Monday, April 30, 2007

A week without the Tube

TV TurnOff Week really wasn't THAT big of a challenge.



I have to admit that I DID cheat on two occasions. Well, I CHEATED once and then ended my week a day early.

Friday night I watched the second hour of AC360 at 11pm. AC was doing a special about a "code of honor" that encourages some African American youths to "Stop Snitchin'." Kind of a follow up to his 60 Minutes piece on the same subject. Then last night (Sunday) I did, in fact, watch three and a half hours of TV: The Amazing Race (I'll miss you Danny and Oswald), Small Space, Big Style (got a GREAT idea for THIS small space), Desperate Housewives (I KNEW Mrs. McClusky was not a murderer!) and P's favorite show Brothers and Sisters which I started out really hating, and have to admit that (thanx in large part to this guy) I'm starting to, if not enjoy, then at least get sucked into.

I can't say it was a life changing experience, not watching TV. I will say that it did make me think about HOW MUCH TV I watch... AND it made me realize that if I DO miss an episode of something here or there, it's not that big a deal. I'll definitely do it again next year.

Sunday, April 29, 2007

The adult parade, a full martini on my crotch, oh and a play!

Forgot to mention that last Saturday we saw Cuttin Up at the Alliance Theater. Pretty good show. For some reason I thought it was a musical, but nope. It's about a barber shop that caters primarily to an African American clientele located in whatever city the play is being staged in. There was one scene that I think was entirely improvised where the barbers and their clients banter about local news headlines and issues. I thought that was pretty cool. Overall it was (for me) little haphazard and preachy sometimes, but a good night out.

Yesterday was also a Saturday and we went to the Inman Park Festival. It's HUGE festival just 2 MARTA stops from This New Condo.
The pic below is just ONE of the streets that they shut down and line with booths featuring people selling just about any old thing.

I'm always reminded at festivals like this of a George Carlin routine in which he talks about our consumerism, "Be the first guy to nail two things togehter that have never been nailed together before and SOME SCHMUCK will BUY it from you!"

Their community symbol is a butterfly. You'll see it in a few of the following shots.

The festival includes a locally famous (or infamous) parade that gets increasingly less family friendly as it progresses...

This is the evolution of a butterfly, the kid dressed as a leaf has a little white egg sack attached to him, and the guy next to him is the pupa, and in the background is a girl wearing her beautiful butterfly wings! Awwwww. Cute:



I think the kids are up front so they don't have to see the debauchery to come:



Starting to get weird:



Those are probably not real:



Not sure which philanthropic organization this "float" is sponsored by:



A sign on the Planned Parenthood "float" (following behind were people dressed as birds and bees):



There was a TON of Bush bashing... That's the Veep playing puppeteer with a W marionette. W, by the way, is holding and drinking from a bottle of oil. Inman Park is definitely not a hotbed of conservatism:



Obligatory bad parade drag:



Picking up the rear:



Less racy than Pride, but more drunk than Veteran's Day. What can you expect from a scene that starts selling beer at 9am?

Oh yeah, and last night I ate SQUAB for the first time. During that same meal I spilled a full martini down the front of me and into my crotch. CLASSY!

How was your weekend?

Friday, April 27, 2007

Encore

Someone may be making a repeat appearance on this show tonight...

But I hope you didn't watch because it's TV TURNOFF WEEK. :)

Thursday, April 26, 2007

Podcasts


Today I have a weird work day... only have to go in for a couple of hours in the evening. That gives me a little extra time during the day to enter some long neglected mail-in sweepstakes (those are them in the pic above) AND catch up with a bunch of podcasts that I subscribe to, but don't always have time to listen to.

One of my favorites is the NPR Story of the Day podcast where I learned more about the new "Super Earth" found in the constellation: Libra. I REALLY want to go there, it sounds wonderful.

I also listened to my first episode of The Mopod Show where I learned that I have a little crush on Rufus, or at least his voice.

While catching up on missed episodes of Jason Bellini's Here and Now podcast from LOGO I learned that he has just adopted two very adorable puppies. You really need to see the video, they are cute. I ALSO learned that I THINK Jason is dating Will Wikle from Big Brother and that Will now works at a hospital. Who knew!? By the way, get that podcast from iTunes... the Logo site is S L O W, at least on my mac.

I'm a big new fan of Ragan Fox's show Fox and the City. Today he introduced me to a Pussy Pilot and read a HYSTERICAL poem about what it's like to go to school at Arizona State University (sounds a LOT like Washington State by the way). This is really good show in my opinion. He is very smart and very funny and that show is TIGHT as a drum, edited to within an inch of it's life.

Jason, Chuck and Kevin on Jive Talkin' entertained me with tales of Clothing Optional vacations and introduced me to some Musical Theater I'd not heard of before. Y'all are going to have to let me know where the name for your show came from because as the old lady on "Airplane!" said, "You ain't Jive." You're entertaining, but Jive?

I went back and found the very first episode of A Shanty No Lemon to find out why it's called that... I still have no idea. Something about an anagram generator I think.

Dan Savage and his callers made me very uncomfortable (in a good way).

Who needs TV?

Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Tease...

I'll have a pretty big sweepstakes related announcement to make next month. It's not a big financial windfall, but fans of one prominent daytime talk show host who's name begins with "O" might find it pretty cool!

Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Cute!

I don't remember where I found it, but there is a very funny webshow called "Cute with Chris."

Chris sounds Canadian, lives in Southern California and knows his cute.

Today on Chris' blog (different site than his show - but you can get there from either and vice versa) a very special puppy named KALI is being featured! Many of you may recognize her from her many appearances on Matt's Blog.

So while you are NOT WATCHING TV check out Chris and Kali!

Monday, April 23, 2007

57 Channels (And Nuthin' On)



Remember that Bruce Springsteen song? Back when The Boss wrote that, 57 channels was A LOT! It seems almost quaint now. By the way, "Back when," was only 1992. Nowadays if you have under 100 channels you're pretty much a looser. Here in This New Condo, I only get 70 I think. I haven't yet gone "digital" so I don't get any of those niche networks and I don't pay for any "Premium Channels." Maybe someday if I get a big fancy TV I MAY spring for some of the extras, but right now basic is working pretty good for me.

I mention all this because this is TV TURNOFF WEEK and I am participating. Well, as much as one who actually MAKES Television CAN participate. While I'm at work I really don't have any choice but to watch, but at home... I'm not going to. It's just a week, Today through the 29th. Frankly thanks to a lot of YOU out there, I spend a lot more time away from the tube these days anyway. I have a long list of blogs that I try to read every day, not to mention a few podcasts that I enjoy. When those cease to entertain me I actually have a BOOK to read!

Ironically I had forgotten that it WAS TV Turnoff Week till I saw an ad ON TELEVISION! Adbusters has a couple ads they've been trying to get on TV... this one is my favorite:



Creepy isn't it? Ever catch yourself looking like that in front of the box? I hope you give it a shot... even for just 1 day. You'll notice so many things... mostly how quiet your house is when the telly is switched off.

In the spirit of the day, I'm also taking down my advertisements. We'll see if they return next week.

Friday, April 20, 2007

NOW how much would you pay?

"GREAT NEWS!" That was my first thought when I saw the notice from the county. They had assessed the value of my home and the number they came up with was $50,000 MORE than I paid! "YAY!" I thought! "It's only been 6 months since I moved in and already my home has appreciated 50k!"

Yes I am THAT naive. Luckily I have friends who aren't Pakleds. Both P and my friend and mortgage broker Allison set me straight.

For those of you who are also not wise in the ways of real estate, a high assessment from the county is 1: NOT good news and 2: probably very inflated. Ya see, that is the number they use to determine how much TAX you pay. Of course, they want it to be as HIGH as possible. So while I might brim with pride when I look at that gigantic number, there is NO WAY I could sell This New Condo for the value they've appraised it at.

I was a little deflated. Here I thought I'd gone from Zero to 50 when in reality I'd gone from zero to less than zero.

So now I have until the middle of next month to do some research. Find out what one bedrooms around me are selling for... prove how much I paid just 6 months ago... probably do a little begging... This never happened when I was renting.

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Amazing how getting an early start can really add hours to a day...

Yesterday I had pretty much decided that if I didn't do SOMETHING constructive this week I would feel like shit. The closet seemed like the obvious choice. On my way to P's I stopped in to The Home Depot to just kind of price things out.

I would love to have a fancy, custom, designer closet... but until that big sweepstakes win comes in I just don't have the spare dough to pay for all that. You can easily spend $1000 on a closet the size of mine. My budget is less California Closets and more Alabama Armoire.

P had to go out of town for work today, and so he had to be up hella early to catch his flight... I would usually stay in bed, but something told me that today I should follow his lead. I can't remember the last time I saw 5am when I hadn't STILL been up from the night before. I figured I was up, have the whole day ahead of me and am already feeling kind of inspired to do something with my closet so I might as well bite the bullet and git'er done.

I think I did really well for a first time closet designer! Here's the before shots:



Notice there is only one shelf/rod thing in there. My plan was to buy a similar shelf/rod system and install it up high and then recycle parts of the old shelf/rod system to use as a second level underneath.

Of course once the old shelf/rod came down I had to spackle up the holes it left behind and paint the walls (using the touch up paint my builder provided).

As it turned out, two pieces of the new shelf/rod things I bought were cut too long. They cut them to order for you right there in the aisle at The Home Depot by the way. I don't know if it was his mistake or mine, but I anticipated this and bought a hacksaw along with my new closet shelving. Took a little bit but I got em cut down to the correct lenghts.

So here's what the empty closet looked like before:


and empty closet After:



I really thought I was making good time! I was done with all that by Noon... but as I started to put stuff away I realized that while I had increased my hanging space area quite a bit, the shelf space really didn't grow. Mostly because the area up high now is QUITE high now. So I chose to store boxes I never need up there. So all the space where t-shirts and sweaters and stuff like that would have gone before had disappeared.

Ultimately I had to return some leftover things to The Home Depot. That errand seemed like a good enough excuse to head over to Atlantic Station and check IKEA just to see if they had SOMETHING that I could use for more storage. And they did. And it was only $40!

So here is the finished product:



The recycled lower shelf should have been about 5 or 6 inches lower, and then I could use the shelf space it provides, but as it is there's no room for anything because the clothes hanging above are just RIGHT THERE. Guess that's why I'm not a closet designer.

I MAY decide to lower that bottom shelf, but not today.

The whole thing cost me about $150, which I think is a bargain.

Now I'm off to have an adult beverage or 4 and enter some sweepstakes!

By the way, if you'd like to see the whole process from beginning to end you can check out the photo set at flickr. Why you would want to see all that I'm not sure, but if DIY is your porn, knock yourself out!

Tuesday, April 17, 2007

I'm off

Last year I lost a week of vacation. Where I work it's "use it or loose it."

This year I made sure to take it all, but I didn't make any plans for the weeks I scheduled off.

So... I'm off this week. No plans.

I feel like there are a million projects I should be getting to, but there aren't really. I'm pretty much caught up as far as getting stuff done is concerned.

There are a bunch of movies I'd like to see that P has no interest in. 300, Grindhouse, Hot Fuzz, In the Pit and most importantly, the one that P would NEVER see, Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters. I personally cannot wait for that one.

Here in This New Condo (lest we forget WHY I’m blogging in the first place) My closet is still a big problem area. I don't have the dough to do the big IKEA closet system that I want in there, but I COULD just buy more of the wire Home Depot closet racks that are in there and move stuff around. Of course I really do want the IKEA system though.

Well if YOU have any good ideas on what to do with a weeks worth of nada... hit me up! I'm all ears. Ears? Disneyworld? No, if I can't afford the IKEA closet, I can't afford the Mouse House.

Monday, April 16, 2007

Film Gaffes

Saw Disturbia over the weekend. Decent movie. No real surprises. It's the kind of movie where the kids are all smarter than the adults. The beginning kind of shocked me a little but after that it was pretty much the Scooby gang pulling the mask off old Mr. Whithers.

There was ONE thing though that make Disturbia memorable... in about 5 scenes you could clearly see the end of the boom mic hanging over the actors heads! It was really weird! Especially because it happened throughout the film, not just in one scene or at one location... it was all over the place! This was a pretty expensive production, and to see THAT in ANY shot, let alone 5 was really surprising.

Friday, April 13, 2007

By the way...

Someone may be making an appearance at the end of this show tonight.

I'm not as creative as I think I am

I was trying to create a livejournal account today so I could post comments on some of the other 12 of 12's that are posted on that service. I don't really NEED another account at another website with another password but in the spirit of community I thought it would be nice to have an account there so I could say nice things to people who use livejournal and don't allow anonymous comments.

I filled in all the fields in the application and hit the "create account" button. Then this message came up, "Bad password: Your password is based on a commonly used password." Wha, wh, WHAAAAAA? COMMONLY USED? I am fairly certain that no one has ever selected this password before me! It's far too creative and well thought out!

It's a beauty too, it has numbers AND letters and it's a longish string, but not TOO long. It has great significance to me so I never forget it, and has served me well. I must admit however that recently after a weird thing where some of my Yahoo! mail junk mail started showing up as "read" I changed most of my more sensitive passwords, banking, email, eBay, stuff like that to a random string of letters, symbols and numbers that is taking me FOREVER to commit to memory. But for basic goofy stuff, my old password has always worked just fine.

Kind of bums me out that the password that I, for so long, relied on for most of my internet security is SO COMMON that the computer that controls access to a second tier site like livejournal won't even ALLOW me to use it!

Guess "internet security consultant" would not be a good choice for my next career.

Thursday, April 12, 2007

April 12 of 12

12 photos all taken on the 12th of each month. Chad Darnell has all the details if you'd like to take part:

#1 - I declare myself the winner of the best "bed head" shot of the day:


#2 - Watching last night's South Park with breakfast:


#3 & 4 - Time for MAC's weekly water change and bowl cleaning.

Before:

After:


#5 - Back for more TV... this time it's Bravo's new reality competition Shear Genius:

I MAY have to give up the worst bed head crown to her!

#6 - Found a really good sweepstakes (it's only open to a few states, the prizes are big and there are a bunch of them AND it's a mail-in only... ALL good odds builders) so I spent a few minutes filling out 3x5's and addressing envelopes:


#7 - At work now, buying my my water:


#8 & 9 - Have to wear a headset for part of my day. Makes me feel like a borg:



#10 - This is the door to Edit 26. It's right next door to Edit 27:


#11 - My department:


#12 - Gotta love the filtered water stations in the break rooms. One last refil before I head out the door for home:

This is also my BONUS PIC. My Random Word was DIET. Quit rubbing it in already! I know I'm big! I'm workin on it!

Probably not my best 12 of 12 effort... just some random shots of a day in my life.

Wednesday, April 11, 2007

TiVo made me smile today...

...while watching last week's 30 Rock.

Network exec Jack Donaghy correctly assumes that up and coming young west coast NBC exec Devon Banks is in from L.A. in order to take his job. After some investigation Jack puts two and two together and realizes that his new rival has a secret.

Jack: "Good God, Devon is gay... He's even more powerful than I thought!"

"Water? It'll never sell."

That is a quote attributed to the Late Great W.C. Fields. For those of you who don't know him, he was the star of a bunch of movies and short films in the '20's. Mr. Fields typically played a child hating, hapless and harried drunk that sported permanent gin blossoms. In all the movies I remember him in he played a guy in either the medical or service industries. I'm not sure in which film Mr. Fields said the line, "Water? It will never sell." I only know the quote because it was written on one in a set of coasters my parents used to have behind the wet bar. Others read "Fasten your seat belts, it's going to be a bumpy night! -Bette Davis" and "Why don't cha come up and see me some time! -Mae West," stuff like that. I think there was a Bogart in there too...

Mr. Fields' line about water always puzzled me though, after all, water has always sold pretty well I think. Maybe in the '20's people weren't making a lot of money on it, but for most of my life I can recall water being sold in one form or another.

Knowing that he typically played a drunk but NOT knowing the origin of the line, I came up with a scene of my own:

W.C. Fields enters his favorite watering hole. He won't be there long, as he is the town dentist/barber/cabbie/pediatrician/appliance store clerk and only has a few minutes till he needs to be back at work dealing with sticky fingered children and indecisive housewives. It's been a long morning and he needs a stiff drink. He spots an open stool at the bar and shoves another guy out of the way to get to it first. Sitting down he notices a sign, placed on the shelf in front of a row of brown bottles. It reads, "Water: 1¢." We cut to a shot of W.C. Fields across the bar from the sign's point of view. He looks confused. He can't understand for the life of him why anyone would want water when there is all this delicious liquor to drink and so he mumbles to himself and a little to the guy next to him, "Water? It'll never sell."

Of course he was as wrong about that as he was for not taking the role of the Wizard in the Wizard of Oz (reportedly because the thought the role was too small).

So with all that exposition out of the way, I quit drinking soda on Monday. I'm not entirely sure why. Sometimes I just like to quit something to prove I can... this time though I think I quit because Diet Coke had almost entirely replaced water in my body, and that just can't be healthy. So I cold turkey'd diet soda and replaced it with water. Which brings us back to W.C. Fields because every time I hit the Dasani button on the Coke Machine at work Mr. Fields words come ringing back to me. "Water? It'll never sell."

Water is not satisfying or even pleasant to me. It's bland and flat and boring and tasteless. Replacing my bubbly, caffeinated bottle of Diet Coke (or Diet Pepsi or Diet Dr. Pepper, depending on which one has the best sweepstakes running at the time) feels like penance. I'm punishing myself. Mostly for my weight I think... every time I see that pic of me in my profile I cringe (which is why it is staying). Dropping diet soda isn't going to help me slim down, but I'll look less ridiculous as the heavy guy with a bottle of water than I will as the fatty with the bottle of Diet Coke, "Who's HE tryin' to kid!?"

Maybe I am watching too much Intervention on A&E but I think I have actually had some withdrawal symptoms after pushing the soda aside. Headache, back ache, extreme sleepiness and some irritability. On the flip side, I'm sleeping like a ROCK! So much so that it is hard to get up in the morning. I'm also saving a ton of money. There are no free refills on Diet Coke, but once I buy that first Dasani I can refill that puppy at any water fountain!

I still drink tea (green tea with splenda and milk right now), milk with my cheerios (my new addiction) and I'm not opposed to coffee, though I haven't had any since the soda ban. Oh, and not to worry, I have a few cans of the bubbly brown elixer in my fridge just in case I start to get the DT's. I'll keep ya posted.

Sunday, April 8, 2007

I'm a lucky guy

This New Condo sat empty most of this weekend.

On and around most holidays P pretty much sets our schedule and our home base is usually his place so he can better control the agenda.

We attended services at his church this morning and then off to his Mom's place for Easter. Easter includes dinner, an egg hunt AND three birthday celebrations.

His full family and all it's extensions are almost all locally based. Nearly every holiday is marked with a gathering at his mother's house in the burbs. Certainly any holiday that includes a meal of some sort. P's family is pretty big, and growing! One niece has two little ones now, one nephew is recently married, a sister is recently divorced and re-married (it happened very quickly, QUITE the scandal), the teens all bring their boyfriends or girlfriends... it's a scene! There were 24 people at three tables for dinner this afternoon! P's father passed away when he was not yet 10 and so his is really the only presence missing from the gathering.

By contrast, my family is pretty small, and all spread out. I have a brother who lives overseas and my Mom is out west. My Dad actually lives here in Atlanta by a twist of fate that brought us both to this city (me from Oregon, him from Minnesota) just months apart. Family gatherings even when we did all live together were pretty low key so this big family gathering thing is a little intimidating for me.

Intimidating and a little uncomfortable. In all honestly I don't really enjoy these gatherings. Even though it's not my favorite way to spend an afternoon however, I always leave a gathering with P's family thinking two things:

1. How the hell did P come out of that group? Seriously, no family is "perfect," but it's saying something when he and I walk in there as a couple and we are the LEAST controversial relationship in the house. When the gay son/brother/uncle and his boyfriend show up and it's not even CLOSE to the most salacious bit of family gossip, that's pretty telling. Having said that I should say that I'm so lucky to be in love with a guy who's family accepts us without reservation. Never once has there been anything but kindness from any member of his family towards me and I'm quite honored that they expect me now at their family events.

For the record, my family is similarly accepting and P is always invited to the limited number of events on our family calendar as well.

2. From P's Mother's perspective it must be an amazing, powerful feeling to look at a house full of people and think, "I did this." What an awesome sense of accomplishment to look into a great grandchild's eye and know that her actions ultimately resulted in that life, and it's mother's life, and it's grand father's life... It's times like these when I wonder about becoming a parent. It's fleeting, but there's a twinge of remorse that I didn't provide my parents with the possibility of finding 24 lives that share their genes at home for a holiday.

I hope y'all had a nice Easter as well. I'm off to have a hard boiled egg and some Jelly Bellies!

Friday, April 6, 2007

Mistaken for a fan

In 2004 my employer sent me to the Democratic National Convention in Boston. Amazing trip, definitly something I will never forget. I was working, so I didn't have a LOT of time to sight see and souvenir shop but I did manage to pick up a momento. One that I still make good use of... in fact I had it on today.


Now, I like ball caps in general, but I REALLY like this one. It has sentimental value, it wears well, it has a good story behind it, I like the color... problem is when I wear it people think that I have it on because I am a Red Sox Fan.

"Your boys sure kicked ass tonight!" or "How about that Matsuzaka?" people ask as I walk past. Total strangers who otherwise would have just walked on by will see my hat and want to strike up a conversation about the game.

Hard to do when you know as little about the Red Sox or baseball or even sports in general as me. I know the Red Sox is Boston's Major League Baseball team. I know they play in the storied Fenway Park (home of the green monster). I know they won the World Series in 2004 and I know they just hired a Japanese pitcher (the aforementioned, Matsuzaka) for the ridiculous sum of 51 million dollars.

The story behind the hat is too cumbersome to tell while walking past a coworker in the hall, so I've developed a good ear for inflection. I can now tell just by the way they ask about "my boys" whether it's been a good season, whether they won their most recent game and/or whether there has been some kind of controversy putting them in the headlines. Thanks to my finely tuned ear for inflection, I can respond with an appropriate, "yeah man."

"YEAH MAN," when it's good news.

"Yeah. (sigh) Man," when it's bad news.

"Yeah? MAN," when it's shocking news.

Hopefully that mollifies the TRUE fan and I'm able to make it to my destination without looking too stupid. This CAN of course backfire when someone wants to go into greater detail, but again, my keen inflection senses let me know when it's safe to make like I know what someone is talking about, and when I should just cut my losses and come clean about the real story behind the hat.

The cuteness of the person who wants to discuss the Red Sox is also a factor in my decision, but that's a whole 'nuther matrix that would take pages to explain.

A full 5 people at various points in time and locations mentioned the Red Sox to me today. I'm always surprised the first time because I can't imagine why anyone would want to talk baseball with me. Then I remember that I'm wearing the hat. Today I gave 4 of those people the appropriate "yeah man" (three "YEAH MAN!"'s and one "YEAH? man.") and one person got the hat explanation. The one who got the full disclosure seemed disappointed. He's from Boston so I asked him if it was cool to wear the hat, even though I'm not a fan. He said, "Yeah man."

Thursday, April 5, 2007

Can you hear that?

It's the sound of my toilet not running and the tank not dripping into the bowl.

For about a week I've been fiddling with the guts of my toilet to try and make the adjustments necessary to get it to stop dripping and filling and dripping and filling and dripping and filling. It was to the point that I was actually turning off the water to the toilet between flushes.

I don't know why I'm so reluctant to call someone to fix stuff... I'm UNDER WARRANTY after all and I need to take advantage of that while I can!

So I broke down and called the plumbing contractor today and within an hour two dudes were here takin care of bidness. 20 mins later, a cacophony of quiet was cascading from my commode. That means they fixed it.

Still no word on the noises in the wall... it's actually kind of cleared up a little on it's own. Still, it's weird that someone came and looked at it, offered a solution for diagnosis, assured me that action would be taken and since then... nothing. How much pushing do I want to do? How much should I HAVE to do?

A fellow Atlantan is having customer service issues of his own. I know we all have cable TV issues but few of us take the time to really document the whole debacle! It's a shocking and AMAZING blow by blow account of what just ONE person is dealing with trying to get cable installed. I can't imagine how many other stories like his are happening all over the country right now.

Wednesday, April 4, 2007

Gods that was good

It's rare... Really, really rare that I am impressed by a TV show anymore. For all my love of TiVo and the medium in general, the word, "Wow" is not a common one for me at the end of a TV show. Usually reserved for episodes of The West Wing, SportsNight and South Park.

I just finished watching the Season Finale of Battlestar Galactica however and, "Frakin-A." Good Stuff.


I can't say that I was completely happy with the ending... frankly I'm a little disappointed in it... I'm not sure what the statute of limitations is on spoilers... so I guess I will wait till I read about it in Entertainment Weekly before I really go off on my feelings about the ending. Suffice it to say I was not totally surprised.

One thing that DID surprise me were the revelations regarding four Galactica crew members and their taste in music. I have a theory on that one too though. This one I think I can talk about without ruining anyone's fun though. First of all, I think they are mistaken about their main assumption. Second, I think the music is coming from Earth. Remember in Contact when Jodi Foster explained that once our TV and Radio signals leave Earth, they keep going, and going and going and going out into space forever? For reasons yet to be explained, I think that a bad sitar version of All Along the Watchtower was broadcast on Earth and now 4 crewmemebers are picking it up in their fillings (nod to The Partridge Family).

Speaking of those 4 crewmembers... I'm OK with two of them disappearing. But the other two (especially this one - what? not who you expected?) I'd be bummed to loose.

P will not watch BSG with me because it has spaceships in it.

Now I have 8 sectars until the fleet returns in 2008 to convince him to give the last Battlestar, Galactica, a look as it leads a ragtag, fugitive fleet, on a lonely quest, for a shining planet known as Earth.

Holy CRAP I am a dork.

Series 2 Dual Tuner TiVo BABY!

Love is a word that I reserve for very few things in life. At present I love P, I love my family, Haagen Dazs Vanilla Swiss Almond ice cream, and I love my brand new Series 2 Dual Tuner TiVo!

This is my 4th TiVo but it is my FIRST NEW TiVo.

My first was a christmas gift given to me about 7 years ago. It was one of the very first models to come out and it was deeply discounted because it had been a demonstration unit in a store. It only had 15 hours of record time! But they were precious hours. Due to the limited recording space I became a master at organizing my season pass list to avoid conflicts... selecting only the new episodes of the shows I really wanted and then following each of those shows with a less important program in the same time slot which I instructed TiVo to record ALL episodes of. That way when the first show was a new episode it would get recorded, but if it was a rerun TiVo would record the secondary program. My season pass list was tight as a drum and nearly flawless in it's organization.

Then... one Superbowl Sunday in 2001 there was a bad fire in the house I was living in. Some overly dramatic people might say that it burned down. It actually just burned really badly, and what didn't burn was drenched from the fire hoses. No one was hurt and insurance was good to us but a lot of stuff got ruined that night... TiVo #1 didn't make it.

About two years later I was ready to try again. #1's replacement, TiVo #2, was a unit that had been returned to Best Buy. Because the box had been opened the Best Buy people had to sell him at a discount. The price was too good to pass up and on impulse I became the owner of a 40 hour TiVo! I was giddy with the thought of organizing my new season pass list with over TWICE the amount of hard drive space to fill with programing. But it was not to be. Hours after setting him up TiVo #2 suffered a catastrophic hard drive failure. I tried and tried to revive him, but no luck. Best Buy wouldn't let me exchange him for another TiVo because he had been on sale. All they would do was give me my money back.

TiVo #3 was/is a TROOPER. About 3 weeks after #2 died I managed to outbid some other TiVo fans on eBay and just a few short days later #3 was up and running!

That was sometime in 2004 I think. I do not know how I survived between the fire and TiVo #3. I had lost two TiVo's... one dying a horrible death in a burning building, the other suffering a catastrophic drive failure right in front of my eyes. Having been so scarred it was hard to love again, but thanks to TiVo #3, I learned to open my heart and once again feel the warm embrace of TiVo.

Now the next chapter has opened in my TiVo scrapbook. For my b-day I got my first BRAND NEW TiVo! This bad boy has 80 hours of hard drive space (at lowest resolution) AND can record TWO shows at once! This is a feat that until just recently only the DirecTV TiVo's were capable of. Once again a whole new world has opened up to me. How do I have to manage my season pass list now that I no longer have to worry about programming conflicts?

The weird thing about all this is that thanks to my relatively recent foray into the blogosphere... I have actually watched WAY less TV than I used to. I try to turn off the computer and relax in front of the tube, but I'm drawn back to the internet more and more lately... and NOT just for the porn! I've also discovered that I tend to spend more time programming TiVo #4 to record programs than I do actually watching said shows! In fact I should be watching the season finale of BattleStar Galactica, but instead... I’m writing pages about the machine that I use to record BattleStar Galactica so I can watch it.

Is that ironic? Where is Alanis Morrisette when you need her?

By the way... over on eBay the Game Boy Advance I won a while back is on sale... the auction is ending soon!!!

Monday, April 2, 2007

March Winnings

3/5 - $50 in gas cards - "prize winner in the WSB-TV Chevron Red Carpet Sweepstakes" - Just showed up in my mailbox.


3/20 - A $12 Movie Ticket Gift Certificate redeemable for one movie ticket up to $12 in price - From the GENERAL MILLS SPIDER-MAN 3 ONLINE INSTANT-WIN SWEEPSTAKES - Notified via email from the sweepstakes agency

3/21 - My choice of a college basketball jersey (I chose OSU) - From the Nabisco "Make the Call for Your Home Team" text2win sweeps (text winit to 47171 through 4/2) - Notified via text message

3/21 - $25 pre-paid MasterCard - From the Atlanta Downtown Association's commuter rewards program - notified via email newsletter.

3/27 - "$20 Cash for Gas" in the form of a check - From Pepsi's Free Ride Sweepstakes - check just showed up in my mailbox, no other notification that I'd won.

Sunday, April 1, 2007

What will they think of next?

I wonder why they picked today to announce these new products?

This one is Amazing!

These are cool too!