Inside the Head of a TV Junkie

Average cost of a gallon of gasoline in the USA is $3.89. The average cost of a gallon of gasoline in Germany is $8.33. Europeans have been paying double what Americans have been paying for quite a few years now. They’ve all had time to adjust to this cost as a fact of life and have budgeted for this cost.

What I find interesting is that there are signs that our society is changing, albeit slowly. We’ve seen a decline in Ford Super Duty trucks and Hummers in the first quarter of 2008 and a recent survey shows that many Americans feel that $5/gallon gasoline will be a reality by early 2009 and that the price will probably never drop below $4/gallon ever again.

Have you been changing anything in your daily routines to cope with the higher fuel costs?

Well, I’m now able to stream audio and video to my XBox360.  The system refresh I did last night worked like a charm.  I’m totally getting tired of all the things that can and do go wrong with PCs.  I think that my next desktop purchase will be a Mac.  There used to be things that I would use a PC for that kept me from going all Mac but I can’t really think of any of them now.  I’m going to have to keep a list when I do come across these things to see if there is a way to accomplish them on a Mac.  For now, I’m good and my PC is behaving.  How long will it last?

Firefox is trying to set a guiness world record for most downloads of a software program in a 24 hour period.  They have setup a site where you can pledge to be part of it and they will send you a reminder on the day that Firefox 3 is released.  If you’re a Firefox user and you are going to download the new version anyway, why not pledge to download it on the day it’s released and help them achieve their goal?  I’ve been using a beta version of Firefox for the last month and some of the improvements are amazing.

My PC problems are on the way to recovery.  Last night I did a fresh install of Windows Vista on my PC.  WatchNow from Netflix works once again.  I’m hoping that the other issues I was having with my Vista box and my XBox360 have been fixed as well.  I will test that out later this evening.  Right now, I’m just happy that the PC is back up and running.

I tried to fix my NetFlix WatchNow issues by uninstalling Vista SP1.  Bad idea.  Now I can’t share my media from my PC to my XBox360 and there doesn’t seem to be a solution in sight.  I’m going to try a few more things but then I may just need to do a good old fashioned reformat of the PC.  Ugh.  Updates to follow.

The picture below is of a couple that was sitting next to my friend Erin and me at La Grande Orange on Monday.  From the moment they came in they hardly said a word to one another.  It wasn’t a first date type of awkwardness.  Erin likened it to more of a ‘been married for some time and I hate you’ type of awkwardness.  She had a front row view while I had to rely on her commentary of what was going on at the next table.  As you can see from the photo, they are really just having a great time!

I set my TiVo to record “The Brady Bunch” on TV Land this past week. I figured it would be amusing to watch a few episodes when I have nothing else recorded. I am kind of frightened that I remember all of the episodes I have seen so far. I know exactly what is going to happen within the first 3 minutes. One thing I enjoy about the show the most is how dated it is in regards to family dynamics and gender roles. In one episode, Mike pointed out that Mrs. Brady put on her high heel shoes before getting up off the couch to take the phone from Mr. Brady. Is walking in your bare feet that bad? How taboo! In the same episode, a second phone was installed in the Den that only Mr. Brady was allowed to use. He needed it for business purposes (setting up tee times with the boys). If you haven’t seen an episode in a while, I suggest you find it on TV Land and record it. What’s your favorite episode of “The Brady Bunch”?

Oh! Anyone else notice that the theme song is sung by some generic guy/group in the first few seasons and then is sung by the “Brady Kids” in later seasons? Examples follow:

I have highlighted the key word in the excerpts below. You can find the entire text here .

Article IV: Section 2 - The citizens of each state shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several states.

Amendment XIV: Section 1 - All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws

The recent events in California have increased donations to both sides of the gay marriage issue according to this story in the San Jose Mercury News.  When the group for amending the CA constitution receives its largest contribution from the Knights of Columbus , how can anyone not believe that their motives have a religious foundation?  The HRC has pledged $500,000 to help defeat the ballot initiative in November.  What happens in California this November will have lasting effects on the rest of this country.  Let’s hope the people of California will reject the ban.

Here’s a WiiFit update for my loyal readers.  Since setting up the system on Thursday this past week, I have used it 3 days (skipping Saturday).  My WiiFit age was 49 when I first tested with the balance board.  Today, my age is 32.  I’ve made some nice progress in that department.  I’ve also unlocked longer sets of certain strength exercises, like the jackknife and push up activities.  I’m sure my arms and abs won’t be happy with me tomorrow, but I’m hoping that keeping up with these activities will yield some results.  Only time will tell.  In the future, I’ll post small updates on my progress with the WiiFit .  If you have the ability to try one out, I would suggest that you do.  Even if you don’t want it for the exercises, the balance games are pretty fun.

I used to work for a sporting goods company. I was pretty good friends with a girl that worked in the Marketing department and we were discussing the ways in which the company distributes images to various resellers. I was amazed when she told me that they just zip up the files and send them through email, sometimes in multiple emails as the images were large in size. I told her that we needed to get a website created that we could just post the images to that would allow for each reseller to go out and download whatever images they wanted. We found a free solution to this issue through Microsoft Office Live. It’s been a few years now and the website is no longer cutting it. It’s a HUGE pain to update and the customization options for the pages is extremely limited. I’m actually embarrassed at how shitty the pages look. There’s a new person in that position at my old company and I think that I might have been successful in convincing her to go with a new site. Good news for me!

Here’s the question… Do I use a WordPress install to solve this website issue or go about it the old fashioned way (pure HTML coding)? I guess there are pros and cons to both options. I think WordPress would be easier but HTML coding might offer more in terms of options when it comes to customization, etc. Anyone have other ideas or thoughts?