Doing More With Less Since 1972

Tag: television (Page 1 of 2)

Daily Reading List — March 29th

Bike Trainer Workouts for Every Distance – Been kinda going on my own so far this season. Race in a few weeks, then going to focus on Sprint for a while before ramping up to another 70.3 in the Fall.

Unfit for Work: The startling rise of disability in America | Planet Money – A person on welfare costs a state money. That same resident on disability doesn't cost the state a cent, because the federal government covers the entire bill for people on disability. So states can save money by shifting people from welfare to disability. And the Public Consulting Group is glad to help.

Higher Ed bubble in two charts – Lots of graveyard whistling going on around this topic.

HBO Mulls Making HBO Go Available to Non-Cable Subscribers – Sign us up.

Everything I Know About Polls

I learned from “Married With Children”.

Bud Bundy: We’re taking a family poll.

Kelly Bundy: What are we going to do with a pole?

Bud Bundy: We’re going to stick it in your head so we have a place to hang the sign that says, “Duh!”

Kelly Bundy: Great. You guys won’t let me pierce my nose, but you’re going to put a pole in my head.

Think about it America.

Idea For New Television Show

A booksmart/streetdumb professional basketball player studying to get his master’s degree in economics secretly pines for his sports agent’s sister–a police detective with a tough-as-nails exterior and a heart of gold. Of course, the ditzy-but-smart athlete messes up every case the object of his affection works and thereby ruins his chances of ever wooing her.

Luckily, the agent always has his client’s back and is able to repair the damage caused, at the same time discovering that the suspect the police were pursuing was innocent and the person you least expected was responsible. This makes his sister look brilliant.

In Season 2 we learn that the agent secretly has a crush on the basketball player, and in the season finale he bursts into the guy’s mansion to express his feelings, where he finds his client making out with his sister.

A song by The Fray plays as we see scenes from the dialog-free aftermath this event caused, including the player missing a series of free throws at the end of a game and costing his team the league championship and resulting in a potential trade.

Who will represent him in the trade negotiations now that the agent has moved to Vancouver to find his spirituality?

What will happen at the police station now that she doesn’t have her brother to help her solve cases?

How will the distance affect their relationship if he really does get traded to Dallas?

Season 3 is gonna be awsum!

Michael Phelps Rant

Dear citizens media of the United States,

Michael Phelps doesn’t owe you a damn thing. He doesn’t owe you/us/anybody another gold medal or an explanation about “what happened”. Stop using words like “disaster” and “disappointing” to describe anything he does or doesn’t do at the Olympics.

Ditto for every other athlete competing there in every other sport.

Ditto for every other athlete competing at any other level.

I swim, but I’m not really a swimmer. My longest workouts of an 18 week triathlon training plan are about what real swimmers–even the ones who are a long way from being Olympic athletes-do as a warmup before their main set. And I go about half their speed.

And they do this daily.

At 4:00 am.

And again at 4:00 pm.

For years.

With no real off-season.

What these athletes do is nothing like the trip to the gym that most of us take to “work out”. They aren’t chatting with friends between sets, listening to a 10 song playlist and calling it quits, or watching “Saved By The Bell” reruns on the screen of the cross trainer while they work to the point of almost sweating. I’ve had swimmers who weren’t even D1 level tell me their stories about swimming through their teammates’ vomit floating on the surface of the pool and having their goggles fill with tears from the pain they were suffering during training.

During the cycling road race, I heard one of the commentators mention an East German training tactic of putting a cyclist on the trainer in front of a concrete wall and having them ride for hours looking at nothing, just to build mental toughness. How mentally tough do you have to be to spend all your training staring at a black line on the bottom of a pool?

So, in closing, get off the guy’s ass. He’s been staring at the bottom of a pool for 20 years. So what if he wanted to coast into this Olympics with (relatively) little training and just enjoy the experience of being there and have some fun? He’s done this long enough to know he’ll get what he earned, and that’s something he has to come to terms with on his own (*UPDATE* Coach Vance points this out better than I did after Phelps’ post-race interview).  He’s smart enough to know that he isn’t going to be the best in the world for the next 300 years either.

He doesn’t have to answer to anyone but himself.

The second we see swimmers jump into the pool and splash around like idiots instead of actually trying to win a race, it will be time to complain. Until then, anyone who is “disappointed” when watching (from their sofas or broadcast chairs) any of these athletes’ performances should hit the off button, get up , and go do something about it themselves.

Rinse and repeat for NFL, NBA, MLB, NCAA sports, and all little league competition.

</rant>

 

All Hallows Link Dump

Apple to Make Remote Obsolete? – Because sitting on your ass staring at a screen just isn’t easy enough yet. For some people, the only exercise they get is lifting sofa cushions to look for the remote.

How to Get a Personalized Financial Plan Without Spending a Fortune – Awesome idea, but not sure if I like the idea of giving up the personal attention. Then again, I don’t like the idea of giving up $100 an hour for personal attention.

Signs Of A Slowdown Are Obvious (In China) – They should probably borrow some money to work on that wall thing. You know, infrastructure and all.

7 Steps for Building A Mobile Future In Your Enterprise

Gmail to Unveil New Interface – Unlike FB, I think something Google can really leverage is becoming a place you live, not a site you visit. This looks much more like G+.

100-Year-Old Man Completes Marathon – How old are you?

Link Dump – I Think The Debt Ceiling Is Causing Global Warming

Five Facts About the Debt

“When it was Chrysler secured bondholders objecting to getting defaulted on by the president’s auto task force, Mr. Obama denounced them as “a small group of speculators” who were “hoping that everybody else would make sacrifices and they would have to make none.” Where was Mr. Obama’s newfound respect for bondholders back during the Chrysler deal?”

NASA Data Blow Gaping Hole In Global Warming Alarmism – The hell you say! Can we go back to regular light bulbs now?

Tips for overcoming fear of open water swimming – Good stuff here on overcoming your fears. Now I just need to find out why I feel like I’m going so much slower in the open water so I can calm down.

How to Migrate Your Facebook Account and Data to Google+ – Making some assumptions you actually want to move all that stuff, but useful!

Ironman Lake Placid Race Report – @emilysweats has written of the best race reports ever. Worth your time

‘Mad Men’ Begins Streaming on Netflix – Cracking open a single malt scotch and settling in for this one.

Why Leaders Need to Exercise – I’ve found this to be almost exclusively true, and not just with leaders. People in general seem to be more productive, less affected by stress, and more pleasant to be around when they are fit. I know I am.

Big Bird and Amazon

Amazon has released even more movies and TV shows for Prime subscribers today, including the last 7 seasons of Sesame Street. Cool!

We ditched cable about a year and a half ago and are exclusively streaming stuff from Netflix, Amazon, and Pandora through our Roku box. No regrets, and we haven’t looked back. There’s a ton of good children’s programming available that way, and the adults in the house only watch TV on purpose these days–no more turning it on and flipping through channels to find something to watch.

$11 a month for Netflix plus $79 a year for Amazon Prime gives us way more TV than we could ever watch.

Google’s Moats, “The Wire” Reviewed, and Hagar Abduction Link Dump

Android as Google’s Moat – I like this take on Android as a defensive product for Google. I also like what that implies for us as consumers–costs keep decreasing while functionality keeps increasing. Can you believe someone wanted to charge for a web browser at one time? Now there are several free browsers, and they are still trying to out-do each other in features and speed!

The Quintessentially Victorian Vision of Ogden’s “The Wire” – Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.

Are We Better Off Today? – Definitely. I think the problem is that we have a skewed idea of "comfortable". If I have food in my belly and shoes (hopefully some $1 Old Navy flip-flops) on my feet and I'm not bleeding, chances are I'd say I'm comfortable.

6 Common E-Mail Marketing Mistakes Small Businesses Make – Read the bold points as a checklist before you hit send.

Integration Of Google Voice and Sprint – A daddy of an announcement. Now…do I have to pick one number or the other to have seamless integration? I like having both.

"Red" rocker Sammy Hagar says abducted by aliens – Still trying to "Out-Dave" DRL. You sir, are no David Lee Roth

NYT’s DIgital Pricing Plan Discriminates By Device – Alternate Headline: Requiem to an Ass Biter.

Cutting Back on Screen Time

From today’s Tennessean, Dr. Frank Boehm calls for replacing t.v. time with book time:

If we began to encourage our children to replace screen time with reading books, they would be more able to counter ignorance in themselves and others by being able to enter conversa­tions with real facts rather than sound bites from television programs and the Internet.

I won’t pretend our kids don’t watch any television. They do. But we’ve found it easier to limit their tube time by getting rid of cable and only using a Roku player to stream Netflix. This allows us to limit what they see to very specific programs and zero commercials. An added benefit of using only a streaming player is that when a show ends, it’s over. There aren’t any “Coming up next…” announcements. Pea usually gets up and turns the television off when her show ends, saying, “We don’t watch t.v. all day.”

It’s been good for us (the parents) as well. We watch considerably less television now. Gone are the days of flipping through channels looking for something to watch. The only time the television is on at our house is when we sit down to watch a specific movie or an episode or two of a television program we’re streaming after the kids’ bed time. If you thought DVD was the best way to watch a series, you should try streaming it!

Again, no commercials, and we spend a lot more time reading and talking than we do staring at a screen.

We’re also saving a ton of money. For the cost of one month of cable we were able to buy the streamer to connect to the television, and Netflix is less than $10 per month. Cutting cable completely may not work for every family, especially if you like to watch sports live, but we love it!

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Best While-You-Work Television Ever

If you have multiple monitors, there’s nothing better than throwing the live coverage of the Tour de France onto one of the screens to listen to the race in the mornings and glance over to see what the announcers are talking about when you hear excitement in their voices. This is the only televised sporting event I really care about watching (or listening to) live.

I don’t care if they are on steroids, HGH, doped blood, meth, or monkey dung. They still have to get on those bikes and ride them a long way up some steep mountains. And since everyone is cheating anyway, the playing field is level, right?

It’s going to be nice to listen to something besides talk radio and Texas country music for a couple of weeks.

Here’s the stage schedule.

UPDATE:

Those  greedy fat cats over at Versus are charging to follow the tour online this year. How dare they try to make a profit on an event held in a socialist democracy! The Tour belongs to the people and accounts of it may not be produced without the express written consent of the NFL and commissioner Pete Rozell.

Stuff You Should See — 23:14

Man Gives His Tattoo Breast Implants – Wha?! I guess the economy isn’t bad for everybody, huh?

Hacked STOP Signs – The best one is “Collaborate and Listen”.

Instapundit on Saving and Budgeting – I have to throw in a “yeah but…” here. I always did things pretty much the way he describes, but since my money has become OUR money, we’ve been more diligent about the budget, and it seems to work well for us. It’s even happened that we’ve been able to save more than planned on occasion.

Jersey Shore Nickname Generator – Nice to meet you. I am S-Train, and I’ll be your tanning host for the evening

Send text messages to mobile phones from the web – I was having some problems receiving texts on my mobile phone. I used this site built by my buddy Michael Wender to test things out while I was trying to resolve it. Very handy!!!

Delicious Link Dump– December 29th through December 30th

Calendar Reform – I’m all for it. But can we please keep Congress away from it? I like the idea of WorldDay, which would fall outside the calendar and not be a marked day at all (Friday, Saturday, WorldDay, Sunday) once a year. That should help it get bilateral acceptance, right?

Go to Nashvegas with Gavin Baker – That’s not an insult, it’s for real. He’s heading to Social Fresh. Details are at his place after the link.

Sonrisa Salvaje – I’d totally forgotten DLR made this record. Can I write this off as an education expense to learn Spanish?

I’m Going To Turn My Grandmother Into A Radical Libertarian – I’m down like four flat tires. I don’t have much hell to unleash, but I’ll do what I can.

Van Halen-Panama – Get your New Year’s party started early

Great Examples Of Coming Soon Pages And How To Create Yours – Some great examples here. They are probably more promising than the actual websites will be once they are launched. Still, I could use something like this. I have hundreds of ideas that are in “coming soon” state, and I’m adding more and more every day.

Songbird – Ahhh…synchs with Android. Likey.

The best series of the decade – I’m sorry. I’m not going to argue the placement of any of these series in this list. I’ll just say this and end it–if you don’t have The Wire (the best show in the history of television) anywhere in the list, you aren’t qualified to compile a list of TV shows. I hate to be mean, but that’s just the truth.

10 Things From 10 Years Ago I’ll Never Get Back

Are we any better off now than we were 10 years ago? Ok, just had to ask that because it seems like the thing to do. I know that for a lot of people the answer is a definite “no”. As for me, I’m infinitely better off than I was then. The last decade has been one of tremendous technological advancement, but there’s plenty to lament. Here’s my list of 10 things I had 10 years ago that I’ll probably never have access to again.

  1. The ability to remember phone numbers. I still remember both of my grandmothers’ phone numbers from when I was a kid, but thanks to these fancy schmancy mobile devices, I can only remember a handful now. And if I met you in the last 10 years, you’re lucky if I can even guess your area code.
  2. Mix tapes. Yeah, we could burn CDs for some of the 90s, but what the hell were you supposed to listen to in the car? Because chances are you were driving a car made in the early 90s at the latest, and it didn’t have a CD player in it.
  3. My knees. This one is obvious. There’s nothing worse than tackling a young guy, hearing the breath leave his lungs as his back slams into the pitch, then watching from the ground as he trots away on his springy legs. The only thing that keeps me going is the fact that he’s going to get old too and probably won’t fare as well as I have.
  4. Bill Clinton as President. As much as it pains me to type it, I’d prefer any Clinton (Bill, Hillary, Chelsey, George, any of them) to what we have now. Sure, it’s not the optimal situation, but beggars can’t be choosers.
  5. My Thursday afternoon job bottling beer. One of the best jobs I ever had was helping the guys at New Knoxville Brewing Company bottle beer on Thursdays. There was no money involved, but I was promised I’d achieve total inebriation on my death bed. So I got that going for me, which is good. Fortunately, that’s yet to come to fruition, but we were allowed to carry out a couple of cases of “shorties” (bottles that weren’t completely filled and weren’t worth a label) every day. Good times.
  6. Waylon Mothergrabbin’ Jennings
  7. Tables. Back in the 90s, you could load a website down with embedded table after embedded table, then fill those tables with sliced images that the browser magically placed back together and no one thought a thing about it. Put just one table into a site now and you are getting beat with a USB cable.
  8. When a girl could still cook, and still would. I had to throw that in there for Merle Haggard, but actually, this one happens to be the opposite for me. I don’t think I knew a girl in the 90s who could really cook. Not so now. I’m very well fed, and I look the part. But my girl couldn’t cook back in the 90s–this is a newly acquired skill. So if I could go back to the 90s version of her (the one that was over 18), I’d probably be much thinner. That’s logical, right?
  9. New episodes of Seinfeld. I have some of the seasons on DVD. It’s not the same. Scott is gettin’ angry.
  10. Free international travel. During the 90s I got to go to Europe and Asia to work on projects for weeks, which meant weekends on vacation in Europe and Asia. Even better–the companies I was working for footed the bill and provided per diems for expenses. Damn you Webex and remote login. Damn you straight to hell. Just kidding…except for the travel thing, Webex and remote login have made my life better in more ways than I can count.

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Delicious Link Dump– December 22nd through December 28th

2009: The Year of the Failed Narratives – I love story time! I have to admit that I'm a little disappointed that none of the stuff they are trying to sell us involves dragons or unicorns. I mean, if we're going to write fiction, let's go all the way with it.

Ghetto Kool-Aid – The word "ghetto" is over-used. The word "Kool-Aid", however, is not.

The New Flight Security Rules, So Far – When you can count on showing up for a flight four hours early, not being allowed to access your carry-ons (the whole purpose for carrying things on when you have children), not being able to hold objects in your lap (try explaining that to a toddler), and not being able to go to the restroom for the last hour of the flight…why on earth would anyone fly anywhere with kids? This will definitely be changing our travel plans in the future.

Is cable worth it? – Not even if they paid you to watch the commercials

Top 10 Bad Things That Are Good For You – I don't set things on fire and put them in my mouth, so weed is out. Can I double down on the beer instead? And I won't need the LSD to counter the extra beer for a few years. I won't knock the maggots until I've tried them.

Obama, Left Behind – What he really needs to fix this is a new web site and a fresh Twitter account. They'll be back in no time.

Mortgage Applications Drop to 2-Month Low – I have to believe this is mostly due to the fact that people are hanging out waiting on short sale approval letters. *hint hint*

Learn to Let Go: How Success Killed Duke Nukem – Shake it baby! This is the first and only shoot 'em game I ever bought, but it was pretty good. I'm not that into video games, so I didn't really keep up with the drama that was the continual delayed release of the sequel.

Stripper For Christmas – Ho Ho Ho! Yeah, that wasn't very original.

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