The one channel I really wish I watched more often, and by that logic I feel all the more bad about when they’re having a rough patch, is TechTV. It seems our favorite channel is having issues and issuing layoffs. It’s a damn shame, because while I can understand the problems they’re having (it only makes sense that the channel that covers the tech industry has issues once the tech industry goes into a slump) they really do need some help. They tried a 9.5 hour show called “Tech Live” to run during the day but it’s been cut to thirty minutes – since all the dot com people have to go get jobs now, no one watched the show. The Screen Savers has basically sucked since Kate Botello left it, and now I’m wondering about Extended Play since that show only turned around once she went to it.

I guess I’ve always suspected they were having problems – they’ve never really had the big advertisers. They tend to get ads for things of the “Call in the next ten minutes and we’ll double your order…” variety. They put on hours of shows about how to tweak your system and then they sneak in there an hour long infomercial for some prebuilt computer retailer. Plus, nearly every news story they used to do had to end with the commercial involvement the entity in the story had in the channel – of course now there’s less of that (can’t imagine why…)

Plus another problem is simply the target audience. Computer users (yours truly included) tend to be an exclusive lot – lots of know-it-alls. I had a friend who was a complete Microsoft Whore, and he thought everyone on TechTV was nuts for “jumbling the facts” regarding Microsoft and being too pro-Linux. Go to a Slashdot thread and you’ll see people who believe quite the opposite – the channel is too MS-centric. There’s just no pleasing the end users. I find myself watching the Call for Help show thinking the person who mans the helm is a moron with no idea what he’s talking about. That’s the other problem – nerds tend to quibble on even the smallest of details.

And now the big problem TechTV has is that of programming, or lack thereof. The Tech Live stunt was a good way to cover the fact that they didn’t have too much of it. They tend to run the same shows multiple times a day (which lots of networks do) but they simply don’t have enough of them and with the tech boom winding down it’s going to be harder to fill hours with shows about idiot web pages and yet another has-been music artist turning to MP3 (Willie Nelson). The hell of it is that when they want to, TechTV can make some of the best shows on TV. The show Big Thinkers is on par with most brainy PBS affairs, Extended Play is something I watch religiously, and John Dvorak’s Silicon Spin was great (thought it looks like it’s been cancelled now).

But what to do with all that excess time? Well lately on Friday nights TechTV has been trying different things. They air an occasional tech-related movie. They re-run a Nova special. This weekend, however, they’re starting a 14-episode rerun of the old show Max Headroom. Max Headroom was of course the pseudo-CGI characyer that, along with Cocaine, Regan and Nintendo, epitomized the 1980’s. Few people who watched his Cinemax shows and his Coca-Cola commercials realized that it was originally a British television show. Produced in 1984, it took place in the not-too-distant future (thought the “20 minutes into the future” line was obviously a bit pessimistic) where television channels were small governments, off-switches on television sets were illegal, and ratings were literally to kill for. When a network reporter got too close to the truth of an internal conspiracy to cover up Blipverts, 30 second commercials crammed into one second with the unfortunate side-effect of causing viewers to occasionally explode, the resultant chase causes him to suffer a concussion. With him in their clutches, the network gets an internal hacker to probe into his mind and re-create what it knows in a computer simulation – but the simulation (Max Headroom himself) gets loose and the rest is history.

ABC picked up the pilot and made 14 episodes, but cancelled the show and the 14th episode was never aired, prior to Bravo’s resurrection of the show in the early 90’s. Now it looks like TechTV is reviving the show, if for no other reason than to get some more viewers and fill some more time. I personally thought Max Headroom was great, disturbing and funny television, on the order of a less violent Robcop. I’ll be taping (and possibly downloading) the episodes this time around, and doing my best not to remember the New Coke ads.

This comic summarizes EverQuest and other MMORPG’s in a nutshell to me. Am I wrong? Are there possibly MMORPG’s out there that are fulfilling? Possibly, but I’m not going to pay monthly fees to find out.

Something I’ve noticed. I’ve told a few people about my new monitor and after I tell them the size and the price we paid for it, they ask the brand name. Now, this one stops me because I’m not sure. The monitor has a “TTR” on it, but I’m not sure if TTR is the manufacturer or the name of some incarnation of some company that UCS own/owned and they put their name on it. I know one company UCS owns is Rentsys, who rents out computer systems, so TTR may have been a former name of theirs (I know KeyTrak, the company I worked for for two weeks brands their own PC’s and monitors this way). Even if TTR is the company though, it’s not like Sony or Samsung or some company you’ve ever heard of. Then I realized – I don’t know who manufactured the monitor I had before – it was just the right size and price in Best Buy (yeah I know, BB sucks). I’ve never had any conversations about monitor makers with people. I would imagine if I had a $3000 plasma flatscreen then I would be interested, but I’m not. So, at what size do people start to wonder about manufacturer? I guess it’s 21″ because after that the size gets rediculous (not to say 21″ isn’t already rediculous) and so people start to wonder about other things.

I wonder how feasible it would be to install an older card in a PCI slot and get my dual monitor on…

Oh, what’s sadder than someone paying $14,000 for one of the few remaining 200 Apple I computers? When it’s seen as a disappointment because old Apples used to go for $50,000 or more.

I want to tell you how cool my wife Wendy is. The company she works for periodically has auctions for old things like furniture and computer stuff to its employees. She called me up to ask me if I wanted anything. I didn’t figure there would be anything worth getting (or at least nothing I could think of) so unless she spotted something really cool not to worry about it. She spotted a 21″ monitor and signed up for it. It was a silent auction – one where you place your name and bid on a list and wait. Someone else comes along and outbids you. And so forth. She called me and told me, but noted “I didn’t know if you wanted a bigger monitor.” My response? “HELL YEAH! I NEEDS MORE RESOLUTION!”

She also put her name down for some office type furniture which she wanted. The auction was over at 6:00 and she got off work at 5:00. She went down and she knew a way to win at least one thing (the monitor or the furniture) – stand next to it to intimidate potential bidders. They would see the name on the list, the name on the tag, and then feel too bad to bid. She really really wanted the furniture, but she decided to stand next to the monitor for me. Her bid was up to $55 ($5 increments). Someone bid $60. She bid $65. She stood there and stared down bidders (not really) while tons of people swarmed the furniture she wanted. 6:00 came and we won the 21″ monitor for $65, and someone walked by and informed her we had won the furniture as well. Life is good.

So I got it home and it’s huge. It takes up most of this desk. It’s dingy and the little pull down thingy is half-broke. It had no power cord or VGA cord, I had to dig some up. And it originally hated my Encore card (a reboot synced them up). But man, once I got it hooked up and calibrated with Photoshop and the control panel – it’s huge, and it’s specatcular.

Yeah, my wife rocks like that.

I just played some games on it and since I don’t have the juice to run most games higher than 1024×768, I’m suddenly a big proponent of Full Screen Anti-Aliasing, so that’s next on my list. However, I have NO complaints – this monitor kicks ass and having games playing this big is amazing.

Oh, and I’m now running 1280×960 resolution, so I finally have some screen real estate in VisualStudio.NET, or anything else for that matter.

Can you tell I’m a wee bit happy?

Update – here’s a Slashdot post by the guy who got arrested.

Best Buy saw fit to arrest a man who questioned the price of a GeForce 4 graphics card. This after several years back they arrested someone for writing down prices in their store. You know, come to think about it, I have never stood in line at the computer counter and not seen someone lose their shit in that store at the employees (including my Father-In-Law once). I just may never go to Best Buy ever again – I’d like to get through this life without being arrested if I can.

Pixar has announced their next three movies, Finding Nemo, The Incredibles and Cars. Hit the press release for more info.

The deal with Pixar and Disney is this – Pixar has a contract with Disney that, at this point in time, obliges them to three more movies by 2005, thus the announcement. One of the stipulations for them is that sequels don’t count towards the totals, so we won’t be seeing a Toy Story 3, unless there’s still some demand for it in 2006. Toy Story 2 was originally going to be a direct to video sequel – despite the fact that Toy Story took four years to produce, the logic was that Toy Story 2 would take considerably less time since most of the assets (like the characters and the software) already existed. However the movie/plotline proved to be “too damn good” so they went the extra mile and made it a full blown film, released in 1999. Toy Story came out in 1995 and A Bug’s Life came out in 1998, so at that point there must have been two “teams” working within Pixar. My guess would be that the Bug’s Life team turned around and did Monster’s Inc. for release in 2001. It’s somewhat representative of Moore’s Law that the technology in the films can improve while the turnaround time dwindles, but I would imagine Pixar must have three teams right about now.

Finding Nemo doesn’t have a date yet but the plan is for The Incredibles to come out in 2004 and Cars (my bet is the title changes – A Bug’s Life was originally Bugs) to hit in 2005. In order to work on three films more or less concurrently (Cars is going to have Lasseter back at the helm, so it doesn’t sound like it could be turned around in two years) is to have three teams. Come 2005 they’ll either renew their contract with Disney on better terms (sequels for starters) or venture off on their own.

The movie Shrek was fine and all, but I thought it was more of a fart joke than a film – and it sure as hell wasn’t Oscar worthy. Final Fantasy went to the other extreme – near photorealistic graphics and a horrible story. The recent film Ice Age was a decent movie but the graphics looked to me like a student working on a resume film – they didn’t do it for me like a Pixar film does. And as for that Jimmy Neutron movie? How in the hell did that one even get nominated? The crappiest Quake modification looks better than that.

Pixar hasn’t let me down yet – let’s try to keep it that way, shall we?

And the Treasure Planet trailer looks to kick ass as well.

Oh and I don’t care who you are or how much you like/hate Disney animation, this latest Lilo & Stitch trailer kicks ass.

Last night I watched Aerosmith ICON on MTV, or rather the last half of it. A much better choice than last year’s ICON special, Janet Jackson. Aerosmith kicks ass, always has, always will. One slight thing I take issue with last night, however, was the assertion that Aerosmith is the “only band to make three decades”. Umm, hello? Rolling Stones? Even if you count the album they did (either 1997’s Bridges to Babylon or 1998’s live No Security) as the end of the group (the Stones have not broken up, though the members are currently engrossed in solo projects) that’s still 35 years easy. Still, that Aerosmith is consistently good and even topping their former achievements, as opposed to the Stones which was quite possibly the greatest band in the history of Rock & Roll in the mid 70’s and has been decline ever since, is quite an achievement. Ironic that due to showmanship and Steve Tyler’s lips Aerosmith was originally labeled the “American Stones” or “The Poor Man’s Rolling Stones”.

As far as longevity is concerned, I guess the Stones do hold the record (provided they can be considered “not broken up”). The Grateful Dead came close, but then Jerry Garcia died. KISS is still around, though since they’re currently on a “Farewell Tour” it seems likely that if they do make it to the 30 year mark (2004 I think) it’ll be the end anyway. Besides, KISS has a problem keeping their lineup the same. AC/DC’s been around quite a while, but it’s not really the same since they had a lead singer change (drug overdose).

It still blows my mind that groups I grew up with are celebrating decades. They Might Be Giants started in 1982, Bad Religion’s been around slightly longer, and GWAR even has longtime fans bringing their kids to the show now. Hell, the grunge music I listened to in High School is over a decade old now. When I listen to Appetite for Destruction, I start to feel old.

The other end of the spectrum is the “burn out” artist. Jimi Hendrix recorded for four, maybe five years, but to this day new material is released. The man must have never left the studio, except of course to die of the occasional overdose. Perhaps if Led Zeppelin had not broken up due to the alcohol related death of drummer John Bonham they might have gone south and released imperfect albums – as it stands now their nine studio albums are still brilliant. Had Lennon not been killed we might have seen Beatles reunions and that group would have not enjoyed the legendary status they do now. The Eagles seem less mythical since we know they got back together. Like Denis Leary said, had Elvis died in 1958 we would have been spared the polyester jump suit years.

Therefore, the fact that Aerosmith is still here, still kicks ass, and still has the original lineup is all the more impressive.

One of the most annoying things about being a programmer in a “periodic” environment is that sometimes you’ve made an error in a program and by the time it becomes a problem you can’t even remember why you did it that way anymore, let alone if you were in fact the one to do it in the first place. Today we ran up against a problem wherein people were unable to add a fee option for the summer. Turns out the program had a bug in calculating the timeframe in which this option could be added. The bug was placed there by me in August. After Summer in other words. Actually the section of code it’s in is in two places, one for summer and one for fall & spring. The fall & spring code worked fine and has been working fine. Why I would have dickered up the second section is beyond me – I’m 100X smarter a programmer now than I was back in August, and compared to a year ago when I started this gig, I wasn’t even an amoeba back then.

This is not to say that this bug was a big deal per se – my Boss isn’t losing her hair over it and no one’s mad or anything, but it’s still annoying to wonder why I would have made a seemingly obvious mistake like this back then. On the other hand, I identified a pretty nasty bug that’s been broken for some time now, and people are just now starting to complain. I guess it happens to everyone.