When friends ask me what I look for in a woman, I sometimes joke that I already have the perfect relationship -- with my TiVo. TiVo is utterly compliant, easily takes whatever suggestions I make, implements them and has met my needs/requests and is waiting for me when I get home. Whenever it hears about something coming up it knows I want to watch, it gently asks first if I want to continue doing what I'm doing or, perhaps, do something more to my liking. (No, I don't really want a woman that servile. Well, only if she walks around in stilettos and a French maid outfit.) Given that, there are some life lessons that TiVo has to teach. 1. Sometimes, those who love you don't really know what's best for you. We've all gotten those horrific presents from relatives who love you very much, but just don't realize that a sweatshirt with a light-up crocodile on the front is not something the average late-twenty-something wears. Such as the case with TiVo, which is why I had to turn off the "Record Suggested Program" option. Contrary to popular belief, I'm not a gay Hispanic homemaker, so I don't need to watch 16 episodes of the Telemundo version of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition every week. 2. Sometimes starting relationships can be more work than maintaining it. Learning the quirks of your new attachment's personality can be a bit of a minefield because you never know what might set them off. You're basically feeling each other out until you get comfortable enough. Such is the case with TiVo, where getting it home and set up was hell on wheels. I had to hunt down the information that no, you really do need a phone line for TiVo's initial setup, even though the Series2 could connect through the Internet. Since I have no landline, I had to run a phone cord out my front door, up the stairs and into the apartment of my understanding and generous upstairs neighbor, who patiently allowed me to usurp her phone line for an hour and a half while TiVo did its thing. 3. No matter how hard you try to teach people, they just may not get it. Like me and computer programming in various languages like C++ or Scheme. That's why I switched majors to Psychology and earned the Most Useless Degree on the Planet™. But when my parents saw a show on TV that they thought I'd like, Mom called me the next day to tell me about it and said, "Well, it was on yesterday, didn't TiVo record it for you?" I had to explain to her -- again -- that time is linear and I can't go back and record something that already aired. On top of that, TiVo isn't recording everything at once so I can't just pick stuff out from the cacophony that is my channel lineup of Every Channel Known to Man™. Were TiVo to do that, it would blow itself up about 18 times a day, and that might get expensive.