Yesterday, my TiVo recieved a service update, with some new functionality. I really like the “Recently Deleted Folder”, which shows everything you’ve deleted but hasn’t yet been recorded over. It’s a good concept, since I’ve accidentally deleted things I’ve realized later I actually wanted to see. I have a few quibbles with the implementation—for one thing, it could use a nicer icon in Now Playing (right now it looks the same as any other folder, which it’s not), and I had gotten used to hitting Page Down in Now Playing until it bonked to get to TiVo Suggestions, which doesn’t work anymore—but I think it’s a good thing overall.

What I don’t like about the update is the “Improved TiVo Suggestions”. The message tells me that “the TiVo service is better than ever at suggesting shows you might like”, but I don’t want it to do that. I want it to suggest shows I will like. I had gotten TiVo into a nice rut where it was recording episodes of basically the same seven or eight sitcoms whenever they were on (if you must know, Frasier, Friends, Cheers, Mad About You, Wings, That 70’s Show and a few others I delete), and I like all those shows, so I would watch them. Since yesterday, it’s been recording all sorts of odd things I don’t usually watch, or have never seen before—it just picked up a bunch of really old sitcoms from TV Land, like The Dick Van Dyke Show, Green Acres, I Dream of Jeanie and Leave It To Beaver, and as we speak it’s recording The Tonight Show, so I don’t know what to think. And, of course, it managed to find one of the half dozen episodes of Ellen I’ve seen before. Maybe these are shows I would like, but I had gotten used to the old behavior, and TV isn’t where I want to experiment with change.

Laura got the car going again: She got off the train, got in the car, yanked on the gearshift, and it worked. I am glad the car is working again, but I am a little flummoxed as to why I couldn’t get it out of park, either last night or when I tried again this morning.

I parked the car at the train station this evening, and when I went back to it twenty minutes later, I couldn’t make it go. It started, but I couldn’t shift it out of park. I tried all the steps listed in the manual, but to no avail. More than a little frustrating, of course. I tried calling AAA, but they insisted that all they could do was jump start or tow, and I wasn’t sure I was ready to have the car towed just yet. Eventually, I decided maybe I should just leave the car and take the bus home. The 35 had been parked stopped at the bus stop for a while, and I figured that once it turned on its lights and route sign, I could wander over and hop on. Turns out that it pulled away without ever turning on the rear signs, and there wasn’t going to be another one for an hour. Sigh.

I ended up taking Caltrain up to San Antonio, and walking home from there (carrying the groceries I’d bought earlier in the evening), and now I’m home, safe and mostly sound. The car is still parked at the train station, and maybe tomorrow I can figure out how to make it go, or have it towed somewhere where they can fix it. Or maybe this is a sign that it’s time to decide that I’m never going to be able to afford to own property in the Bay Area anyway, and spend all my savings on an extremely expensive brand new car.