I've been hearing TiVo in its death throwes over here. Ever since I've restarted the machine this morning, the hard drive occasionally will spin wildly, creating a shrill, high-pitched whine. It stops the play back temporarily, then resumes again in a few seconds. Not being a parent, I can only guess this is my equivalent to hearing a baby's funky cough late at night. It's enough to open your eyes and wait with baited breath to see if you hear a second cough in succession, but when you don't, you go back to bed. Until you hear that second cough bellowing through the house (or in my case, the one-bedroom apartment). I'm at the point where I know something's wrong with my baby, and am in a state of denial. C'mon TiVo. Pull through, baby.

If I have to go back to schlepp'ing it old school, arranging my life around TV schedules and sitting through mindless Ford and Swiffer commercials whenever I do make it to the couch on time, I guarantee there will be tears shed.

Please, oh please, oh please start working correctly again, lil' TiVo! At least until the next season of Nip/Tuck, Sopranos, Six feet Under, Deadwood, and the West Wing begins. Travelling out-of-state means that I'll miss live episodes of the Apprentice, 24, Made in America, the O.C., CSI (Miami, Vegas, New York) and Road Trip unless TiVo manages to pick them up without crashing while I'm out. If this reads like I'm a TV junkie, I'm doing a good job. I just have a few hours after I get home from the office and the homework is done to unwind, and this is how I choose to do it. -and if you don't have a TiVo, you may not understand the TiVo formula of good TV. If this is the case, please refer to the following:

if(TiVO), 30MinShow + 30MinShow = 42Minutes(GoodTV);
else, 30MinShow + 30MinShow = 60Minutes;

Okay, I'm moving on now.

Happy 25th Birthday to Michelle!! This is going to be a good year for you, so kick some ass. 25 was my best year up to that point. Well, then came 26.

Ya know, both Dan and Michelle pointed me towards an article [here] that addresses the very risky issue of bloggers posting information about their places of employment and often losing their jobs as a result.

A recent post on my blog here was purely coincidental with this Washington Post article. --But this isn't the first time my family and friends have mentioned watching out about what I type here on this instant-publish, immediate-gratification medium. If you haven't read the article yet, go for it first, then read below- I'll share what I think about this thing.

All with me? Okay, here goes:

1) In my history of blogging, I have only regretted posting one entry regarding the office. This involved my feelings about a co-worker, the first time I've ever witnessed someone being fired, and what happens when they leave. It was a scary, confusing and awkward experience for me-- and I even knew it was about to happen. That article is no longer online on my site- I moved it. And that brings me to:

2) Because I was concerned about public viewing, I created a separate journal for work-related blogging, and no, you don't have access to it. It covers stuff that I want to vent about without the concern of public consumption and/or liability.

3) I have never, nor will I ever sign an agreement preventing me from sharing my mood about a particular thing at work, unless that "thing" discusses some sort of confidential information.

MMkay? So that's my spin on this. Blogging has always been like a motel swimming pool. You do what you want, just at your own risk. and I'm wise to what those risks are for me, and therefore eliminate information that is too personal or discloses too much.

On a different note, I forgot to blog about the dresser project a while back, so here goes:

I started another furniture project last weekend to refinish my dresser. This dresser has some history- it was originally bought at a yard sale by my grandmother and was painted to fit in a children's room. I took that in college to my apartment and stripped the paint to stain it. I never was too happy with the color of th stain, so now it's time to do something else with it....Southwestern style, baby.

So step 1 of that project is to first sand down any stain and get the dresser back to it's base color...a light wood. I started doing that last weekend, using my orbital sander. It's loud, but that thing really does the trick. You can see in this pic what the original stain color looked like versus what it looks like now.

More details will come here when I have done some more to it.