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At the Movies History: Siskel, Ebert, and the Rest |
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I looked up the show's lineage, and have pieced together bits of it. The title graphics were nicked from Wikipedia, no way could I come up with those on my own. :) IN THE EARLY DAYS....
SNEAK PREVIEWS Originally known as "Opening Soon.. ..at a Theatre Near You" (1975-1977), this original incarnation was produced locally (truly, it was local only) in Chicago. It was a monthly movie review show with Gene Siskel & Roger Ebert. After a couple of successful years in local programming, it was decided to take the show national. So, in 1977, it underwent something which is a recurring theme over the entire legacy of the show, a formal name change. The "Opening Soon" name was dropped, and it was renamed to "Sneak Previews". It was first distributed through PBS in 1977, and ran for five years with Siskel & Ebert at the helm of the show.
I sort of remember this tenure. I was more interested at this point in Siskel & Ebert, so I followed them to the new show, and sort of not watched the other guys who were with the old show. I remember Medved fairly well, the other guys not so much - so I did watch it, but really, I was more interested in Siskel & Ebert.
AT THE MOVIES WITH SISKEL & EBERT Siskel & Ebert founded this show after departing from the original incarnation. Technically (and legally) this was a separate show. The original was produced by WTTW in Chicago, and this show was produced by Tribune Entertainment, again out of Chicago. While I don't have any specific recollections about Show 2 over Show 1, I do have a vague recollection of thinking around that time that "Hey, this is really Sneak Previews, just called something else because some people got pissy over money", so I was more intersted in this for the nebulous concept of "this is the same spiritual show, even if legally it is not". Anyway, this show carried on until 1986, when again apparently Siskel & Ebert left over contractual reasons. And again, it carried on without them, only not nearly as successfully as Sneak Previews. This version of the show only lasted four more years (until 1990), with hosts Rex Reed, Bill Harris, and later on, Dixie Whatley. What's amusing about that is that both Harris & Whatley also had tenures on Entertainment Tonight, and from what I recall, the show under their direction was less about movie reviews in the way Siskel & Ebert had done it, but more of a general entertainment thing, still with a lean towards movies.
SISKEL & EBERT AT THE MOVIES This gets somewhat confusing. Technically this show ran from 1986 until August 14, 2010. It originally in 1986 with Siskel & Ebert. The original title of the show bears this, going under the name "Siskel & Ebert and the Movies" from 1986 through 1999. The last episode with the two of them together was Jan 23, 1999. So it ran quite a long time with Siskel & Ebert as hosts. That is the bulk of the time. However, in 1999 it starts getting confusing.
Gene Siskel announced in February of 1999 that he was taking some time off to deal with a brain tumor, and less than three weeks later, he died of that. There was the tribue to Siskel by Ebert immediately after that, and then Siskel's chair was filled with a series of co-hosts. 
Ebert kept going with guest hosts - some were serious attempts at getting a new host (AO Scott, Michael Phillips), some were not (Harry Knowles, Martin Scorsese). The original title was kept until Sep 4, 1999, when it was renamed to "Roger Ebert and the Movies".
The guest host thing continued until Ebert picked Richard Roeper as the permanent replacement for Gene Siskel, and the show was renamed again on Sep 10, 2000 to "Ebert & Roeper At the Movies". I grew to really like Richard Roeper, some did not. Here's what I have to say about that... With Gene Siskel gone, that is NOT coming back, so you have to move on. Roger Ebert was still there, and this was still the same program, so you have to accept change. You have to accept SOMEONE. Granted, Richard did a better job than just "being someone", I'm speaking to those who say he will never be Gene Siskel. No he won't. But that's not the point. Ebert & Roeper were NOT going to be Siskel & Ebert. What made that show great from 1975 through 1999 died with Gene Siskel. Given that, I was really behind the selection of Richard Roeper. As you watched the guest stars, you got the feeling more and more they were leaning towards either Richard Roeper or AO Scott, guys who were guesting way more than anyone else at that point. 
The title was yet changed again in the name of length to "Ebert & Roeper" in September of 2001. The show stabilized under this format and lasted for about five years this way. This went on until 2006, when Roger Ebert had his thyroid problems, and was knocked off air for those reasons. The 2006-2007 season was completed with guest hosts for Roger. AT THE MOVIES WITH EBERT & ROEPER
It was short lived, though as Richard Roeper and Roger Ebert said on July 21, 2008 that they would both be leaving the show over contractual and format reasons. Roger Ebert took the "Thumbs Up" with him, as it was a copyright owned by Siskel's widow and Roger themselves, that did not lie with the producers of the show. It probably had something to do with the fact that the thumbs up/down had disappeared from the show some time before they formally checked out. That's probably part of what contributed to the "artistic direction" remarks we saw around the separation. Although, in researching this article I ran across an article where Richard Roeper clearly calls out Ben Lyons as being "stupid" and being the reason he left the show. Wow. And so it ends..
On July 22nd, 2008 it was announced that the new hosts would be Ben Lyons & Ben Mankiewicz. This was widely disparaged by long time fans of the show (some going so far as to create a Stop Ben Lyons website), and it proved to be true, as their incarnation of the show was generally regarded as completely awful. The show's format was changed, expanded, and bore little in common with the Siskel & Ebert lineage it held (legally). Mankiewicz wasn't all that bad, really. However, Ben Lyons was SO awful, it just drug the whole thing down. Had Mankiewicz been paired with someone else, he might still be there. One interesting note - Ben Lyons was the son of Jeffrey Lyons, who was one of the replacements for the original Siskel & Ebert show Sneak Previews. That doesn't justify anything, Ben Lyons was still damn awful, despite that quirk to the show's past.
AT THE MOVIES (gets some cred back)
As I write this, the first two episodes have aired with Scott/Phillips. It's definitely good again. Given they legally can't use thumbs up/down, the "See it, Skip it, Rent it" sort of works. I've seen some backlash against that, but I find my wife and I saying a lot that we will wait for a DVD release to watch a movie, won't spend the boatload it now costs to see a movie in the theatres. They have kept the "chair" motif from the two Bens era of the show, the old movie theatre / balcony idea is gone. Shame, as I always felt that added to the aura of the show. Below is a promo video for AO Scott & Michael Phillips, which is worth checking out. Also there's this video, which is Scott & Phillips talking about movies from their past.
So the original show started by Gene Siskel & Roger Ebert in 1986 is still going now under the name "At the Movies" with rather respectable hosts going forward. This bodes well for the (legal) legacy of the program. However... AT THE MOVIES (gets canceled) I wrote this article back in September, and at that time, the new incarnation of the old show had just started with Phillips & Scott. I watched several, the quality was quite good. While it wasn't Siskel & Ebert, it was the legal show they started, and I felt good about the future with these guys. So it came as quite a shock on the morning of Mar 25, 2010 when I learned that this will be the final season for "At the Movies". It started many a year ago, and the article i read today said that this season (the 24th year) will be the last. That's pretty sad, and a lot is being written today about how much the legacy was good, and it was. I've had a season pass for the show on my TiVo for a few years now. Going back into the old show, through the two Bens (although I almost never watched it), and this now final season. The reasons given for the show being canceled are probably valid, as they're business reasons. Not the hosts, and not the idea. There's virtually no syndicated shows like this left that aren't infomercials. That's part of the problem, I think. Here in Dallas, the show is on at like 1AM on Monday morning (Sun night), and leads off a block of overnight infomercials. The show was never treated well (and this was even before the two Bens year) in syndication. If it was on at a "real" time, I bet you the show would still be around. My brother and I used to watch it back in the 70's, so it's pretty sad that it's finally finishing. I'll definitely miss the show, but as one of the articles I read today said.. At least having AO Scott & Michael Phillips there at the end means the show can die with some dignity. Had it been the two Bens at the end, it would have a different feel. The show ends in August, I wonder if they could get Roger Ebert there on the last episode to make an appearance. I think that would be a great touch, and a nice bookend for the show he started ages ago with Gene Siskel. I'll update this again probably when the show finally does go off the air. TRYING TO GET OFF THE GROUND AGAIN The time after Ebert & Roeper walked away from the show was spent with a few attempts to get the "old show" off the ground again. Here's what I know about those, which I label "Show 4" (I wrote this section in the fall of 2009, so some of the text could be a little off when it talks about Show 4 still happening)... 
It was stated at the same time when Ebert & Roeper left At the Movies that they would have some new show. That announcement was made on July 21, 2008. They said something like it would be announced "soon", and would restore the legacy of the original Siskel & Ebert show: TALKING MOVIES Right when Roeper & Ebert departed, I set up a Google News Alert for "Richard Roeper". I wanted to be told when their new show was talked about. Nothing happened with it after that. It was a dark time, as the old show was only on with the two Bens. Then on June 12, 2009, my alert sent me the following text: The Thumbs will be returning to television in a new program named Talking Movies, with Richard Roeper, Michael Phillips and Christy Lemire. ... The alert stopped there, as they don't email you the whole thing, just the first line or so. So I clicked on over immediately and found the link was a 404 Not Found. It had been taken away. What I suspect happened was someone was prepping an article about that, and it got published to the RSS feed, and then deleted before anyone (well, almost anyone saw it). This happens to me a lot when you use RSS feeds as your primary source of access to websites. Anyway, the link was gone, and I could not find anything online about this story other than this link, so I wasn't sure what happened here, exactly. Whatever this "Talking Movies" was, it never got off the ground. I don't know Christy Lemire, but Richard Roeper & Michael Phillips were the hosts who held the spiritual line of sucession going back to the Sneak Previews days of the 70's, so it felt right to have them together. Both were hand picked replacements for Siskel & Ebert (by Ebert themselves), so I'll buy them as the carriers of the flame. EBERT & ROEPER PRESENT "TWO THUMBS UP" But again, nothing happened. It just sat there. On September 7th, 2009 I had discovered that Roger Ebert & Richard Roeper had been working on a website project called "Two Thumbs Up". It had the URL of http://www.twothumbsup.tv. It appeared from what I could tell to be an internet based version of the old TV show. However.. When I saw it in Sep of 2009, it was stale, and had been abandoned more or less, there was nothing current when I saw it. I don't know when it went online, either. This snuck out there with little fanfare, or I would have heard about it, since I was looking for info on them. Either I totally botched it, or this really was a small time thing. Either way, not much appeared to be going on with it, although Christy Lemire's name was still attached to it. On the day I wrote this section of the article (Sep 15, 2009), I went to grab a screen capture of the site for use here, and discovered it had gone. I have no idea what happened now. If you go there, you get a "Forbidden" error, which generally tells me one of two things. Either the site's server has a serious configuration error preventing you from seeing anything, or someone just nuked the entire content off the server, and there's nothing for it to show. Either way, whatever this experiment was, it appears to be gone. The trademark is still in use, though. If you look at Roger Ebert's current reviews, they're called "Two Thumbs Up® reviews". So it's still out there. But how it will manifest itself on TV? What's going on, guys? What happened to the "coming soon" (In the summer of 2008) show that was going to restore the legacy of Siskel & Ebert? Some of us are still waiting, and as you can see by this article are still paying attention. While the old show is in capable hands with Scott & Phillips, I want the Richard Roeper and Roger Ebert show to return. It was said that it would be Richard Roeper & Michael Phillips with Christy Lemire on screen. Well, Phillips has another gig now, so he's out. No matter who is picked as the other host, what the heck is going on with THAT? UPDATE NOVEMBER 29 2009: ROEPER GOES IT ALONE It appears that the attempt at Show #4 has failed, and will not be happening. The why of that I'll get into in a minute, but we do have some solid new stuff.
"I'm so excited about this new project," Roeper said Monday. "As much as I loved doing 'Ebert & Roeper,' this will have much more of an unfiltered, uncut, viral feel. As someone at Starz put it, they wanted 'Roeper uncut.' If a film is a piece of shit, I'll say it's a piece of shit. I love the idea of seeing the movie and turning around immediately and telling you what I think about it in a conversational manner. In some cases I'll be recording reviews right there on the street as I'm exiting the theater or the screening room." There was a minor stink about it the next day from Roger Ebert thinking that Roeper thought he was censored on Ebert & Roeper, and I could see that, but Richard came out with a retraction saying that was not the case. Still, it made for an interesting bit of back and forth for a day there around Thanksgiving. :) One final amusing thing, Richard's website says "Richard Roeper & the Movies" - nice throwback name. Richard had an intro video initially posted on his website (but was later removed - I don't know why). It parodies the recent movie, Paranormal Activities. It's here:
Which brings us to the other part of the update. Roger Ebert finally spoke out about all of this stuff, the old show, Richard Roeper, the two Bens, etc.. There was a really great journal update by him here detailing a ton of stuff. If you've read this far, you need to read that article too. Roger goes into issues of his own health, what happened behind the scenes after his boot off the air from thyroid cancer, and talks about other names (Philips, Scott, others) that could have been permanent replacements (some of that is covered above). But the sad part is how Roger talks about the end of his incarnation of the show - the point where the "producers" decided on destroying the old classic balcony stage instead of donating it to something like the Smithsonian. I didn't realize that kind of stuff happened. But the final nail was when the studio hired AO Scott and brought back Michael Phillips to host the show, Phillips went to Roger Ebert's house personally to tell him. I thought that was classy. Apparently Roger offered to the producers the legal return of the thumbs and his own endorsement of the show (which would have brought a nice closure to all this), but he was rebuffed, saying "the show has moved on". That's sad. That's really sad. Roger also goes into far more detail on "Show 4" (my term, not his) than I knew of. The reason THAT didn't happen is due to the economy according to Roger. But he says the show can probably still happen, and from what Roger said, it seems to be more than a "glimmer", but not exactly a raging inferno waiting to break out either. But I remain hopeful that the original show's lineage (if not the legal version of it) will rise from the ashes. Whatever Roger Ebert ends up doing, whether it be with Christy Lemire or Richard Roeper, or someone else, I think there's enough room for their show, and Roger's old show still going on with Scott & Phillips. I'd watch both for sure. 
Well, it's now late March 2010 as I write this, and it was just announced that the old Siskel & Ebert show (now manned by Scott & Philips and called "At the Movies") will be gone come August. Is that truly the end? Apparently not.
I mention all that, because I think it ties in somewhat to something he announced today that the old show he was talking about awhile ago is still going to be happening. I found that as quite a surprise. THE TRUE "SHOW 4" - ROGER EBERT PRESENTS 'AT THE MOVIES'
Roger talks about how he didn't think it would work if they were just doing the same show as it always was. Which is kind of why I think the old show finally was canceled. It effectively was the same show from all those years ago, just a different tone and flavor, but the format was the same. Roger's new show according to him will cover "New Media: Television, net streaming, cell phone apps, Facebook, Twitter, iPad, the whole enchilada.". That's good to see. I think if Roger just brought back the old format with new hosts, then it probably too would fail. I also liked this text which Roger wrote.. ""At the Movies" was one of the last survivors of half-hour syndication. It didn't fail so much as have its format shot out from beneath it." He even goes on to mention everyone who has hosted the show (which is Roger Ebert, Gene Siskel, Richard Roeper, Michael Phillips, AO Scott, Ben Mankowicz, & Ben Lyons). The show will be produced by him and his wife. He wants to make appearances, and says his computer voice can be used to keep him "on" the show, even if he can't physically appear. He mentions they know who they'll cast as face talent (Christy Lemire perhaps? Her name has been attached to his for awhile now). He's not giving details, but this is the most forward I've seen Roger Ebert be with a replacement show since he left the air. Some of what this new show will be like was presented in September 2010. It was announced who was going to be on the show, what it was going to be like, etc. So much so that a "demo reel" showing what it might be like was produced. I'm assuming this was done in order to shop the program to people. Same goes for the show logo above. I'm unclear if it was intended to be the final logo or not, but it was there, so I'm using it in the story. The aforementioned video is still available online. You can check it out here: The announced show in September 2009 was going to have two talking heads. Christy Lemire (AP News), who has been attached to Ebert for a few years now, and Elvis Mitchell (of NPR Radio). These were going to be the primary folks on screen. Ebert himself, while unable to speak would make a regular appearance via the use of his computer created voice, as demonstrated on the Oprah Winfrey show.
The whole list of names that was announced was:
So the show sat that way for awhile. There was a Facebook group set up in September 2010 for fans (myself included) to discuss the show, but it never really got going. That incarnation of the show had the logo shown here (with the white head and glasses). I presumed that was going to be the show's logo as it was on the Official Facebook group. Looked legit enough. Had an "artsy" feel to it. But not much happened for awhile. For the remainder of 2010, it was pretty quiet. I'm guessing there was a ton of behind the scenes stuff going on. They had to sell the show, build sets, etc, etc... But given the at times tortured history this show has had, we couldn't get to launch without some other drama rearing its head, could we? 2011: Ebert Presents "At the Movies"
The only thing that article leaves me with is that the kid is kind of a movie snob. Back in the Siskel & Ebert days, I always got the impression that Ebert himself liked the "common, popular" movies like an Iron Man, or a Terminator or something along those lines. What I've read about this Russian kid is that he's more into arty films. I wonder if he'll like these more "popular" films at all, or if it will turn into a "Lemire likes the popular stuff, the kid won't" dynamic before you even hear them say anything about a movie. Granted, that's an unfair assumption on my part, but as I write this text, the show is three days away from its first episode premiere. I'll give the kid the benefit of the doubt, but what I read tells me he'll be the "Siskel" in this pairing. We'll see. Elvis Mitchell wasn't on a street corner selling pencils after this move, he was announced as the lead movie review person for the website "Movieline", so he's doing fine. :)
As long as I'm talking about the name.. When the old show went off the air after Disney canceled it, they owned the name "At the Movies". Now, the name "At the Movies" has been around for a long time. Going back to "Show 2", it was ued, and then again in "Show 3" (the really long part of the history), and the name morphed a lot during the Show 3 years depending on who was hosting it, but "At the Movies" was in there. I wonder if Roger Ebert bought the rights to the name from Disney, and owns it, or he is just licensing it at this point. I realize that's a highly anal point, but from a purely legal standpoint, I can't imagine him just "using it" like that, one would think Disney legal wouldn't go for that. I've asked about that point, I'll be curious to see if I ever get an answer on it. The week of the premiere, some pictures were posted of the recording of the first episode (which originally was going to be a "Best of 2010" segment, but changed to a standard show at the last minute), and the old "movie set" is back. Check out the pictures below, which if you look at them, remind me a LOT of the set as it was when Ebert & Roeper were on the show. There are two additional pictures available as well as significantly larger versions of the pictures available at this blog post from Roger Ebert.  
Going back several hosts, I always wondered if the "movie theatre set" for this show was capable of actually projecting movies. Given this set was built using modern tech, one would think it'd be easy enough to build something into the set where you could actually watch movies on it. It would be a laugh, that's for sure. As I said before, the new show premieres in four days. As I write this, it's Jan 18, 2011. Roger Ebert is back. The movie theatre set is back. The Thumbs are back! Sadly Gene Siskel is not. Neither is Richard Roeper. But I'll be there checking it out too, as it does feel like the old show's proper lineage has returned. When the last show ended, I said that I enjoyed what was being done by AO Scott & Michael Philips. I did really enjoy them. The one negative against them is that they were mostly the same person - what made Siskel & Ebert work best was they were NOT, and had conflicting opinions. This new show is definitely different in it's presentation, and I hope that the old feel of Siskel & Ebert (and Roeper) is there as well. Just NOT the feel of Ben Lyons. Barf. As a taste, the opening credit sequence for the new show was posted online just a few days before the premiere. Here it is:
So there we are. A twisted history of the Siskel & Ebert movie review show. Many names, many incarnations, I believe I've covered it all. Roger, I know you're online, and do the blog thing, so if you see this, I wanted to say thank you. Have had fun all these years watching, and Richard? I thank you for sitting in the seat all those years for Gene. I even liked the Scott & Philips team, even if they were a bit too much like each other and there was no Siskel & Ebert arguments. At least they weren't "dumb" (Lyons), there was a level of intelligence to them which I enjoyed seeing. I'll leave you with some amusing videos I saw on Youtube of various funny bits from episodes over the years. These show that Richard Roeper & Roger Ebert could still complain at each other like Siskel & Ebert did, they weren't the bland pair that I've read about over the years. Enjoy. God bless Gene Siskel.
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EBERT & ROEPER AT THE MOVIES
For the return of the 2007-2008 season, the show's formal name was changed again to "At the Movies with Ebert & Roeper". On April 13, 2008 Michael Phillips was named the permanent on air replacement for Roger Ebert, although the name remained "ATM with Ebert & Roeper".
AT THE MOVIES (goes into the toilet)
The two Bens experiment was fortunately realized as bad by the producers, and on Aug 5, 2009 it was announced that the two Bens would not be returning for the 2009/2010 season, which started on Sep 5, 2009. They were replaced by A.O. Scott and Michael Phillips. Both were guest hosts for Roger Ebert during his health problem period; Phillips being named the brief permanent replacement for Ebert in 2008. Much was made in the press for the change in hosts about going back to "serious reviews", and "serious writers". If that was the case, then why did they just not bring back Richard Roeper with Phillips, and restore it to the way it was before the Two Bens came onboard? Probably too many bridges burnt there. Anyway, Scott/Phillips are a welcome return to form, will definitely be watchable. Some of the post Ebert changes remain, but it's mostly back to the way it was (if not with the same hosts).
First off, on Nov 24th, I found 
First off, before I get into that, I wanted to mention the appearance by Roger Ebert on the Oprah Winfrey show. I am most definitely NOT a fan of Oprah Winfrey, but I brought myself to watch the show (or at least this part of it) that Roger Ebert was on. To my knowledge, it was the first appearance by him on TV since he was knocked off the air at his old show with Richard Roeper. I had seen pictures of him since, and was aware of his condition. But seeing him can be hard if you're not used to that kind of thing. I was glad I tuned in, as his story is seriously cool that he's been able to fight past all that's happened to him, is cancer free, and all that. The bit where his voice was recreated by a company using tons of his old commentary DVD's and whatnot was really quite awesome. This appearance was like a big step back for me, as he got to announce his own Oscar picks in his own voice for the first time in ages. The Oprah Winfrey website has videos of all this stuff online (for now, anyway). I suggest you 
So we finally get to January 2011. The launch of the new show. While the precise date wasn't yet set, it was found out in mid December actually that the previously announced host of the show (Elvis Mitchell) was no longer with the show (
Another interesting point is the show had a subtle name change. Since it was announced many months ago, it was called "Roger Ebert Presents At the Movies". It's now called just "Ebert Presents At the Movies". It's a subtle change, but I wonder - if Roger dies, I have to assume that his wife will retain control over the show, it's copyright, and all that. I wonder if the simple removal of 'Roger' from the title is something to do with that. I could be reading into it way too much - and I admit that. But it does make me curious about the subtle name change.
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Fix the Add-on Bar Location in Firefox 4 Beta 8 |
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I've been using the Firefox 4 beta builds for awhile now, and previous to an hour ago, I haven't had any problems with them. Beta 8 though posed a new one. Apparently in Beta 7, they removed the "status bar", and replaced it with the "Add-on Bar". Which doesn't bother me so much, although it did take some time to train my eyes to look up top for where a link is going when I hover over it. That used to be on the bottom. But Beta 8 really screwed things up. They changed it so that the icons that have always been on the lower right of the browser were now on the lower left. They've been on the right side since this code was in it's ancient days Netscape Communicator. BAH! Look at what I mean.
It even makes the popups from the add-ons show up on the left, too. Can't have that. I looked around online, and couldn't find anything on how to fix it. Got mad. Then played around myself and found an answer. Here's how to do it.
1) Right click on the add-on bar (assuming you have it activated, if you don't do that first). Click Customize.
2) Drag the icon named "Flexible Space" from the Customize Toolbar shown below, and drag it to the left of the icons that are in the wrong spot. 3) It will leave a long empty bar to the left of the icons, which should now be pushed all the way to the right.
4) Click "Done", and the big white bar will disappear, leaving the icons on the lower right where they should be. One small caveat to that, the "X" which translates to "Close add-on bar" will remain - I don't know if it's possible to get rid of that. If you know a way, let me know. Hope this helps, as I was rather shocked at this major design change after all these years. What were they thinking? (Unless it's a bug where the variable space was left out, in which case nevermind, but still...) |
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How to change the play count number in iTunes |
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It's been awhile since I posted some sort of tech/computer thing on this blog, but when I was using this little tip myself today, I thought I'd share it. I can't remember how I happened upon this, but I wanted to pass on the info. NOTE: This is for Windows. I have no idea how you'd do this on a Mac. One thing I've noticed about iTunes is that not everything is easily changeable. For instance the play counts. There's been times where I've accidentally deleted an album with playcounts, and wanted to get back what I had. Or I've imported a new version of an album, and I wanted to transfer over my playcounts, but you can't do that in iTunes itself without resorting to playing the track the number of times you want, and shifting the slider bar to the last two seconds so the playcount gets increased. Those kind of tricks aren't needed anymore. Just follow these steps. Open Notepad and put the following text in it: Dim iTunesApp, currTrack, newPlayCount Dim prompt, title, defaultValue Save the file as "SetPlayCount.vbs", putting it in some easily accessible location. When you double click on it, a box will pop up, asking you what you want the playcount to be. One caveat, it only works on one song at a time. It will be the "selected" song. Whether it's playing or not, it will only edit the one track that you have highlighted in iTunes. If iTunes isn't running, or you don't have anything selected (like you just started iTunes), it will error as well. It's not perfect, but it is useful if you want to change the playcount of an individual track in iTunes. |
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Until the Whole World Hears! |
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My Personal Testimony |
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...or "How I Came to love Jesus" NOTE: This document was originally written as part of an assignment in a discipleship course my church offers regularly. I wrote it back in late March of 2007 when I was taking the course. I expanded it in July of 2010, picking up where the discipleship course part of this ended, and talked about what's happened in my life since then. I hope you enjoy reading this, as it's been a joy to live it, thanks be to God! Jesus has always been a part of my life. My problem is that I never always acknowledged it, or even when I did, didn't give him the attention he deserved. That's the crux of my story. I've never really let him in the door until very recently in my life. When I was child, I was raised and taught Sunday School lessons from an early age. I knew all the things you were taught, I even believed them, as much as a young child could believe things in the same way an adult can. I had several years of Sunday School perfect attendance when I was around the ages of 5-7. I could say the Lord's Prayer at an early age, and I was very much the proper young Christian boy. As time went on, my parents divorced (at 12yrs), and while I don't have a conscious recollection of that causing a problem at the time, it likely did, as it did upset many portions of my life. Not long after that I started to rebel in school, lost focus, and quite a lot of things didn't have the same flavor anymore. I used to sneak into my mom's bedroom on Sunday mornings, and turn off the alarm clock so we wouldn't have to go to church. I considered church an imposition on my Sunday morning sleep. At this point in my life, Jesus was never really an active thought. Not that I actively campaigned against him, or anything along those lines, it just was never an upfront thought in my mind. Somewhere during this time, I stopped going to church completely, as I didn't feel connected anymore. There were a few other moments after that where I had the chance to reconnect, but did not. Looking back, this was probably Jesus knocking on the door, but i didn't really answer. There was a person who ministered to me in a church and asked me if I was saved, and told me that all it would take would be for me to accept Jesus as my Lord and savior and let him into my heart. I said the lines, and the person said I was saved, but I didn't "feel it" in my heart. I also attended a Billy Graham Crusade and came forward at the end to receive Jesus. That was an opportunity and I didn't follow through on that, either. Some years later, my family happened upon another Episcopal church led by a Father Edd Schultz. Father Edd was the first building block in my return to church in that he was young, and hey - he had Cable TV! A priest who had MTV was something cool to this teenager, so I bought into it. I enjoyed attending church there, and continued there until Father Edd left the church to move elsewhere in the country. At that point I more or less stopped going again. When I moved to Texas in 1992, and all of that was lost - I never went to church after I moved to Texas for awhile. I got married in 1996; after that my wife and I attended a service at Holy Trinity Episcopal Church in Garland. We felt the church was nice, but due to my general laziness and desire for Sunday morning sleep, we did not return. At this point in my life, I had pigeonholed my thoughts on religion into this. If I believed Jesus was savior and my Lord, I would be saved. I didn't need to attend a church, and I didn't need all that other stuff. I believed, so I was good to go. It was my daughter who ended up leading me back to church - and she hadn't been born yet. Late in 2004, my wife and I decided that since we were having a baby, that we needed to attend a church. As our families are about 1500 miles away, we needed a support system. After a couple of attempts elsewhere, we returned to HTEC, as that was the religion I was raised in. After attending several services, we felt very welcomed and comfortable; so we stayed. This was a seriously important decision, as it's here that I found Jesus for good, and let him into my life in a way that had NEVER happened before. In looking back, I always sort of paid lip service to Jesus. I believed, or thought I did, but it wasn't until after my daughter was born that I started noticing that I was feeling more filled, and more excited at attending church. That had never happened to me before. I prayed to God a lot during my wife's pregnancy, and those prayers were answered in the form of a very happy, and very healthy young daughter. Up until this point in my life, Jesus was mostly an afterthought, and he still blessed me with the best daughter I could have imagined. It was that realization that started me back without looking for a "way out" like I used to. The big moment came when I was standing on the front lawn of my rector's house one evening. I had been there to fix a problem on his computer, and afterwards we were talking about a discipleship course he was going to soon be embarking on. I was not planning on doing it, mostly because I was (or thought I was) unprepared for the course. After hearing my reasons, the rector rather strongly told me I was wrong, and that I was more than ready to take the course. One wouldn't think that the turning point in one's religious life would be standing on the front lawn of the pastor's house, but it was for me. God gives you what you need, and that's what I needed - a surprise from an unexpected location like that to get my attention. On the drive home that night, I changed my mind and decided to take the course. It was a giant leap of faith on my part, as I really had NO idea what I was getting myself into. As the weeks went along in the course, I found myself believing and reading scripture more than any other time in my life. I started being able to recite parts of it, and I found the course was nowhere as difficult as I anticipated it would be. I found that some of the things we were taught and learned about weren't the hollow things I thought they were when I was younger - these disciplines like fasting and prayer had real life meaning! As I let these things into my life more and more, I found that I had a deeper peace about various issues in my life that were never peaceful. I found that I did not stress internally about things as much as I used to. Now that's not to say I can't still run off the end of the stress meter, and I do from time to time. But overall, I've found great relief in simply allowing problems in my life to be turned over to Jesus. To a non believer, that might sound hollow, but the Holy Spirit has worked miracles in my heart. The biggest changes during the discipleship course came in the latter months after I started taking scripture to heart. Oh sure, I could spend more time with the living word; and I still sin like everyone else, but I have an avenue out. The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord. An example is that I was lifted of my fear of praying in public. I used to dread that with a crippling fear that would stop me from any public prayer. In one of the discipleship class sessions, we had a big prayer group session, and I felt that something happened to me, but I did not know what. That was answered the next day when I had to take my wife to the hospital, and while driving there, I said a prayer for her healing with my hand on her head. Shortly after that, she told me that after I had taken my hand off her head, it felt like my hand was still there. This was a powerful moment for me, because it showed me what God had done in my heart, which was remove my fear of prayer. And as I've learned in James 5:16, "the prayer of a righteous man has great power in its effect". I've felt no problems with praying for people any longer, and that is a blessing my life. I wanted to cry when I realized what had happened to me. This discipleship course has given me so much more strength and peace than I could have ever believed I was capable of. Praise God for getting to me through it, as I credit THAT as the reason I now am stronger than I ever believed I could be in Jesus. My wife has told me that the course has changed me externally too, which is nice to hear, since I cannot see that. After the discipleship course ended, I found that since I had a stronger belief in God, and the ability to believe in what our culture generally refers to loosely as "an invisible person", that I've had a greater peace about a great number of things. One of the things that told my wife an I that God was with us was when our church was starting a building fund for a new church we intend on building. There was a meeting at the Rector's house to talk about the program, and go over details and whatnot. My wife and I were there, and we both had decided on a number we were going to contribute ahead of time. During the speeches by our Senior Warden, the Rector, and the fellow from the fund raising firm, we both had decided to increase our amount the we would commit. I had decided at that time to give up my weekly bowling league, which I had been in for about 34 consecutive years at that point. I tallied the fees and whatnot, and it worked out to be a number that was within just a couple of dollars of what my wife on her own decided we should increase our commitment by. We were both instantly convinced that this was from God, as we both decided this on our own with no discussion amongst each other (and after prayer). So we were joyous at our being able to donate to the building fund with what we knew was a prayerfully considered dollar amount. Our newfound prayer and joy was put to the test in early 2008 when my wife and I were expecting our second child, who we had lost to miscarriage. It was a painful thing to go through, as anyone who has experienced that can tell you, but through a lot of prayer, we were able to get through it. In fact, the thing that helped us most was being able to name the child (whom we named Vanessa Grace), and turn the whole situation over to God. Through that act, we were given much peace about the situation. Oh, it still hurt, but I wasn't as devastated once we made the choice to give the child back to God. This was borne out when during the last night of a healing ministries conference at our church my wife went up for prayer, and was given a vision of what our lost daughter looked like. Obviously this was more powerful for her than for me, but I too took this to heart, and was able to rejoice in that someday we'd get to meet our lost daughter. This act also caused some friction with some who thought we were "weird" or "nuts" for doing something like naming a child that we lost to miscarriage. This was mostly people not from our church, as we received lots of support from our Church family over this issue. However, both of us strongly felt we were being led by God to do this, so we honored that call and were obedient in this matter. After a lot of prayer and support from friends at our church, we were able to get through it and get pregnant again during the late summer of 2008. Thus began the biggest part of our life with God. Given we had lost a baby recently, this third pregnancy for us was somewhat more fraught with concern for obvious reasons. We wanted it to work, and yet we had the loss of Vanessa in our minds, too. The pregnancy went fairly well, and we were set to deliver our second child, our son David (who was named after King David in the bible) on May 28th. However, on May 6th, we got a bombshell dropped on us, as I found out that my job of 16.5 years was going away. I had lost my job after being there for the better part of two decades, and we had a kid on the way. My last day of work ended up being six days before my son was born, and I have to say, it made that week a complete whirlwind of emotion. It is said God's timing is perfect, and I think that's why I lost my job when I did, because I was able to spend time with my newborn son, and be with my family. The lack of work was hard (and continues to be), but we think it was a test from God to rely on him, and rely hardly did we ever! You see, late in 2008, I had decided that we were going to start properly tithing. My wife grew up in a Ukrainian Orthodox church who doesn't have the concept of tithing in their church. This was an alien concept to her when we started attending church. As everyone knows, money can be a major source of friction between married couples, so I decided not to go nuclear and start tithing fully when we went back to church, but kind of eased into it, building up until we got to a proper tithe in late 2008. At that time, we had just short of $10,000 in credit card debt to our name, not to mention the usual "real life" things like a car payment and a mortgage, etc.. Our money wasn't unmanageable, but the credit card debt was a concern somewhat. Still, I felt it was the right time to tithe. So we did. I went and figured out exactly what 10% of our income was, and started (rather happily, mind you) giving that to the church. When I lost my job, I went and figured out what a tithe would be out of my unemployment money, and continued to tithe. It felt good, it felt like the right thing to do. God honored this by keeping us not only solvent through unemployment, but with the means to rid our debt. When I walked out the door at my old job, I still had about 3/4 of that credit card debt on the books. You do not expect to be able to get on top of credit card debt when you lose your job, you expect to tread water, or at best hope not to slide backwards. But we believe our being obedient to the tithe, especially after losing my job gave us the ability to COMPLETELY PAY OFF ALL OF OUR DEBT (save for the mortgage). Our car was paid off within a month of losing my job, and all of our credit card debt was erased during the summer of 2009. More evidence of God's timing was in play when it came to hospital bills. We received bills for both my wife and my son. Both times when we got the bill in the mail, in the mailbox AT THE SAME TIME was a check (or checks) to cover the bill. It was as if God was saying "I'll take care of it" with his timing. To make it a better story, I've been able to KEEP the credit card debt at zero - praise be to God. It's July of 2010, and I can say I still have no credit card debt, 14 months into unemployment. We've never gone without, and still have been able to live a life we enjoy. Oh, there were cutbacks for sure, and the people who have helped us (both financially and physically) have been a blessing. We thank God for them too for listening to his call to help us as they have. We couldn't have done it without them. My time of unemployment has taught me several things. To be reliant on God for everything, and not just "pay attention" to him during Sundays and that's it. It's taught me that obedience brings blessings, as this has been borne out by our ability to remain worry free about money during all this time. I think that astounds people somewhat, as I took a trip back in March of 2010 to visit my family back home to visit my grandparents in the hospital. I drove to Philadelphia from Dallas, renting a car, staying in hotel rooms, etc. Sitting in the hospital room with my mom and my Grandmother we got to talking about money and all that, and they showed concern that I wasn't going to be able to pay for the trip. When I told them it was covered already, they were pleased, but what they probably weren't pleased with was when I said "..and even if I wasn't, I'm not worried about it, it's just money". To someone as detail oriented as my mother I think the lack of concern about something that is SUPER detailed as money was a shock to her. But I really was not concerned at all about money - I really wasn't. As I was trusting in God to take care of me and my family, the fact that there was a new round of bills to deal with in regards to my trip did not concern me in the least. On this trip, I was able to pray for several family members (plus some people I did not know), and in a way I found myself surprised at being able to do. I think I was able to show some people in my family firsthand how much I've grown. At minimum, I was able to show them a side of me they'd never seen before. I've learned to trust in God, and it's benefited my family so richly, I can't tell all of it in this short document. There's so much more to this story, but I don't want to write a 20,000 word mini novel here, so I'll end it with this.. I cannot wait for what else will come on this path I have chosen. It can be your path too. It doesn't take much to get started on the path either, if you have any questions on how, just ask me. May God bless you, as he has me. Joe Siegler Malachi 3:10: "Bring the full tithes into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house; and thereby put me to the test, says the LORD of hosts, if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you an overflowing blessing." Ephesians 6:18: "Pray at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. To that end keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints." |
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New Xbox 360 Hardware Questions |
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After watching the Microsoft Press Conference today I was impressed with the hardware refresh, and had some questions about it knowing what I know about Xbox 360 hardware. Reading a bunch of places about it, and found out some information that's useful. The screen captures I have below are taken from the Engadget Xbox 360 S unboxing video, which you should check out here.
I will continue to update with both updates to the above and with new questions. |
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Dallas Stars |
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My Xbox 360 Died Part III |
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If you've followed my blog at all, you may remember that my second Xbox 360 died in March of 2008. I talked about it here. This after my original 360 died back in Feb of 2007. Well, my third unit has now died, too. I posted about it on a private forum I belong to when it first happened on July 25th, and I'm posting it here on Aug 5th, and then I have a new update for this blog.
So anyway, I started playing 1 vs 100 last night, and right as it started I heard a rather obnoxious sound - kind of like a loud click coming from the 360, and then it locked hard. My initial thought was "Uh-oh". While it didn't sound like a sound I heard from my previous two dead 360's, it didn't sound good at all. So I hit the power button for off, then back on again, and there it was. The stupid red rings of death. AGAIN. Xbox 360 #3 has died. MS talked about the failure rate being "acceptable", but for me, my failure rate is 100% so far. I don't believe that's acceptable. The annoying thing now is that I'm out of warranty. My original 360 had a three year warranty. It was bought on Jan 1, 2006, so I've expired that now. My third 360 (this one) was a warranty replacement for the second one, and the warranty for "in warranty replacements" is not another three years, it's one year (according to the website), and that too has expired. So I'm out of warranty for all three of my 360's. I suppose I could fight it on the grounds that my current 360 is still the original footprint, and should be warranted for three years, but then I'd get another one. So I'm stuck now with paying $99 for a warranty repair. To add insult to that, the warranty repair place is about 10 miles from my house (was 8.2 from 3D Realms HQ), and because the facility is in Texas, I'd have to pay sales tax on that. So my replacement cost would be about $110. From what I know of the repair procedure from going through it, they'd likely send me another one of that kind. Since my original purchase was technically a core unit, that's what they'd send me back. Great. I don't really want to pay them that much money to get a FOURTH box with the original mostly problematic hardware footprint. My original 360 was a gift from 3D Realms for Christmas back in 2005 (well, Jan 2006, but you get the point). My second one was technically a core purchase. I got so mad at repair that I went and bought a new core unit - my total out of pocket expense for that was about $80 after I sold my original unit broken on ebay (Got about $125 for that, surprisingly). The second one went back to MS and I got the third one for free under the warranty repair program, so my total expenditure for the three 360's was about $80, which isn't too bad all things considered.
So on Sat July 26th, I went to Worst Buy to buy a 360 Arcade. At $199, it's much cheaper than what it was when originally available, and with information gleaned from the article above, I was confident I was going to get a Jasper machine. Surprisingly Worst Buy was sold out of them. That surprised me a bit. I did notice while I was there, that their 360 Pro units were Jaspers. I wasn't buying that, but I checked 'em out. So I headed over to Toys R Us, which had one 360 Arcade, and the guy I asked to look at it had some knowledge of the situation, as he said "Oh, you're looking for the new chipset". He didn't think it would be that one, since he said "that has been sitting there for awhile now". But I confirmed it was a Jasper with the info from the article. Bought it, brought it home. Good news on the unit. Once I got it out of the box, there was no doubt about it. Jasper unit. It was manufactured on March 30, 2009. The Arcade machines are a bit better now than this thing was when it was called a Core at the start of the console's lifecycle. The new one I got came with a wireless controller vs a wired controller. It also has 512Mb of memory ON BOARD, and not via an external memory card (it ends up being about 400Mb of usable space, which is nice for a throwin). The overall sound of the unit is way quieter, the power adapter is much smaller, and also has much less output. It's 12.1w now vs the 16.5 of the old units. So all of those should hopefully. FINALLY. Figure out the RROD problem, which was heat related. I plugged in my old cables, and the 120Gb hard drive I had, and I was up and running pretty quickly once I got home. There's a lot to like about this new model vs the older ones I had. So a few days after I bought the new model, I discovered that I could get my dead unit repaired for free. While technically out of warranty, that "three year" extension talked about for awhile applies to RROD, and this unit qualified for that repair. So I sent it over to them, and let them repair my third 360. I wasn't sure what they'd do. I mean, they couldn't send me the original 2005 hardware footprint AGAIN in August of 2009, could they? On Sunday the 2nd, I noticed that my info had changed in the repair area of the Xbox website. I had a new Xbox 360 in my list of "owned consoles", the new one they were sending me back. I could see what the serial number was, so I looked online, and found this link telling me how to decipher the serial number of an Xbox 360 to find out information about it. So from what I found, this unit was made between June 7th and 13th, 2009. (Not that it matters, but it was the 2,791st 360 they made that week in lot 9). So for a unit made in June of 2009, SURELY it would be the Jasper footprint, right? They would send out the corrected hardware - they wouldn't mess with any of the old stuff, right? WRONG! The UPS guy showed up at my door today, and gave me back the coffin. He commented "Oh, an Xbox, eh?" I said yeah, and we got into talking about it. Anyway, he told me that the repair facility in Mesquite TX is actually ON the giant UPS distribution grounds. He said that Microsoft has leased space on the actual UPS grounds so that they can ship these things out and save on shipping costs. Wow. I knew both the UPS plant and the Xbox repair place were close to each other, but I didn't realize they were in the same actual place! Anyway, as I was walking in, I looked at the stickers on the outside of the box, and my heart sank, as I saw the word "Zephyr", which is one of the code names for the original 2005 hardware footprint. Great. Just great. It's just mind bogglingly amazing that in August of 2009, they're shipping the same hardware footprint from 2005 that had all the heat problems, and is the one most likely to RROD. I plugged the thing in, and it works OK, but then they all work for awhile. Something else I found really bizarre about this unit was on the back where the manufacture date normally appears on a 360 was the phrase "Service Date". The date on the back of this unit is Aug 2, 2009, which was when they packaged it up to ship out to me. So this tells me that they just make a bunch of the original hardware footprint, have them sit there waiting for someone to send in a RROD'ed Arcade or Core unit, and send back one of these. That's just bloody amazing. I don't intend on regularly using this unit. I've had enough of the 2005 footprint. I'm quite happy with the Jasper I bought, and will be using that. This will go in the closet as a backup. Had I had to actually send them $99 to repair this, I'd be hopping mad about it. SUMMARY: So to summarize, here's the life of me and Xbox 360 units dying and needing replacement. Unit 1 (Core): Bought new on Jan 1, 2006. Died Feb 3, 2007. Sold dead on Ebay for about $120 or so, helped fund purchase of unit 2. Unit 2 (Core): Bought new on Feb 5, 2007. Died Mar 8, 2008. Sent in for warranty repair. Unit 3 (Core): Received from repair Mar 28, 2008. Died Jul 24, 2009. Sent in for warranty repair. Unit 4 (Arcade): Bought new on Jul 25, 2009. Current active machine. Finally have HDMI jack. Best of the bunch. Unit 5 (Arcade): Received from repair Aug 5, 2009. Is bad original hardware again, put in closet as backup. What a fiasco. If the Xbox 720 or whatever it's called has this same kind of nightmare, wow, will they have shot themselves in both feet, but probably through several other appendages, too. If this wasn't the best console out there this generation, I would have walked awhile ago. |
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Goodbye Compuserve |
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Just read this morning that as of yesterday, Compuserve Classic ceased to be. That's a major milestone for a service that had been around for a very long time. Now I didn't realize the old Compuserve still was operational, that was a surprise. Anyway, Compuserve and I go way back. When I got my first modem in 1986 (a 1200 bps card for my Apple //e computer), the first place I dialed was Compuserve. As I recall, I ran up quite the bill that first month - something like $400. I was addicted to online stuff immediately. As time went on, I was a member of the Sci-Fi forums, and when I got hired a few years later by Apogee, the gaming forums, too. I was all over the place there. And yeah, if you're a Compuserve old timer, you pronounce the name of the GIF file format like the peanut butter name. That's the right way, not the other way (sounding like 'gift'). Anyway, I lasted there for quite a long time, way past when it was commonly used by people. Basically until the point where the guy at my company who paid the bills asked why I still had that account going. :) My old account of 71540,306 is no longer needed, sadly. I read where you can still use your old email addresses if you wanted, but you probably had to sign up to keep it active. I didn't do that, so I'm guessing mine doesn't work anymore. So goodbye Compuserve, you were my first.  |
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Pixar References & "Up!" |
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The Pixar guys are quite awesome - I've said for years they have totally harnased the spirit of what used to be good about old school Disney films. They're also big fans of self references. They are constantly putting in references to their other films, and not always backwards - they go forwards sometimes, too. Like the time in Monsters Inc where Boo gave Sulley a Nemo toy - Finding Nemo had not yet come out at that point. 
Anyway, this year Pixar is coming out with their annual new film, this one is called "Up!" As with all the others, I expect a gaggle of injokes, like "Find the Pizza Planet Truck", and "Where's the Luxo Ball?" (the latter can be seen in one of the earlier movie trailers, actually). Anyway, in watching the third (and I think final) trailer (shown below), there's a rather large bird in the middle of it, which appears to accompany the main characters in the movie plot. I'm looking at this thing, and it immediately reminded me of one of the older Pixar shorts. There was one from 2000 called "For the Birds". It had a bunch of small, mostly annoyed birds sitting on a wire. A larger, stupid bird came up and sat on the line with them. 
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Riding the Trains |
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Yesterday was a day where Mommy was at work, and Samantha and Daddy were at home. We went out to storytime at our local library, hit the bakery for some stuff Mommy wanted, then came home. We sat there for awhile, and an idea popped into my head. We had talked about having Samantha ride the Dart High Speed Rail Trains. Trains are something I recall from my own youth with my father and brother. As you can see of this pic of my brother and I from the 70's.. :) 
So off we drove to the train station, and I talked to Samantha a lot about how she needed to hold my hand, and not walk away anywhere. She was asking a ton of questions about what color the train was, whether the driver was a boy or girl, how fast the train would go, etc, etc, etc.. I answered all her questions but went on a lot about how she must hold Daddy's hand. Which she did well with; if we weren't sitting in our seats on the train, she was holding my hand. While I wasn't really concerned, taking my three year old downtown into Dallas was something new, and I didn't know how she'd react. Or how people would react to her, to be honest. But we got to the train station, and went to buy our tickets. Even that was exciting to her. I printed out the tickets from the machine, and said here are our tickets, and she went off again, "TICKET! TICKET! TICKET!". But it was not lost on me the moment we walked over the train tracks and onto the station - this was something that I loved as a child and a family event, and then on my own when I was older riding the mass transit system of Philadelphia (Septa). Samantha got up onto the train without much difficulty, and found a seat. 
She got all excited when I told her that the train went under the ground. Not a lot of the rail line goes underground, but there's a part where it does as it approaches the downtown area. She really enjoyed that part - I don't know why as there was nothing to look at out the window - was just black, save for the one lone underground station they have on the line. But she loved it, which is odd, as it is Mommy's LEAST favorite part. So we got out of the tunnel and called Mommy, who at this point was on her lunch break. She was quite surprised to realize that her husband and daughter were in downtown Dallas on a train. But Samantha obviously conveyed how much fun and happy she was, so that was good. By now, I think Samantha wanted to see something else, so we got off the train at the West End Station which is a big transfer station, actually. We walked around a little bit, and posed for a picture that came out QUITE well, it's shown here. 
I love my daughter. |
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MacGruber |
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This was on Saturday Night Live this past weekend. MacGruber is a recent vintage SNL recurring bit, and for some reason I laughed really hard at this (especially the third one). My wife witnessed it, and it's really short, dumb, and it always blows up at the end. For some reason, I really enjoy the MacGruber bits. :) There's more of them available here. |
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A question about the Digital Switchover |
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First off, I hope it goes over in February, and not June. Folks have been saying it's coming for years, the February date has been known for quite a long time now. What are you waiting for, people? If you didn't notice by now, go dark. Meh. Anyway, the question I have is this. In all the talk we see about the big digital switchover, the talk is that the air wave space that is currently allocated for over the air analog television signals is going to be reassigned for other use. What is going to happen at some point down the road if I plug in rabbit ears to one of my old television sets without a digital converter box? Will my TV set pick up whatever is using that old spectrum space? I'm sure if it's data, it'll be encrypted, but what if it's used for voice or something? Will my old TV set become the new police scanner radio of the next decade? :) |
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