Cory's Spot: The Post This Should Have Been

Editor's Note: This post has become a little exercise in revisionist history - the way it originally appeared was just embarassing since it promised I'd soon return to blogging, which obviously didn't happen. What follows would have been a more accurate statement to make at that time. 4/6/05 8:44pm

I just finished my last final and school is out for the semester! Now if we could just accumulate a bit more snow, I'd love to make it out snowboarding over the break!

Not that I've been a terribly prolific blogger since the inception of Cory's Spot, but I feel a lengthier break coming on. Don't hold your collective breaths or anything, but I'll return sometime.

Cory's Spot: TiVo

If you haven't heard about TiVo specifically or DVR in general, I'm sorry to say, but you're dreadfully behind the times. TiVo is a specific brand of DVR, or digital video recorder, also known as PVR, or personal video recorder, which essentially take the place of a VCR for recording programming from your TV provider and is available for use with anthing from an off-air antenna to cable to satellite.

Since I sold my soul to Convergys some time in the past and work as a customer service representative for DirecTV in their customer installation support department, I've been selling their integrated DirecTV receiver/TiVo units to people for quite some time now, and I'd begun to drool quite heavily over the technology. Well, I finally got my satellite dish installed and activated my service and, liking that, decided to take the next step and purchase one of the basic 40GB models, which allows for up to 35 hours of recording and actually records the digital stream straight from the satellite.

I have to say, I'm in love. Working full time and taking full-time credits at the university (I won't say I'm going to school full-time, because that just wouldn't be true), I had a hard time finding something to watch when I had time, even with 200+ channels to choose from. With my TiVo, I set my favorite shows to record every time they're on and set movies and other shows to record if I think my wife or I will be interested in them, either individually or together. Not only am I catching up on past episodes of Angel, Stargate: SG-1 and Stargate: Atlantis, but my wife gets to watch Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and we've been watching some movies we'd missed in the past or that we simply hadn't seen in some time, and this without happening to catch the show at the right time and happening to have the time the watch the show all the way through.

A couple of other features that are extremely cool are the ability to pause live TV (for up to 30 minutes) and to rewind back through the past 30 minutes of the show you're watching live, as well as the ability to start watching a show you're recording from the beginning while it continues recording through to the end, even if you start watching after it's already started (as opposed to having to wait until it's over to watch it like you do with a VCR, or even the DVR software I have on my computer). I can also record up to two shows at once, and can even watch a previously recorded show while I'm doing that. I'm telling you, the flexibility is great!

The one thing I wish I'd done differently is spend a bit more and get a unit with a larger hard drive. 35 hours is fine for a couple of first-run shows and a movie or two, but following three different series, one of which is entirely in syndication right now and the other two I've missed a lot of earlier episodes, I find that I sometimes have to watch more than I'd like to in order to not fall behind or run out of space. It's created a sick sort of addiction to TV that's at an entirely different level than I've experienced before. A larger hard drive would simply allow me to build up more of a backlog and then watch when I really have time.

Personally, I think the DirecTV DVR with TiVo is a great unit, especially if you subscribe to DirecTV (and if you're willing to pay for television, DirecTV seems to be pretty much the best option, corporate loyalty aside). Even without DirecTV service though, TiVo sells standalone units that work with pretty much any provider, or other cable and satellite providers have their own units available for sale or rental. One thing the standalone TiVo units support that I wish were available on the DirecTV models is in-home networking to share recordings between a couple of different units (so you can record a show on a TiVo unit in one room and watch in on a TiVo in another room, as opposed to having to record it on each with the DirecTV models if you want to be able to watch it in either location. I believe it's also possible to upload recordings from the standalone units to a PC to watch there or to burn to DVD, but I'm not sure. Of course that kind of functionality can be hacked into the DirecTV units (using the native Lynix OS), but I'm not quite ready to void my warranty.

In any case, I'd best be getting back to that annoying school thing. Oh, and then to watching more TiVo.

Cory's Spot: Tires: Les Schwab

My lovely 17-year-old pickup had tires that were probably half to lots-more-than-half as old as the pickup itself. I kept getting flats, which were luckily manifest in the form of slow leaks, which allowed me to keep pumping more air in at random gas stations until I could get them fixed. In getting these various flats fixed, I always went to Les Schwab and sat around cursing their slowness whilst eating free popcorn and waiting for them to finish. I then went back to driving my pickup with my newly freely repaired tire (because I told them I'd be back to buy tires from them when I finally gave in to the inevitable) until the next incident. OK, so I exaggerate on the frequency of these events (it happened twice – both times to the front right tire) and I left out the fact that second time I actually let the tire go completely flat. I then had to prop it up – on a jack that didn't actually fit under the frame without lifting the pickup up to slide it under – for several days until I decided to take the time to have my spare tire fixed (which also happened to be flat) so that I could put in on and drive my pickup in for new tires. Of course, in order to get them to fix the spare without charging me, I had to tell them I'd be back within a matter of hours to buy all new tires, which I actually did. Turns out my old tires were also really squishy, even when fully inflated, and it's much nicer driving around now – I don't have to fight against the lack of power steering quite so much to turn.

I've also left out the fact that I have a 90-days-same-as-cash account at Les Schwab that I've had to use far too often. First for a new battery for my car, then for four new tires for my car, then for a new battery for my car (less the warranty trade-in value on the old battery), then for two new tires for my car (less the warranty trade-in value on the tire that went flat on the interstate), and lastly for four new tires for my pickup. You'd think I'd be bitter about the battery and the tires that went out before their times, which I am. On the up side, the friendly tire guys at Les Schwab now jump nicely any time I pull in to have a flat fixed for my tires rotated, and I don't have to tell them I'll be sure to buy from them next time just to get the work done for free, because they can see I already bought the current tires from them.

The point to this rambling monologue is that for a non-mechanic with a dinky hand-cranked emergency jack and no jack stands, air compressor, or other handy tools, Les Schwab is a good place for tires.

And yes, I did write this post immediately after the "Mosh" post. Go figure….

Cory's Spot: Music Video: Eminem – "Mosh"

It seems that at one time I had something important to say about Eminem's "Mosh" video. Naja…it may not have been important, but at least it wasn't any less important than anything else I've chosen to post on. I guess the long and the short of it is that that video is an anti-Bush statement with as strong an emotional impact as anything else I've seen. The Gorillaz-esque video certainly provides an eye-catching visual to go along with Eminem's lyrics, which, by the way, are as eloquent and on-topic a rant as I've ever heard from Eminem. I'm particularly impressed with the reveal of the twist – that Eminem's army isn't marching to violently express its opinion, but to exercise the right to vote. While I don't agree with the vote Eminem was encouraging (and I'm satisfied with the outcome of the presidential race), I have to give him credit for powerfully stated argument.

P.S. Sorry about the delay on this one, Tara.

P.P.S. Go figure – the one time I write two posts, one after the other, and the server goes down in between so I can't post this one until much later.

Cory's Spot: CD: Anastacia – Anastacia

Of course, there are exceptions, but for the most part, any given artist only releases one eponymous album. That being the case, it would certainly stand to reason that said album would be the most indicative of that artist's sound; the most personal; the best release to date. In the case of Anastacia's latest, I'm afraid that simply isn't the case. Anastacia reminded me of everything from Linkin Park to Ace of Bass, but "her" sound seemed to be missing. After a bit of research, I discovered that Glenn Ballard co-penned several songs; combined with the numerous unnamed guest voices, it's no wonder Anastacia doesn't seem to really own this album. That’s too bad – I've enjoyed her previous releases, but this one, while not a terrible listen, just didn’t work as well for me.

Cory's Spot: Broadband

I guess it’s not really a review, but more a celebration. I have broadband!

I got it through Teton Wireless, and I have to say, I’m quite impressed so far. I had some pretty specific installation requirements, and the tech worked hard to make me happy. He even redid the ends on some of the cables a friend and I ran for my DirecTV installation and made sure I could use both my DirecTV and their basic cable on my living room TV. I was hoping to keep both at my computer, but the technology won’t allow for that, or so I’m told.

In any case, after part of one day, my conclusion is: Teton Wireless: good; broadband: great! Hopefully that opinion holds!

Cory's Spot: Weekly Columns: Reviews, Politics, and LDS Culture

It’s been quite the long time since I last posted here. Considering that it’s my blog, that’s probably not such a good thing.

For the moment, I’d simply like to direct my readers’ (or is that reader’s?) attention to a few columns I make point to check out every week. All are accessible from www.hatrack.com, which is author Orson Scott Card’s website. The first two are by him and the latest of each is accessible from the left sidebar, and the third is simply linked to from his site, at the bottom of the "other sites published by Orson Scott Card" section.

"Uncle Orson Reviews Everything" is as close as anything to the direct inspiration for my own blog. Every week, Card writes on a variety of different topics, giving his own opinion on each. The most common topics are movies and books, though restaurants, socks (yes, the kind one wears on one’s feet), and all kinds of other things have come up.

"World Watch" is akin to the blogs from my friends Nick Speth and Tara Rowe. Card discusses political happenings of the week and lends his two cents. A self-proclaimed moderate Democrat who strongly supports Bush as opposed to Kerry, most due to their stances on the war on terrorism and on the way each is likely to follow through on our current involvement, Card often hits the nail squarely on the head, IMHO.

Finally, "The Back Bench" is written by Aaron Johnston. Johnston is LDS and his column is written from that perspective for an LDS audience. As a member of the target audience, I often find myself amused by his approach to various topics – he’s not so overly pious that he can’t joke around a bit, yet he never lets it get out of hand.

I can’t promise that I’ll suddenly reform myself and write as regularly as I’d like to, but I’ll definitely be making the effort to keep the time between posts significantly shorter than it has been this time. Should another unannounced and unearned sabbatical come upon me, check out Card and Johnston’s columns and rest easy, knowing that there’s better stuff out there anyway.


By the way, I was informed this morning that my fellow blogger, Tara Rowe has decided to mention me in her latest blog. Sorry, Tara, that this isn’t about Morgan Freeman, but that one may still come.

Cory's Spot: Concert: Dave Matthews Band at USANA Amphitheatre

Thanks to a very generous friend, I had the opportunity to attend the Dave Matthews Band's concert last night at the USANA Amphitheatre in West Valley City, UT, which is essentially all kinds of south and west in Salt Lake City. Between still being quite tired and not really having a lot of time this morning, I'll simply say for now that the amphitheatre was nice, the band was awesome, and the audience left much to be desired with their enthousiasm. In their defense, the band played several newer songs that people didn't know and couldn't sing along to and a couple of long, drawn-out jams, but I was still disappointed.

More later, though.

By the way, this isn't actually from this show, but it's from somewhat the same angle we saw the show from and gives an idea of stage/lighting setup.


Thanks to DMB Road Crew for the photo.

Cory's Spot: Excuses and Dragons

Between school, work, and reading for pleasure, I’m afraid I’ve been falling far behind on my blog. Not that I’ve got a backlog of things I’ve meant to blog about, but more that I simply haven’t been taking the time to develop whatever ideas might have crossed my mind into posts.

I don’t know how many of my readers are into reading sci-fi/fantasy, but this summer I’ve rediscovered a series I hadn’t read at all in years, and I’ve been trying to get all the books read before school started (a week ago today). That didn’t happen, and I still have a few books from the series I haven’t been able to get my hands on, but I’m almost done with what I could find, which I consider to be a good thing, since I’m now almost 200 pages behind in Dickens’ Bleak House for my ENGL 110 class.

In any case, the series I’m reading is Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern series. The idea behind the book is that 2,500 years ago, humans, wanting to escape the war, greed, etc. of a human civilization already far in our future, settled on a backwater planned name Pern where they could continue and their own pace and be left alone. Everything was good for a while, but then deadly organisms, called thread, began falling from the sky, draining their resources much faster than anticipated and causing much of the technology they’d brought with them to decay quickly enough that it became obvious they weren’t going to be able to rely on technology as long as they’d intended and that they weren’t even going to be able to survive thread unless they came up with something else to combat it. So they did what any advance civilation with a bioengineering facility might do: made the cute little fire-breathing lizards they'd found on Pern when they arrived big enough to ride on and fight thread with, thus introducing dragons. These dragons and their riders became key figures in Pernese civilization and, along with other changes from the high-tech culture the settlers had landed with, a new civilization came to be.

I know these book won’t be for everybody, but if it sounds interesting at all, I’d recommend you give it a try. McCaffrey’s characters and society are quite believable, so there are people to recognize and a storyline to believe, even if the basic precepts of the story are quite fantastic. As the first three Pern books written by McCaffrey (starting back in the late ‘60s), I’d recommend starting with Dragonflight, Dragonquest, and The White Dragon.

I’m still a bit behind with all I ought to be doing, but I’ll be posting again before too long.

Cory's Spot: Livestrong Wristbands

As I’m sure many have also noticed, the little yellow livestrong wristbands are becoming more and more prominent, being frequently seen on the arms of many famous personalities, entertainers and politicians alike. Closer to home, my sister’s been sporting one for a while now, and last night my wife ordered a ten pack direct from the LAF (Lance Armstrong Foundation) store.

The problem is this: strongly agreeing with Tara Rowe’s commentary regarding the inappropriateness of the magnetic yellow ribbons seen on vehicles around town, I’m struggling to decide whether I want to wear one of the wristbands.

Yes, the monies raised by the sale of these wristbands support cancer research. Yes, being directly sold by the foundation, there’s a decent chance that the money will actually get to researchers.

I simply have to wonder how it’s worthwhile to spend $10 plus handling & delivery on 10 wristbands instead of donating the money directly to a research organization/charity of choice. I'm also admittedly put off by the fact that Lance Armstrong himself is an admitted adulterer. True, a person can change, can repent, and can and should be fully forgiven, but should that person also still be held up as a hero?

The wristbands are backordered, so it’ll likely be quite a while before I have to make a definite decision, but any input would be appreciated, either in the form of additional information on the topic or as a direct expression of your personal feelings on the matter.

Cory's Spot: Nothing New Today

Before starting my blog, I worried about the whole publication deadline. Of course, there’s no literal deadline, since each blogger is free to publish on whatever schedule, or non-schedule, they feel the desire to adhere to, or not adhere to. Nonetheless, I feel that in order to actually develop a readership and have people bother to check for new posts on a semi-regular basis, I need to be at least semi-regular in my posting. The problem is, I don’t always have something worth writing about, short of picking some random annoyance and raving about that for a while (believe me, I could probably pull the whole random rant off, since I’m often peeved at one thing or another, but it’d probably get old fast for you, Gentle Reader) and I think it’d take the fun out of it to force a post every day or so. For example, writing today about my wonderful tuna fish sandwich on fresh honey wheat bread would be a bit much, don’t you think?

In any case, I don’t really have much to say today. I do think I ought to give fair warning that I made a trip to the library today and came home with a couple more books than I’d planned on, a couple of which have to be back in two weeks, not to mention the impending start of the fall semester. Still, should I feel the need to spew forth line upon line of mostly grammatically correct English for public consumption, you’ll find it here.

By the way, I hate road construction, but that’s a post for another day...or not at all...but in any case, not today.

Cory's Spot: Recipe: Garlic Lime Shrimp

Over time, I'm sure a certain degree of predictability will creep into my posts, but for now, I'm guessing this particular post will come as a surprise to almost all of my readers. You see, today my wife and I enjoyed a delicious seafood and pasta meal for lunch that we had thrown together ourselves in a matter of minutes, and I'm going to tell you all about it. I wish I had the money to be regularly visiting fancy restaurants and posting reviews, but most meals that get a mention here will be either of the fast food or of the home grown varieties. And, yes, I may just be blogging about fast food.

In any case, this particular meal is officially called "Garlic Lime Shrimp." I say officially since that's the name given it by the magazine I originally found the recipe in. The first time we made it, we had to go shopping beforehand, since we didn't have a lot of the ingredients on hand. On the up side, the tiny bottle of cayenne pepper we bought will probably last us for years, so I guess you could call it a worthwhile investment.

Without further ado, the recipe, as I originally found it:

Garlic Lime Shrimp

1 lb uncooked large shrimp (peeled & deveined)
5 garlic cloves, minced
½ t. salt
¼-½ t. cayenne pepper
½ c. butter
3 T. lime juice
1 T. minced fresh parsley
hot cooked pasta

In a large skillet, sauté the shrimp, garlic, salt, and cayenne in butter until shrimp turn pink – about 5 min. Stir in lime juice and parsley. Serve over pasta.

Makes four servings.

Being well removed from any sort of seashore where one could reasonably come by really fresh, good shrimp, we settled for frozen shrimp from Wally-World. It's a little more expensive to buy it pre-peeled and deveined, but it's worth it. As for the garlic, you could of course use garlic powder or such, but it's worth spending a bit up front for a garlic press and then buying fresh garlic – I'm not a huge garlic fan, but when I use it, the taste is much better from the fresh stuff. Ditto for the parsley. I have to admit that we've only ever used the little squeezable limes instead of the real thing, but I'm sure the same would be true there. The major change we've made it getting rid of the butter and using some olive oil instead. I like the taste better, and I believe the health gurus would argue for benefits in their field as well. I suspect I use far less than ½ cup of olive oil, but I've never really measured. One downside to using just enough oil to sauté the shrimp, garlic, etc. is that it ends up being a bit dry on the pasta – that's easy enough to overcome by adding a bit more lime juice, which makes for a better flavor anyway.

I always forget to start the pasta before the shrimp, so I end up having to simmer the shrimp for a bit while waiting for the pasta to be done, but a little advance preparation would easily enough avoid that particular delay.

Depending upon how much cayenne you've used, you'll probably find yourself wanting something cool and crisp to complement the pasta dish. Again, working with a poor college couple's budget and time constraints and not really knowing any better, we usually go for the pre-mixed, bagged variety with something other than just plain iceberg lettuce instead of buying different varieties of lettuce super fresh or growing them ourselves. Crisp it up beforehand in water, then keep it from staying too wet in the fridge and it can actually be quite tasty. The secret ingredient for this particular salad is the dressing: Briannas Homestyle Blush Wine Vinaigrette Dressing. It's a sweet dressing and I prefer to add fruits to garnish my salad when I use this dressing instead of croutons and such, but to each his own.

Well, I'm even surprised that I've gone on this long about pasta and salad, but it's my ability to ramble when I put my mind to it that originally got me thinking about starting a blog, so it makes sense.

Try it and enjoy…and let me know what you think!

Cory's Spot: Disclaimer

No one else I know bothers to put a disclaimer on their blog, but I’m going to do so anyway. You see, although it ought to be patently obvious to anybody, myself included, that there’s really nothing wrong with expressing an opinion, especially when it’s well informed and well formulated, I’m worried that somebody will take offense or will strongly disagree and will let me know and I won’t be able to respond properly. I’m afraid of coming off as stupid, which I might as well admit now is pretty much the cardinal sin in my book. I guess it’s just an irrational fear of being wrong, which I have to admit has paralyzed me on more than one occasion and is far more stupid than the actual thought I’ve been afraid to express or the action I’ve been afraid to take.

Now, having gotten that off my chest, I’m going to attempt to open up and express myself freely in the entries to come. I truly hope that most will be well written, with all that implies, but I know that not all will be and I accept that. If you’ve made it through my disclaimer, congratulations! Come on back – I hope to fairly regularly have something for you to read, and occasionally something for you to ponder. Should you wish to express either agreement or (gulp!) disagreement, please feel free to comment!

Oh, and one more disclaimer: though I’m preceded in publication by Nick’s Daily News, The Political Game, and GolgOpia, I need all to understand that I’m not merely imitating my friends in this undertaking, but have rather been spurred on to action by their examples. I’ve been toying with the idea of starting my own blog for quite some time now, and I’m finally setting my fears aside and taking a flying leap at it. It's a minor distinction to some, but important to me.