RIP, Television Review

The Television Review is offically dead. I just canceled it's hosting plan, and read some final threads. Oddly enough, on August 3rd someone I don't know with the screen name "Bozvefkuv" posted one word: "Achtung!!", then never posted again. They posted this at the end of the thread in which we berated Qualler for saying he didn't watch Lost because he thought there were dinosaurs on the island.

All in all, I thought The Television Review was an interesting idea that was fundamentally flawed. I really like television, and a lot of you guys do too, but when you actually try to discuss it in a forum every discussion tends to fall into the "this is great vs. no, it sucks" category. Which is fine, but it just doesn't hold one's interest for that long.

I was sort of suprised how easy it was to delete the hosting account. I'm typically not a fan of the "are you sure you want to do this" messages that pop up all over computers, but to cancel my hosting plan and erase all of my content took only three mouse clicks: select the account, hit cancel, hit okay. I feel like it should have taken longer. But now I have all this free time write about it on my blog! Hooray!

I'll miss you, Television Review.
(Everyone go post something on the Blogulution forum.)

My Bubbling, Seething, Unrelenting Hatred of Comcast

In an effort to make me hate them even more, Comcast has decided that it would be a great idea to further clutter up the guide screen by sticking huge, low-resoultion banner ads at the bottom of it. So now, by my estimation, the guide screen's basic makeup is:

20% Ads
20% Mini tv window
10% Comcast / TV Guide logos
10% Show description
15% TV listings
25% Space wasted due to bubbly fonts and low resolution outlines

So approximately 25% of the guide screen is actually showing information I want, and about 20% is showing what's on the screen, which I like. The other 55% is pure garbage that I do not want to look at and will never sell me anything. If they would just clean up their f'n system they could easily squeeze some more listings in - they waste huge ammounts of screen real estate on backgrounds and corners and large spaces between lines. It's a terrible, terrible guide. You used to be able to select the height of the lines, either "single" or "double", and you got four or eight listings per screen (if I remember correctly). Now you get either three listings on double height or... ready for it?.. four listings on single height. It makes surfing through with the guide take twice as long as it used to. I think I'll explore the option of using the little info strip, rather than the guide screen from now on. It shows two shows at a time, which is now almost as many as the guide shows, and not a single ad.

Strangely, these ads only appear some of the time. They seem to be on during primetime, and off otherwise. There's really only one explination for this. Think about it. If the ads were actually to drive revenue or to enhance my experience or something, you'd have them on all the time. Why not? It doesn't cost you anything extra to run them all the time. So why only put them on when I'm most likely to be trying to watch TV? The only answer is that these ads are actually specifically designed to annoy us, the customers. Comcast is so evil and so heartless that they are now not just being a horrible company to deal with, they're actually going out of their way to piss me off. They have to do something between breaking my service and raising my rates, I guess.

So why do I continue to give them over a hundred dollars a month? Well, the answer is like the one given in the crowd favorite film, Dante's Peak. At least I think it was in this movie where the guys explains about the frog. You put a frog in a pan of water, and start heating it up slowly. The frog will just sit there, taking it, until it actually dies due to the temperature. However, if you take a frog and just drop it into a pan of hot water, it jumps right out to save itself. I am like that frog. Comcast was great a year ago - $60/month, no ads on the guide, reliable service, but over time the price has doubled, the service has gotten worse, and now the ads have shown up. If I had gotten this level of service on day one I would have immediately started looking elsewhere. But since I've put up with it for so long and have gotten used to it, the level of effort it would take to switch providers is still greater than the level of effort it takes to keep from throwing my remote at my television. When that balance tips I will be shopping for both a new TV and a new cable provider.

Chattin' At Cha

Hey guys, if anyone (like Pfeiffer, perhaps) wants to get Digg friends going, my Digg name is spanishturtle (of course). Post your Digg username in the comments here and we'll all buddy up.

I just added another type of text ad to the blog - this from a place called AdBrite. They don't seem too intrusive, and I'm always interested in exploring that world again (what with being an online marketer and all, ya know).

GAMEZNFLIX UPDATE:
The longer I deal with this company the more I hate that stupid name. I'm having to type it into an address bar a little too often for my taste. But the good news is that they have shipped off my first two items, even before charging my card for my paid account. Items shipped sometime late this morning or early this afternoon, so I'm holding out hope for a Thursday delivery. If they can get me these discs by then I'll be impressed.

One of the things I ordered was the movie Doom because 1) I will totally watch it and sort of pay attention and 2) I can send that back right away and test the turnaround time.

Several Things of Great Importance

Several friends have recently purchased their first homes, and I must say they all look fantastic. My friends Jess and Marcus in Madison just bought a very nice house and a brand new condo, respectively. Jess' house is in a nice small neighborhood on the edge of Madison, and it already feels homey after only being lived in for a few weeks. Marcus' condo is in this brand new rehab attached to a giant new building, and it's one of the swankest pads I've ever seen. Also, Chris and Jess up in Minneapolis just bought a new condo, which I have only seen via one picture, but it looks pretty sweet. I'm looking forward to checking it out next time I roll through town. I just got to see the new homes in Madison thanks to a sudden trip up there, spurred by an event on Marcus' rooftop patio that featured two-story tall videogames. Marcus was even on-the-ball-enough to record video of the proceedings. It was pretty much amazing.

I just ordered a free copy of Vista Beta by completing a BS quiz on Microsoft's website. It should be legit; it was plugged on Diggnation. I'm interested in throwing this on my laptop to see how it'll run. I'm guessing with my dual core processor and a gig of ram I'll be able to run Aero okay, though I may need to up the ram a bit to smooth things out.

Recently I've been feeling the Netflix / Game Fly itch, but Game Fly is sort of pricey and Netflix doesn't do videogames. Then today I stumbled across a place called Gameznflix that does both. I've signed up for the trial account (2 weeks free), for the 2 items at a time plan. After the trial period it only costs $12.99 for two items, which is pretty reasonable, and the fact that those items can be DVDs or games really sold me on the idea. The only complaint I have found about the service is that their customer support is terrible and they sometimes ship too slowly. I just put my first items into my queue this morning, and nothing has shipped yet, so I'm waiting to see the turn around time before I judge. And I never had to contact Netflix or Game Fly customer service, so I'm not too concerned about that. The Gameznflix site is definitely not as nice as Netflix or Game Fly (a popular titles section would be nice), but as long as I can find what titles I want I can live with a shabby online presence. I'll probably post if I have any strong opinions either way about these guys.

Oh, and by the way, the picture at the top is the cover of Creature Tech by Doug TenNapel. It's a graphic novel that Jess lent me, and it is fantastic. The art style is very reminiscent of Calvin and Hobbes and I'm highly enjoying the pace of the story telling. TenNapel has a good sense of how to keep things moving from event to event while still taking time for some humor or a bit of character development. I highly recommend it.

=====UPDATE:===============
I just found, buried in a FAQ on the Gameznflix website, that when you sign up for a trial membership you do not recieve items you have requested unless they have extras available. I don't know why they don't tell you this when you sign up, it seems like a great way to turn off potential customers. Had I signed up for the trial and never had a game delivered because they're both listed as "short wait" I would have cancelled immediately. So I've upgraded to a paid plan. I expect my first games to ship tomorrow.

Also, I just started looking through their movie selection; it's pretty rough. Specifically their library of television shows (the largest portion of my movie rentals) is quite slim.

So things aren't looking too hot. But still, I'll reserve judgement until I see the shipping time.

I Can't Sleep

I've been having trouble sleeping over the past couple of days. I just can't seem to get my brain to slow down when I want it to. Not that I have anything good to think about, mind you... Tonight, however, the Popeye's I had for lunch seems to be unhappy in my innards, and is making me feel all kinds of weird. Luckily for you folks, that translates into late night blog post.

Work has been very good lately; we're pushing forward all these new ideas, trying to monitize on several websites we own but don't currently see any revenue from. I've feel like I've been somewhat turned loose to do what I think will yeild results with these things, and having a design and development staff at my command (once they get some free time) makes it very fun. Being the idea guy and not having to do the actual work is a good way to go. But really, I think we could make scads of cash off a couple of our properties that are currently sitting dormant, just by making a few changes and running the right kind of traffic through the pages. I'm sitting at home right now, it's almost midnight, and I can't wait to get into work tomorrow. That's a great feeling.

Maria and I have taken in three comedies in the past week, and they fall into a pretty clear order of funniness:

#3: Taladaga Nights certianly had it's moments, and I think if I had been in a goofier mood I would have liked it more, but in general this movie was pretty dull. It seemed to start off strong, but then putter around in the low-energy comedy that this group of guys has gotten so good at, but without a decent plot to move it along there wasn't much to play off of. Also, even though they make fun it, Nascar sucks. You cannot have an exciting, cheesy finale when your medium for competition is Nascar. It's like trying to have an exciting chase scene when your vehicles are paddle boats.

#2 Wedding Crashers was suprisingly entertaining. I'd been hearing about it for months and we had a lazy Sunday afternoon that seemed to beg for a comedy, so I finally got to see it. Really the girls steal the show in this one; that red haired crazy one that Vince Vaughn gets paired up with has some great stuff, and Rachael McAdams (sp?) does a decent job as the glue of the whole thing. Also, Christopher Walken has some great Walken-screams, and generally makes me happy.

#1 Little Miss Sunshine blew them both away. Really the only movie in recent memory that kept me laughing for an extended period without pause to catch my breath. Also did it with very little resorting to cheap sexual or poop jokes. If you haven't gotten out to see this yet, you really need to. The characters all feel deep-ish without us having to sit through too much development (which can be tricky in a true comedy). They've managed to use typical character types, but give them enough of a twist that we can learn something about these people and enjoy watching them. I left feeling like we only learned a tiny bit about each character, but that there was something more there (rather than feeling like the character wasn't fleshed out). The plot is pretty thin, but gives the film a perfectly usable path for the cast of lovable outcasts to stumble along, learning in the end that a group of broken people can come together and fix one another (corn ball, but it works). Also the horn bit is a riot.

Other than seeing tons of movies, I've also been reading The Tipping Point, which is a good read. Thus far I've been somewhat suprised how little he actually talks about this idea of a 'tipping point'; he's spend most of the book discussing various qualities to an epidemic that makes it more or less likely to tip. It's still very interesting stuff, and a good read if you like this brand of popular, light, non-fiction writing.

Furthermore, don't buy my phone. I have the Samsung A900, and it turns out that it has a battery life of less than a day. I'm not talking about a day in which you use it a lot either - I'm talking about a day where it sits in my pocket. I literally dies after about 20 hours of sitting on a table doing nothing. That's insane. I kick myself for not checking on that before I bought it, but battery life has never been a big deal to me, and I assumed that certianly any phone coming out now would have at least a day or two of stand by time. Ah, well. It's a really nice phone, so long as it gets a sweet shot of juice before midnight.

Fall TV is starting up again, with the premier of Prison Break this week. It was a fine episode, which got things going again with a.. bang? (HA HA HA HA) But really Prison Break was never a top-tier show, so all it does is get me excited for the DVR to fill up in a month or so. I've constructed my fall TV spreadsheet - have you?

Alright, that's about it for this evening. I'm going to see if I can't get some sleep. I do have to get up in a few hours, after all. Enjoy these last days of summer, people! In a couple of months you'll offer to kill your own mother for a 80 degree afternoon.

The Blue Angels Won't Leave me Alone

This weekend is the Chciago air show out over the lake, and The Blue Angels are here practicing. They keep flying around my building, making really loud noises and forcing me to look out the window and say "coooool!"

They just started flying real, real low around the high rises here by the park, and they're doing this thing where the fly in, seem to shut their engines down and coast through between the buildings (I assume if they powered up they'd be crazy loud and break windows or something). When they do that instead of loud engine noises they make this weird whining sound. It's awesome.

It's only a matter of time before I catch one of them and make them fly me home after work.

"Coooooooooooool!"

Portrait of a Hero/Warrior

(This portrait of a hero/warrior is being recorded as I watch Hardball on TNT.)

Behold the limits to which humanity should strive; Keanu Reeves' character in Hardball; Connor O'Neil. Connor O'Neil is a good man who has come upon hard times living in the rough south side of Chicago. Living in the rough, Swedish, north side of Chicago, I can relate to this character. Also, he is a true hero/warrior.

Down on his luck, and very in debt to not one, but TWO bookies, Connor O'Neil must make money somehow, and finds a source of lots of cash thanks to his rich friend, but that money comes at a price - coaching the youth baseball team that his friend is supposed to coach! I hope he drives his limo out on the ice! Wacky!!.. for a while. Things get considerably less wacky when one of his players gets chased by crack heads and beaten up outside the projects because "coach" O'Neil keeps them out too late at practice. Ouch, so much for wacky family fun, eh?

Unlike the perfect man, Connor O'Neil, Hardball can't quite figure itself out. This is clearly seen in the variety of movie posters available for this movie:

Is it a light-hearted family romp? Perhaps it would make a perfect movie for one to send their children to when they go to see darker, adult fare like Eyes Wide Shut or The Sounds of Thunder. I mean, it has kids that play sports, coached by a handsome man who learns as much from them as they do from him... D4, anyone?

Then again, perhaps this is more of a gritty, hard-hitting urban truth-fest that rips open the seedy underbelly of the life of poverty in America, making no apoligies and pulling no punches.

I believe if they had let Connor O'Neil, hero/warrior design the movie poster people would have seen that really, below the sub-skin, Hardball is a movie about heart. After Connor abuses his team in an effort to just scrape by, making the bare minimum effort for the preseason, the first game finally arrives. Here is the first time we see Connor begin to awaken to his true hero/warrior spirit. He not only tells off his rich friend for not helping out with the team, he even takes the time to talk to some crybaby little kid! And gives him a high-five! Woah! Talk about a perfect role model. And daaamn does the sound track throw it down once the game starts. Did someone say hip-hop? Yeah, Lil' Zane did - and he also said his name, Lil' Zane, right at the beginning of his song. Thus, he got his name featured not once but THRICE in my blog! Way to go, Lil' Zane!

Throughout this whole afair we're constantly shown images that let you know they're still in Chicago. Well, one image, really - the Sears Tower. Because you can see the Sears Tower between two other buildings no matter where you are in Chicago. But they also have images that let us Chicago "insiders" know that they're all up in the Chi. Things like grit and truth. This city is dripping in grit and truth.

But anyways, back to our story of America's premier hero/warrior, Connor O'Neil. After that first game (which they lose 16-1, by the by), the team starts pulling together, powered by swearing, pizza, and the one kid who always wears headphones that can actually play. In the second game he even pitches (with his headphones on, OF COURSE). After a laughter-earning dance on the mound, "Miles", as he's called, starts BLAZING STRIKES OVER THE PLATE! Woah, the other team says, maybe we shouldn't laugh at him. And what does he listen to? A little song called "Big Poppa", by the Notorious B.I.G. What's that? Did someone say the name of a hip-hop song? DJ, CUE THAT JAM!

The team is inexplicably doing better. Nothing's changed, except for the presence of CONNOR O'NEIL, HERO/WARRIOR EXTREME on the bench! Even that kid that I didn't realize quit the team rejoins the team. I guess he quit earlier. Whatever. The point is that these kids can hit all of sudden now - with no practice or instruction. Thus is the power of Connor O'Neil. Oh, and I forgot, Connor is also putting the moves on a pseudo-hot school teacher (who teaches these kids on his team). You can see her on the family movie style poster above. I think she may be a famous actress.

After they win a game, she finally agrees to go out with Connor (duh, lady, he's only a hero/warrior). But before Connor can do that, he has to meet up with a... wait for it... THIRD bookie so he can make one huge bet to try to pay off all of his other debts in one fell swoop. Now, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "Why would he do that? He's making money by coaching the team, right?" Yeah, I'm not really sure either. He owes bookie #1 $750 a week, bookie #2 was sort of a buddy of Connor's, so he let him slide until Connor could pay off bookie #1 (cuz bookie #1 is "the barber", a real badass), and Connor is making $500 a week just for coaching the team. So, um, whatever. MOVING ON!

Jeez, I'm out of breath. It has become clear to me that the plots of Hardball, varied and weaving, make putting the content of this film in blog-form nearly impossible. It would take the typical content of three-and-half Blogulator posts to contain all there is to say. Know that Connor suffers set backs, triumphs, and in the end, finds true love (I'm assuming - the movie won't be over for another two hours), and he never - ever gives up on his team. So I will sign off with one final Connor O'Neil photo.

Hero/Warrior

Things that I want to do this Fall

Fall is sneaking up on us, behind the still-blazing sun and the towering electricity bills, soon it will spring out from behind that tree over there and blast us with our first 68-degree afternoon and we will all welcome our old friend with sweatshirts and open windows.

As my brain is still anchored in the tried-and-true school year annual system, fall is the beginning of the year to me. And as I just took a short vacation, I feel that fall is beginning now, rather than in several weeks. The arrival of preseason football and a slight break in the heat have done nothing to help the situation, but what the hell, fall can start in August; why not? I just can't wear sweatshirts yet (and I got a real nice new Packers one too, I tell you).

Once fall actually does roll over the city, though, there are several things I want to make sure we do. Many of the old traditions have fallen apart in the face of summer schedules and trips, and some new traditions are in order.

Fall Activity #1: Basketball brunch. This weekly bastion of physical activity has fallen by the wayside thanks to a combindation of weekend trips and hotter-than-lava temperatures. I am eyeing next weekend with a lick of my lips and imagining stuffing Ben's eight foot left arm hook shot right back in his face. I very much look forward to the last basketball brunch this winter when every other sane person stopped coming out weeks ago and we must admit that, at least unitl they shovel the courts, we need to call it a season.

Fall Activity #2: Cards. Ho boy did I play a lot of cards this past week, and ho boy is it a great time. I love cards that you can play as you shoot the shit over a pitcher of beer or in the middle of a larger social gathering. Nothing beats playing cards at a table on the edges of a party. While I have been carrying a deck of cards with me everywhere for months and months, its time I start pulling that deck out and pestering people to sit down and throw some trump. I also want to see some games of "Drop the Brain", or whatever the supurb zombie card game Jess and Kat introduced us to is actually called.

Fall Activity #3: Chicago Fire game. I don't know when, but some weekend in the next few weeks will feature grabbing everyone we know, piling into Pat's Corolla and pushing our way through the masses to the new Fire stadium to watch them do battle. I love ceremonial drumming in the crisp autumn air.

Fall Activity #4: Just get out of the house. Two weeks ago, before I visited Wisconsin, Maria and I had an unprecidented ammount of mid-week activity, including tee-ball in the lovely evening air outside Ben and Lindsay's. I'd forgotten how lovely low-key activities can be in the evenings, so long as the transportation is easy and the people are good. Cooler weather will make leaving the comforts of home behind even more appetizing.

Fall Activity #5: TV and food. Back in the "glory days", the residents of 208 S. Bassett St. were fond of food and TV based evenings. Cookie dough with Gilmore Girls was probably the best. Even farther back was the case of Friday afternoon soccer v. Nachos Plus, which paved the way for the future. I am looking forward to a new evening of food and TV, one shared with our new arrivals, Laura and Bacon (Bacon isn't actually here yet). This seems like a great one-two punch, as it should allow for both #5 and #4 to happen at the same time if we host it off-site.

Home Again, Home Again

Well, I'm finally back home from my family reunion trip (see photo gallery), but I have yet to return to work as I have come down with the nasty cold that's going around. It was a fantastic week, right up until I came down with this cold. So I'm spending one more day on my couch to hopefully shake this and return to 100% tomorrow.

The trip was great; Maria came along for a few days, then I hung out with some cousins and my immediate family for the rest of the week. It was extremely nice to be out of the city and playing sports for such an extended period of time. In just a few days I played two full (three set) games of tennis, went bowling twice, drafted my first fantasy football team, saw Lambeau, ate cheese curds (regular and deep fried), drank Spotted Cow and played a huge ammount of Sheepshead. I also stopped at my parent's house on the way back and found a treasure chest of old toys in the basement. Some of the best finds:

Several old Transformers, including several knock-offs and Go Bots. One turns into a rock!

The 1st place baseball trophy and the 2nd place (state) forensics trohpy that I earned alongside Pat

The original cricket that Harry gave me from a Happy Meal (it still chirps!)

I also found a box full of old sweatshirts and I also picked up a bunch of photos from high school and middle school. In particular I have a great picture of Joe in his get-up for the 'swing' themed dance (I think that was freshman year). So if you're looking to turn back the clock a few years, stop by and I'll let you root through some artifacts.

One of the highlights of the trip was our visit to Lambeau, where we watch a Packer's practice. I decided to play with my phone's camcorder a bit, and recorded this video of Cory Rodgers catching a long pass. It was pretty cool to watch them run plays right in front of us, and it was a beautiful evening (right after the heat broke). I also recorded this video of Jet (my parent's dog) eating a plant.