John's Review of X2

First off, if you have Comcast's Xfinity X1 set-top, you too can try out this platform by following these simple instructions: Make sure your system has the latest updates, hit Xfinity, scroll over to the settings wheel, choose About and see if there is an Update Version button. Apply any updates and wait for it to reboot. Now you can get it to switch to the X2 platform by pressing Exit, Exit, Exit 9, 8, 9, 6 (X, T, W, O). Use this same code to switch back.

John's Review:

I have two X1 boxes, the one in our living room has the hard drive for recording and the other is in our master bedroom, it links to the main box so we can still see all the guide options and watch our recorded shows. As soon as I heard about their new platform TV went and found out how to update out boxes. I tried the new version of the guide (X2) for about 3 months and I have to say, I don't like it. Here are a few of the differences that I found not enjoyable and a few things that I think would be neat to add.

On X1, when you hit the Guide button, you get a shrunken tv (pip, Picture-In-Picture) and a menu on the right-side of the screen of nearby channels. Press Guide again and you see a smaller tv in the upper right and a full guide on a timeline below. This way you can still see what you were watching while you see what else is on. Font sizes are of reasonable size to fit into the show’s time block and displays about 7 or 8 rows of channels as well as time and weather in the bottom right.  Filter options are available by hitting the yellow triangle button although more filter options should be available, this is handy.

On X2 when you press Guide, the whole screen goes black (no pip tv) and displayed is a large font timeline showing only five rows of channels. The font is so large you can only see about the first 10 characters for a half hour show. You can still see the time and weather on the top right, but having no pip is frustrating to my toddler as he wants to see what was already on while I look for something else. When you press Guide again, I do like this feature, you get a simple text menu that shows how you want to see the guide. The options here are for All, HD, Favorites, Trending, Movies, Sports and Kids. However, if you select a view other than the All or HD view, you see a black background menu with a large image of the show/movie in a mobile app kind of view where the icons scroll left and right. Up and down are larger categories, being time slot or type of channel. 

This mobile-type of menu makes me feel like Comcast thinks I’m stupid. Like I need large pictures, large fonts and huge categories to find shows I want to see. This might be nice for Grandma, but I want to see more on my HD TV, not less.

On X1, when you hit the Xfinity button, you see a pip in the top right and a 7 row timeline guide with a right to left menu of Guide, Saved, On Demand, Apps and icons for Search and Settings. It’s compact without being too over-crowded all the while having the pip. On the Saved menu you see a sub menu on the left side of the recording categories with time and weather at the bottom. On the main right side, you see an 8 to 9 row text listing of the items in each category with status and other info about the recording. The On Demand menu has similar categories on the left side and then larger images of the programs with names below. These images are a little big, but not as big as those seen in X2.

On X2 when you hit the Xfinity button, you still see a full view of the channel you were watching and a menu overlays in the bottom 1/3 of the screen. It is a very simple 6 option menu, showing Guide, Saved, On Demand, Search, Apps, and Settings wheel. Selecting Guide pulls up the same menu as hitting the Guide button. Selecting Saved shows the programs that you have recorded, but the menu here is large image, large font and uses the scrolling left to right for each huge item and then categories are up and down taking up most of the screen for that one or two rows shown. I really don’t like this menu as I feel frustrated by not being able to see as much content as on the X1.

Overall, I think some of the features in X2 could be integrated into X1, but the feel of X2 seems as though it belongs on a tablet. With no options to shrink the font, pip, or not being able to change the feel of the menu (like a customizable interface), the App has a ways to go before being superior to X1. I also noticed that while using X2, (on both of my set-tops) navigating was very sluggish and not as responsive as the X1. This very well could be due to the increased memory usage for the X2 menus or because the whole interface was being overlayed on the existing X1-main OS. I think Comcast can do better and should not force this update on the masses. At least give the user an easy way to choose which interface they want to use.

Recent Busy-ness

Happy St. Valentine’s and President’s Day everyone! Rant Alert: You know, no one says Saint Valentine’s Day... I guess it’s one of those religious things that people ignore or are afraid of.  Perhaps it’s the USA’s typical way of sterilizing a belief system. Funny how this country was created by those seeking religious freedom, but now we want nothing to do with calling out any specific religious association. I also feel that St. Valentine’s Day has become one of those “greeting card holidays”. Candy, Flowers, Cards, hype, hype, hype. It’s really asinine how the second one holiday is over, or close to being over, the next two are already being advertized and have related products in stores. Can we have a breather between holidays, please? Id’ like to make a no-holiday holiday. A day where no cards are given, no special anything for your S.O., no super sale bargains, or promos of any kind. I’ll call it John’s No-Spend-Day. No one is to spend money on this day, everyone simply saves money. On this day there are no commercials, no flyers, and no junk mail. It would be awesome. Ok now that I’m done with my rant, I hate how on these greeting card holidays that the price to participate increases. You’d think that because of increased number of people buying into the hype, that they would be able to decrease prices. I refused to pay triple for a dozen roses and I let Jenny know to not expect any this year. However, this last Friday, on our drive home, Aaron said he saw Wal-mart selling a dozen roses for only $15. He suggested we stop to surprise the Mrs’ and so I relented. It was only $15 and I think Jenny enjoyed them.  I will close this subject by giving you some fun facts: California produces 60% of American roses, but the vast numbers sold on Valentine’s Day in the US are imported, mostly from South America. Approximately 110 million roses, the majority will be sold and delivered within a three-day period. Thank you Dilbert-A-Day.

Too many times do I feel that I get crap in my mail box. It feels like they are saying “Here, you throw this away”. To recycle in my neighborhood costs me extra and the city does not have a recycle center close by. It would be a good 7 miles for me to be able to take in my recycling. Coordination to do so simply means that our recycling piles up, so I pay a little extra to have our trash collectors pick up every other week. Therefore, I have this idea of requiring a permit to send paper flyers; it would be like renting advertisement paper. Basically, senders of paper junk mail and phone books are required to recycle them. They would have to provide a return address that unwanted/expired ads could be returned to. They would then have to re-use or recycle them. Maybe it would be controlled by having a “paper expiration date” and regulated by the EPA or something. This would force more companies to advertize digitally so they would not have to endure the cost of recycling and postage. Maybe a similar thing could be done for packaging.

Speaking of ads, the Super Bowl XLIV party was a fun time at Nick and Andie’s. I could have cared less who won. The Broncos didn’t make it this time so, no ties to either team by me. My favorite ad was the Doritos commercial with a dog that takes off his anti-bark collar, straps it to a guy taunting him with Doritos and then the dog barks, shocking the guy. The next best one for me was the Snickers commercial where they brought in Betty White and Abe Bogota, a must see if you haven’t already.

The Olympics are going on right now. A while back, Nick, Andie and Steve S. wanted to know if we wanted to go as a group. Well of course I WANT to go, but it sounded expensive and Jenny doesn’t have the time to take off.  I’ve been to those type of sporting events before and they are not real exciting except for the 5 seconds the pack whooshes by. Frankly, I think you have a better view on TV. It’s warm, in HD, I can see more than one event in a short period of time and it’s extremely cheap. I guess I do have to put up with Matt Lauer and Bob Kostas giving ridiculously unnecessary commentary. Can’t they simply put up stats and fun facts in text? I’d rather have the sounds of the crowd and action going on. It would be more like I was there. I love my country, but I’d love to see some underdogs show up the big boys. I’d like to see someone from Jamaica school Shaun White, lol.

With all the stats and usage reports available thru services like Google Analytics, why it is I have to bend over for Comcast? Why can I not simply pay for only the channels I watch or want to watch/pay for? If I’m paying for cable, why are their advertisements? I know, the actors/producers/etc don’t get paid by the cable company, but maybe they should. Then I could pay for an advertisement-free season of a show, or a no commercial version of a live broadcast. Maybe if we had the option to be commercial free, by paying a little extra, we would not have to be bombarded. I watched a Bronco football game that my Grandfather taped from 1988, you would not believe how long it took until a commercial and how short the break was. There was no TV time-out and there were minimal signs around the field that was simply named “Mile High”. I’m seriously considering cancelling cable and putting up an HD antenna, maybe this summer I will pull that trigger.

As for my dumb-ass brother in jail for DUI, again, (I don’t get how thick he is) he wants my address to write to me.I see this as his popportunity to ask me of favors while locked up. It'll be easy to say "go f yourself" to his requests. He’ll be lucky to be able to get a license in CO again and won’t be out for some time. That means the big-ass truck he convinced my Grandpa to buy for him needs to be sold ASAP. The monthly payments are way too high for them. I told Grandpa I’d put it on Craig’s List for them.  I’m trying to figure out the best asking price, but because they got a crappy deal from the dealer, it will be hard not to take a loss on this one. I’ve been going over to my parents a lot lately to clean up after their pit-bull (that also needs to go, thanks Bro), Ginger. The giant 30 ft tall Blue Spruce that is, literally as old as me, is very sparse and dying quickly. I trimmed off all of its lower branches and will be cutting it down in the near future. The lower branches are the bigger, heavier, and harder to manage ones. I’ll have to make several more visits to get them tied up for the trash collectors. The house is always a mess due to my hoarder mother. I am going to have to make several trips to help them stay sanitary and some-what organized. It’s going to be a long year of cleaning, but its way past due. I need to get my Bro’s possessions back from his girlfriend. Why she has any of his stuff still is mind-numbing. ::Sigh:: I wish I or my parents didn’t have to always clean up after my brother’s mistakes.

On a happy note, my cousin Candice and her 6 month old baby, Kolby, came in from NC for a visit this weekend. She is doing well and is really lucky to have such an easy to handle kid. He doesn’t cry much and goes right to sleep. I hope when we have a kid that it’s that easy. Candice sucks when it comes to  computers. It’s like she doesn’t want to take the time figure it out; I’m talking about simple stuff: Load pictures to computer, add photos to facebook.  She told me she would give me her password and I could update them for her. I already made a picasa site for them. It’s just frustrating that she is so unwilling to learn. “I’m busy with my new kid” is a convenient excuse. I know you have a lot of down-time, Kevin cleans that place, and Kolby is not mobile yet.  Take a few minutes each day and try, just try. You’ll feel self-empowered when you see how simple it is.

Well, speaking of computers and my cousin’s side of the family, my Aunt and Uncle’s computers are not doing so well. I’ve been trying to troubleshoot their issues all weekend. The desktop won’t even start up, but only at their place… It works fine in my house. I think it’s the gauge power cable, I’ll have to experiment. Their laptop is a bit old, but still works for what they use it for. I found it had a virus and decided to upgrade it to windows 7. After this last install of updates, it will not power on past the windows starting up screen.  So, two computers, both won’t turn on after I “fixed” them. LOL maybe I should have not touched them at all…

Because I have been so busy with cleaning up other peoples crap lately, I have not had a chance to contribute my photos for my 365 project. I’ll get to it at some point, but now it’s going to take me forever to organize, collect and edit 2+ weeks of photos. Luckily, I have still been taking photos each day.

I really would have rather gone skiing or snowshoeing this weekend. We had it all lined up to go with Mikey and Sarah, but too many other things came up. I think Derek was going to go too. I would like to go shooting with him again as well.  I better get moving on this Loveland 4 pack thing. At this point, I have not gone once! I need some better time management.

I have been consistently going to the gym, which is good. I was getting sick and going out of town a lot for a while there. I have gained some weight as a result, but I think its starting to come off. I am feeling weaker though. I see some of my previous numbers from earlier in the year and I am having a hard time getting up to those numbers. I wish my coach would become more digital with his stats and such. He keeps good paper records, but that could easily be converted and maintained online. That, of course, does not explain my loss in progress. The best I can do is keep doing.

I promised Rich I could find him a cheap Xbox, so I’m now on the prowl. I’m sure I can find one worth fixing. His brother Rob just had their baby, Ben. He looks so much like both of them. I think they will make great parents. I thought Rob , MD never returned phone calls before, now I probly won’t hear from him for years. He’s still a good guy and will always call him a friend. I can understand being busy.

I hope you enjoyed hearing about my recent busy-ness. At least I had my moment to dump my thoughts.

My first post of the year

Well, since January is almost over, I guess I might as well add a blog entry... This has been a very busy month. We won best overall wine at the Bickford's wine tasting New Year's party... again. I'm getting good at picking out wines. Jenny finished her Goofy challenge and made a personal best time. Ironically, Florida was very cold (record lows for that region) when standing around to catch a glimpse of them trot by. I'm super proud of Jenny for sticking with all the training, getting on the plane, and making it through to the end. The trip overall was very fun especially because we got to vacation with Nick and Andie but it was also nice to have the last couple days to ourselves. Of all the Disney's, World is my favorite. I may have to do a post with more details just about this trip.

After vacation, it was tough to come back to reality. That very next weekend, I got sick, again! Its like the 3rd time in 3 months! This one, the congestion took almost 2 weeks to go away. Being out for vacation and then being sick, really set me back when attempting to return to Defy. I was doing so well, feeling fit and strong, losing weight, etc... but, alas, I put on some weight and have to retrain my muscles/body to get used to Cross-fit all over again.

I am trying to encourage Jenny to join Defy as I think it would be a good way for her to keep in shape that does not exclusively involve pounding her feet into a trail. Just today, Jenny said she misses the training runs and thus, Stomper and I rode along in support, just like good old times. She enjoyed it immensely and I think it helps with her headaches.

This month, I had to replace the cell phone I got my Mom: she simply lost it. I think its good for her to be able to keep in touch from wherever and don't mind helping her understand these new fangled contraptions. I hope she hangs on to this one.

As of lately, I finally called a plumber (that Steve recommended) to have our leaking water heater pipe and water main valve replaced. That meant I had to demo a wall so he could get to the pipes. Demo is fun :) Friday, at the gym, I did 12/15 laps (400 meters) of the assigned walking lunges. My legs and butt are the sorest they've been in months. It's painful to get up from chairs and start walking. I think it will be good for me in the long run though. Also last night, Jenny went to a Silpada party and I invited the guys over for poker night; It was a great time. I got a little drunk and ended up staying up late talking with Andrew till 2:30am. I changed my oil today and the oil in my Mom's car with no ill effects of the night before.

Speaking of drunk, its been a little (a lot) stressful trying to help my parents figure out some things for my brother's predicament. He got ANOTHER (4th) DUI and has been in jail since New Years. His bail is way too high, and trying to afford another lawyer is not monetarily possible. His girlfriend still has a bunch of his stuff and he has left a lot of things unfinished around my parent's house. They cannot afford his truck payment, so I told them I'd try to help them sell it. Since he is a "scrapper" there is literally junk all over the property, not to mention his pit-bull that is being unfairly/barely taken care of by my parents. She needs a good home or to be given to a shelter. I wish my parents would act on that.

I joined a group at work that is kinda like a photo club. The goal is to take a photo every day for one year. The group is call GHX Project 365. Even though I dislike a lot of the user interface with Flickr, I signed up for the Pro version and will display my photostream below. Yes I figured out a way to use Picasa to get my photos loaded (Thank God). We are allowed to post a week's worth at a time, so you may not see photos until my usual Sunday night load.

On the plus side, I did get the payout from an Exceptional Performer award I received at work from 2 years ago. This will be very helpful to our mountain of credit card debt. We used a good portion of this to fill up our HSA. This will give me bigger paychecks and allow us to actually go to the doctor for any reason.

We have arranged to have a local cake designer make a miniature replica of Jenny's parent's wedding cake. they are celebrating their 40th wedding anniversary this weekend and we hope to surprise them with the cake.

Well, I think I'm done for now. if I forgot something, I'll be sure to include it in my next post.

My Blog Vow

I used to write in my old blog quite a bit. I enjoyed it. It was a good way for me to rant or go on and on about a topic of my choice. I stopped because the blog system I used for my website kept spamming me, HARD. I had crazy anonymous comments like 50 times a day with gibberish. Well this coming year, I vow to start writing in my blog again. I don't expect anyone to read it, but if I find the time, I will make a post.