I love my family and friends, I know that DVR is true...

If I asked most of you if you would rather give up your home phone or you cell phone (if you even have a home phone), almost everyone would say home phone. In fact, even in the most dire of financial straits people wouldn't give up their cell phones. Why? BECAUSE THEY'RE GREAT. Have you ever forgot your cell phone one day? You feel cold and naked. Vulnerable. Unsafe. Alone. You'd call your mother for comfort but you don't know her number. It's in your cell phone. You wonder how you survived so long without one, and shudder to think of such a dreary existence. Have you ever tried to meet up with someone who doesn't have a cell phone? It's next to impossible! The 2 parties trying to meet up need to give very explicit instructions of where to meet. If anything goes wrong, the meeting doesn't take place and people spend hours trying to find the other person.

In 1998 I got my first cell phone. I was a high school senior, 3 months from graduating, when I saw a fellow pizza-delivery man making a call on a cell. I mocked him--the only people that "needed" cell phones were those jerks who work them on their hip pocket to look important and cool--what the blue tooth is today.

"You don't need a cell phone! How much are you paying for that ridiculous contraption?"

He answered, "10 bucks a month."

Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat? Really? Only 10 bucks? I figured 10 bucks a month was nothing compared to all the time I'd save finding phone booths, calling people's houses if they weren't there to pay for their pizza. So I signed my life away for 10 bucks a month. The plan? 30 minutes. No text. It didn't exist yet.

At the time, 30 minutes was by no stretch a ton. That's like a minute a day. But I didn't want to pay more than that. So I resolved to use it only for pizza delivering. That lasted like 5 minutes.

I got home that day, said hi to my mom and went downstairs. Then I called her from there. "Hi Mom, I'm calling you from downstairs!" She was puzzled and confused. Greatest moment of my life.

I drove over to my girlfriend's house and called her from the doorstep. She was super excited that her BF was one of those jerks with a cell phone. She demanded that I buy one of those hip-holsters and wear it loudly and proudly.

Soon, my bill was over 100 bucks. I went over my quota in one or two days, and it just compounded from there. So I signed up for a $40/month plan for like 200 minutes. Then I left on my mission. When I came home in 2001, most everybody had a cell phone and they were getting more minutes for less and free phones. I figured I didn't need a cell phone, who did I have to call? That lasted about a month. I came crawling back. The number I got in 2001 is my number today. I'm gonna hold onto this number until I die.

Now I have another can't-live-without gadget: DVR. Once you have it, you can't imagine life without it. No more sitting through the annoying low-budget local ads. No more being forced to schedule your life around Thursday's TV line-up. I can get through college football games in an hour, NBA games in 45 minutes.

I watch less TV with DVR than without because I'm so efficient. I like to watch TV at certain times of the day, right when I get home from work and later at night. Before, when I plopped down on the couch, I just surfed to the best possible program on, settling on some dumb show because the only other options were "Next Top Model" and "What Not to Wear", that intolerable show where the annoying gay guy and the condescending woman think that the only acceptable time to wear a t-shirt and pajamas is never.

So instead of watching garbage while waiting for my favorite shows to start, I can skip straight to my favorite shows. Once my favorite shows are over and I still feel like watching the tube, I skip over to my secondary shows, the shows I've recorded for the sole purpose of having something to watch when there's nothing else to watch.

When I was a kid, I was so stoked to stay in a motel for the sole purpose of having ESPN. Now, even at the nicest hotel, I get bummed out because I have to sit through commercials and they only have like 50 channels to choose from. Where is my DIY network? Where are my 15 movie channels and 30 sports channels? You call this living? How did I even watch TV before DVR?

There are a few minor downsides:

1. You never know what new movies are coming out.
2. Everybody's on a different schedule. No more showing up to work/school the next day to discuss "The Office".
3. Along the same lines as number 2, you sometimes have the outcome of your favorite show spoiled by the loud coworker across from you.

I can't think of a better way to spend 10 dollars every month. It's a show organizer, life planner, and a friend. I'd like to take this chance to bear my testimony of DVR. DVR is true. I know it with every fiber of my being, without a shadow of a doubt.