There have been a number of recent comments, disparaging and not, online and offline, about my lack of TiVo. What can I say? Hey, at least there's a television in my living room! (Which is a good thing, because you're all invited to the State of the Union-watching dinner and drinking game at my house tonight.)

In May 2006, I won a Slingbox in a raffle at a technology conference. What is a Slingbox, you ask? Well, it plugs into your TV and into your internet connection, and then it's able to send anything that would have gone onto your TV to, instead, wherever you can find an internet connection. Some such place, perhaps, is in cold and rainy Zurich on a Sunday afternoon. On a Treo's EVDO connection. Hypothetically speaking.

This is not really a technology I was really missing in my life, however. Plus my early-adopter coworker (and co-conference attendee) Kevin was seriously drooling after this baby and even offered to buy it from me. Yet selling raffle winnings seems like inviting bad karma in for a cuppa and a year, so I made this proposal: He would get the Slingbox. In return, he'd have to get me something that made me equally happy, of equal or less monetary value.

Honestly, I'd forgotten about the whole proposal when a 25-pound box showed up at my tiny Brooklyn apartment door just before Christmas.

So now, instead of owning a Slingbox, I own a KitchenAid mixer. For Make Benefit Glorious Friends (In Terms Of You Having Tasty Things To Eat). I swear you're better off in the long term, that you would rather have me churning out pumpkin butterscotch cookies than watching 30 Rock. Even you, Frank.