Burnerblog

Why is possibly the best show on TV (next to Pushing Daisies and 30 Rock) being allowed to go away? How can NBC not give this great show a full season to gain it’s legs like they did last year for 30 Rock? Like Will Farrell’s character in Zoolander said, I feel like I’m taking crazy pills.

I’ll be writing my letters, emails, and sending my box of Rice a Roni tomorrow. If you haven’t seen the show, go to NBC.com and watch an episode. They are stunningly good.

Wow… I just watched some reverse mortgage commercial on TV and while I wasn’t paying too much attention to it (actually, I was messing with my eeePC during the commercials), I heard a familiar voice: Robert Wagner. I loved the TV show Hart to Hart when I was a kid, and I often wished I was like him: a millionaire with nothing else to do but solve mysteries and crimes with my hot wife. Add in a cool butler that helps with everything and private jets and vacations in exotic places all over the world, and  you have what was my dream life.

Anyway, I looked over at the TV and was shocked to see some old guy with silver hair instead of the Robert Wagner I’ve known all my life. It seems he’s finally given up the ghost of having pigment in his hair and has embraced his gray. He looks completely different, but I know we all age and we will all hopefully one day be all gray and look different than we did when we were young. It was just a shock to see him this way, since only a month or so ago, I remember seeing him on another commercial looking quite a bit older than I remembered him, but at least with his signature black coif. Oh well.

They’ve gone and done it again. It appears that the December 11th deadline for ordering new episodes of Journeyman came and went without said order being made. NBC isn’t making a big deal out of it; they’re allowing Journeyman to just slip into obscurity. After tonight’s episode, there was no mention that Wednesday night is the last night of Journeyman’s last episode, nor was there any mention of the “end” of the series. That fact alone gives me hope, since there has been no official cancellation announcement, yet the December 11th date came and went without that all important order for more episodes.

I’m quite bummed about this. Journeyman is one of the best new shows on TV, and it’s been the most dramatic and well-written show aside from Pushing Daisies, Boston Legal, and 30 Rock. I’m really surprised it hasn’t done better that it has, but then again, it is quite complex involving time travel, and the noodle that is time, especially when it gets messed with.

So, here I am, mourning the impending loss of one of my favorite TV shows and I’m watching an old Clint Eastwood movie called “Play Misty For Me.” I remember seeing this one the first time it was on TV when I was a kid. I wasn’t supposed to be watching it, but my dad fell asleep on the floor in front of the TV, and I just decided to be very quiet and continue to watch. It’s weird how much I remember, yet how much I don’t.

Ok… so maybe when I read the rules, I misunderstood or inferred something incorrectly. Regardless, the way it stands now is that I’m not one of five semi-finalists, but one of nineteen vying for one of five prizes. After viewing the others, I think I have better than a good chance, but it’s not a “done deal” like I thought earlier.

Since it’s out in the public, I can now say it: I’m a semi-finalist in the TiVo “Hook Up With TiVo” contest. I was selected as a semi-finalist for the following faux personals ad:

HDTV+TiVo HD+Me=Best Friends for Life!

Posted by: TiVoLover67

If you’re a Tivo HD looking for a nice Plasma HDTV and a loyal user of TiVo HME, Yahoo Weather and Traffic, Ticket Purchasing, and Product Watch, then you’re looking for me! I would love to play Skull and Bones with you, stream music or photos, and perhaps snuggle down with a little “unbox” action once we get to know each other better. I even see TiVo eSATA storage in our future!

I was called by Chris Harrison, host of TV’s The Bachelor, who notified me of my being selected as a semi-finalist. Nice guy, very unassuming and polite. As soon as I got off the phone with him, I got to work on my video. Sure, it’s not super-awesome, but it is what it is. With that said, I still think I have a decent chance. hehe

You can find my video as being on the bottom-left of the videos; I’m wearing my gray fedora.

Ever since we got the TiVo HD last week, I’ve been enjoying TiVo all over again. We’ve had our Series 2 TiVo for nearly five years, but we haven’t used it in the past three years because we have an HD TV and HD Cable, and it looked terrible through the TiVo, even at the highest settings. Sherry and I patiently waited for TiVo to release an HD DVR, and we were a bit sticker-shocked with the price of the first TiVo Series 3 HD set. We decided to hold out for a more reasonably priced HD TiVo and we were rewarded with the release of the TiVo HD. It’s not as pricey as the Series 3 nor does it have the shiny remote or the larger HD, but it does run the Series 3 firmware, and best of it IT’S HD!!!

To make things even more fun, two days after we got the TiVo HD, we were upgraded to the newest firmware that has just begun being rolled out (9.2), and we were able to take advantage of the Multi-Room Viewing (MRV) and the Home Media Engine (HME) which allows us to not only pull content from our Series 2 TiVo onto our TiVo HD, but we can also get content from both TiVos to put on the computer to burn to DVD or to watch (which I have been doing more of lately). There is also a feature of the TiVo Desktop software that allows me to transfer the content directly to my iPod, and I have two shows set up to do that automatically.

All in all, I am ecstatic to be back on a TiVo DVR again. The old cable DVR was usable, and I’d just learned how to use some of the features on it to make it more user-friendly, but in the end, there’s nothing like TiVo, and I can’t believe we’ve lived without ours for so long. I’m glad TiVo is back in our living room!

Quite a bit happened this weekend. Friday night Sherry, Stevie, Lawrence and I went out for dinner at Steak and Ale and had a really REALLY good pork dish that I forget the name of (but it’s something like “bruised pork”). It was YUMMY! Sherry had something with shrimp, but the three of us guys all had the pork, and it was amazingly delicious and tender!

Saturday was a day for shopping. Sherry and I bought Brendon’s Christmas presents and also one for ourselves: a new TiVo HD. We drove straight from the Best Buy we bought it at to the Comcast office where I picked up two cablecards (I found out later I only needed one of them since they were m-cards) and Comcast had the m-card working perfectly within 24 hours. We now have two TiVos in the house; a Series 2, and the HD. The Series 2 was in our bedroom, but we’ve decided to put it upstairs so the kids can record their own shows and leave the HD TiVo alone! Then, Steve and Anita came over with the girls and they helped Sherry with decorating for the party. I was a bit too preoccupied with the new TiVo HD, so I was worthless as far as helping was concerned. This was to be a theme for the weekend.

Sunday, I got up early to do another paid gig photographing a bridal shower. It was a lot of fun, and I may possibly be looking at some more photo work on a few more weddings based on this one. I like the fact that I’ve been getting extra work here and there via word of mouth. I don’t want to do it full-time, but it’s nice to do on my terms when I have the free time. I’ve still got two scheduled “gigs” this year, one of which is a really important corporate client. I am hoping to dazzle them this year so that I can make it an annual event. After the shower, I came home and changed out a few light switches that were left undone from when we painted the house and swapped out our light switches for the larger toggle switches. Aside from that, I took a nap, watched the NASCAR race at Martinsville (and watched Dale Jr. blow up engine #7 this season!), and did some more TiVo playing.

On an unrelated note, I installed Ubuntu (Linux) on two of the computers here in the house, and I have to say that it was the easiest install process I’ve ever had for any OS EVER. EVER! I think this is finally the OS that has a true chance of unseating MS and Apple’s stranglehold on desktop operating systems. Now if some games would come out for Linux like they have on Windows, they’d REALLY have the OS to go to! As it stands, Ubuntu has everything you need to make your computer productive FOR FREE, and INCLUDED. It’s very well done, and having installed everything from Red Hat to Debian to Slax, I was expecting at least a little bit of my Linux knowledge to be tested. NOT SO! Ubuntu really was so easy my kids could have installed it. My son actually wants me to install it on his systems (he has a desktop and a notebook), and my daughter wants it on her notebook, too. That’d be five Ubuntu desktops in the house. I’m also looking at setting up an Ubuntu server to see how it operates, and to possibly switch over from my W2k server.

So… that’s the weekend. Both productive and slacker. Just the way I like it!

Over the past five years, a number of TV shows I enjoyed were canceled or reached their end.

• The Practice (morphed into Boston Legal)
• JAG (ended)
• The Guardian (canceled unmercilessly)
• Enterprise (the BEST Star Trek show IMHO, killed because it was too close to reality)
• Andy Barker, P.I. (silly show, but still funny)
• The Loop (they brought it back for a second season, but without the elements that made it funny in the first season)
• The Sopranos (ended)
• Rome (lasted only two seasons due to high cost of production)

I’ve picked up only a few new shows to watch in the past five years:

• 30 Rock
• My Name Is Earl
• Boston Legal
• Eureka

So, I decided to check out what’s out this fall that is new and good, so I’ve settled on the following:

• Californication. I think it’s funny. Other writers I know think it makes writers look bad. I think the irony (he’s a “rebel” because he doesn’t want to be cliche, yet is a rebel in the most cliche way) is hilarious, and the story is actually pretty decent. Sure, the boobs are nice to see, too, but I could honestly do without ‘em as I feel the story is strong enough.
• Journeyman. I started watching this because of the lead character having been on Rome,  but found it’s actually a good show. I hope it makes it.
• Pushing Daisies. What a cool show! It feels very big-budget and very Tim Burton. The narration in the story, most of the time annoying to me, actually works and is very funny. The characters are a little over the top, but in that good way.
• Cavemen. Not sure about this one just yet. I have it set on the DVR, but it didn’t leave me howling with laughter like I hoped it would. We’ll see what happens with it in the coming weeks.

So, that’s the schedule so far. I’d have liked to have added Reaper to the list, but I can never find it as a choice to subscribe to. I wonder if it’s even a regular TV show. The premise of it seems to be hilarious; I’d love to see an episode of it.