there were at least three David Caruso patented ‘whip off the glasses and smirk’ quips I didn’t have to hear. So that was a plus.)

So far, the noise is the only indication our TiVo is thinking of giving up the ghost. The programs haven’t been skipping, and I haven’t noticed any more smoke than usual coming from behind the TV set. I’m hoping it’s just a wonky cable or a loose hamster in the power supply or something. Christmastime is depressing enough without considering being without my three months’ worth of Simpsons and Married… with Children reruns. That’d be one big fat lump of stupid coal, there.

Besides, if the TiVo goes, how the hell would I keep up with the weather reports? Those blizzards are sneaky, dammit.