To make sure no more accidental dropping of my Treo occurs, last week I’ve ordered the eGrips from TreoCentral. It arrived today in the mail and it is very grippy! The instruction is very clear and overall pretty easy to apply to the Treo, though one of the more elaborate piece for the left hand side and top half of the back is a bit fiddle-y to align properly. So hopefully no more Treo slipping from my hand…

My phone carry status is now back to normal. Finally gotten tired of waiting, I called AMEX yesterday to find out the claim status. The nice lady on the phone told me that since AMEX requested my original phone, that means I will be getting my refund in my account in a week time! They could have told me that in the letter requesting my phone, because I would have gone out and got a new one then.

So I went out this lunch time and bought a new Treo. However, since I am already have call plan I don’t get the new service discount 😦 I have to pay the full retail price. Oh well, I guess I have to pay for my stupid mistake after all, just not as much as I feared in the beginning.

TiVo emailed me this evening that they have shipped the refurbished replacement unit to me via DHL. I hit F8 and got the Package Tracker widget working and discovered that it should be delivered this Friday! Woo Hoo! Only 3 days without a TiVo! And I may be able to play golf on Sunday and TiVo the U.S. Grand Prix, instead of staying at home to watch it live.

Now, where is my Treo 650 replacement…

So apparently I am not out of the wood yet for this year. Our trusty TiVo die a horrible death this evening. One minute it was playing an old episode of NCIS, the next minute the “Welcome. TiVo is powering up…” screen came on and stayed there. I ‘rebooted’ it a few times and in the end, even the ‘powering up’ screen didn’t come up any more.

(A bit of background here may help. The TiVo actually has been exhibiting sickly signs for many months, if not over a year. Back when we were in Hoboken and I needed to reboot the TiVo last summer, it refused to reboot until the internal temperature dropped below 40C which is not hot at all for a hard drive or TiVo. So since that day I’ve been expecting it to crap out on me any day soon.)

Anyway after spending over 30 minutes with the TiVo customer service guy, who amazingly enough was pretty polite and professional, it was decided that my TiVo was beyond hope and a replacement is needed. Thus, after handing out my credit card details, TiVo is shipping a replacement to me within 5 business days for $79 plus shipping, which can either be the same model (a series 2 black 80 hours) or a better one (let’s hope for the 140 hours version). But more than 5 days without TiVo! Crap, crap, crap!

Yes, I could have done one of the following instead:
1. Buy a brand new Series 2 140 hours TiVo for $299.99 tomorrow from a shop – Too expensive.
2. Order a replacement (and larger) hard drive for around $150 and have it arrived within couple of days – Reasonable price but don’t really fancy doing the surgery myself. Too lazy here.

Oh well, let’s hope disaster doesn’t come in three…