According to the Energy Policy Act of 2005 daylight savings time is extended by 4 weeks beginning this year. I’ve already patched my Windows XP and server machines to recognize this change but I forgot about my beloved Audiovox 5600.
Ok, so I’ve gotten so lazy that I put stuff in my blog just so that I remember to do it later. 😉
I drink a lot of Starbuck’s. By ‘a lot’ I mean 2 or 3 venti (roughly bucket size) non-fat, no whip, mocha lattes a day. There is a Starbuck’s ‘dealer’ about 20 steps from my office door so it’s very easy to scratch the itch.
So this morning I walk in and the line is literally out the door, as usual. As I’m queued up, still about 6 people away from placing my order, one of the nice folks with the aprons comes out from behind the counter and hands me my drink. “Here ya go Tim!”.
Evelyn is my new hero.
So they started out calling them CableCARD receivers, then it was OpenCable Receivers (OCURs) and now it’s Digital Cable Tuners…. whatever.
The info. that’s available to me know still says that the only way I can get one of these things working is through an OEM. So long hobbiests, so long startup HTPC manufacturers, so long to ‘owning’ your entertainment content ever again. Now if the CableCos want to take a page from the cell carriers playbook and give me a Vista PC with all the hardware necessary to be a subscriber, then I might be interested.
I guess I just don’t get it… why do we need these things? I can record a ton of HD content off-air today without paying the Comcast ‘digital cable’ tax. Don’t even get me started on digital cable, what a crock-o-bits. They charge more for something that costs them less to deliver, and at least in my area, the picture quality is less than that of analog cable. Until I can get ala carte pricing they can keep it.
Now that the broadcast flag is, for the time-being, dead I can timeshift all the HD content I can watch straight off the air. And when those baby-heads finally give up and settle on a High Def. DVD format I’ll spring the $400 bucks (that would get me about 6 months of digital cable) for a drive and watch all my films in HD.
“Movies on Demand” you say? My Netflix subscription gives me all the movies I can watch for about $15 a month, that gets me about 3 movies via Comcast.
The only reason this technology exists is to limit consumer access to content and thereby create a new revenue stream for the content providers.
Robert McLaws: Windows Vista Edition : Exclusive: Windows Vista Digital Cable Tuners
So I simultaneously find this hysterical, sad and rewarding.
Nurse sues over ticket for anti-Bush bumper sticker – CNN.com
I don’t know where this post was hiding, but I went to blog about something else and my Firefox Performancing plug-in came up with this pre-loaded. Hmm…
Along with about a third of the population of North America we planned to travel this holiday season. In our case it meant a trip to Kalamazoo MI for a gathering of the clan, the first in over 2 years. We booked the flights several weeks ago optimizing for cost over schedule. As a result we were booked on a 6AM flight.
I’ve been traveling a fair bit recently, Chicago and LA this month alone, so when the time came to drive to the airport, 3:30AM thank you very much, I was on auto-pilot. Of course, we scheduled this flight long before we knew my company party would be happening the night before, nor that L’s company party would be the night before that. Needless to say we were zombies.
We make great time; arrive at the off-airport parking lot, hop in the shuttle, bounce our way to the terminal and queue up with the other zombies waiting to check in. We pounce on a ‘self check-in kiosk’ and jam the credit card in to get our reservation. Hmm… nothing found. No worries, I’ll just enter in the destination airport code, AZO. Double-Hmm… nothing found. I enter the confirmation number – bzzzt! No check in for you! Now, I’m worried. Continue reading Stupid like you read about…
Today we finally received our first significant snow of the year. It’s only about 2 inches and with tomorrow’s forecast of 38 not likely to last. Time to bust out the Flexible Flyer!