For those of you yet to experience the wonders of a DVR (are you living in a cave?) I am selling our old ReplayTV box on eBay. The beauty of this system is that it can be used with just about any cable, satellite, or standard TV setup, as long as you activate and pay the monthly $12.95 fee for the programming guide. We loved this system, but currently Comcast offers a built in DVR for cheaper than $12.95, so we switched over to that.

We used our DVR to tape American Idol last night and zoom through the 2 hour show in less than an hour and a half, just by skipping the commercials. I’m still a fan of Chris Sligh even though I had no idea what song he was singing. I also think that Blake Lewis is going to do really well in the competition as well. I though the show was a little below average when compared to past seasons, but it was just the first real episode. The girls will be singing tonight. Be sure to check out the early predictions on DialIdol.com, if you want to ruin the surprise all season.

Who else is excited about the return of American Idol? I will admit that these audition episodes that have been on the past couple weeks are pretty painful to watch. I used to think that these were hilarious, but the humor has definitely worn off, at least for me. I did see a couple of good auditions throughout the various cities, so I’m really looking forward to when the actual season starts.

Here’s a video that cracked me up last night. To make it even better he actually was pretty good and advanced to the next round:

In the little free time that we have, we’ve been trying to catch up on our recorded TV shows before we loose them all in the move. Last night we made it through just about all of the remaining episodes of Survivor: Cook Islands. The only thing left is the second half of the reunion show, which I’m not sure we’ll watch all of. I’m sure we have some other recordings that should take a higher priority.

Anyway, I was a little surprised by the outcome of the finale. I always figured that Yul had a good shot at winning, but I wasn’t sure if he would get the most votes from the jury after some of his actions. This was especially true when it came down to the final three. At that point I thought that Ozzy would win for sure. If the jury wasn’t able to ask questions to each of the final three, I still think that Ozzy would have won. But after watching Yul win everyone over at the last tribal council, I wasn’t too surprised by the results.

Is anyone watching the Amazing Race this season? I’ve been trying to keep up with it and last night I watched the most recent episode. I’m sad to say that Kentucky, one of my favorite teams from a previous post, was eliminated from the race. I knew they weren’t going to win, but they were fun to watch in the meantime. There are only five teams left and one of them is a team that I said to look out for in that earlier post, Tyler and James. I really think that they have a legitimate chance of winning. They just need to watch out for those beauty queens.

Things have been slowing down after work for Kim and I, which is nice since the fall TV season is in full force. One of my favorites, Amazing Race, is back for its tenth season. If you haven’t been watching it, they are only two episodes in so you aren’t far behind. Early favorites of mine are David and Mary, a coal miner and his stay at home wife from Stone, Kentucky, mainly because you never know what they are going to say. Think of them as the Wild Hanlons of Amazing Race. They provide lots of laughs but probably will not make it too far in the race. In my opinion, the teams to look out for are Tyler and James along with Peter and Sarah, but it’s so early that it’s anyone’s game. The episodes only get better as the season goes on, so tune in on Sundays to pick your favorites.

Hopefully I didn’t convince too many of you to watch Treasure Hunters. In the end the show was pretty awful, especially the finale. This final episode was an hour long but the winner of the competition was revealed within the first ten or fifteen minutes. The remaining time was spent talking to all of the teams, some of which I didn’t even remember being a part of it. The series could have ended with one less episode and it would have been better. It still wouldn’t compare to the Amazing Race, but it would have been better.

I’m a little leery of recommending any other shows, but I just realized that Rock Star is back. I enjoyed the first time this show was on when INXS was searching for a new singer. Now a new band, Supernova, is also searching for a singer. The band is comprised of Tommy Lee on drums, Jason Newsted (formerly of Metallica) on bass, and Gilby Clarke (formerly of Guns N’ Roses) on guitar. The remaining singers in the competition are all pretty good, minus a girl named Storm. Each of them is way different from the next, so it will be interested to see who the band (along with the fans) picks to front Supernova.

Has anyone else been watching Treasure Hunters? I was hoping it would be just as good as my latest experience with Amazing Race, but so far it’s been kind of a let down. On the night of the premiere Kim fell asleep watching the show. I’ll give her credit though since it was two hours long.

Last night’s episode flew by, but maybe that’s just a sign of the show getting better. I think the hard part is that there are so many teams right now that it’s hard to get to know any of them, let alone pick out a favorite. Right now I just hope the Fogal family gets knocked out ASAP. After that I’m pulling for the Wild Hanlons just so I can continue to be entertained by them. One Hanlon rocks a mullet, the other two are his son and brother. Last night they left the last mission to grab some food on a eighty mile round trip and somehow still made it back in time to avoid elimination by solving the puzzle.

The show is on Monday nights at 9PM eastern and 8PM central. I’m hoping that it’s only going to get better from here, so maybe you should check it out next week if you have not already done so.

While running this morning the news reported that more people watched the US and Italy World Cup game than Game 6 of the Stanley Cup, which could have been the last game if Carolina had won. The World Cup game did a 4.3 national rating on ABC while Game 6 did a 2.2 on NBC. I guess soccer is more popular than I had originally thought.

What’s funny is that I watched the soccer game but did not watch the hockey game later that night. As I mentioned yesterday we had a block party to attend on Saturday night. Luckily Edmonton went on to win that game and force a Game 7, which hopefully had better ratings than Game 6 (I couldn’t find the ratings yet). I know that I watched all of the game last night.

The Carolina Hurricanes went on to win a pretty exciting Game 7. It was a very physical game with lots of good shots and even better saves. Carolina’s rookie goalie, Cam Ward, went on to win the Conn Smythe Trophy and captain Rod Brind’Amour finally got to hold Lord Stanley’s Cup. Congrats Carolina!

Last night we made the scenic drive out to Shawnee, Kansas to our friends Joel and Amanda’s house. As I mentioned earlier Amanda’s birthday was over the weekend, and the girls had planned to get together this week for a “girls night.” I guess the crappy weather from the past couple of days spoiled their plans and they decided they were just going to hang out at their house. Well Joel found out about it and invited me over as well.

Anyway, Joel cooked up some food on the grill while we ate appetizers and had a few Corona’s. After stuffing ourselves we watched last night’s episode of American Idol. I don’t mention it very often but I haven’t missed a week of this show in quite some time. Imagine that, a live music freak such as myself watching a pop music competition. My one saving grace is that I don’t vote, I never have, and I never plan on doing so. I’m a sucker for entertaining television I guess, and besides how can you go wrong watching a crazy Paula Abdul.

The show’s theme was love songs but I think very few people actually loved the contestants’ performances, well besides Paula who was in tears at one point. A couple of the male performances were probably the best of the night but how could you not be a huge fan of Katharine McPhee, especially when her performance includes a wardrobe malfunction. Now that’s what Ed calls TV!

After work yesterday I played tennis with a couple of fellow coworkers. We did not play any matches since we are all at different skill levels, but it was fun to get out and just hit back and forth for awhile. We are hoping that this develops into a somewhat weekly outing and that more people coming along in the future. I know that I would benefit greatly from playing on a consistent basis. I know the fundamentals of the game and now I just need to get more practice.

From there I went home to eat dinner and watch TV with Kim for the rest of the night. Our DVR was quickly filling to capacity, so we attempted to free up some space. I think that we deleted enough shows to account for another day or two of recordings. Perhaps we’ll have another TV night ahead of us tonight. To those of you with DVR equipment, especially those from cable providers, how much space do you have? I believe that our ReplayTV has a capacity of around 40 hours of record time. I’m considering my other options as we move into our new house.