(Extra credit to anyone who spots an extremely obscure reference.)
Well, the analog TV era is over. I would have rather seen DVB-T than ATSC, but we get what we get. Rescan your tuners and get some higher-gain antennas if you're still getting broadcast.
Now if only some of these stations could see fit to using the extra channel space for, you know, original programming and the like...
Friday, June 12, 2009
Monday, June 1, 2009
Janet Napolitano and her permanent headache
I had planned on posting some choice snark about the comedy troupe "The Whitest Kids U Know", but the murder of Dr. George Tiller intervened. The irony of the right wing's temper tantrum over the Department of Homeland Security's report on right-wing domestic terror threats is so obvious it's painful. I don't envy Janet Napolitano her job right now -- her office is probably the busiest place in Washington right now.
Call it what it is: a terror attack. The murderer (currently suspected to be anti-government extremist and likely Operation Rescue member Scott Roeder, currently in custody) shot the man down in his church and seems to have been obsessed with Tiller for years. Tiller performed the thankless and harrowing job of terminating wanted pregnancies in situations where the fetus couldn't be carried to term, a tiny specialty for which he knew he took his life in his hands every day he got out of bed in the morning. For this he lies dead, and I can only hope the man who shot him is the man in custody.
Maybe it's a character flaw on my part, but I like Dantean punishments. I want his murderer to be shivved up the ass in prison with a sharpened coathanger. And I hope that there is a doctor somewhere in this country brave enough to take Tiller's place.
Call it what it is: a terror attack. The murderer (currently suspected to be anti-government extremist and likely Operation Rescue member Scott Roeder, currently in custody) shot the man down in his church and seems to have been obsessed with Tiller for years. Tiller performed the thankless and harrowing job of terminating wanted pregnancies in situations where the fetus couldn't be carried to term, a tiny specialty for which he knew he took his life in his hands every day he got out of bed in the morning. For this he lies dead, and I can only hope the man who shot him is the man in custody.
Maybe it's a character flaw on my part, but I like Dantean punishments. I want his murderer to be shivved up the ass in prison with a sharpened coathanger. And I hope that there is a doctor somewhere in this country brave enough to take Tiller's place.
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Wingnut flameout
Sonia Sotomayor maybe isn't the best of all possible choices when the Supreme Court is heavily slanted towards the Scalia wing, but she's pretty good in absolute terms. I've heard reservations about her attitude towards church-state issues, and that could be an issue, but overall she seems like a very solid choice. (In fact, it does seem Obama went out of his way to pick someone with a long track record -- what he said in his introduction speech seems to bear out on examination.)
Of course, as Amanda on Pandagon pointed out, the wingnut world is reacting predictably, calling Sotomayor an affirmative action appointee. Now here's a question -- is there anyone n0n-white that Obama could have appointed that wouldn't get that label? Of course not.
On Prop 8: it sucks. It was probably a legally correct decision, and at least the California Supreme Court refused to void the marriages already performed. But good lord does it suck. Best of luck to the CA LGBT community on the 2010 election.
Of course, as Amanda on Pandagon pointed out, the wingnut world is reacting predictably, calling Sotomayor an affirmative action appointee. Now here's a question -- is there anyone n0n-white that Obama could have appointed that wouldn't get that label? Of course not.
On Prop 8: it sucks. It was probably a legally correct decision, and at least the California Supreme Court refused to void the marriages already performed. But good lord does it suck. Best of luck to the CA LGBT community on the 2010 election.
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
Crap commercial
The "I Married My Dream Girl" commercial from freecreditreport.com is nothing more than "bitch set me up" set to music, and I'd prefer never to see or hear it again. I'm inclined to think any guy who wishes he hadn't gotten married because of his wife's credit score deserves to be shitcanned.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
It's Wingnut Boilover Day
How do we stop the extremists in this country from thinking their opinion is the only one that matters?
Can we prevent the Eric Rudolphs and Timothy McVeighs of this country from bringing back the bad old days of lynchings and Red Scares?
When will the wingnuts stop shitting all over our shared national symbols? First the Minutemen and Michael Savage's laughable Paul Revere Society, now the reduction of one of the great symbols of humanity's right to consent to its government to a juvenile sex joke supporting greedy, ignorant cheapskates' right to be greedy, ignorant cheapskates.
I wore a flag sticker on my backpack for about a year after 9/11. When it became clear that things were returning to business as usual and that the right-wing hawks and lunatics had every intention of appropriating the flag and the symbols of our history for their own purposes, the sticker came off. We of the American Left need to take our symbols back and remind the people who are abusing them that back in the day, they'd probably have been Crown loyalists. Update: Teabaggers at the Hyannis Airport Rotary. I drove by screaming they were a disgrace to the flag and flipping them all the bird. They booed me. Heh. Not concerned. (Well, except for the part where they were causing a traffic jam worthy of August.)
AmazonFail update: I would categorize their response as barely adequate -- they have more or less admitted fault and mostly repaired the problem, but haven't explicitly apologized, nor have they been really clear about what happened. They will be watched, and have already lost a lot of customers to places like Powell's or AbeBooks. At this point, I think it's a judgement call as to whether to boycott or not. I have already made one of the purchases I was planning on making at Amazon at another location and though I will resume doing Vine reviews soon, there's a very good possibility I may do my self-bought reviews here or at Off Season for a while. Which is just as well, as many of my upcoming review choices probably should be at Off Season anyway, if only to get more traffic. Update: see Clay Shirky's analysis of the response to AmazonFail, which I thought was somewhat justified myself but bordered on a witch hunt.
Can we prevent the Eric Rudolphs and Timothy McVeighs of this country from bringing back the bad old days of lynchings and Red Scares?
When will the wingnuts stop shitting all over our shared national symbols? First the Minutemen and Michael Savage's laughable Paul Revere Society, now the reduction of one of the great symbols of humanity's right to consent to its government to a juvenile sex joke supporting greedy, ignorant cheapskates' right to be greedy, ignorant cheapskates.
I wore a flag sticker on my backpack for about a year after 9/11. When it became clear that things were returning to business as usual and that the right-wing hawks and lunatics had every intention of appropriating the flag and the symbols of our history for their own purposes, the sticker came off. We of the American Left need to take our symbols back and remind the people who are abusing them that back in the day, they'd probably have been Crown loyalists. Update: Teabaggers at the Hyannis Airport Rotary. I drove by screaming they were a disgrace to the flag and flipping them all the bird. They booed me. Heh. Not concerned. (Well, except for the part where they were causing a traffic jam worthy of August.)
AmazonFail update: I would categorize their response as barely adequate -- they have more or less admitted fault and mostly repaired the problem, but haven't explicitly apologized, nor have they been really clear about what happened. They will be watched, and have already lost a lot of customers to places like Powell's or AbeBooks. At this point, I think it's a judgement call as to whether to boycott or not. I have already made one of the purchases I was planning on making at Amazon at another location and though I will resume doing Vine reviews soon, there's a very good possibility I may do my self-bought reviews here or at Off Season for a while. Which is just as well, as many of my upcoming review choices probably should be at Off Season anyway, if only to get more traffic. Update: see Clay Shirky's analysis of the response to AmazonFail, which I thought was somewhat justified myself but bordered on a witch hunt.
Monday, April 13, 2009
Amazon, WTF?
Well, if it hasn't reached you yet, it will soon -- hundreds of books on GLBT, teen sexuality, and women's issues vanished from Amazon.com's sales ranking lists over the course of Easter Sunday. The blogosphere has, quite predictably and understandably, shit a brick over this, especially as the problem seems to have been outstanding since February.
Now I do not personally think this was a corporate decision, but Amazon customer reps have been sending out form letters calling it a "glitch" (after an initial round of form letters that would seem to indicate that they had no idea what was going on). They have yet to post anything on the front page, though at least a few people (including me) believe that the system was intentionally trolled during a time when most of Amazon's US staff was probably home for the Easter weekend, and at least one person is claiming responsibility (though his credibility is in grave doubt, based largely on his lack of programming mojo). (There is an ongoing Twitter discussion at #amazonfail.)
Amazon knows this has been a disaster for them; many people have canceled orders, and I myself sent a note saying that I would not only postpone any purchases I'm considering (I had a couple in mind, including the new Michael Ruhlman book and a deck of Spanish playing cards) but that as a Vine reviewer, I won't be submitting any content until it's resolved. I'm willing to grant them a presumption of innocence, but even if they are innocent, they're handling it poorly and deserve to lose massive amounts of money over it.
Now I do not personally think this was a corporate decision, but Amazon customer reps have been sending out form letters calling it a "glitch" (after an initial round of form letters that would seem to indicate that they had no idea what was going on). They have yet to post anything on the front page, though at least a few people (including me) believe that the system was intentionally trolled during a time when most of Amazon's US staff was probably home for the Easter weekend, and at least one person is claiming responsibility (though his credibility is in grave doubt, based largely on his lack of programming mojo). (There is an ongoing Twitter discussion at #amazonfail.)
Amazon knows this has been a disaster for them; many people have canceled orders, and I myself sent a note saying that I would not only postpone any purchases I'm considering (I had a couple in mind, including the new Michael Ruhlman book and a deck of Spanish playing cards) but that as a Vine reviewer, I won't be submitting any content until it's resolved. I'm willing to grant them a presumption of innocence, but even if they are innocent, they're handling it poorly and deserve to lose massive amounts of money over it.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
What I was doing with a deck of cards at a bar last night
The basic idea: solitaire hold 'em poker. I've been on a bit of a playing card kick lately and the idea of a newish sort of solitaire poker flitted through my head a while back. I'm not too sure of the value of this particular game, but here goes the basic rules I came up with:
Needed:
-1 deck of standard cards, jokers removed
-a handful of counters (I used 5, but 21 might be better)
1. Shuffle deck.
2. Deal out nine cards face down -- two for the player, two for the "house", five common cards.
3. Flip over player cards, then first three common cards. Decide whether to stay in; if not, pass a counter to the "house".
4. Flip over last two cards; stay in or pass counter.
5. Flip over house; winner gets a counter.
6. Player wins best-of-five.
My main concern in something like this is that it actually be sufficiently interesting as to be worth repeat plays. I've already come up with one refinement -- the "21 counters" game, where you start with 21 counters and push one into a pot for each stage of the deal (initial deal, flop, fourth street, river) if you wish to stay in, and pass the pot to the "house" if you don't. In this set, you win if you have over half your original chips after five hands. (Why five hands? 54 cards/9 cards per hand = 6 hands, but since there's no jokers there will be seven cards left at the bottom of the deck before reshuffling.) This particular ruleset can also be trivially converted into a blackjack-like banking game, but I'd bet someone somewhere has already come up with it.
Needed:
-1 deck of standard cards, jokers removed
-a handful of counters (I used 5, but 21 might be better)
1. Shuffle deck.
2. Deal out nine cards face down -- two for the player, two for the "house", five common cards.
3. Flip over player cards, then first three common cards. Decide whether to stay in; if not, pass a counter to the "house".
4. Flip over last two cards; stay in or pass counter.
5. Flip over house; winner gets a counter.
6. Player wins best-of-five.
My main concern in something like this is that it actually be sufficiently interesting as to be worth repeat plays. I've already come up with one refinement -- the "21 counters" game, where you start with 21 counters and push one into a pot for each stage of the deal (initial deal, flop, fourth street, river) if you wish to stay in, and pass the pot to the "house" if you don't. In this set, you win if you have over half your original chips after five hands. (Why five hands? 54 cards/9 cards per hand = 6 hands, but since there's no jokers there will be seven cards left at the bottom of the deck before reshuffling.) This particular ruleset can also be trivially converted into a blackjack-like banking game, but I'd bet someone somewhere has already come up with it.
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