Information Overload

I'm pretty sure this isn't the first time I've written about information overload and it probably won't be the last. I'm just sure I'm missing something or have forgotten something or will soon forget some very important thing. And among all those important things, I'm positive I've lost several less important thing.

My latest battle is with our cable company, a favorite whipping boy of almost everyone. The problem arose when Carolyn during several of her statewide trips had time on her hands so she actually turned on the room TV. Her favorite hotels happen to carry HBO as part of the room comfort amenities so she would surf through the channels until she found one that looked interesting and without a soundtrack that would blow here out of the room. She might repeat the process if her initial assessment of the program proved not to be accurate. This has resulted, of course, in her seeing many movies while missing the first 10, 15 or 20 minutes of the main feature. There have even been times when she said she liked the movie but could not remember what it was.

Carolyn told me that she enjoyed the HBO channel in the hotel so I checked with our cable company and found that they were running a special to sign up new customers. We'd only have to watch 2 to 3 movies a month to make it less expensive than Hollywood Video. That, of course, assumes we want to watch the movies they have.

We subscribed and promptly had problems trying to figure out what was showing. HBO.com has a pdf file that is sort of like the pamphlet the hotels have but I can't get it to print on our printers. And of course, since the schedule comes from HBO it only has the channel names not the channel numbers which are assigned by the cable company. I'm toying with the idea of just having the directory as a pdf file on the computer desktop.

Does anyone else have this problem? And a solution?