To the Networks:

Hi there. Let's get right to the point.

There are some shows that are going to be really popular, and there are some shows that will have smaller audiences. It's time that you embraced the idea that, by definition, not every show is going to be in the top ten.

If you have shows that are good, well-written, well-acted, and they have loyal, but (gasp!) smaller than top ten audiences, just keep the show for cryin' in the sink. I bet you there are some advertisers who can't afford to buy time during your blockbuster shows, but who would be more than willing to pay for some time on a middling-popularity sort of show.

Let me 'splain to you why this would be good. We, the viewers, wouldn't see the same blessed ads over and over again. Do you know what we do when we're inundated with the same damn ad over and over? We ignore it. It becomes part of the furniture. Some of us are so aggrieved that we mute the damn things, we're so sick of them.

So what do you think would happen if you had a wider variety of advertisers, based on a wider variety of fees? We'd pay more attention to ads! They might, you know, actually work, to make us want to buy things. You can back up your ability to sell their product.

And you know what else? Stop counter-programming popular shows with other shows that would be of interest to the same audience that watches the show you're programming it against. That just sucks. Some of us have to TiVo to see stuff because we're busy with the kiddos, or we, you know, just want to turn off the TV every now and again. Most of us don't have two TiVos or a dual-tuner one, so you make us have to choose.

Out of spite, I always choose the established show over the new one. Do you know why? Because you could have chosen any time to put it on, but you intentionally made me choose. You're the one causing the conflict, so I ignore the new show. This is why I don't watch Heroes, though I've tried to find my way into it with the Sci-Fi reruns (sadly, to no avail, because it just doesn't seem to hook me in). I know I can watch 'em online, too, but I didn't find that out until later, when I'd already tried a few reruns and didn't find it pulling me in.

But NBC, you put Heroes against 24. You made me choose, so I stuck with the network that DIDN'T make me choose. You lose a viewer, not that it much matters because that particular show is a hit without me and my ilk.

Instead of whacking all the shows that have the potential to attract the same sort of audience into the same damn time slot in some sort of network-based game of chicken, hows about programming them against unlike competition, so that people of differing tastes are served at the same time, albeit maybe (say it's not so) by your network at that particular time.

Now, I notice that the show "Thank God You're Here", which could be interesting to people who like comedy improv on against 24. You might not think that comedy improv and terrorism drama overlap, but I bet you a lot of the 24 watchers would give "Thank God You're Here" a try if they weren't on against each other. I think they're probably both younger audiences who like offbeat, break-the-rules sort of shows.

Why, when there are a week's worth of other choices? Why doesn't anyone put anything on against some of those asinine half-hour sitcoms or plethora of reality game shows?

Oh, screw it. The networks aren't listening to me, anyway.

Love, Actu—Huh?

So, I mentioned before that our last TiVo bit it in the power outages from the last ice storm, and that we'd done a replacement with the company and were set up to TiVo again.

However, we did lose everything that had been on our old TiVo, some of which was quite old and was sort of a bonus to have there if one of us woke in the middle of the night and had trouble going back to sleep. On that list of stuff on "keep until I delete" for months (or in some cases, well over a year) were several episodes of Good Eats, a couple of Futuramas, three episodes of the first season of the new Doctor Who, and the movie Love, Actually. It was Love, Actually that was the go-to program for me most of the time, being pressed into service whenever I needed something reassuring on in the background to allow me to go back to sleep.

While I have the movie on DVD, we don't have a DVD player in the bedroom and who wants to get up at 2 am to put on a DVD anyway? I set up a keyword search on Love, Actually, assuming one premium channel or another would dust it off and program it for the Christmas season.

Instead, USA network put on a "basic cable safe" version of it. As a curiosity, as I am probably the closest thing on the planet to someone who would gleefully collect Love, Actually curiosities, it is interesting to watch. Billy Mack's tirade of swearing in the recording studio is replaced with an emphatic "Ohhhhhhh!" When Natalie meets the Prime Minister, instead of swearing several times in front of him, she instead impulsively kisses him. Jack and Judy, the body doubles, basically seem to have had to film their entire appearances in the movie twice...once with rampant nudity and once without.

It's just so odd that there's enough stuff in the movie that it wouldn't have made sense in a purely censored version, and the makers of the film actually saw it coming far enough in advance to film entirely different versions of scenes that would make the storylines nonsensical by their omission.

I actually might keep this version, just because it seems like some sort of weird ultra-rare, like a foil Charizard or something. It does suck with the commercials in, though.

Suckitude in Ice Storm Land

There was one electronic casualty of the ice storm. The TiVo bit the dust after repeated power on/power off cycles. Yes, I should have remembered to unplug it. No, I didn't remember. I was trying to get the baby's things packed up for our flight to the MIL and FIL's and I didn't unplug everything I wanted to unplug before we left.

After calling the company, for a fee, we could trade in our old box and get a refurbished unit of the same ilk, then send back our old and busted box. They'd then transfer our lifetime service to the "new" (to us) box and we'd be good to go.

It took some time to get it shipped (just arrived today, we've been TiVoless for about a week and I appreciate the service more now, I think) but there was one real bitch of a problem to work out...although all of our config data was pre-loaded onto our new box so that we didn't have to re-authorize the new box or any of that unpleasantness, we lost all of our season pass information.

Those of you who have TiVos may have taken a gasp of horror at that point, and the rest of you were thinking, "So the $**()#*$ what?" A season pass list, with its quirks and hierarchies and "this program runs one minute over" subtleties, is cultivated over time, like a fine cheese or wine. It's constantly tweaked. Programs fall out of favor. New ones come into vogue. It takes forever to get it to "just that lovely place" where it catches things that you would have missed (like our wishlist search for Lewis Black that gets his appearances on talk shows and on Comedy Central, though not his appearances on The Daily Show, regrettably) and doesn't record the wrong thing because your hierarchical list was in the wrong order.

"So sit down and fix it," you may be saying. Ah, but I can only search for programs that the TiVo knows about, and it has limited guide information at this time (though I forced it to update about fifteen minutes ago, and we'll see if that helps a bit). Plus, things like 24 that won't premiere for weeks yet wouldn't appear in the guide anyway, so I can't really put it in my list.

I've done a bit of sneaky scheduling via the Yahoo TV website, where I already had our box information configured (here's hoping the hoo-hah that TiVo did when it switched the boxes on our account will keep that Yahoo->TiVo box link working, which I think it will, as our "new" box knew what the old box's name was) and I hope that will be part of what this forced reload will update on my box.

Now I'm off to do some real work around the house, before I look into boxing up the old TiVo to ship back to them either later tonight or tomorrow.

Since When is 3>7?

So, on my priority list for season passes on my TiVo, the top three are:

1) Veronica Mars
2) Lost (ironic, ain't it?)
3) 24

At seven, we have The Apprentice.

The TiVo is supposed to record higher shows on the pri list first. When 24 and The Apprentice were on against each other last night, ask me what my TiVo recorded...The Apprentice!?! WTFBBQ?

This is the first time I haven't come upstairs when I knew there was a conflict to double-check what the TiVo was grabbing so I could watch whatever the other show was, and I got screwed! Every single week I come upstairs to make sure I'm getting VM so I know to watch Lost real-time, and every week it does it right.

What the eff is up with my TiVo? I checked in the To Do list where it tells you why things didn't get recorded, and its excuse for skipping 24 is that something of a HIGHER PRIORITY was on at the same time. Last I checked, Lost and VM weren't on at the same time last night. Screwed!

So I took The Apprentice off the list (which is where it should have been in the first place, not on the list) and it added next week's 24 to the To Do list. What gives, TiVo? Is this some Trump conspiracy?

In the House

So, we and our stuff are inside the confines of the house. There is still an incredibly large cardboard quotient going on here. Also, the cable order got screwed up and they didn't bring boxes for all the television sets. This means we have no remote control in our bedroom and that we can't hook up the TiVo yet, which makes Kathy cross.

However, we do have the internet and the wireless up and running (using it to write this now) which makes me feel like a real person again. Some of the cable is working as intended, so hopefully that will mollify me a bit. A bit. Not all the way, but a bit.

Telephone is hooked up. Still waiting to switch over wireless phone numbers until the move shenanigans are over, because all of the move people only have those two numbers. Those of you who currently have our telephone numbers can expect an email or something with the new numbers in the next week or so.

God, there's a lot of cardboard here. Some of our furniture is still shrink wrapped. I have money flying all over the place. Oh, and the deal on the house in VA is now done, and we don't own that house anymore. The relocation firm does, and I can officially forget about it. Nice feeling.

More later. Miss all you VA people. Stay safe with that hurricane or tropical storm or whatever it's calling itself now. Blog so we know you're okay and you still have power and whatnot.

WoW and Tivo and no time, oh my.

Lots of changes this weekend, two of which caused the entire Friday night through Sunday night period to blow through here on an express train...do not pass go, do not collect $200.

I have a ten day free trial with World of Warcraft. I was determined to stay in until I got a pet, at level ten. I'm now level eleven, and I'll be logging in there as soon as I finish this, in pursuit of level twelve.

Why do I do this? Time slips by hours at a time while other tasks (the bills, our taxes, the pine cones in the front yard, the laundry, vacuuming) pile up, as I spend my time killing spiders and big cats in a make-believe world where my hair is white and I have an ass-kickin' pet owl.

Then we go and buy Tivo (E, I put in your email address as a referral when I registered) and I have four hours of stuff on there already. When am I gonna watch that? I was afraid that would happen. Maybe I don't have the time to watch all that stuff about which I used to think, "Man, if only I had Tivo, I'd watch that." By 10:00 tonight, I'll have five and a half hours worth of stuff on there. And we hooked it up yesterday.

Oh, and I have a 25 mile time trial this Sunday that I have to train for. I am going to get my ass kicked, but it will serve me right for letting up on my training. DDR has really interfered with my time on the bike. (Worth it when I do those 9's, though, on second thought.)

This was going someplace, but I drank a Hard Black Cherry Zima while I was writing this and now I'm too light-headed to remember what the point was. Oops. Sorry for wasting your time.