I was on TV

In case you missed it, I was on TV.



To clear up a few things:
I am not a bachelor, even though I am labelled Geeky Bachelor #5. I'm just hanging out with my bachelor friends.
Also, I do not live in an apartment with my mom. I own my own house and live with my wife.

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My Life on the E-List

I got a very surprising phone call today. The producers of Kathy Griffin's My Life on the D-List telephoned me to tell me that I will be appearing on the show that airs next Thursday, August 7.

I was surprised for several reasons. First I was surprised that they would call everyone who was to appear on the show to tell them that they were going to appear on TV. Next, I was surprised that I was appearing on the TV show. Sure, I was around when the crew was filming an episode, and the camera was on me when I was talking to people, but I assumed ever since that day that all appearances of me would be edited out. I didn't say anything very interesting while on camera.

Me in the foreground with other famous people behind me, including Woz, Kathy Griffin, and Rachel True.

I have no idea how much of me will be on TV. I assumed that the most I would appear would be walking around in the background. That still may be the case. Perhaps the producers were just calling everyone they had a release for, whether or not they made the final cut or not.

Anyways, be sure to watch for me. It's My Life on the D-List on Bravo on the episode that airs on Thursday, August 7, 2008.

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I was there when the comeback began!

I joined Apple way back in June 1996. Apple wasn't doing very well, and was posting regular losses. We had a new CEO Gil Amelio who was trying to turn things around.

To make people believe he was doing a good job, he cooked the books and made a fake quarterly profit of $25 million. He made a bunch of cheap hats and bumper stickers and handed them out at a company-wide meeting on July 22, 1996. They said, "I was there when the comeback began! July 22, 1996"



In reality, the comeback had not yet begun, and Gil Amelio would not be around when the comeback would eventually begin. I think we announced a $750 million loss the next quarter. Every year on July 22, I dig out my hat and wear it as a homage - a mocking homage - to Gil.

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The DirecTV HR20 is the crappiest DVR ever

When I got my HD TV, I had to upgrade my DirecTV service to HD. This means I had to get rid of my DirecTivo, and get the DirecTV HR-20. I was a bit weary since Tivo has the reputation for having the best user interface, and all other DVRs are amazingly bad.

My experience with the HR-20 started out OK. Almost every feature in the HR-20 is not as good as the Tivo equivalent, but nothing was horrible enough to get my knickers in a bunch.

Then, the other day, I tried setting up a new Series Link, which is the HR-20's version of a Season Pass. I was informed that I already had 50 Series Links, and so I needed to remove a Series Link, because 50 was the maximum.

What the hell? I don't want to have to deal with this! I want to record what I want to record, and I don't want some piddly device telling me it's too much of a useless wimp to handle more than 50 series links. It's a freakin' computer. It should have no limit. I work on the iPod, and you can put thousands and thousands and thousands of songs on it. Clearly us iPod engineers are much more skilled than the buffoons engineering these DVRs. I'm going to need plenty of more series links when the fall TV season starts.

I started Googling to see if other people had this problem, and I see people talking about it as far back as November 2006. So I'm not alone, and it's not something the DirecTV are able to fix in the last year and a half, so I have little faith in their engineering abilities to fix it anytime soon. Losers.

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It's 2008 and the world has not ended

As I was placing the latest state quarter in my state quarter cabinet, I noticed that 2008 is the last year for state quarters.

I reminisced about when the state quarters first came out. I collected the quarters and didn't spend any of them. I bought one of those electronic component drawer cabinets with over 50 drawers, and labelled each drawer with the state and year that the state quarter would be released.

The bottom of the cabinet started at 1999, and they went all the way to top to 2008. Almost every state quarter I've ever got I have placed into this cabinet. It must be worth a fortune now.

So when I was printing out all these labels, 2008 seemed so far in the future, and I couldn't imagine the world would still be around. Well, at least not like we know it. I did not think that we'd all be dead, but I thought things would be much different. Huge droughts, unbearable pollution, earthquakes, water shortages, crop failures, nuclear bombs, etc.

But the world is still around, and the biggest difference I can think of between now and 1999 is the high gas prices. But I can't imagine the world will still be around in 2017.

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Bad Tacos

Last Thursday was Free Tacos at Jack in the Box if you brought in a receipt for gasoline. I thought it was a great deal, and I like tacos, so I made an effort to go to my local Jack in the Box. I have never had tacos at Jack in the Box. I was expecting the kind of taco that I get at a place like Del Taco. But no, the tacos were crappy. Very bad. It's weird - they do something like deep fry the entire taco. Very greasy.

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George Michael

I saw George Michael perform in San Jose last week, and the show was great.

I especially enjoyed the part where George said, "Thanks for sticking by me for the last 25 years. I know it's not easy being a George Michael fan."

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Now in High Def

I've had my eye on getting a new HD TV for a while, and I finally got one last week. It's a huge 52" LCD. I got a deal on it through an employee discount at work, although to be honest, I'm not sure if I really got a good deal or not.

When I got it, I had to pull it out of the box sideways and attach the stand to it. When I finished and lifted it up, I stood back to admire the greatness of it. My wife was observing me, and inquired if I could feel my manhood enlarging.

I hooked it up to my existing standard definition Tivo. Things looked much larger, but now I could see the limitations of the standard definition.

I tried to watch some over the air channels. At first my TV could not find any. Then I remembered that the previous owners had a TV antennae on the roof, so I connected that to the TV. The TV now found about 30 digital channels and some analog channels.

The analog channels looked as bad as I predicted they would. Not clear with lots of static. But the digital ones came in totally clear. I see why they're turning off analog. But digital doesn't mean high definition. Some channels came in high definition, and they looked absolutely amazing. I remember watching David Letterman in high definition, and being awed at how I could see the fabric of the chair that the guest was sitting on, and because the show was widescreen, being able to see items like his mug of pencils that I wouldn't have been able to see before.

I tried playing a DVD. I had a DVD player that's about 6 or so years old. It's best outputs were S-video and component. When playing on the TV, I could really notice the pixelation when I tried playing the DVD widescreen. I may need to fiddle with some settings on the DVD player. Modern DVD players offer a HDMI output and upscale to 1080p, and even more modern DVD players are Blu Ray.

The moral is that when you get a high definition TV, you'll realize quickly how all your old standard definition equipment isn't good enough anymore. I'll post some more describing ways I got around these problems.

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Pie Day

Today is March 14, which is known to geeks everywhere as Pie Day. That's because the first few digits of pi is 3.14.

So I went to Baker's Square yesterday to buy some pies. I asked the cashier lady if she knew it was Pie Day tomorrow. I fully expected her to not have heard of it, and when I told her about it, she would think I was some kind of geek/nerd/loser.

But the cashier had already heard about Pie Day since some other guy was in that day getting pies for his math class. Even so, I still believe she thinks I am some kind of geek/nerd/loser.

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Al Gore in a hybrid

As I was leaving the Apple Inc annual shareholder meeting this morning, I saw Al Gore cram his baggage into the trunk of this hybrid, and then get into the driver seat and drive away.

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