NOTE: This document was originally written as part of an assignment in a discipleship course my church offers regularly. I wrote it back in late March of 2007 when I was taking the course. I expanded it in July of 2010, picking up where the discipleship course part of this ended, and talked about what's happened in my life since then. I hope you enjoy reading this, as it's been a joy to live it, thanks be to God!

Jesus has always been a part of my life. My problem is that I never always acknowledged it, or even when I did, didn't give him the attention he deserved. That's the crux of my story. I've never really let him in the door until very recently in my life.

When I was child, I was raised and taught Sunday School lessons from an early age. I knew all the things you were taught, I even believed them, as much as a young child could believe things in the same way an adult can. I had several years of Sunday School perfect attendance when I was around the ages of 5-7. I could say the Lord's Prayer at an early age, and I was very much the proper young Christian boy. As time went on, my parents divorced (at 12yrs), and while I don't have a conscious recollection of that causing a problem at the time, it likely did, as it did upset many portions of my life. Not long after that I started to rebel in school, lost focus, and quite a lot of things didn't have the same flavor anymore. I used to sneak into my mom's bedroom on Sunday mornings, and turn off the alarm clock so we wouldn't have to go to church. I considered church an imposition on my Sunday morning sleep. At this point in my life, Jesus was never really an active thought. Not that I actively campaigned against him, or anything along those lines, it just was never an upfront thought in my mind. Somewhere during this time, I stopped going to church completely, as I didn't feel connected anymore.

There were a few other moments after that where I had the chance to reconnect, but did not. Looking back, this was probably Jesus knocking on the door, but i didn't really answer. There was a person who ministered to me in a church and asked me if I was saved, and told me that all it would take would be for me to accept Jesus as my Lord and savior and let him into my heart. I said the lines, and the person said I was saved, but I didn't "feel it" in my heart. I also attended a Billy Graham Crusade and came forward at the end to receive Jesus. That was an opportunity and I didn't follow through on that, either.

Some years later, my family happened upon another Episcopal church led by a Father Edd Schultz. Father Edd was the first building block in my return to church in that he was young, and hey - he had Cable TV! A priest who had MTV was something cool to this teenager, so I bought into it. I enjoyed attending church there, and continued there until Father Edd left the church to move elsewhere in the country. At that point I more or less stopped going again. When I moved to Texas in 1992, and all of that was lost - I never went to church after I moved to Texas for awhile.

I got married in 1996; after that my wife and I attended a service at Holy Trinity Episcopal Church in Garland. We felt the church was nice, but due to my general laziness and desire for Sunday morning sleep, we did not return. At this point in my life, I had pigeonholed my thoughts on religion into this. If I believed Jesus was savior and my Lord, I would be saved. I didn't need to attend a church, and I didn't need all that other stuff. I believed, so I was good to go. It was my daughter who ended up leading me back to church - and she hadn't been born yet.

Late in 2004, my wife and I decided that since we were having a baby, that we needed to attend a church. As our families are about 1500 miles away, we needed a support system. After a couple of attempts elsewhere, we returned to HTEC, as that was the religion I was raised in. After attending several services, we felt very welcomed and comfortable; so we stayed. This was a seriously important decision, as it's here that I found Jesus for good, and let him into my life in a way that had NEVER happened before. In looking back, I always sort of paid lip service to Jesus. I believed, or thought I did, but it wasn't until after my daughter was born that I started noticing that I was feeling more filled, and more excited at attending church. That had never happened to me before. I prayed to God a lot during my wife's pregnancy, and those prayers were answered in the form of a very happy, and very healthy young daughter. Up until this point in my life, Jesus was mostly an afterthought, and he still blessed me with the best daughter I could have imagined. It was that realization that started me back without looking for a "way out" like I used to.

The big moment came when I was standing on the front lawn of my rector's house one evening. I had been there to fix a problem on his computer, and afterwards we were talking about a discipleship course he was going to soon be embarking on. I was not planning on doing it, mostly because I was (or thought I was) unprepared for the course. After hearing my reasons, the rector rather strongly told me I was wrong, and that I was more than ready to take the course. One wouldn't think that the turning point in one's religious life would be standing on the front lawn of the pastor's house, but it was for me. God gives you what you need, and that's what I needed - a surprise from an unexpected location like that to get my attention. On the drive home that night, I changed my mind and decided to take the course. It was a giant leap of faith on my part, as I really had NO idea what I was getting myself into.

As the weeks went along in the course, I found myself believing and reading scripture more than any other time in my life. I started being able to recite parts of it, and I found the course was nowhere as difficult as I anticipated it would be. I found that some of the things we were taught and learned about weren't the hollow things I thought they were when I was younger - these disciplines like fasting and prayer had real life meaning! As I let these things into my life more and more, I found that I had a deeper peace about various issues in my life that were never peaceful. I found that I did not stress internally about things as much as I used to. Now that's not to say I can't still run off the end of the stress meter, and I do from time to time. But overall, I've found great relief in simply allowing problems in my life to be turned over to Jesus. To a non believer, that might sound hollow, but the Holy Spirit has worked miracles in my heart.

The biggest changes during the discipleship course came in the latter months after I started taking scripture to heart. Oh sure, I could spend more time with the living word; and I still sin like everyone else, but I have an avenue out. The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord. An example is that I was lifted of my fear of praying in public. I used to dread that with a crippling fear that would stop me from any public prayer. In one of the discipleship class sessions, we had a big prayer group session, and I felt that something happened to me, but I did not know what. That was answered the next day when I had to take my wife to the hospital, and while driving there, I said a prayer for her healing with my hand on her head. Shortly after that, she told me that after I had taken my hand off her head, it felt like my hand was still there. This was a powerful moment for me, because it showed me what God had done in my heart, which was remove my fear of prayer. And as I've learned in James 5:16, "the prayer of a righteous man has great power in its effect". I've felt no problems with praying for people any longer, and that is a blessing my life. I wanted to cry when I realized what had happened to me.

This discipleship course has given me so much more strength and peace than I could have ever believed I was capable of. Praise God for getting to me through it, as I credit THAT as the reason I now am stronger than I ever believed I could be in Jesus. My wife has told me that the course has changed me externally too, which is nice to hear, since I cannot see that.

After the discipleship course ended, I found that since I had a stronger belief in God, and the ability to believe in what our culture generally refers to loosely as "an invisible person", that I've had a greater peace about a great number of things. One of the things that told my wife an I that God was with us was when our church was starting a building fund for a new church we intend on building. There was a meeting at the Rector's house to talk about the program, and go over details and whatnot. My wife and I were there, and we both had decided on a number we were going to contribute ahead of time. During the speeches by our Senior Warden, the Rector, and the fellow from the fund raising firm, we both had decided to increase our amount the we would commit. I had decided at that time to give up my weekly bowling league, which I had been in for about 34 consecutive years at that point. I tallied the fees and whatnot, and it worked out to be a number that was within just a couple of dollars of what my wife on her own decided we should increase our commitment by. We were both instantly convinced that this was from God, as we both decided this on our own with no discussion amongst each other (and after prayer). So we were joyous at our being able to donate to the building fund with what we knew was a prayerfully considered dollar amount.

Our newfound prayer and joy was put to the test in early 2008 when my wife and I were expecting our second child, who we had lost to miscarriage. It was a painful thing to go through, as anyone who has experienced that can tell you, but through a lot of prayer, we were able to get through it. In fact, the thing that helped us most was being able to name the child (whom we named Vanessa Grace), and turn the whole situation over to God. Through that act, we were given much peace about the situation. Oh, it still hurt, but I wasn't as devastated once we made the choice to give the child back to God. This was borne out when during the last night of a healing ministries conference at our church my wife went up for prayer, and was given a vision of what our lost daughter looked like. Obviously this was more powerful for her than for me, but I too took this to heart, and was able to rejoice in that someday we'd get to meet our lost daughter. This act also caused some friction with some who thought we were "weird" or "nuts" for doing something like naming a child that we lost to miscarriage. This was mostly people not from our church, as we received lots of support from our Church family over this issue. However, both of us strongly felt we were being led by God to do this, so we honored that call and were obedient in this matter.

After a lot of prayer and support from friends at our church, we were able to get through it and get pregnant again during the late summer of 2008. Thus began the biggest part of our life with God. Given we had lost a baby recently, this third pregnancy for us was somewhat more fraught with concern for obvious reasons. We wanted it to work, and yet we had the loss of Vanessa in our minds, too. The pregnancy went fairly well, and we were set to deliver our second child, our son David (who was named after King David in the bible) on May 28th. However, on May 6th, we got a bombshell dropped on us, as I found out that my job of 16.5 years was going away. I had lost my job after being there for the better part of two decades, and we had a kid on the way. My last day of work ended up being six days before my son was born, and I have to say, it made that week a complete whirlwind of emotion. It is said God's timing is perfect, and I think that's why I lost my job when I did, because I was able to spend time with my newborn son, and be with my family. The lack of work was hard (and continues to be), but we think it was a test from God to rely on him, and rely hardly did we ever!

You see, late in 2008, I had decided that we were going to start properly tithing. My wife grew up in a Ukrainian Orthodox church who doesn't have the concept of tithing in their church. This was an alien concept to her when we started attending church. As everyone knows, money can be a major source of friction between married couples, so I decided not to go nuclear and start tithing fully when we went back to church, but kind of eased into it, building up until we got to a proper tithe in late 2008. At that time, we had just short of $10,000 in credit card debt to our name, not to mention the usual "real life" things like a car payment and a mortgage, etc.. Our money wasn't unmanageable, but the credit card debt was a concern somewhat. Still, I felt it was the right time to tithe. So we did. I went and figured out exactly what 10% of our income was, and started (rather happily, mind you) giving that to the church. When I lost my job, I went and figured out what a tithe would be out of my unemployment money, and continued to tithe. It felt good, it felt like the right thing to do. God honored this by keeping us not only solvent through unemployment, but with the means to rid our debt. When I walked out the door at my old job, I still had about 3/4 of that credit card debt on the books. You do not expect to be able to get on top of credit card debt when you lose your job, you expect to tread water, or at best hope not to slide backwards. But we believe our being obedient to the tithe, especially after losing my job gave us the ability to COMPLETELY PAY OFF ALL OF OUR DEBT (save for the mortgage). Our car was paid off within a month of losing my job, and all of our credit card debt was erased during the summer of 2009. More evidence of God's timing was in play when it came to hospital bills. We received bills for both my wife and my son. Both times when we got the bill in the mail, in the mailbox AT THE SAME TIME was a check (or checks) to cover the bill. It was as if God was saying "I'll take care of it" with his timing. To make it a better story, I've been able to KEEP the credit card debt at zero - praise be to God. It's July of 2010, and I can say I still have no credit card debt, 14 months into unemployment. We've never gone without, and still have been able to live a life we enjoy. Oh, there were cutbacks for sure, and the people who have helped us (both financially and physically) have been a blessing. We thank God for them too for listening to his call to help us as they have. We couldn't have done it without them.

My time of unemployment has taught me several things. To be reliant on God for everything, and not just "pay attention" to him during Sundays and that's it. It's taught me that obedience brings blessings, as this has been borne out by our ability to remain worry free about money during all this time. I think that astounds people somewhat, as I took a trip back in March of 2010 to visit my family back home to visit my grandparents in the hospital. I drove to Philadelphia from Dallas, renting a car, staying in hotel rooms, etc. Sitting in the hospital room with my mom and my Grandmother we got to talking about money and all that, and they showed concern that I wasn't going to be able to pay for the trip. When I told them it was covered already, they were pleased, but what they probably weren't pleased with was when I said "..and even if I wasn't, I'm not worried about it, it's just money". To someone as detail oriented as my mother I think the lack of concern about something that is SUPER detailed as money was a shock to her. But I really was not concerned at all about money - I really wasn't. As I was trusting in God to take care of me and my family, the fact that there was a new round of bills to deal with in regards to my trip did not concern me in the least. On this trip, I was able to pray for several family members (plus some people I did not know), and in a way I found myself surprised at being able to do. I think I was able to show some people in my family firsthand how much I've grown. At minimum, I was able to show them a side of me they'd never seen before.

I've learned to trust in God, and it's benefited my family so richly, I can't tell all of it in this short document. There's so much more to this story, but I don't want to write a 20,000 word mini novel here, so I'll end it with this..

I cannot wait for what else will come on this path I have chosen. It can be your path too. It doesn't take much to get started on the path either, if you have any questions on how, just ask me. May God bless you, as he has me.

Joe Siegler
July 2010

Malachi 3:10: "Bring the full tithes into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house; and thereby put me to the test, says the LORD of hosts, if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you an overflowing blessing."

Ephesians 6:18: "Pray at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. To that end keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints."

1. What is this thing called?

   A: Seemingly, just "Xbox 360", although the unboxing videos show the sticker on the back, which says "Xbox 360 S Console".
   
   

   

2. Is the Arcade SKU getting this kind of stylish upgrade, too?

   A: Officially unknown, but there will still be an arcade unit going forward, so one has to assume that will eventually get the same new design, too.

3. Is the Arcade SKU going away, leaving this new one as the only unit?

   A: No, Arcade will still be sold.

4. What is the chipset/hardware footprint inside here called?

   A: I'm not entirely sure, but I think the new hardware design has a new nickname to followup on the old Zenon/Zephyr, Falcon/Opus, & Jasper footprints.

5. Have the slots for the old memory cards been deleted from the hardware footprint?

   A: Yes

6. What is under that slot in the lower right hand corner of the front?

   A: That cover is where the USB slots on the front are now. They're hidden by default like in the old hardware footprint. Also right next to that is the new controller sync button.
   
   

   

7. Is the 802.11n a full 5Ghz, or a 2.4Ghz (lame) implementation?

   A: It's 2.4Ghz. Fail. That means my 360 (and most people's I take it) will be stuck at Wireless G, as my router only operates 802.11n at 5Ghz. It CAN operate at 2.4Ghz, but then I'd have other problems. This is particularly annoying as the separate wireless-N adapter that Microsoft sells operates at 5Ghz.

8. Are there still going to be detachable faceplates? Obviously the old ones are incompatible, but has that feature been done away with?

   A: Read online tonight from someone at the show that they were done away with, and you can't personalize like that anymore.

9. Is the hard drive built in?

   A: Yes (sort of), but you will be able to swap it out for another larger capacity one. Old style external HD's are not compatible. Additionally, the new 360 swappable drives are a proprietary format, so you can't stick your own 2TB drive in there.
   
   

   
   
   

10. Will you be able to transfer stuff from your current 360 hard drive to the new one?

    A: Yes. $19.99 data transfer cable will be sold around same time as new units go on sale. I still have a data transfer cable from when I upgraded from the original 20Gb HD to a 120Gb HD. Whether I can still use that one or not is unclear. Failing the data transfer cable option, you can also use up to 16GB at a time with a flash drive, as part of the new console featureset. You can also use Xbox LIVE itself to redownload everything, although that won't preserve save games.

11. They claim it's "whisper quiet". What's changed regarding that? Most of the noise came from the DVD drive, what is the DVD drive in use now?

    A: Unknown what hardware is in use for the drive, but they've gone from two internal fans to one large one, which should make things quieter. Hands on reports from right after the MS press conference all indicate it's massively quieter than the old stuff.

12. How will the reliability issue be regarding red rings? They seemed to have solved that with the last hardware footprint (Jasper).

    A: Unknown. There's a rumor the "red rings" will be "green rings" errors, but that's a minor interface issue. One would hope it would get better, as this is now the fourth hardware footprint, and the third one seemingly solved the problem for the most part. However, this is a new hardware footprint, and it could bring it's own new problems to the party. Time will tell, but one has to assume it's at least as reliable as the last footprint, which proved to be the best of the original "white" console's run of hardware.

13. Will this new unit also come with the "built in memory card" like the last models did (had an on board 512Mb memory card that looked like an external memory unit to the OS)?

    Unknown, this may not be an option in the "Elite" unit, it could only be in the new revision of the Arcade machine, whenever that shows up.

14. Will this be able to support 3D games?

    A: Unknown, I read a rumor where it's not possible due to power demands past what the unit can produce, but sounds like total BS.

15. What's new in the new dash? The Joystiq.com unboxing video makes mention of a "new dash" in their unboxing video.

    A: Unknown. Didn't know there was a new dash coming. Have heard squat about that.

16. What's special about this new console and "Kinect Ready"? I thought all 360 consoles are compatible with the Kinect device?

    A: While all 360's can use Kinect, if you have anything other than the "360 S" Console, you'll have to have a separate dongle and a power supply. The "360 S" has a port just for Kinect, and you'll be able to just plug it in and go.

17. What's this Kinect thing supposed to cost?

    A: While Microsoft hasn't announced that formally, Gamestop has pricing for three options. The Kinect by itself is $149, an Arcade machine with a Connect is $299, and an Elite (the new model) with a Kinect is $399. Comes out November 4. Microsoft later issued a statement saying that pricing listed today is still a "rumour", and official pricing and bundling has not been finalized. Linkage.

18. When will this be available?

    MS said that they were shipping it to retailers today, and it should be available by the weekend. Amazon.com is taking pre-orders, although they don't have pricing on it listed yet.

I will continue to update with both updates to the above and with new questions.

Anyway, Compuserve and I go way back. When I got my first modem in 1986 (a 1200 bps card for my Apple //e computer), the first place I dialed was Compuserve. As I recall, I ran up quite the bill that first month - something like $400. I was addicted to online stuff immediately. As time went on, I was a member of the Sci-Fi forums, and when I got hired a few years later by Apogee, the gaming forums, too. I was all over the place there.

And yeah, if you're a Compuserve old timer, you pronounce the name of the GIF file format like the peanut butter name. That's the right way, not the other way (sounding like 'gift').

Anyway, I lasted there for quite a long time, way past when it was commonly used by people. Basically until the point where the guy at my company who paid the bills asked why I still had that account going. :) My old account of 71540,306 is no longer needed, sadly. I read where you can still use your old email addresses if you wanted, but you probably had to sign up to keep it active. I didn't do that, so I'm guessing mine doesn't work anymore.

So goodbye Compuserve, you were my first.

There is a really good article showing off where several of these references are in various Pixar films. Go check that out here. If you like this kind of thing, you will love this page, I guarantee it.

Anyway, this year Pixar is coming out with their annual new film, this one is called "Up!" As with all the others, I expect a gaggle of injokes, like "Find the Pizza Planet Truck", and "Where's the Luxo Ball?" (the latter can be seen in one of the earlier movie trailers, actually). Anyway, in watching the third (and I think final) trailer (shown below), there's a rather large bird in the middle of it, which appears to accompany the main characters in the movie plot. I'm looking at this thing, and it immediately reminded me of one of the older Pixar shorts.

There was one from 2000 called "For the Birds". It had a bunch of small, mostly annoyed birds sitting on a wire. A larger, stupid bird came up and sat on the line with them.

Anyway, in the new trailer, the "Up bird" looks to be influenced by the "For the Birds bird". It doesn't look EXACTLY the same, but given Pixar's penchant for self-referential characters, it wouldn't surprise me if this is the same bird model they were working from. Take a look, let me know what you think.

So anyway, Samantha & I were sitting at home yesterday, and I just thought - you know, why not right now? We weren't doing anything special at the time, we had talked about doing it "sometime", and we had a few hours to kill before we had to go pick up Mommy from work. So I suggested it to Samantha. She got rather excited about it, but when she said "Are we going to go TODAY?", I said yes, and she got massively wide eyes, and and started jumping up and down going "TRAIN! TRAIN! TRAIN! TRAIN!". It was quite intense. From the moment I suggested it until the moment we were in the car driving to the train station was about 10 minutes, most of which was taken up going to the potty. :)

So off we drove to the train station, and I talked to Samantha a lot about how she needed to hold my hand, and not walk away anywhere. She was asking a ton of questions about what color the train was, whether the driver was a boy or girl, how fast the train would go, etc, etc, etc.. I answered all her questions but went on a lot about how she must hold Daddy's hand. Which she did well with; if we weren't sitting in our seats on the train, she was holding my hand. While I wasn't really concerned, taking my three year old downtown into Dallas was something new, and I didn't know how she'd react. Or how people would react to her, to be honest. But we got to the train station, and went to buy our tickets. Even that was exciting to her. I printed out the tickets from the machine, and said here are our tickets, and she went off again, "TICKET! TICKET! TICKET!". But it was not lost on me the moment we walked over the train tracks and onto the station - this was something that I loved as a child and a family event, and then on my own when I was older riding the mass transit system of Philadelphia (Septa). Samantha got up onto the train without much difficulty, and found a seat.

We waited just a minute or so (our timing was good), and the train took off. Samantha got up on her knees and looked out the window. I spent most of my time making sure she didn't fall out of her seat. As this was her first train ride, she didn't have any knowledge of how to balance her body weight when the train took off, or sped up or anything like that. So that's what Daddy did. But I also was enjoying her just watching things. She would look out the window, look at the signs in the train, the other people. I asked her once what she was looking at, and she said "Everything!". On the first leg of our ride, there was an older gentleman sitting right behind her, he looked to be around 70 or so. He would smile at her, and ask her her name, and would talk to her somewhat, he was a nice joy. I know my child can be bubbly, and that's good in my opinion. But I also know not everyone likes bubbly, so it was nice she ran into someone who didn't mind a three year old looking at him. :)

She got all excited when I told her that the train went under the ground. Not a lot of the rail line goes underground, but there's a part where it does as it approaches the downtown area. She really enjoyed that part - I don't know why as there was nothing to look at out the window - was just black, save for the one lone underground station they have on the line. But she loved it, which is odd, as it is Mommy's LEAST favorite part. So we got out of the tunnel and called Mommy, who at this point was on her lunch break. She was quite surprised to realize that her husband and daughter were in downtown Dallas on a train. But Samantha obviously conveyed how much fun and happy she was, so that was good. By now, I think Samantha wanted to see something else, so we got off the train at the West End Station which is a big transfer station, actually. We walked around a little bit, and posed for a picture that came out QUITE well, it's shown here.

The train in the picture was the same one that we rode down in, and as we were waiting at a light to cross the train tracks, we waved at the conductor, who waved back. Samantha loved that too, and started jumping up and down next to me, which the conductor had to have seen. As we crossed the tracks, I pointed down and said look - what is that (pointing directly at the tracks). She said she didn't know, and I explained train tracks to her, which she seemed intent on listening to me about. Someone else apparently saw this exchange, and appeared to be chuckling in approval behind us, which I rather liked, too. We did briefly walk into a store that sold fruit, I thought about getting her a fruit smoothie, but she didn't seem interested, so we walked back out and sat down to wait for the return train.

We sat on the bench by the curb, and Samantha in the picture above showed what my wife said was "your look - Wow does that look like you". Apparently the furrowed brow look is something I do a lot. But something fun while sitting there. Some kids a couple of benches over were throwing some sort of food onto the train tracks, which attracted a ton of pigeons, something like 30 or 40 of them. When the train showed up going the other way, all the pigeons scattered, and flew everywhere. Samanatha thought it was funny and asked why the pigeons all flew away like that. I told her the other train scared them by making a loud noise, so they flew away. When they came back again after the train left, Samantha kept trying to get it to happen again. She'd sit there screaming "PIGEON! - PIGEON!". When I asked her what she was doing, she said she was trying to scare them because it was funny when they all flew away. I enjoyed that exchange. PIGEON! While we were down there and I had three people make some sort of variant of the same comment, which was "I see you have your valentine with you", or "What a beautiful little girl", or something like that. It never occurred to me that we'd get noticed by people, I just saw the entire exercise as "Daddy wanting to spend some time with his Daughter".

So we got back on the train, and made our way out of downtown. There was a younger woman about 20-23ish who sat behind us, and Samantha waved to her, and they talked briefly. Said woman used the idiom, "How are you doing baby?" to which Samantha replied (somewhat sternly, too) "I'm not a baby!" The woman chuckled and said "I'm sorry!" Was actually a sweet exchange. She seems pretty at ease with talking to random people, which is both good and bad. As we start to venture out into the world, I'll have to teach her limits and who to look out for, and all that. But for now, it's quite good. We had talked about Valentine's Day, and that we needed to get home and make a card for Mommy, but somewhere in here Samantha said we needed to go to a store - she wanted to go to a store on the train. So I got off at a stop about halfway between downtown and back home, as I remembered that the place was supposed to have a bunch of shops. Well, it did, but they were the snooty ritzy kind of things, places we didn't want to (well, I didn't) spend time looking around in. Especially with my leg acting up a bit lately, I wanted to reduce the walking, not increase it. The place did have a a very nice fountain system at the top of a stairwell we went down. Fortunately I had a few pennies in my pocket which she threw into the water. She enjoyed that. She's always liked throwing pennies into a fountain.

We made it back onto the train, which involved a very long escalator going up from the platform initially, and then an elevator back down (as the down escalator wasn't working). By this point, I think the lack of a nap coupled with all the excitement was starting to wear, because she started getting mildly cranky, as the train had to stop at one point. There were construction workers on the tracks we were on, and our train had to wait to be diverted to the track on the other side. At this point there were four stops left till we got back to the end of the line where we had parked. With two and a half left, she told me she wanted to go home. This was borne out by the fact that when we did get to the end of the line, we waved goodbye to the train, and then got in the car. Samantha was asleep within 3 minutes of getting the car moving. She had a blast, but it definitely tired her out.

I suppose the greatest moment of this day beyond the obvious joy my kid was experiencing was the fact that what we were doing was something I recall from my youth at a time when my mother and father were still together. Doing something with my daughter that I too experienced as a kid, and loved on my own (as a kid, teen, and an adult) was great. She's now at the age where she will probably pick up a few things that will stay with her the rest of her life, so to be responsible for putting some of those memories in her head was by far the best Valentine's Day present she could have given me.

I love my daughter.

This was on Saturday Night Live this past weekend. MacGruber is a recent vintage SNL recurring bit, and for some reason I laughed really hard at this (especially the third one). My wife witnessed it, and it's really short, dumb, and it always blows up at the end. For some reason, I really enjoy the MacGruber bits. :)

There's more of them available here.

Anyway, the question I have is this. In all the talk we see about the big digital switchover, the talk is that the air wave space that is currently allocated for over the air analog television signals is going to be reassigned for other use. What is going to happen at some point down the road if I plug in rabbit ears to one of my old television sets without a digital converter box? Will my TV set pick up whatever is using that old spectrum space?

I'm sure if it's data, it'll be encrypted, but what if it's used for voice or something? Will my old TV set become the new police scanner radio of the next decade? :)

Samantha said that when she grows up and is an adult, she wanted to come work with "Daddy & Mr. Bryan". (Bryan is a friend and co-worker) When Lynn asked her what she wanted to do, Samantha said..

"Daddy has a second computer in his office, I will work with him!"

"But what will you do there, Samantha?"

"I can type and I will do email, and I can help him play Duke Nukem".

So basically Samantha thinks Daddy's work is a cool place to be. She's never played Duke Nukem, as it's not appropriate for a three year old. But it was quite heartwarming to know my kid apparently idolizes me, as she wants to work with Daddy when she "becomes an adult".

Gotta love that.

That's cool, as it helps ratchet up one's stock of foreign fruit. The town you play in comes with its own "native fruit". That's the kind that grows wild in your town. For me, that's Apples. There's about half a dozen different fruits the game can have. The others are oranges, pears, cherries, coconuts, and one or two others I can't recall right now. There is a lesser known feature in the game, called a "money tree". Anyway, I mentioned to a few people whose towns I was visiting about the concept of money trees. I wrote this big email to one of them, and decided to post it here in case anyone else wants to know about this.

In Animal Crossing, you dig things up from the ground (or bury) with a shovel you get at the local game merchant's store (that would be Tom Nook). Anyway, as you progress in the game, the various objects have "gold" versions, which are snazzier than the standard ones. They look somewhat cooler, but they have better functions. For example, the gold slingshot will shoot three pellets instead of the one the standard one does.

Anyway, you plant bags of money like you would any other fruit. After a few days, the tree will bear bags of money as opposed to fruit. Then you get it off the tree like any other fruit.

The catch here is this. And this goes for any kind of tree, not just money. If you want to GUARANTEE the tree will grow, you need to cut down an existing tree and replant in the same spot, but BEFORE closing over the hole once you've dug up the stump. If you do that, it resets the hole, and you've lost that. This is particularly annoying if you try planting in a new spot with money, and the tree withers, you've then lost that money. Your best best for planting money trees is to cut down an existing tree, and plant in that same spot. Additionally, a money tree doesn't regrow money once you've harvested it. After that, you need to cut it down and replant with fruit, as a single spot will grow money just once.

I only experiment with new tree locations with my town's native fruit, since there's a bunch of it, and you're not out a lot of it fails.

The max money tree you can plant is between 99,000 and 100,000 bells. That's because you can't hold more money than that at once, and you can only plant one bag at a time, so the max output for a single tree in one harvest is between 270,000 and 300,000 bells depending on the size of the bag buried. The tree will continue to bear fruit after you harvest it, so once you get a lot of these in your town, it's best to harvest them before letting others in via your open door. Otherwise they can swipe your money. I haven't timed it, but money trees usually take a little longer to grow than standard fruit tree (or just a plain sapling).

The money for the tree can come from anywhere, it doesn't matter what - I just sell off tons of stuff until I'm carrying 100k in bells, then bury it. It helps to raid other towns for their non native fruit. This whole thing goes faster once you have a town full of non native fruit yourself.

This effectively breaks the money system and lets you pay off all the mortgages in pretty quick fashion once you get a couple of 300,000 bell trees going. Plus you can buy all the expensive crap in the city. :)

In fact, that's the whole reason I did this, as my three year old plays with me, and I wanted to outfit my room with the entire princess line of stuff that the game will start selling in the ritzy town store in April. A bed there costs 300,000 bells, it'll take a few million to get everything, so I will need a boatload of cash for all that. :)

Me and my golden shovel standing in front of a money tree after it ripens (takes about a week after planting). That's 90,000 bells you're looking at. I planted a bag of 30,000 bells.

Some (important) background

A little background info first. A couple of months ago I bought a nice 46 inch HDTV. Not necessarily in anticipation of this channel, but this was going to be a benefit. This TV has a TiVoHD hooked up to it - this is a CableCARD device, so the cable goes from the TiVo just to the TV, there's no "cable box" as such. My bedroom has an older SDTV, and a Series 2 TiVo. This TiVo uses a Motorola Cable box provided to me from Time Warner in addition to the TiVo device.

January 1st Rolls Around

So January 1st rolls around, and I find out I have some big tech problems getting the channel (which persist to today). I found I could not tune to the channel. This is Channel 198 here in Dallas. On a TiVo box, you can tune to a channel two ways. Either through the guide, or "manually". On the TiVoHD/HDTV one, if I try tuning to 198 through the guide, it's impossible, as Channel 198 is not listed as a channel that exists. If I try tuning to Channel 198 manually from LiveTV, the screen is still black, and I get one of two error messages saying something like "Channel not Available, CableCARD device may be needed, please contact your cable company". I've been reading online about the problem since, and some information I found on the bizofbaseball website says this:

Reports have also filtered into the Business of Sports Network that some using TiVo players with cable cards are unable to access the channels listed. In the cases reported, subscribers had premium packages. Others, however, have reported that the systems are working properly. MLB Network is looking into the issue at this time. A technical issue has been reported in the past with premium channels and TiVos with cable cards, most notably those looking to watch NHL's Center Ice.

Great. Sigh. So on January 2nd, I went through all the options I know of on my local TiVo unit to reset the channel lineups. No luck. Any TiVo has a screen in the setup options that lists every single channel known to the TiVo service that is on your specified cable provider. In theory, it should match the list of channels available from Time Warner Cable. Guess what? Channel 198 isn't there. There's a 197, and then it goes to 200. Sometimes when a channel is new, TiVo won't have guide information available for said channel, but it will be on the list of available channels as "To be announced". 198 isn't like that - it isn't even a selectable channel, which is why I get a blank. As far as my TiVoHD is concerned, Time Warner Cable doesn't have this channel at all.

The Real Hell - Calling Customer Service

So I pick up the phone and called TiVo Customer service. Got a nice CS rep on the other end, which as good, since we were on the phone for about an hour. She had me walk through some options I didn't know about, she looked up things on her end, but the end result of that hour on the phone with TiVo was that "This is a Time Warner problem". The CS rep told me that TiVo has filed an official problem report with Time Warner over this specific issue I raised. So as far as TiVo was concerned, this wasn't their problem, and lodged a complaint with TWC over it. They told me it can take up to a week for TWC to deal with their lodged complaint, which would be January 9th (this coming Friday). Those who know me know patience is not one of my strong points, so I couldn't just "sit" and wait that long.

So I fumed for a bit, and contacted TWC's online support later in the evening (via their online live chat). I basically talked to the customer support rep. I knew this would be bad, since TWC is not known for their good customer service, and my problem is definitely not your garden variety "can be fixed by a customer service script problem". I was right. The CS rep I spoke with issed a box reset from her end, and it didn't make a difference, I still could not access 198 on my TiVoHD. After talking with her some more, she kept wanting to send out a tech to "fix" my CableCARD issue. I asked her what the point in that was because TWC doesn't officially support TiVo. She said they didn't, and after my rather useless CableCARD installer originally, I said "I do not want a tech to come out at this time", since I couldn't see what they'd do - except make things worse. So Time Warner's response was that it was a TiVo problem.

Great. They both blame each other. That doesn't help me. My TiVoHD/HDTV setup is stuck, I can't get the channel at all.

My Bedroom TV

Now all that above is about my primary TV, the one I want to watch this on. What's interesting about this whole situation is that my bedroom TV CAN get the channel. Further reading on the bizofbaseball site says that there are plenty of providers around the country who have MLBN on incorrect "tiers" or programming packages. My first thought was perhaps my account was not setup right to get the channel. So I check my bedroom TV. Guess what? I can get it. If I bypass the TiVo here and directly change the channel on the cable box, I can get 198 - MLB Network is there. So I know it's not my account not having access, it's some tech problem with my living room TV/TiVo. The bedroom TiVo does have 198 listed in the list of available channels, so I am able to set up recordings on my Bedroom TiVo.

TiVo & Tribune Media

I cannot do it "properly", though since the TiVo service does not know about Channel 198 on Time Warner Cable in Garland, TX for my zip code. Zap2it is run by Tribune Media - the backend company that provides the guide information that TiVos use in their service. So I went through zap2it's feedback mechanism, and told them "Hey, 198 is missing, where's the lineup"? I sent the same kind of request to TiVo as well. What I was hoping for is for TiVo's service to recognize 198 in my Garland, TX zipcode. My thinking was that if it showed up as a channel in the TiVo service, it might kickstart my TiVo into thinking the channel is there, and allow me to select it. However, as of January 5th, the channel is not there on either of my TiVo units. Likewise it is not on the guide info at tivo.com nor at zap2it.com. So TiVo (the service) doesn't "know" about the channel, despite the TiVo CS rep's statement that they did.

Summing up - what to do now?

So that brings me to now. It would appear that the statement over on bizofbaseball about TiVo/CableCARD devices and these kinds of channels is true. While my TiVo service doesn't know about the channel, I was able to tune to it via the Motorola cable box in my bedroom, so it is not an issue with my level of account access. I spent some time talking in a thread on dslreports.com about this issue, and others have confirmed that it is available in my area, it's something local with me. I hate those kinds of problems, since it's harder to get a CS rep that cares enough to learn your problem and really deal with it - most CS people just want to "script" you off the phone.

One curious thing, though. If you look at the listing of channels for TWC in Garland, TX, Channel 198 shows up as uncategorized. I wonder if perhaps the channel is mis-categorised at TWC's end, and if so could be contributing to my inability to see the channel on the TiVoHD device.

I'm at a loss. I'd be far more mad if I couldn't get it in the bedroom. Since I can get it there, I am manually recording things in there, and then transferring them to the TiVoHD and watching them out in the living room. It's certainly not optimal, since the programs have things like "Ch 198 - 6PM" as program names, but at least I can see the channel.

The final little turn of the knife in all this is that Time Warner is not even OFFERING the HD feed for MLB Network. According to MLBN, any carrier that carries MLB has the option to offer the HD version of MLBN - but TWC in the Dallas area is not even making it an option. That's lovely.

UPDATE FRI JAN 9: When I came home from work, my wife said that at some time in the middle of the afternoon, MLB 198 came on the TiVoHD unit. In addition, Channel 96 came back on, too. Whatever was going on at the headend appears to have been fixed. So, w00t! Whether it was my multiple calls to TiVo, or my complaint to TWC, I have no idea, because it just "came on", no tech ever visited my house (fortunately).

Now if TiVo would get some guide info in there...

UPDATE THU JAN 15: There's finally guide information in here now about the channel, so all is well. I'm just annoyed it took so long to get it all working. Not annoyed enough to get truly angry about it, after all it is just a TV channel.

My wife took her out to see a movie yesterday, and out in front of the movie theater is a rather large fountain. Samantha has always loved throwing pennies in there, and making wishes.

The cool part is that Lynn said that Samantha was washing for things like "Daddy's leg to feel better", "For a healthy new baby", for "A baby sister", "for mommy not to feel sick", things along that line. No toys, and NOTHING for herself. That's really quite amazing that a kid won't ask for anything for herself.

Wow.