Congratulations TiVo team for a job well done. First, the user interface is so simple, anyone in my household can use it.  It isn’t complicated at all.  The audio & visual feedback help make it so easy. Second, teaming up with Netflix to provide video on demand was such a great decision.  My wife and I have the two DVD plan.  While the discs are in transit, we can still watch movies on the big screen. Finally, the video on demand feature from Netflix has been running flawlessly for my family since last Christmas.  My wife loves browsing Netflix for videos to  watch on our...

I don’t know exactly when it happened, but over time I have developed a reputation.  I am recognized by others as the go-to guy.  This is not necessarily a bad reputation to have, except when people think you can solve anything.  Usually, when someone comes to me with a problem to solve, I have them describe or show me the situation.  If it’s in my domain of knowledge or expertise I will usually accept the challenge.  If it’s not, I will refer them to someone else that I feel is better suited to help resolve their issue. Most of the time, the issues people bring to...

I recently experienced a missing page error on my website.  It didn’t match the theme at all.  I was kind of disappointed, since the rest of theme had been done so nicely.  I figured, no problem, I’ll just install and activate one of them handy dandy Plugins to resolve the error and then it will display nicely within the the content window of my theme. I’ll admit at the moment, I’m a newbie to the WordPress framework.  So, I have a little learning to do.  After doing a some googling on the subject, I discovered, that the missing file error is handled in the...

During my career as a software engineer I have been frustrated most by user interface design of consumer electronics. My biggest pet peeve is when a device is partially functional.  The user interface appears to be running or kind of running, you can touch a button or touch the screen or click on a remote control and see some response, but it’s obvious that the device is not really performing the requested task.  It’s stuck somewhere waiting for an event that may or may not happen.  The old “race condition” has reared it’s ugly head.  What caused it? ...