Thursday, September 29, 2005

A better way

At work, I have always been always on the lookout for a better, more productive way to do any of my daily tasks. The whole time I am transcribing, I am thinking, "Could this be faster? Could I make a macro for this? Could I combine some steps?"

I forget sometimes to keep that same inquisitive mentality when I'm at home. Lately I've been having problems with the TV schedule. We don't have digital TV, so to see what's on now and coming on later, we have to sit through a slow crawl of program lists on cable, and I usually time it just right so if I want to find out what's on channel 8, the list is on channel 9 and will crank on at a snail's pace through 3-digit channels before it starts over.

I get a Sunday newspaper every weekend for the little TV schedule booklet, but the Bangor Daily News stopped printing it, probably because everyone was passing up the daily paper and only buying the weekend paper like me. I read that the newspaper had a web site where I could see and print a schedule, but it apparently doesn't work with my browser or has technical issues with my computer.

I considered buying the TV Guide magazine every week, but I find it hard to navigate. Besides, I have to plow through tons of channels I don't even watch just to see what's on the channels I do watch.

At any rate, I finally had the common sense to mention my dilemma to Matt, and he told me about www.titantv.com, a site where not only can you get a TV schedule for your area, but you can customize it and omit all those stupid channels you never watch anyway. Wow - I knew there had to be a better way! That truly simplifies my life.

It's one thing to waste valuable time (isn't all time valuable?) sitting in front of the TV watching a mediocre program. It's more of a waste to sit there watching program titles scroll one at a time.

Sometimes when you are trying to simplify your life, all you have to do is ask for help. And hopefully, you will have access to someone brilliant like Matt when you do!

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