Snowed a lot here. Mainly decorative, didn't effect the roads much. Got to have a night off. First in awhile. Really only like two hours but had a Mayfest meeting and some El Guapos, so all was good. Thursday nights are fajita night, $7.99 fajitas. I want to go back for $3.99 Wet Burrito Mondays...

The only thing missing from South Park's purported cure for SARS is "The Price is Right."

Logan has RSV and for some reason, TPiR is one of the few things that really soothes him.

Also, figured out that if you buy a receiver, go to AVSforum.com and quit looking at the manual. The manual tells you about the receiver, not the settings for your other half-dozen components to make everything work right (and in 7 channels instead of two.)

The new receiver is here. Does every major audio format and HDMI upconversion. It's like the sugar-coated side of the miniwheats. Now I've just got to program it, get the 8 billion speakers working, etc.

It's finally wednesday. Got some interesting stuff coming up, hopefully recoup and regroup. Maybe replace my receiver. I also want to pickup Saw IV on DVD. I liked the first three and I want to know how it (doesn't) end.

Deciding maybe I can keep up with Netflix this time. My queue is around 50 discs so far.

Not quite, but I world about 22.5 hours yesterday.

I'm pretty much worthless right now.

Oh, and I'm tired to.

Woke up this morning think it was Friday. Sure way to inspire disappointment.

The 2009 Dodge Ram was revealed this weekend. The interior has gone from bland truck to sports car. Plus any truck with a 0-60 under 7 seconds is amazing. I figure it will be 3 years before I could consider one for my driveway, but I can still drool.


I'm 4 days into my "eat breakfast stupid" and "1 Meelion percent increase in water consumption" plans. I ate a poor breakfast on the days I did and drank no water. Been having oatmeal, fruit, water, and some breakfast sandwich or similar for protein. I definitely am less hungry at lunchtime and somewhat less at dinnertime.

Well, it can't kill me...

For breakfast: water and an apple with my bacon-egg-cheese-Texas toast
breakfast sandwhich. Mixed in some healthy.

Had a health care screening at work. They said the results are a bit higher this time of the year due to the holidays, but overall I did very well for an overweight fast-food aficionado who loves himself a good recliner.

Total Cholesterol: Borderline, but not high, likely just a post-holiday peak
HDL (Good Cholesterol): Good
LDL (Bad Cholesterol): Near Optimal
TC/HDL Ratio: Very Good to Ideal
Triglycerides: Normal
Glucose: Normal
Blood Pressure: Borderline

They told me that I needed to drink more water and eat a little less fast food and my BP will be fine.

Schweet.

It's a real pain in the rear when this thing disappears. Why do they have to have those little "ABC" button that don't appear on like, 98% of the universal remotes out there?!?!?

After a 5 year hiatus, rejoined netflix. I promised to do better this time. It's working out well so far.

Also, went down to a one DVR household today. I'm blaming the writer's strike for lack of anything worth recording.

If I remember correctly, it wasn't that long ago that a meteorologist from one station was fired for preempting programming for a weather report, at the same time, some stations can't seem to stop preempting programming.

Last night I was watching American Gladiators. Not great programming but with the writer's strike, what else is there to watch? Anyway, they broke in no less than 5 times in an hour to talk about a storm in eastern oklahoma. Each break ran 5-10 minutes. At one point they played five commercials, and when the program was coming back on, they broke in. They even took time to show viewer pictures of hail in lawns and the obligatory 10 second intro and tag "this has been a channel 2 weather report" at the end.

I understand the need to get weather information across, but you don't need to show hail pictures, ramble forever and if you're going to preempt part of the program, don't skip the actual competitions and come back in time for the recaps. Most of the show, all that was aired was people talking about what just happened and you got to see very little of the actual contest.

/RANT

The tagline to Oklahoma's tourism campaign and recent license plates, "Native America," always confuses me. Much of the state income is made from the harvesting of our natural resources as well as the fact we have the highest number of man-made lakes in the U.S. Now, we are once again using this tagline on our new state license plates, the proposed designs of which can be seen here. Apparently the choice is really just like the old kids pretend game of Cowboys vs Indians. Not a single meth lab, pregnant teenager or call center to be seen.


Just like Steven Colbert, I hold the above truths to be self-evident, so I did absolutely no research.

With the writer's strike sucking the life-force out of the magic light box in my living room, reality TV is the only choice remaining. While the meat-and-potatoes are gone from TV, all we have is slim-fast (or 'Ensure' if you're watching The Price is Right.)
Name the top ten five reality shows you can think of.... Okay, now every show you listed I hate. The 80's nostalgia in my heart and desire for alternative programming made me giddy for the return of "American Gladiators." So far it looks like a good blend of the old show combined with updates based on lessons learned in the last 20 years of competition TV shows. I was a bit surprised by the use of the pyramid setpiece in two events, but overall I'm glad there's something on worth watching.

Also worth watching:

• The Colbert Report
• The Price is Right
• Transformers Animated
• Sarah Connor Chronicles (coming soon)
• Anything educational in HD
  

I got my travel IQ up to 100. Only a few of my clicks were on the wrong side of the planet. I've seen enough TV and studies to know that "one third of americans, don't have maps" and thus are doing WAY worse than I am on this.

http://www.bnbstar.com/travelgame.asp

Grabbed a shiny new 12-pack to take into the office. Salesclerks have the annoying need to punch out the little handle part. I've watched them pucnh out four in a row and never even use the handle. However, if you ask them to NOT punch the hole, they act like you're speaking Klingon. Anyway, so I decide to actually use the handle since they punched it out for me. Low and behold, the handle rips off, then rips around the 12-pack like a tear strip on a TV dinner. The box hits the ground, both ends blow out and now I have an 8 pack. Who thinks, "Hey, let's use cardboard so thin it rivals most trash bags and then put a friggin' hole in the center of it for a handle?"

/RANT

D-day finally hit. Hard to get back into the swing of things. Have work to do for like 4-5 different people.

Wednesday is always the toughest day of the week for me anyway, then add the previous 2 weeks of vacation onto it. Not sure wehre to start. I realized I don't even have a 2008 calendar...

Glad there are only two more work days after this.

Had a real day off today. Take lots of time off work, but today I did nothing of any consequence whatsoever.

Awesome.