I’m in love with Maggie.

Yes there is another woman in the Ehlers house hold (as if Sheryl and Ainsley didn’t outnumber me already). But Maggie is different. She is technically savvy. She loves music. She loves pictures. She loves TV. At times she is a little temperamental, but she makes up for it by doing little things for me like recording my favorite shows and playing music that I want to hear. She doesn’t even mind if I watch sports…she’ll even show me replays. She is not much of a looker (unless you go for that silver, blue, black thing), but it is her mind that makes her so attractive. OK so I’ll admit, I have a little problem with naming material things.

Maggie is my HP Microsoft Media Center PC. And although sometimes I wish she was as stable as a Tivo (she has her days), she can do so much more. We needed to get a new computer at the beginning of the year and since it would be mostly used for pictures and videos of our family I started investigating the MCE. We didn’t really get it for its TV recording functions; that was just kind of a side benefit. Now how things have changed. The only problem is since she is not a Tivo I can’t say, “I Tivo’ed that show.” But maybe, “I Maggi'ed it” will catch on.

Sheryl and I have become fans of shows that normally we never would have watched. There is a show on BBC America called ‘Coupling’ (you may remember it from a brief stint on NBC), that we enjoy. And we are big fans of Extreme Makeover Home Edition. All shows that we probably wouldn’t watch without Maggie’s help. Also there are the shows you normally watch and now can watch at anytime. For example, I love the ‘West Wing’ and last night when Ainsley didn’t want to go to bed right away I would have missed the beginning. But with Maggie, I was almost happy to start watching it 30 minuets late….that way I could skip the commercials. It’s not that we watch more TV now; we just don’t waste our time watching bad TV or commercials. It’s amazing how we start watching (what would be) two hours of TV 40 min. late and finish at the same time. Not to mention we can burn the shows to DVD for later viewing or sharing.

Another side benefit is that you can play a slide show while you play music. This is a great way to enjoy your music and your pictures at the same time. It is like a music video set to your pictures. I set it to random play on the music then random play on the pictures and I get a chance to enjoy pictures that normally would sit in a shoe box or on a hard drive. In fact this was the main reason we ran a cable through the attic and to the downstairs TV. Now we can listen to music on Deckzilla (there is that naming problem again) or in the kitchen, and someone always comments on the pictures…”Oh, I remember that day” or “Look at how young Ainsley looked.”

Yep, you gotta love Maggie…I just can’t wait until College Football season. Then Sheryl might start to get jealous of her.


Maggie May