Okay, so if you've talked to me since I've moved, you've probably been subjected to the rant about AT&T Cable. You know, the one where I bitch about how there's no timer on the cable box, so I can't tape Buffy on UPN at 7pm, then switch to Fox for 24 at 8? Well, that's all behind me now.

I was paging through the current issue of Wired, as I am wont to do, and I saw an ad from Philips that was touting their universal remotes. Now, granted, some of these things run about a grand, are networked, and can even turn your lights on and off. But there are others in the $200 range that will just learn how to be like your other remotes, and give you a cool LCD touch screen and whatnot to boot. That's still maybe a bit more than I would invest in this kind of device, but I figured I'd check out the website nonetheless. Turns out they have a free program for the Palm OS that turns your handheld into a universal remote as well. Problem being, it's for Palm 3.5 and higher, and I opted for the Handspring Visor, which doesn't allow for OS upgrades.

But that got me into research mode, so I checked out some sites, and downloaded a shareware program that does something similar. After an initial attempt that didn't go so well, I was able to train my Visor to be a universal remote, and programmed it to switch the cable box to Comedy Central in order to tape the Daily Show earlier this evening, which it did. Of course, my roommate neglected to turn off the VCR, so it didn't actually tape. After all that work, it's always human error, isn't it? But I've beaten the bastards at AT&T, and that's what's important. Also, I'm a big geek, but we knew that already.