I had the day off yesterday for Martin Luther King Jr. Day. The kids (and subsequently the wife) did not. They (the wife and kids) attend an all day Classical Conversationa meeting on Mondays as part of their home schooling. When I first told the wife that I had the day off, she asked* (asterisk added as you husbands can do the translation) me if I wanted to come along for the day as some of the other dads did from time to time. I quickly saw my day off diminishing in glory but then I got sick.
The wife and son were sick last week and it was my turn (the daughter has managed to avoid it thus far). I have blogged in the past about how my wife acts when I am sick and I assure you that her reaction was the same as it always is (you will have to read the linked blog for more details). At any rate, I had my Monday back again albeit with limited mobility as my body seemed to weaken with even the simplest of tasks (like blowing my nose). This allowed me to spend the day with my new love, my Roku. I did not think that something would come along so soon to replace my other recent love, my Raspberry Pi, but it did.
If you are not familiar with the Roku, it is basically a device that can turn your normal, Dumb TV into Smart TV. Depending on the model of Roku that you buy, you can even connect your very old, very dumb cathode ray tube TV assuming it had RCA jacks. Fortunately, my TV is not that dumb and with the help of the Roku I can use it to watch Netflix and a host of other online content via other providers (PBS, Smithsonian, Crackle, etc.) and using an app called Plex, I can get to my personal collection of ripped DVDs and CDs. Plex even connects me to YouTube (should I run out of other things to watch). Without this app, the Roku might not be as exciting to me so perhaps I should have titled this blog so as to include my love of Plex as well. I even bought a 2nd Roku for the bedroom and the wife and I are almost through the 10th season of Frazier now (our nighttime ritual involves an episode or 2 before lights out).
So, as I was saying, I got to spend yesterday, all alone with only the couch, a cover, a few dogs and my Roku. It all reminded me of a Peanuts cartoon that showed Charlie Brown lying in bed and smiling with the text “Happiness is being too sick to go to school but not too sick to watch TV.” I plowed through a few Nicolas Cage, Denzel Washington and Mel Gibson movies and an episode of Wilfred. On a side note, an old manager at work was on vacation in Germany last year where he was talking to a fellow tourist on a tour bus. That tourist was an acting coach from Australia who used to coach the actor who plays Wilfred (a grown up man in a dog costume). By my count, that is only 4 degrees of separation! That story is also the only reason I began watching that show.
Anyway, if you have a not so smart TV and you have a Netflix streaming subscription then check out the Roku. I got one of mine on sale at BestBuy and the other refurbished and on clearance at NewEgg.
Jon
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