XX Winter Olympics Wreaks Havoc

I love the Winter Olympics and as much as I'm looking forward to the Opening Ceremony next Friday, I'm also filled with a little bit of dread. So far this TV season, we've done an excellent job of keeping current with most of the TV shows that we TiVo. We've even managed to watch the six episodes each of The West Wing, Las Vegas, and Numb3rs that we taped before switching them over to TiVo. Here's a list of shows we currently TiVo and the number of episodes we have pending in our "Now Playing" List:

The West Wing (0)
Desperate Housewives (14)
Grey's Anatomy (0)
Surface (1)
Las Vegas (0)
24 (0)
The Bachelor: Paris (0)
Medium (13)
Invasion (0)
Love Monkey (0)
Bones (1)
Alias (0)
Lost (0)
Survivor (0)
Numb3rs (8)
Close to Home (0)
American Idol (0)

As you can see, we have 37 hours waiting in the queue, ready to watch. We've been slowly working our way through the backlog. But now with the start of the Winter Olympics only a week away, we are in danger of becoming buried alive by programming. Our TiVo has the capacity of storing 140 hours of programming at its lowest quality setting, called "Basic." The quality at that setting pretty much makes the show unwatchable, so we've set the quality to "High", which is the second to the highest. This means we only get around 64 hours of storage capacity. Doing the math, we've already filled over half of the hard drive and adding huge blocks of Olympic coverage is going to eat up the rest of the space very quickly. Add to that any of our regular programming on networks trying to compete with the Olympics and it's a recipe for disaster. It will take us weeks to recover.

The only sensible solution is to quit my job so that I can watch TV full time. Are there any job openings out there for full-time TV watchers? If so, please keep me in mind. I have years of experience.

Survivor: Exile Island

Well another season of Survivor has begun. Once again it takes place in Panama, the home of Survivor: Pearl Islands and Survivor: All Stars. This post contains spoilers, so if you haven't watched the first episode and don't want to know what happened, then you might want to stop reading.

Although the location is the same, the structure of the game has changed. Instead of two teams of eight people, there are now four teams of four people, divided by age and gender. In another twist, the team that loses the reward challenge must choose someone to spend a night alone on "Exile Island." As consolation though, there is an immunity idol hidden somewhere on the island that they can use anytime during tribal council, even after the votes have been read.

My favorite part of the series is at the end of tribal council when Jeff Probst frequently admonishes the team for making a poor strategical choice. Last night, the "Older Women" team was sent to tribal council where they voted off the strongest member of their team, Tina. This women was the first to make fire, caught a large fish, and has been a veritable work horse around camp. In her "real" life, she's a Lumber Jill, a feminine version of a Lumber Jack. She's spent her life outdoors and has proven herself a real asset to the team.

After Jeff extinguishes her torch and sends her on her way, he turns to the remaining team members and says in a disapproving voice, "You're three days into a game you've all admitted is a lot tougher than you expected and you just voted off the one person who could make your life more bearable. Head back to camp."

You tell 'em Jeff!