First off, I am in the Boston area. I say this for the benefit of readers who find me with a search engine and are researching this purchase. That said, here's what I learned:

1. Comcast does offer cable cards in the Boston area. A TiVo HD forgoes the traditional use of a cable box in favor of this technology. This has two major effects (in my opinion).
a) Cable cards, obviously, use cable. This means that TiVo HDs kind of freeze out dish users. Sorry.
b) Cable cards are a one-way technology. This means that using a cable card forces you to sacrifice interactive features your cable provider otherwise offers. The most important features lost are the on-screen guide, which TiVo replaces anyway, and On Demand programming. I have also read rumblings that more programming will require two-way communication between your box and the provider later down the road. I have no way of knowing if this is true.

2. Comcast does offer multi-stream cable cards in the Boston area. A multi-stream cable card is a cable card capable of decoding multiple signals. This means you'd only need one cable card instead of two for your TiVo HD to be able to view and record two stations at once. This is a Good Thing(tm).

3. The reason multi-stream cable cards are such a good thing is financial. The first cable card is free from Comcast, so you don't have to pay a rental for the second card. That being said, the rental of a second card is only a few dollars at the time of this writing ($2.50 I believe), so don't be sad if your installer does not have a multi-stream cable card.

4. Your installer may not know what a cable card is or how to install it. Don't worry. The directions that came with the TiVo HD are thorough and good. Remember to ask for a multi-stream cable card. Your installer may not know what that is or if he has them. Mine brought up two multi-stream cards saying they were single stream. If it says M-Card on it, you've got a multi-stream card. When in doubt, your TiVo HD will detect the type of card and tell you what it is when you insert it.

5. Pairing information is important. Your TiVo may sit on a cable card status screen, but you'll actually need the pairing screen.

That's all stuff I had a little trouble finding information about when I was researching. I hope it helps someone down the road. And if not, at least I've got it documented for myself.

I really got the sense that they put a lot into the city. I noticed uniformed workers sweeping sidewalks and scrubbing store fronts. I didn't see any graffiti, though I'm sure I'd find it if I looked hard enough. And yet at the same time, I witnessed an apparently homeless woman urinating on the sidewalk right in front of an Underground station and plenty of people. I saw a police officer searching someone's pockets while that person just let it happen, all the while carrying on a pleasant conversation.

Not much more to say than that.

A cursory search of this blog tells me I have not posted about this before, so I will say that I have been very happy with my roomba pet edition. It's kept my apartment's carpets in pretty good shape, and it helps get litter off the bathroom floor when my cat decides it no longer belongs in the box.

Unfortunately, this toy has attained the rank of a good thing that comes to an end. After about eight months, my roomba will no longer take a charge. It happened suddenly; my faithful robot trundled around the apartment one day and returned to its dock, never to recharge again. At first I thought it needed cleaning. I cleaned it. Then I thought it must just not be on the dock properly. Perhaps the terminals were messed up. But they were not. It seems the battery simply will not take a charge.

The batteries in the roomba have consistently been problematic. I know people whose roombas would take a charge but refuse to hold it, crapping out after just a few minutes. That's the biggest complaint I've heard.

I think my next vacuum will be a bagless upright. I wonder where I'll store it.