New Toys and Psychic Nikki

On Mix 99.9 this morning, they had Psychic Nikki on as a guest - she comes on now and again and they get people to call in and ask her questions about their love life, job, financial situation, stuff like that. What a crock. Every single person who calls gets a positive response - yes, your money situation will improve. Yes, you will meet the person of your dreams within a few months. Yes, you will get promoted or get a new job. This morning she was also doing "past lives readings". Humble Howard apparently was a German fighter pilot in WWI named Deiter. The funniest part was the very first caller - she asked about her past lives, and Nikki told her she was one of Henry VIII's wives, who was beheaded. Puh-lease. There are approaching 6 billion people in the world today, and the first person to call the Mix this morning happened to be one of Henry VIII's wives in a past life? Come on. I get a kick out of Psychic Nikki whenever she's on - it's such crap.

Now for the real fun stuff - toys! I went out to Factory Direct yesterday and picked up a PVR card and DVD burner for $60 each. I need to put a cable TV jack in the office now, but there's one in Ryan's room which is on the other side of the wall, so I could probably just cut a hole in the office wall opposite the jack in Ryan's room and move the jack over. Then plug the cable into the card and voila! I can record TV shows on the computer, then burn them onto DVD. I have anothor thing called a Dazzle, which plugs into the computer, then you plug the video camera into that, and it allows you to transfer video tape to the computer. Now we can transfer our video tapes of the kids to the computer, and then onto DVD. This will obviously make watching them easier, but will also allow us to put the original video tapes in the safety deposit box - backup and offsite storage is a critical part of disaster recovery, dontcha know.

The PVR card also has a FM tuner in it, so I was able to listen to the radio through the computer yesterday as well. I'm sure I won't use that feature all that often, but it's cool nonetheless.