So, the Freak Out Followup

Follow up to the optical freak out. Bob has - according to the second optometrist - Small-angle esotropia, intermittent at near but constant at a distance, causing amblyopia with crowding phenomenon. None of which comes up with a lot on Google, unfortunately. Essentially, his left eye is periodically a bit off-track, thus the "intermittent" which means that surgery won't fix it. He had his 6-week follow-up, and there was some improvement, so we're doing more eye exercises and will go back for another appointment at some point. Scarily, the doctor implied tht this could be a fairly long-term thing. God, I hope not. Adding 2 hours of eye exercises on top of the after-school French program and regular homework, plus time for playing and dinner, is trying to cram a lot into one day. Doesn't help that he's bored with most everything we've done, and is a master at stalling and misdirection. Bribing will only go so far, and threats don't do any good.

It's Dead, Jim

A moment of silence, please, for our poor TiVo. Yes, we knew it was acting twitchy and that we needed to call DirecTV about a replacement. Yes, I knew I needed to watch some of the massive backlog that built up over the summer. Too late now, folks. It died this morning, while I was watching a Flashpoint rerun. Froze up, wouldn't respond, and even a pull-the-plug reboot didn't fix it this time. FedEx will be delivering the replacement hopefully tomorrow. And, sadly, if it was really the hard drive that crashed and burned, all my backlog is gone. Now, 75% of it, oh well, there will be reruns. Eventually. Or they exist on DVD. Things like old Disney movies (although Happiest Millionaire is pretty rare), The Music Man, Flashpoint reruns, the Good Witch movies, even Black Gold, which is obscure at best. Magic School Bus. 15% of it, I may have to start looking for underground bootlegs or something. Special Unit 2 and The Sentinel, since SyFy has given up on showing, you know, actual science fiction shows. But 10% of it probably won't be rerun at all - like the Opening and Closing Ceremonies of the Olympics that I still hadn't watched. The latest Mars landing. Science Channel's Neil Armstrong tribute. Worst part? It's premiere week, plus new SyFy shows are running, so I've lost the newest episodes of Alphas, Warehouse 13, Hawaii 5-0, and NCIS. Part of those we can maybe find online, but some of it is gone for good. There should really, really be a way to move things between hard drives. I can do it on the computer, which isn't that different from a TiVo hard drive. Heck, our DVD-R recorder could split a recording into multiple parts, so surely they can find a way to program that into a TiVo. Very handy for keeping small bits of shows (music awards, Olympics) and getting rid of the rest. Or, for the Olympics when I had to tape 6 hours to get the one hour of event I wanted, split the recording to delete the other 5 hours and make some room. So, a fresh start. Maybe this time I can keep from having it sit at 98% full for weeks at a time.