At the end of going out and visiting our moms for Mother's Day, my mom was finishing up watching the documentary Harlan County War about a coal miners' strike in Kentucky in the 70s. It's one of those movies I'd heard about, but never seen (sidebar: Kathy's sister got 27 Dresses DVD for her mother's day, and recommended it. I believe it's the Wal-Mart pack that came with a CD of songs from the movie.) After I got home I decided to check to see when it was on again to see about maybe recording it. I got a message saying I needed to activate my DVR service. But I've had TiVo for years, it's already activated. The "to do" list didn't come up, same message. I was getting worried, because I still have programs I recorded and could still watch, but couldn't record new ones. And DirecTV no longer is associated with TiVo, so I was worried about getting a new box with a different DVR that I'd have to pay monthly for. I paid the lifetime fee for the TiVo when I got it instead of the monthly fee because I figured it'd pay for itself after a couple of years. I guess too many thought that way as well, because TiVo no longer offers that option, it's a monthly fee only. And I didn't want to have to switch it out. So I called DirecTV as instructed, and the CSR tried to reset it on her end. Still didn't work. Then she suggested unplugging for 15 seconds and plugging back in to see if the reset on the box would work (it's like a computer when it starts up, only longer. You get the "almost there" messages, the setup messages, etc) And when it finally came on, it worked.

I know, not much of a story, but it's Sunday afternoon, not much else is going on, and this sounded like a Harvey Pekar story, and wanted to try my hand at writing one, okay?