Breaking up is hard to do, stabbed in the gut

I have been a Tivo customer for a long time, since I had a DirecTV receiver with integrated Tivo back in 2000/2001.  Tivo was a revolutionary product when it came out, allowing customers to no longer be chained to their televisions based on a programming schedule.  Instead I could watch a show whenever it was convenient to me. On top of that watch it in 2/3 of the time since I can fast forward past commercials in a few seconds. The way Tivo would learn your viewing habits and make recommendations for other shows based on them was pretty cool as well. Being able to pause live tv was sweet.

The Tivo interface was always intuitive and user friendly, far ahead of the boxes that cable companies offered which were slow, clunky and ugly.  Over the years Tivo added features to keep up with the times, again being a ground breaker in many areas like allowing you to schedule recordings remotely from the web and be able to take recorded content from the Tivo and play it back on other devices.

I was very satisfied with my Tivo service for a long time.  At one point I had one in the main room and the bedroom.  Well over the last few years that satisfaction has been waning.  The decline started when I ejected Comcast out of my house for cable TV and switched to my OTA HD antenna for live tv.  Doing so cut down the amount of programming available to feed my Tivo dramatically.  Most of the time my box was sitting around less than 10% full.

The shift to streaming delivery of video was another big change that lessened the Tivo’s value to me.  I wound up using the Xbox 360 as much if not more than my Tivo to watch stuff.  Tivo did have it’s own set of apps to watch various online streaming content like Netflix, Amazon Video, etc… but I think they kind of suck.  The apps were slow and annoying.  I found the experience on the Xbox 360 apps to be much better. These factors plus the greatly improved Xfinity X1 hardware and software made paying $15 a month for Tivo service not make sense anymore.

They don’t let you cancel your service online, it requires a call so their “retention experts” can try to change your mind.  During the 15 minute call to Tivo I politely rejected various offers.  The guy even suggested that I should consider buying the lifetime subscription for the Tivo I am getting rid of to increase it’s resale value.  They put you on hold for like 5 minutes so they can “finalize” the cancellation.  Cut me a break, cancelling is probably one or two mouse click on their end.  Save the drama for your mama.

The call finally ended.  I have officially broken up with Tivo.

Last night I took the girls back to Ali’s place after another fun four day visit.  It’s always a bit sad for all parties involved since the girls seem to enjoy being at the house so much.

So last night as Cindy and I were watching Paranoia (B+ rating), I started to feel sharp pain in my abs.  My first thought was the pain was from my stomach.  I asked Cindy if there were any different spices in the food she made.  She said it was all stuff she has used before.  I wasn’t sure what was going on but it was pretty painful.  At the gym I had done some heavy deadlifts, after work I did a circuit that had me straining to get some push up reps out but I don’t recall any specific ab pain during either session.

Sleeping last night did not go well.  The pain in my abs woke me up several times.  Laying in certain positions was impossible.  When the alarm went off I had to struggle to get out of bed, certain angles would make me just wince.  I immediately took two Advil which took the edge off the pain enough that I could function.  The fact that Advil helped pretty much confirms that I just strained something in there.