coming soon: update

So i'm not going to make a massive list like i did last time.

This time i am just going to share with everyone the large list of movies that i "have" to go see this summer/year. As i pointed out last time, it is amazing how many of these are sequels.

Movies i am for sure going to check out:
May 4th - Spiderman 3
May 25th - Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
June 8th - Ocean's Thirteen
June 29th - Ratatouille
July 4th - Transformers
July 13th - Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
August 10th - Rush Hour 3
August 17th - Fanboys

Others of note that i am going to wait to rent or borrow:
May 18th - Shrek the 3rd
June 15th - Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer
June 22nd - Evan Almighty
June 29th - Live Free or Die Hard
July 27th - The Simpsons Movie
August 3rd - Underdog
August 3rd - The Bourne Ultimatum
August 17th - The Invasion

Yes, out of the 16 movies that i am interested in this summer, 2 - that is TWO - are original movies (not sequels or remakes or based on TV shows or whatever). Either something is wrong with me, or something is wrong with the movie industry - or both.

Other interesting movies coming in the not too distant future...
His Dark Materials: The Golden Compass
I Am Legend
National Treasure: Book of Secrets
Speed Racer - by the Wachowski brothers
The Incredible Hulk - didn't we just do this one?

Other movies coming that are worth noting but don't have set release dates set yet...
The Dark Knight
"Bond 22"
Superman: The Man of Steel
Indiana Jones 4
John Rambo
Shrek 4
Puss in Boots
The Hobbit

Now i have to go work some more...

i'm famous

After much patience (and sometimes a lack of it) i am finally starting to draw some good linkage from blog rolls and other sites.

Of course it helps that i have started posting comments in lots of places linking back to my blog. Funny how i always complained about few people commenting on my blog, but rarely bothered to comment on anyone else's. Strange how this works out.

Anyway...i am now a featured blog (kinda) on nashvilleistalking.com, and was just selected as the Quote of the Day there.

One Paragraph in this post also prompted an entire entry in response on an AOL Sports official blog. Even if he did call me "Paul Richardson" (he has since corrected it).

Many more visits from comments i made on James Mirtle's blog (well known hockey writer from Toronto) and other places.

Yay!

wdjd

Tennessee is about to lift it's moratorium on the death penalty (how much irony is in that phrase). This got me thinking again over the weekend about the death penalty in general.

Now, this is actually not an issue that i was raised with a strong opinion about. I was raised with an evangelical church background- Abortion: no, Drugs: no, Gay Marriage: no, etc, etc...but the death penalty wasn't discussed much.

I think this is largely because most of the politicians that the "right wing" church back, support the death penalty. The leaders of the political evangelical movement (Pat Robertson, Richard Land, James Dobson, etc) have tied themselves to political parties and partisans instead of to issues. I don't blame them too much honestly. We aren't interested in middle-ground in the US. It is a two party system. People like me that are fiscally conservative, socially liberal, morally conservative, and a fairly strict constructionist - have no place in US politics. In order to have some of their issues address (abortion, etc) and to gain political power, they had to align with someone. They found they aligned more with "R" than with "D", so they did.

However, that forces them into a position on the death penalty that is, to me, totally untenable in light of their professed religious beliefs, so they keep quiet about it. (Though some try to defend it)

As i said, this is one of the few issues i didn't have a pre-conceived opinion about. So i was able to go all CS Lewis on it and Reason my way to the answer...

To me, the death penalty is one of the few times you Christians shouldn't have to ask "what would Jesus do?" - they can ask "what did Jesus do?". This is one of the few issues that is clearly addressed with a specific situation in the Bible. When Jesus came upon a group about to stone a woman to death, he flatly declined to participate, and show the woman compassion.

Jesus wasn't about condemnation. He was the exact opposite. He was about hope and 2nd chances (and 3rd, and 4th...)

Who else still has the death penalty? Is this the crowd we want to be a part of?
(click for larger version, here for original)

I don't see any reason to have the death penalty in this day and age. The only possible reason I could see defending it (though it would be amazingly cruel and immoral) would be if it saved money. If we didn't have to pay as much to keep people around in prison. But it actually costs more, so even that horrible, inhuman position is indefensible.

It just doesn't make sense.

post-mortem

I was planning on posting about the end of the Predators season at some point, but i just read the horrid article over at the Tennessean that 2-bit writer John Glennon did. Most of the article was calling the Forsberg trade in to question...that got me riled up enough to post a response on their message board...so that, with a few modifications and pretty pictures, will be my blog post for the season ender:

One of the things Nashville needed this year (besides playoff wins) was respect around the league and in Nashville. Peter Forsberg paid off in that respect before he even put on a Nashville sweater. Much like the LA Galaxy with Beckham, I would be willing to bet that the Predators made back what they paid for Foppa's salary in the flood of merchandising and extra tickets that he brought in, not to mention the flood of media coverage and respect it garnered from national media and fans. The trade was worth every player and draft pick we gave up for it. Having said that, i wouldn't make the smallest effort to re-sign him. He will command too much money for the 40-game seasons that his body has left in it.

As for all the free agents (Kariya, Hartnell, Timmonen): Kariya i'd love to keep, but if we do, we MUST get another trigger man, even if young/cheap, to go with him. Kariya, Sullivan, Forsberg, Kimmo...they are all great assist guys. Amazing passing and puck moving skills. We need more guys like Radulov (and to a lesser extend Dumont and Hartnell) who have a shoot-first mentality. There were far too many games this year where D-men lead the team in shots on goal. To that point - keep Kimmo. Don't over pay him, but he's a strong offensive d-man and we've had too much success with him and Zidlicky playing that style. Back to the trigger man issue: i think it is worth it to keep Hartnell as well, even with the extra salary he will demand. He's also a fan favorite, so that helps soften the blow for...

The coaching staff. I love Trotz. He is Good People. But he obviously can't make the adjustments needed in the playoffs. After game 4, he said during his post game interview that what they were doing should be working (which i couldn't argue with), and will work, they just have to keep trying it and wait for a different result. Last time I checked, doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity. Trotz is a great coach at doing a lot with a little, but given an all-star roster, he couldn't win 2 home playoff games, much less a road-game or the series. We need a coach that can make adjustments and motivate the team. While we're at it - a captain that can motivate as well. Kimmo is a fabulous player and I want him back on the blue line, but he and Trotz both are almost too even keeled. I don't know about the European captain curse (I'd take Foppa as captain) but Kimmo didn't fill that role well.

And as for all the worry about the city supporting the team if we don't succeed - our best season attendance-wise was the 2000-2001 season, when we went 34-36-9-3 and missed the playoffs for the 3rd straight year. We'll be fine. We just need Dell to step up and sponsor the Arena to complete the San Jose rivalry (they play in the HP Pavilion). Then all discussion of them ever leaving town would cease.

Lastly, the Tennessean needs to hire a real hockey reporter that hasn't just been watching the NHL as long as we've had a team. The fact that most of the media covering the Predators (Pete Webber, Terry Crisp excepted) are not hockey people is making the community involvement level worse. The coverage is horrible, so only people that actually make it to a game and fall in love with the play on the ice ever get excited about it. Fortunately, there have been a lot of those people, especially in the last few years. But the media coverage MUST improve. (Note: I think Channel 5's coverage did improve dramatically and I give them full marks for the effort. They are about 80% of the way there now, which is better than the 40-50% for the rest of the TV, newspaper, and radio in town.

Here is Christy's post on the end of the season.

more videos

Just a quick note to all - on the left side of the page i have made several recent additions, including a new link to "My Videos". This will take you to a list of all my videos that i have uploaded to Google Video.

All sorts of random things, but like most of my dealings lately, much of it is Predators related for now. More non-Predators stuff is coming shortly though, i assure you.

Enjoy.

random updates

First, just a note that i've uploaded yet more pictures (not hockey this time) to my Flickr page. Christy actually took a lot of these this time. And if you hadn't noticed, i created a set that is nothing but pictures taken by Christy.

A few highlight pictures that i thought were interesting:

This is a piece of tire tread that somehow got embedded in the road on Woodland Street near I-24. I'd really love to know how this happened and how someone let is stay this way - but i love that they did.

I have always disliked above-ground power lines- but now that i am taking pictures around town and having to frame shots around them - i positively hate them. It is impossible to frame decent shots around them. So here i just gave up and shot a picture of the mess at Main and 5th.

This one i took while just messing around while waiting for Christy to come out to the car. I think it's cool cause i got the camera to focus so that the stuff in front of the car and in the rear-view mirror were both in focus, but the mirror frame and my hand aren't.

---

In totally unrelated news:
I won first place in my basketball fantasy league!

It went down to the wire - first i was way ahead, then way behind, then in the final day i pulled back to a dead tie and i had the tie breaker! The fact that so many teams (especially the Spurs for me) sat their start players for the last few games of the regular season (since playoff standings were secured) really threw things for a loop.

---

there is hope

Wow.
I never thought i would see the day.

Joey Crawford has just been suspended - indefinitely.
(At least through this year's playoffs.)

I'm not going to rant and rant about it now (maybe later), but here are the pertinent articles and video links:

ESPN News
ESPN Commentary
ESPN Video



Other pertinent blog links on my page and Mark Cuban's
Blog Maverick: Tim Duncan, Joe Crawford and the NBA
The Game That Was
Better Fines

Real Update: Tim Duncan was fined $25,000 for his critical comments about Joey Crawford to the media. This was expected. As you can see from my post "Better Fines", the NBA fines players and coaches when the publicly critisize game officials. This is the best spent $25k Duncan has ever paid out, and i'd be willing to bet that most of the players and coaches around the league would jump to pay the fine for him for helping to get Joey Crawford throw out of the league, if only for the playoffs.


Rant Update: Per request, i will rant a little more...
(warning: this is a particularly rambling, disconnected, random rant)

Joey Crawford is basically one of the worst refs to ever call a pro sports game by most accounts that i know of. At least in the "modern era". Certainly by my opinion. He tries to show up players and coaches, and obviously loves the camera being focused on him. If you skim the comments on the Blog Maverick post above, you'll get some idea what others think (though that is hardly an unbiased forum)

He does a decent job, occasionally, of actually officiating games. There are times when he calls games and there are no stand out problems. The calls seem reasonably fair, and nothing major happens. But then there are other times when he is a loose cannon. He has a dangerous temper and it goes off. That is just not something you can have in a referee. He makes ridiculous (or at least questionable) calls, and if anyone protests, they get a technical foul and are usually ejected shortly thereafter. You can see him giving someone a technical foul in the picture above - it wasn't very hard to find.

In many ways and to many people he is a good ref. He has called more playoff games than any other, and according to the way the league reviews calls, rates very highly on 'accuracy' and making the right calls.

But that comes down to one of the major problems. The NBA and David Stern (the commissioner) have a major problem with the way games are officiated right now. The calls are too inconsistent, and the refs play far too large a part in the game. Some of it is the way new players are playing the game. I think a lot of it is that players are figuring out ways to 'work the system'.

Example: Players normally do not want to foul someone. If you do, then the person gets to shoot free-throws (if they were shooting) and each player can only foul someone so many times. However, there are now many examples, the most famous being Shaq, where it is a clear and obvious strategy to intentionally foul someone. Most teams only use their top 6-7 players very much during the game. Of those 6-7, only 2-3 usually are in a position where they regularly pick up fouls. So - rather than actually try to play defense against Shaq (which most teams are not equipped to do well) they just foul him - because he is a horrible foul shooter. There are 5 players sitting on the bench with 6 fouls each, plus a few from your main players - that is 34-40 times that you can foul someone and if they aren't good at shooting free-throws, you will likely get the ball back. The better average free-throw shooters in the NBA shoot 75% or so, and many players that shoot more like 50%-60%. This is the great strategy known as "Hack-a-Shaq"
The bad part is, it works really well.

The NHL has the great "delayed penalty" rule - if one team commits a foul - a penalty is called. However, if the team that was fouled still has the puck and could potentially do something good with it, they get to keep trying. In the NBA, if someone has a good shot at the basket and is likely to make it, most teams just foul the person now and prevent the shot. This makes the game boring, frustrating, and also frustrates the players which usually leads to more real fouls.

So part of this rant is against the broken system of NBA officiating...

But back to Joey Crawford.
He is worse than most.

Where most reffing crews call an average of around 35-45 fouls per game and average less than one technical foul - Joey Crawford's crew has the infamous distinction of calling two of the worst games in history during the 2003 playoffs between the Spurs and the Mavericks. Joey Crawford himself called 4 technical fouls on Dallas coaches within the first 10 minutes of the game! I am a Spurs fan and can clearly state that this was completly and utterly unwarranted. His crew went on to call 120 fouls and 9 technicals. During the playoffs. And these were two teams that were not known for having attitudes or problem players. This was two of the classiest coache/player sets to play the game in recent history. Joey Crawford became the story of the series (rather than the play on the court) and as a result was warned by David Stern that if it happened again, he would have consequences. Well, here it is.

the game that was

I kinda feel like this represents the state of basketball in my life right now.

It's a shot of a goal nailed up to a tree across the street from my friend Jamie's old place (just helped him move)

2 years ago I would have listed basketball as my number one sport, and i still love to shoot hoops on my own when no one is looking - but the last time i did that was more than a year ago. and now that i've gotten so in to hockey, and we have a team in town, i haven't been following my Spurs most of this year. maybe when the NBA playoffs start up i'll get back in to it again.

I was talking with my dad about this at the last Predators game. It really makes me sad. I just like hockey better right now. I guess that's ok. That doesn't make me bad right? I just grew up cheering hard-core for the Spurs for so long, i played basketball as a kid (in church leagues and pick-up games).

But the current version of the game, the way the refs call things and the way most teams play...the way the league is so unbalanced...it just doesn't grab me the way it used to.

I am sure a lot of it has to do with the fact that i am going to hockey games live, and live a couple of hundred miles away from the nearest NBA town (500+ if you are looking for a team that actually wins games). We don't have cable and i almost never get to watch Spurs games anymore. Here at the end of the season and in the playoffs that should change since ABC broadcasts games...but now i don't know what's going on. I don't know who's who. I couldn't even tell you off the top of my head who plays center for the Spurs most of the time right now.

I still have a Spurs flag next to the Predators flag on my desk at work. And i still have an autographed David Robinson poster, "Go Spurs Go" sign, and a few other cool Spurs items in the sports-themed (Predators dominated) bathroom downstairs.

But alas, basketball is not the game it once was for me.

I have to say there is the teenie tiniest part of me that hopes that if the Predators don't win it all this year that they just get knocked out early so i can have more time to watch the Spurs in the playoffs. Of course the same could go in reverse. I don't even know if the Spurs are strong enough to guarantee our usually deep playoff run this year.

pictures, lots of pictures

I haven't blogged on pictures in a while, but for those who have been following my Flickr site, i have been posting a TON (several hundred in the last couple of weeks, actually).

I certainly wouldn't expect most (if any) of my loyal throng of readers (i think i'm up to 4 or 5 now if my mom has been able to "make my blog work").

So, here is a quick summary of what i think are the better and more interesting pictures, as well as the stories behind some of them. (for all of these pictures, just click to see the full view on my Flickr page)

First is a series of pictures taken with long exposure times. Basically the "shutter" (it is a digital camera, so no real shutter) is open for a full 15 seconds. The result is brilliant lights, colors, etc, as well as streaks/stretches anything that moves.

One of the down sides to the long shutter time is that if the camera doesn't stay perfectly still, it totally blurs the image. Sometimes the results are kinda cool though. I've started doing it on purpose occasionally:

Of course, many of the hundreds of pictures i have posted recently have been of hockey related since we've been going to so many games.

Here are some pictures i was able to grab of a tradition that i have noticed that i think is really cool and i doubt most people have seen. Many teams in the NHL just have a bucket of pucks they pour on the ice for free skate (warm ups). Others (like the sharks) have a guy throw them all out on the ice. However, the Predators have someone meticulously stack them in a pyramid shape on the edge of the boards by the tunnel. Then when Vokoun comes out (he almost always leads the team out the tunnel) he knocks them off on to the ice.

Anyway, that's it for now.
Many more on my Flickr site, and i'm sure i'll post more soon.

fantasy hockey results

Sweet! I won!

Honestly i didn't rig the league (i was the commissioner and controlled settings) but i think i did win largely because i was one of the only people that remembered to check on it on a regular basis.

It was a very close final 2 weeks (the finals went for 2 weeks instead of one).
I didn't take the lead until late in the final week. Here's the final scoring summary.

Congrats to all my fellow players and thanks everyone for playing!

Final standings:

1. Predators (Paul)
2. Preds Baby (Ryan)
3. Knuckledraggers (Jason)
4. Puck It Up (Brice)
5. Sabertooth Diago (Brett)
6. Nashville Starcats (Christy)
7. Frog Feet (Danielle)
8. Mandos (Kevin)

Update: I also made it to the final round of my Fantasy Basketball league (Someone else is the commissioner for this one). This one will be over April 18th

the nhl experience - nashville style

I've shot a good deal of video at recent Predators games.
As a result, i have a series of them uploaded to Google Video that, when strung together, may give you some idea what attending games can be like. (All of these can be viewed much larger by clicking on the Google Video logo instead of just hitting play)

First, we have the occasional open practice the day before a game. The Sportsplex is open to anyone that wants to watch the players run drills or sometimes even have a full practice.


Second, we have the pre-game warm-ups.
Anyone is allowed to go down near ice level (or to the glass if you get there early enough) and watch the players up close. If you are lucky, you may even be one of the many fans that J.P. Dumont or Vern Fiddler flips a puck to over the glass.


Next we have the visitor starting lineups.
In Nashville we have the tradition of yelling "SUCKS!" after each visiting players name is called out. After the coach, we yell "AND HE SUCKS TOO!"


After that, the Predators mascot, Gnash, is introduced. Sometimes he just comes out on the ice riding a four wheeler. Sometimes he comes straight down a rip line. But for really big games (first and last games of the year, playoffs, etc) he will come down the rip line swinging.


Then of course we have the Predators starting lineups as everyone skates out for the game.


Once the game gets starting, it usually isn't long before someone on the opposing team is whisted for a penalty and has to go to the penalty box.
For this, we all yell "AHHHHHH...SIT DOWN YA LOSER!"


Once we are on the power play, it usually isn't very long until we get to go through one of the many stages of our goal celebration with our own creative lyrics to "The Hey Song"


During intermission, there is usually some sort of silly contest featuring some people in tennis shoes trying to run around on the ice. This is my favorite flavor:


After a while the opposing team gets tired of being pushed around and they may start a little fight or two...and then someone may throw a catfish on the ice...and sometimes they happen all at once


So see, it is so much fun - everyone should come out and watch all the hockey games they can in person!

3rd jersey update

A quick update to a post i made waaaay back in October.

Much to the delight of fans (that hated the mustard jerseys) the NHL has outlawed 3rd jerseys in for next season. So last night's season finale may be the last time we see them.

However, my call was right back in Oct - we were much better with them than without them. Much better.

Here's how the record broke down this year (with one game to go):

	win	loss	otl	points %
overall	50	23	8	0.667
home	28	8	5	0.744
road	22	15	3	0.588
home jersey*	17	7	3	0.685
road jersey*	22	15	3	0.588
mustard	11	1	2	0.857

* Yes these numbers include the 2 times this year we wore our road whites at home and 2 times we wore and home blues on the road. We split those 4 games 2-2 so they were a wash.

So, clearly we were at our best wearing the mustard jerseys. Enough that i really have to wonder if it helped. Our blue home jerseys are dark, like the refs...i can't tell you the number of times i've watched home games where we pass the puck to the ref...at least it looks like it. They are very distinctive sweaters and i really wonder if it helps us see each other better for passing.

Maybe i'm nuts. Maybe it was the teams we played.
But given the samples to pull from, i really have to wonder...

I wish i had the time/resources to do this for other teams to see what the results were.

pictures and videos

Just a quick update on lots of new pictures I've posted to Flickr
I've included some of my favorites below, but as usual, just go to my main Flickr page to see the latest pictures.



Also - I now have VIDEO!
I'm starting to upload videos shot with my new camera (and probably some other random ones eventually too) to Google Video.

As a demonstration of the exciting videos you have to look forward to, here is a video that Christy shot at the Predators open practice recently. It is Vitaly Vishnevski doing puck drills. Thrilling i know.




I have to run now, but WAY WAY WAY more to come.

hockey championship

It has come down to this.

Our Yahoo Fantasy Hockey league's championship game is this week. I am proud to say i beat the odds (and my friend Brice) to get to the championship game.

This has really been a lot of fun. Christy did it with me, as well as a bunch of friends from work (and my friend Kevin, and my friend Brice's wife Danielle). It did what i hoped it would, and gave me a view of the rest of the league. Christy and i (especially Christy) drafted heavily from the Predators, being the fans that we are, but it made us pay attention and at least notice when major players in the rest of the league got hurt or got a hat trick, etc.

Here are the final regular season standings (click to enlarge):

And here's the way the playoffs went down (click to enlarge)

I have to also say that Christy made a great run for the playoffs and despite her team being made of 40% Predators players, she did very well - until the Predators all got hurt. The string of injuries that hurt the Preds have just about killed her in the standings. I think she would have won at least one round in the playoffs the way she was going, if it wasnt for the injuries.

Even if i don't win this week, i'm very happy with my outcome. I figured i'd end up in the middle of the pack.

romeo without juliet

I have to do a little mini-rant. Mostly just pointing out something i think is silly. A good idea gone just slightly wrong.

The local Yellow Pages around here have an add that plays about 10 times during every Predators game on the radio (which i listen to a lot since we don't have cable). It is meant to promote their Companion Directories. Basically mini-versions of their normal dead-tree phone books (does anyone use those anymore?). The idea is that the two books work best in combination.

The premise is simple enough - imagine famous people in history without their famous partner.

Lewis without Clark...
Lewis: "Man are my feet tired, any one want to go further?"
Crowd: "Nah"

Orville without Wilbur...
Orville: "I will make history! Man will fly! Can someone give me a push? Anyone?"
[Silence]

... Funny enough. But then they go off the deep end...

Romeo without Juliet:
Friend: "Romeo, you doing anything tonight?"
Romeo: "Just staying at home, working on my tapestry"
Friend: "Romeo, get a life."

The irony in the last statement is priceless. Romeo without Juliet would have lived longer! He wouldn't have killed himself. He'd have had a chance to work on a lot more tapestries. I think all-in-all you'd have to say Romeo without Juliet would have been a generally improved situation.

Funny commercial, but i think this is just evidence of how many people read the first part of the play in high school, got lazy, and never got around to finishing it.

new camera, new photos

For those that haven't heard, thanks to my parents generosity, i was able to buy a new camera recently. A Canon PowerShot S3 IS.

This thing is sweet. All sorts of amazing features, not to mention spectacular quality. It is basically a non-SLR digital SLR. I can get add-on lenses for it (wide-angle, tele, IR, etc). It has a mode just for shooting panoramas. And it shoots video at 640x480 at 30fps - with stereo audio.

So, here are some of the cooler pictures i've taken with it recently. Just made a big update to my Flickr page, so make sure to check it all out (and request to be my friend on Flickr to see WAY more pictures).

blog issues

For those using IE6: sorry about the blog not displaying correctly.

I custom wrote the theme i am using for my blog and it turns out that though IE 7 and Mozilla (and Opera) all render it just fine, IE 6 (which most people use) does not render it correctly.

I'll get it corrected as soon as i can, but in the meantime, try upgrading - either to IE 7 or the real upgrade: Mozilla.

sweet

This.
Is.
Awesome.

     

     

It isn't actually for sale but supposedly it will be about $1,500 when it does hit the market.

Check it out.

green d-men

Just a quick note to make sure everyone checks out the great article on ESPN.com about the Predators young defensemen. Great article.

Also, though i can't attend tonights game, i do want to encourage everyone to NOT give in to the St Patrick's Day temptation and wear green to the game tonight. We are playing the Dallas Stars tonight and their colors are green and gold. So wear green underwear if you must for St. Patrick's Day, but don't paint the Nashville Arena green and let the Stars feel at home.

we don't count

Christy and i were recently selected to be a Nielson family. That is, we were going to be one of the families who's TV watching habits were monitored to see who is watching what. Those numbers are then analized to see what the number one show on a given night was, etc.

My family got a chance to do this when i was younger, so i was excited to get the chance. Even though we don't have cable, we were looking forward to being able to 'pad' the ratings for hockey and Stargate, etc. that are still occasionally on broadcast TV.

However, you will note i am using all passed-tense verbs.
The guy came out this afternoon and determined we were a no-go.

Normally, they need a phone jack near every TV. We don't have one upstairs. But they said they have a 'wireless' model that would work. The problem came in with the computers.

We have a normal TV upstairs with a tuner. However, there is a PC hooked up to it that we watch things from occasionally. Downstairs there is a 19" LCD TV with a tuner we use sometimes, a VCR with a tuner we use sometimes, and a computer with an HDTV tuner that can display on the 19" screen or on the full projector system. They don't have any way to measure people with TV tuner cards. The guy said they just got the ability to measure content coming from DVR's and DVD players... wow. They are YEARS behind. It is amazing to me that the company that all TV advertisers and networks use to measure the success or failure of a given show don't have the ability to measure even the most basic of PC-based TV tuners. Not to mention all the watching of content we see streamed over the web (like Christy watching Ugly Betty).

As a result - if they can't measure every TV in the house, they don't measure anything.

It really makes me wonder just how under-represented geeks are. Giving in to stereo-types, i wonder how that affects the ratings of shows like Stargate, etc. At the very least i now know that my demographic (young, techno-savvy, upper-middle class, etc) are not being represented and as a result, our shows are not getting their due.

Oh well.
Another reminder that the world is not perfect, despite my best efforts.

Note: They did say they are working on being able to measure PC-based tuners. They are supposedly testing some methods in other markets. They said that we will still be selected as a ratings family when they can measure us, which will be 9 months to a year from now. So, if you will pardon the pun: stay tuned.

wake up, sir

This is awesome.

An alarm clock that awakens you with one of 50+ messages voiced by Stephen Fry (Jeeves of "Jeeves and Wooster"

For geeks like myself, this serves the wonderful dual benefits of being awakened both by the worlds most famous butler and the voice of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Can you think of a better way to wake up?

My favorite wake-up message (of the samples listed):

"I am so sorry to disturb you, Sir, but it appears to be morning. Very inconvenient I agree. I believe the rotation of the Earth is to blame, Sir."

Very well may be something I spend some of my birthday money on :-)
The version for the ladies is supposed to be coming soon.

Update: Ok, I won't be buying it. As awesome as all of that is, it doesn't support 24 hour time - as in - it goes off every 12 hours! That isn't cool. If it went off at 2:00 in the afternoon while i'm not home that might be ok (though it would annoy my wife i'm sure), but going off at 6:30pm as i'm eating dinner and asking me to wake up is just dumb. Not to mention - that means that the 50 messages would not actually last 3 months before repeating (as advertised), they would only last a month and a half. Oh well. Maybe I can just buy all the messages on CD and use them in the CD alarm clock i already own an use. :-)

Update 2:
For those who haven't had the joy of experiencing Jeeves and Wooster, check it out, someone uploaded it to YouTube. Most of the time content owners pull these things down pretty quickly, so i have to assume that its ok with them. Anyway, here's part one. Links to all 5 parts are below.



Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5

happy birthday

Yesterday was my birthday. Had a good day. Got some awesome presents. Had a great dinner with Christy at Mafioza's last night and with my parents on Tues. And we're going to the Predators game tonight.

And check out the awesome cake my wife made me!

Christy got me a Dremel, too, which is fun. So now i just have to find out what I want to spend my awesome birthday cash on...

been a while

I guess i'm busy. At least that's my excuse.

Honestly i wish i had been blogging more. It helps me vent frustrations (which is why this tends to look like a negative rant) or share cool stuff (which is why i talk about the preds a lot).

Anyway, one of the things i have been spending time on that i used to use to blog is my/our new Flickr account.

Check it out - http://www.flickr.com/photos/paulnich

There is also a "Flickr Badge" in the lower right part of my blog if you haven't seen it)

Right now i don't have very many pictures out for public consumption, but i have over 1,500 uploaded and most of them mapped. You can sign up for your own Flickr account and request to be my friend (or family as the case may be). Then you can view all of our photos.

Also, make sure to check out the Mapping feature. I have placed pictures on a map where they were taken. Check it out.