Time left in Bush's term

Days
Hours
Min.
Sec.
Countdown clock provided by BushsLastDay.com

Project Insomnia

Project Insomnia is many things, but in this context it is simply a "braindump" of whatever I happen to be thinking/reading/watching/doing at the moment. Parental guidance suggested.

Wednesday, April 30, 2008

News!

We leave for our long vacation one week from today -- from last night, actually. Next Tuesday, we drive to LA; we fly from LAX to MCO on Wednesday and the ship sails on Saturday. A neighbor will be house- and cat-sitting for us while we're gone. We've never taken this long of a trip and I'm a bit apprehensive. We've had more than a year to prepare, though, and I think we've done everything we can possibly do to ensure it goes smoothly. I'm especially looking forward to the Panama Canal transit.

The Monterey Pine tree in our back patio, which was infected with Pine Pitch Canker, was removed yesterday. It was a decision we really didn't want to make and put off as long as possible, but the base of the trunk was decaying and weakened, and if the tree fell it would have taken out our house. On the bright side, with the tree gone the back patio will get more sun and not be covered in pine needles and sap all the time. In order to remove the tree, the arborist had to chainsaw out some of our back fence -- not really a problem since it was rotted and falling apart anyway. Don't get any ideas, though -- we've put up a temporary fence and the permanent replacement will be installed next week.

I'm still working for Nokia as a result of the Avvenu acquisition from last year. I'm also on the Board of Directors for the Homeowners Association of Mission Palo Alto, and I put in a lot of time in various capacities at MousePlanet. Jennifer is doing very well at CSAA (though they are apparently changing their name for some reason) and not incidentally gets us great travel deals whenever we go anywhere. She's also copy-editing some MousePlanet columns.

The cats are doing well. Watson had his lower left fang removed a few months ago because it had started to decay. He'd lost the upper left a few years ago so now his mouth is a little lopsided, but he's still very cute. Rita and Linus are, after only eight years, finally starting to make friends. Actually it's Rita who is starting to warm up -- Linus has always wanted to be friends but until recently, Rita was having none of it.

This November will mark our tenth wedding anniversary. I know, I'm amazed too.
|| Andrew, 9:33 AM || || link ||

Friday, April 11, 2008

Followup to off-air NBC last night

Received this response to my email to the station:
Andrew - Than you for your note. We lease a fiber optic line from AT&T to provide DirecTV with the best possible quality HD signal. Unfortunately, AT&T tells us that yesterday someone accidentally cut the fiber line between us and DirecTV. As of this morning they have repaired the damage, but we are also talking with DirecTV to better understand why they did not take advantage of the backup options available to them.

We are not able to show last night's programming again soon, but most of the programs should be rebroadcast over the coming months.

Thank you again for writing,

I suppose I'll watch 30 Rock on Hulu or grab it from bittorrent.

Labels: , ,

|| Andrew, 2:04 PM || || link ||

Thursday, April 10, 2008

San Francisco NBC affiliate goes off-air just in time for 30 Rock

First new 30 Rock in months, and KNTV-DT picks tonight to have 'technical difficulties'. The SD channel was apparently working, so my SD-TiVo recorded Scrubs. The HD channel was not, so my DirecTV HD-DVR recorded 30 minutes of "We are having technical difficulties, so NO TINA FEY FOR YOU!"

Nobody answers the phone at the NBC station, and DirecTV can only tell me they are "aware of the problem" but don't have any other information. I wonder if there's any chance the station will re-broadcast the shows that were messed up tonight.

SF Chronicle TV critic Tim Goodman told me in email that he had the same problem. I don't know if he has DirecTV or Comcast or DISH, though.

Labels: , , , , ,

|| Andrew, 11:27 PM || || link ||

Thursday, April 03, 2008

A Request Of Visitors To Our Home

As you probably know, we have three cats. Three cats who are cute, lovable, adorable and in all other ways wonderful. However, they are also autonomous poop-and-shed machines. So here's the request:

If you visit our home and find an objectionable odor, a cat box we've neglected, a carpet stain we've missed or a pile of recently-shed cat hair, please tell us! We don't always notice right away, especially since people tend to get used to the way their home smells. We absolutely won't be offended or upset.

Thank you as always for your support.

Labels:

|| Andrew, 12:40 PM || || link ||

Tuesday, April 01, 2008

A Helpful Tip For An Admittedly Narrow Audience

If you:

You can add a filter (called a Blocking Pattern) to the Todo List which will automatically cancel recording the rebroadcasts. Here's how:

I hope this helps someone. I'm very pleased to no longer have to manually delete the rebroadcasts from my Playlist and Todo list.

Labels: , , , ,

|| Andrew, 2:31 PM || || link ||

Your 2008 San Francisco Giants

Sigh.

Baseball sure is pretty in HD on the 58" plasma. Even watching Your 2008 San Francisco Giants blow it in ways previously thought unblowable was... well... yeah, never mind.

Let's go Oakland?

Labels: , ,

|| Andrew, 12:18 AM || || link ||

"Project Insomnia" and "project-insomnia.com" ™ & SM; site contents © Andrew Rich except where noted.