I'm ready to break something right now. When I cancelled my DishNetwork service the nice lady told me that I had no contract and so there would be no penalty for cancelling, except that I wouldn't receive any more credits on my bill for the equipment that I paid for. Great, I said, so I cancelled it and had my wonderful new DirectTV with Tivo installed. I listed the DN equipment on eBay and it's currently at $31, easy money. But then I get the worst call today. Don's Satellite (not to be confused with Don Arndt local DirectTV deale, but some outfit from Kansas) calls and says that when I ordered the DN from them I signed a contract for a year of service, with penalties for early withdrawal. Crap. I forgot about that. Why didn't DN tell me that when I called? Ok, what will the penalty be? $220!!! Oh, and by the way, we'll be picking up the equipment, too. Gaaaah! I paid for that equipment with my own stinking money! I don't know who to be mad at or what to break. DN should have told me that I did in fact have a contract, and Don's Satellite is the one breathing down my neck for this money. The worst part is that if I had just kept my DN service until the end of the contract (I think about 6 months) it would have only been around $100, and the equipment would have been mine.

Update: I was able to sign back up with Dish Network until my contract expires in August. I'll be paying them $24.99 for service that I don't use, but it will be cheaper than what the retailer wanted to charge me for dropping out. And I can go ahead and sell the equipment. I wish DN could have told me that I was under a contract . . . Bottom line: it's all worth it to have Tivo.

I was wrong about Emma. She didn't get better today. Today she experienced all the symptoms that she's had since Saturday. At least she slept for most of the day. Poor baby.

Emma has been sick since Saturday morning. Yesterday was the throwing up day and today was the sleepy, feeverish, limp day. I'm hoping that tomorrow will be the feeling better day. It's been pretty sad.

Thanks to Luis for pointing this site out:

www.abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijk.com/

You can sign up for a free email address with this domain. Here are some of the features they list:
- Some web forms are unable to read your email address
- Some email software cannot be configured
- People have a hard time typing in your email address
- Companies think that your email address is fake

Sounds great!

I'm looking for some people to volunteer as beta testers for the church web site I'm designing. I would prefer if you have some experience with web design or at least a good feel for how things should look and function. Once I have a list of volunteers and the site is ready I'll email out the instructions. I'll probably have tasks to do, questions to answer, etc., and then have you turn in your responses. If you're interested, please email me. In your email let me know a bit about your background (if I don't know you) and maybe include a link to some design that you've done. Thanks in advance for helping me improve this site.

TechTV.com is giving away money $25,000 to spend on home entertainment equipment. They show four code words each night and you can enter each one here for a separate chance to win (you'll have to create a username, etc.) Don't have TechTV? Don't want to watch 4 hours of TV just to get some code words? Perhaps this might be of some help.

Update: If the syclonefx.com site is down, you can find the codes by searching the TechTV message boards.

1. My So-Called Life (1994-95, ABC)
Before Dawson's Creek. Before Freaks and Geeks. The teen drama that gave nerdy Brian Krakow a chance and Angela Chase (Claire Danes) a start. This one-season show was a work of art and stands alone as the one real depiction of teenage life that doesn't include unrealistic dialogue and over-the-top steamy situations. No repetitive love triangles. No "add-a-kids" or "very special episodes". I was seriously depressed when ABC cancelled this show, and I know I'm not alone. Luckily, I now own all 19 episodes in a box set. Thank you, Danny.

2. Homefront (1991-93, ABC)
This is actually the first show that came to my mind when Danny suggested this category. At its airtime, I was a freshman in high school--no job, no car, no life….I used to watch Sisters with my mom every Saturday night. So I thought maybe this was why I remembered it fondly. Then I went to jumptheshark and found out other people felt the same. Homefront is listed among their "never jumped" shows. Anyway, this show was a post-WWII drama starring Kyle Chandler (who I thought was really hot). Previously, Chandler was in the (CBS?) Vietnam drama Tour of Duty, which I regularly watched with my dad. We like our TV.

3. Cupid (1998, ABC)
Since I have already discussed this show in my Jeremy Piven post, I will not continue to bore you with my obsession. Let's just say ABC sucks.

4. Andy Richter Controls the Universe (2002-03, Fox)
Rupert Murdock, could you and your minions mess with my mind more, please? This show aired when Danny and I were finishing our college lives in Kirksville, MO. We only got two very fuzzy channels on our 13-inch TV, Fox being the most clear. So the promising commercials for this show sent us into elation--finally, something worth watching! So we watched, we liked, we were sad (they cancelled it). Then, a ray of hope: Fox brought it back. Hooray! For like three episodes. Then, nothing. Poor Andy. Guess you should have stayed with Conan and that obnoxious dog.

5. Win Ben Stein's Money (1997-2001, Comedy Central)
Every day after dinner in the illustrious Centennial Hall cafeteria, my friends and I would watch this hilarious show. Contestants would endure the constant harassment of announcer Jimmy Kimmel as they attempted to beat the "Bueller…Bueller" guy (who turned out to be very smart) in an off-beat trivia game resembling Jeopardy, with categories like "The Poison Ivy League" and "I Can't Believe It's Not Buddha."

Das flashengamentag!

Omelet!