Awesome day to learn new things

It was a wonderful day off for me today and I spent it at the Fly Fish Texas, only the biggest event for Fly Fishermen in the state and the perfect place to learn about a cool new sport if you ask me.

For me, its been well over 25 years since I've done the normal bait style fishing and I've never Fly Fished a day in my life. So when I found out about the free seminars on the subject, I jumped at the chance to head down to Athens, Texas and see what I could learn.

For starters its not a cheap hobby or sport at all, but at the same time you don't have to go way overboard to get in on this. What I do recommend it checking with local clubs and learning a bit about it before you run out and buy a bunch of equipment though.

After the day was done, I pretty much learned what I should look for in gear to get started. I learned how to create/tie my very own fly for casting and received some instructions on the basics of Fly Casting.

Its a totally different way of fishing and looks to be a lot of fun if you ask me. This is something I think I could really enjoy and perhaps the whole family might enjoy learning as well. At least for me I had a great time and it was something I could learn to do fairly well I think.

Who needs Tivo?

Thanks to a really good friend of mine, letting me borrow his ATI TV Wonder 600 USB digital tuner/capture device, I'm able to really make use of my Windows Media Center features now. Simply put... WOW!

The quality is way better than what I had expected from what looks like a jump drive with a Cable Antenna growing out of it. The Media Center had no problems picking up the device and located all of the channels I really wanted too. It didn't find every channel in my area available, but I'm only needing Fox, CBS, NBC, and ABC really.

I set it up to record tonights showing of 24 and will be checking that out via the Media Center Extender and my Xbox 360 later tonight. Something else I was impressed with was the ability to not only see my recordings, I could actually watch a live broadcast feed through the extender and all at perfect quality.

So it looks like I can totally pass up on purchasing a Tivo box and paying for their fees. In order to record more than one broadcast, I simply need to purchase a second USB card if I feel the need for that. We could also just watch one show of the shows live and let the other be recorded.

So I'm doing ok with cutting off access to Cable and Satelite service so far and only missiong a small portion of programming. Not a bad way to save some money if you ask me.