Dwight Howard gets it - mostly

Dwight Howard, of the Orlando Magic, was on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon this past week and they talked about his impending free agency... and how another former free agent who is also now playing in Florida handled things.

Mount Vernon

I had a LivingSocial coupon for Mount Vernon, George Washington's house, that expired on March 31 so I headed down there to use it before it expired. I'd never been there but had been planning on going at some point. The coupon enabled me to make that happen for cheaper!

The only problems with going in March is that it was still pretty chilly, none of the crops were in bloom, and some of the features do not operate in the winter. However, overall, it was really nice, with the best part definitely being the property's view. The view is just gorgeous, right on the river; it's no wonder he lived there for like 50 years. There are vegetable gardens, flower gardens, (most of which were not in bloom at all) and livestock.

You go through the mansion on a guided tour so you aren't free to just roam around aimlessly or take pictures. Besides the main mansion, there are a lot of other buildings around, like the greenhouse, the slave quarters, the laundry house, the smokehouse, the garages, the stables, etc... There is also the crypt. George is in the tomb on the right, Martha on the left (that you can barely see).


You also can walk down to the dock and get really close to the water and also see his sixteen-sided barn, which was one many agricultural inventions he apparently had.

I didn't take a lot of pictures but it was pretty cool and wanted to share. It's like a little piece out of the 18th century nestled away outside of 21st century life. Someday I might go again because I didn't really have time to walk through the museum part of it and might take advantage of some of the things that are only available April to October.

Tivo Frustration

I've been a Tivo user for almost two years and have been a huge fan of theirs, praising them to everyone who will listen, but a couple of days ago, my Tivo box died. And since then, I've had a lot of drama involving the company. Like, I've found that their customer service kinda sucks.

Let me start at the beginning. My old box (I have two) started acting crazy on like Tuesday of this week. Quite honestly, it had a couple of little hiccups that led me believe it was aging. But, I had moved it into my bedroom and I don't watch or record things in my bedroom much at all so I wasn't worried. But, on Tuesday, I turned on the TV while I was getting ready for work and the "Welcome" screen was on. The "Welcome" screen comes on when the Tivo is powering up. So, I was confused - had the power gone out? I didn't think much of it until I came home from work and the "Welcome" screen was still on. I unplugged it and then it seemed to boot fine. On Weds. morning, the "Welcome" screen was on again so that day I checked out the Tivo online support site, found a resolution and all seemed fine. By Thursday evening, I had had to "fix" it a few more times and suddenly it wasn't booting up at all. It would go through the actions and then right when it got to the main menu screen, back to the "Welcome" screen it would go. Uh oh.

So, Friday, I called tech support. The guy I talked to, Dennis, was very nice and helpful but told me that it was dead. He suggested I could exchange it for a new machine for $149 or perhaps get it repaired (which I later found out cost $279). I had just a few weeks ago purchased service for it for a year, so I was concerned about getting that money back or getting that service moved to another machine. He said that service could probably be transferred to a new machine of the same type but not a newer model. Otherwise, I would be out the $99 service fee I'd paid. I wasn't happy with any of those options. I don't want to have to fork over any money. But, Dennis gave me time to think about my options.

Saturday, I happened to pull up my online account and saw the words "Eligible for 30-Day Money-Back Guarantee" next to the service details for my broken box. Which, I assumed, meant I could get my money back for this $99 service. Hooray! Well, my account is charged on the 12th of each month so I assumed today was the 30th day of that guarantee (a guarantee that Dennis didn't mention at all). So I called customer support again. I got put through to someone named Steve who very rudely told me that he couldn't do anything for me while their system was down for a few hours. "Call back in a couple of hours," he said. Umm, thanks? How about taking my phone number and calling me when your system comes back up? Wouldn't that be good customer service? Or, god forbid, listening to my problem and seeing if it can be answered without the system? I tried that approach and he basically hung up on me.

So, a couple hours passed and I called back and wouldn't you know I got Steve again. When he asked me how my evening was going, I was so tempted to say "Not so great since you were so rude to me a couple of hours ago," but I refrained. So, Steve is clearly a sales guy and in order to give me that money back, first he's going to go through every other option available to me that involves me keeping my service. He mentioned at least 6 options - none of which were the ones that Dennis had mentioned the day before, by the way. Steve kept going on about how if I didn't want to keep the service, then I should sell my box to a friend or family member. I'm like, "The box doesn't work!!" Then, he suggested I put the box on Craigslist. Again, I had to remind him that the box is broken. He seemed to think the box was still very valuable despite being broken because people pay for the service on the box. Whatever. He was driving me a little crazy. So we get to a point where I ask if he can send me something listing all the options he's laid out for me because there were so many. He gets all defensive and says he most certainly cannot send me the options. He explains to me that their privacy settings prevent him from contacting me - even though he had read off my email address at the beginning of the conversation as a way of proving who I was. When I pointed this out to him, he insisted he wasn't allowed to contact me. Whatever. So I asked him to go through those options again and he only gave me two and then seemed to be in a big hurry to get rid of me. It was really rude, honestly. The only thing he did that was nice was extend my 30-day guarantee so that I would have until April 11 to make a decision. The call was kind of exhausting, truth be told. Steve was kind of a jerk and I still had a broken machine and was out $99.

I hung up, unsure what I was going to do. Sunday, my Tivo box was laying in my living room because I had unplugged it on Friday immediately after Dennis told me it was dead. Somehow, I got the idea to test the box on my living room TV. I guess the thought I had was that the power strip in my bedroom had problems. I hooked it up in the living room and of course it didn't load. But then, a few hours after I had plugged it in, I happened to check it and it was working! I couldn't believe it. It worked the rest of the day. Right before bedtime, I moved it back into my bedroom. And it worked immediately there too. And this morning, it was still working.

So I had all this drama with the customer support for nothing! It's so bizarre. It worries me that the box was acting funny once, so how long before it acts up again? Clearly there is SOMETHING wrong with it. Luckily, I do have until April to figure out what to do. Maybe I should take advantage of one of the options presented to me after all and get a new box? Such a roller coaster ride.

Loving Redbox

I just started using Redbox to rent movies pretty frequently in the last month or two, thanks to free rental coupons and a Groupon I bought that gave me three rentals for $1.00. And it's so easy and cool that I can't believe it took me so long and I highly recommend it to anyone who hasn't tried it and wants to rent movies! I won't be giving up Netflix anytime soon but since I downgraded to one movie out at a time, there are definitely times when I want a certain movie NOW and Redbox comes in very handy for that. It probably helps that there is a grocery store 2 blocks away that has two Redbox machines and is open 24 hours a day, so it really can't get much more convenient. But it's nice that you can check the inventory of all boxes easily online so before I head out to the grocery store, I can see if they even have the movie I'm looking for. Or, maybe go somewhere else. And you can reserve online. And, you can return a movie anywhere - it doesn't have to be returned to the box where you got it. I've used all these features.

Charlie Sheen Fired

I don't know why I'm now posting twice in a few days about Charlie Sheen because truth be told, I'm barely following all the drama... but I came across the full text of the document the CBS lawyers sent firing Charlie and it's awesome. It's eleven pages of trying to prove how he's violated his contract and then ten full pages of references to his craziness from articles and interviews about him, most of which he conducted himself. It's a great read seriously. (via)

Charlie Sheen is ruining my favorite baseball player

As is most of America, I'm intrigued/baffled/obsessed/horrified with Charlie Sheen. Not enough to be one of the millions following him on Twitter or to watch his live web broadcast but enough to watch/listen to some of his various interviews. During a lot of the interviews, he can be seen wearing an Indians hat or jersey, which I find awful (doesn't Cleveland have enough sports woes?) but I chalk it up to his appearance in Major League over 20 years ago. However, during last night's Dateline NBC coverage, I discovered that it's not just the fictional Indians he's a fan of, it's the real Indians too! See the video below, in the shot below and then starting at about 1:11 in the video... notice the baseball jersey hanging in the background on the right of the screen. Lofton, #7. It's Kenny Lofton's Indians jersey!! Only my favorite Indians player ever. Ugh. Then I found out, too, that Charlie invited Kenny over to watch Major League with him and other baseball players a few weeks ago. Kenny, get away fast!!!