« August 2005 | Main | October 2005 »

September 21, 2005

Our Blog: How Can a Major Cable TV Company Screw Up So Bad?

By: The Dude on the Right
I was going to do this Blog about hurricane Rita and how I figured God must have messed up with Katrina, but instead, my blog has quickly shifted to my being totally pissed at the cable TV company called Comcast.  Why?  Simply because at the time of this writing, it's 7:42PM, CDT, at least according to my computer, and their sports channel, who took the rights from the Fox Sports channel, is still out on my cable system.  Normally I wouldn't care, except tonight is the rubber match for this three game series between the Chicago White Sox and the Cleveland Indians.  That's right, the channel simply says "No signal."  These people don't even have a back-up to say something like "We are experiencing technical difficulties."  Nope, just a blank, fucking, screen, and I hate to get blue with this blog, but I find this unbelievable from one of the largest cable companies in the United States, at least without the ability to put something real on my screen.  This wouldn't even be an issue, except this is a game that can DECIDE THE WINNER OF THE DIVISION.  I've seen dozens of other sport's broadcasts where they have technical difficulties, but at worst, they have, on screen, something saying they are having problems with the broadcast, and at least better, have the broadcasters on telephones, at least giving the play-by-play, even without the video.  Yea, I know, I could find a radio and get the game, but I pay way too much money for my cable TV, so I am way pissed off.  I just did a quick check of the Major League Baseball site, I see my Indians scored a run, and I can't watch it because, well, now I'm stuck watching Martha Stewart in her Apprentice version.  Fine, I hate to admit that I sort of wanted to see that show, but right now, baseball takes a lot more precedence over what Martha will say when she cans someone.  Yes, I did call the cable company, and they said they are having problems, but the dude on the phone, who seemed nice enough, said he had no idea when the problem would be fixed.  The problem isn't when it will be fixed, it's just that why should I have to call?  Why can't you put something on my TV screen that says there are problems going on, rather than just "No signal."

Oh, by the way, for this episode, Martha said "Jeffrey, you just don't fit in."  Then told him "Goodbye," and wrote him a note.  But now it's time for "Lost," and hopefully the game will be back on, otherwise, I'll just have to keep watching my internet screen to seen the Gameday Live update.

If I can get to another blog tomorrow, I'll explain how God must have messed up, but for now I'm just pissed.

That's it for this one!  I'm The Dude on the Right!!  L8R!!!

Posted by Rightdude at 8:08 PM | Comments (0)

September 20, 2005

There's Just Too Much TV, and The Cleveland Indians Aren't Helping.

By: The Dude on the Right
Only a few days into the fall television season, and I am quickly realizing that I am screwed because now baseball is getting in the way. Pretty much having lived in the Chicago area longer than I lived in the Cleveland area, I aligned myself with the Cubs. But at the beginning of this baseball season, the Chicago White Sox were going crazy, and it was just baseball that was fun to watch. My Cleveland Indians weren't doing all that great, and lord knows the Cubs were all over the map that you couldn't get around them, and I'm not saying my allegiance shifted from the Cubs to the White Sox, but I would find it cool to get a playoff team that seemed destined to go all the way, so I started rooting for the Sox. But then a couple of funny things happened. First, the White Sox started not playing so well. Second, the Indians started playing phenomenal baseball, and on sports talk-radio all over Chicago, everyone was worried about the Indians. And now look, the Tribe took the first game of this huge series against the Sox, and if you look at their remaining schedules, the Indians look poised to make one of the greatest comebacks in baseball history while the White Sox fans will no longer be able to make fun of the Cubs and their '69 demise, because, well, their demise may rank right back up there in the baseball disaster record books.

But that's not why I'm screwed. Nope, tonight the ballgame is on, but in conflict with many another show. I've got "The Biggest Loser," the season finale of "Big Brother 6," the premiere of "My Name is Earl" and "The Office," not to mention the conflict with the damn "Dancing With the Stars" dance-off, and the conclusion of "Rock Star: INXS." Sure, I've got a TIVO, and an old VCR, but I don't think that is going to cut it. I was trying to get around it, but dammit, I might have to look into getting another TIVO, or the digital recorder from my cable company, or just throw all of my TV's out the window and read a book instead. The latter will never happen, but for now, all I know is that for my television viewing this Tuesday evening, I'm screwed.

That's it for this one!  I'm The Dude on the Right!!  L8R!!!

Posted by Rightdude at 7:27 PM | Comments (0)

September 16, 2005

"Survivor" Was Great, but Why Are We Doing a Podcast?

By: The Dude on the Right.
Again I give myself dilemmas.  It's bad enough I'm already getting sucked into the fall television season, with my already being pretty much hooked on "The Biggest Loser" and "Survivor," but I know the new seasons of everything else I like are coming up quickly.  Then I started questioning just why in the hell am I really starting a podcast.  I mean, what's really the point.  I have the website, I have this blog, and now it seems I'm just being redundant with the podcast thing.  But I've got something to say, and it's a place to say it, so for now I'm going to just go with the flow, and maybe figure a way all of the things can meld together in a really coherent way.

The weather is finally a little better here in the Chicago area, although it's supposed to warm up again next week, but we'll see how that goes.  I've got movie dilemmas, choosing between "Lord of War" or "Just Like Heaven," there's the Bears game on Sunday afternoon eating into my movie-watching time, I'm covering My Chemical Romance Sunday night, and I still haven't seen the damn penguin movie although everyone says it is incredible.  That, and I'm heading back to the old country, alright, just Ohio, next weekend, so we'll see how all of that plays into things as the upcoming week comes along.

I did do another podcast so use the highlighted link to get there because I'm still trying to figure the best way/placing of our podcast link on our pages.  Tomorrow, though, I'm thinking all of these dilemmas will be history, because I'll have $250 million dollars to work with to solve them because I have the winning Mega Millions ticket in my pocket!

That's it for this one!  I'm The Dude on the Right!!  L8R!!!

Posted by Rightdude at 7:33 PM | Comments (0)

September 14, 2005

Almost ready to start our podcast - Never the easy way.

By: The Dude on the Right
Today has been a busy day where, at the end of the day, I'm not really sure how much I really got done.  For some reason I figure we need to do a podcast.  Hell, everyone else is doing one, why not us.  So I spent a lot of the last few days trying to figure out the best way to get this up and running.  I wanted to use my blogging software to set up the podcast area, so that was an issue in itself, especially since I can't seem to upgrade to the new version and that still has me twisted because if there's a newer version of software, I think I should have it, even if it causes trouble.  Hell, I spent Saturday trying to get my iPod software to work again (Apple introduced version 5, which seems to have some bugs in it), but finally, after way too much time, my iPod is working again, and as of this evening, I think I have the podcast templates almost okay for the podcast area I'm planning on setting up.  The rest of today was trying to find software that would allow me to record my podcast with a real-time, going in my headphones audio, because I plan to incorporate audio/music/other clips into the podcast as I record it, so it would be really helpful if I could hear everything I am trying to record at the same time I am talking.  Anyway, I think I might have found my initial software, made by a company called Acoustica, but they only give a seven day trial download, so I suppose I have to figure out quickly if it will be my podcast software of choice for awhile, and such are my issues, as well as already getting sucked into "The Biggest Loser" when it was on TV yesterday.  And then Survivor starts tomorrow (thank God President Bush scheduled his speech for 8PM CDT, because he would have lost another notch in my popularity poll had he interrupted the Survivor premier.)  Anyway, my initial plan is sort of like recording my own five to fifteen minute podcast on the internet, at least for now, either just doing a review of a concert or movie I saw, or just some other crap I can think to talk about.

Alright, this is dragging on to long.  Right now our podcast site is at www.entertainmentavenue.com/podcast, the first podcast is simply a test with a review of the movie "Crash", but eventually there should be a link to be able to subscribe to it, at least, hopefully in the next day or so, or at least by the end of the weekend.  Those out there say podcasts are easy to do/set-up, and maybe, sometimes they are, but I like to make things a little more polished, or maybe a little more Polish (at least staying with my nationality), and in any case, that makes it a little more difficult.

In any case, if the podcast thing isn't working yet, I apologize.  Give me a few days to get things clicking, and I thank you always for your support.

That’s it for this one! I’m The Dude on the Right!! L8R!!!

Posted by Rightdude at 8:12 PM | Comments (0)

September 11, 2005

Football is Back With Full Force.

By: The Dude on the Right
I just couldn’t bring myself to actually go out and see a movie this weekend, I mean my choices were and Exorcist-type movie which is actually more about the priest, and "Mr. Man," which, well, just didn’t look that good. So this morning after reading my newspaper I actually hunkered down with a DVD I picked up, the movie "Crash," and it was a great drama that really didn’t hold back showing a lot of people are either blatantly racist or have it in them without realizing it. But that’s not the important thing today, and I know, we are remembering 9/11 four years ago, but fall is officially here as NFL Sunday kicked into high gear.

Right now my Bears are struggling on offense, and I see my Browns aren’t fairing too well as of yet. Hopefully that will change by the end of the afternoon, but as football season has officially begun, I also am filled with impending dilemmas, namely the fall television season is ready to begin, which I mentioned in my last Blog. And here’s where the problem lies. As I keep trying to expand the web site, get back to concert reviewing and covering more things, I also have this grand notion of starting a podcast, but where will my TV viewing come in. Sure, the TIVO and VCR will be used diligently, but when will I watch things. My original plan a few years ago was to record things during the week and then watch everything over the weekend. That was fine for then, but if I’m doing the podcast thing, especially on a mostly daily basis, it won’t do much good to give you any kind of TV recap when it’s a week late. I guess I’ll just have to figure things out, with I guess the first thing actually being getting my podcast up and running.

Hope you had a good weekend and have a great week. See ya next time.

That’s it for this one! I’m The Dude on the Right!! L8R!!!

Posted by Rightdude at 2:49 PM | Comments (0)

September 9, 2005

Easy Upgrades Sometimes Aren't.

By: The Dude on the Right
I've got so many things I have wanted to write about.  There's the entire New Orleans' thing, a rant about why Kentucky Fried Chicken sucks and it's not related to PETA, my picture with Johnny Cash, how proud I am of Columbus, IN., how I'm rooting for my Indians and torn about rooting for the White Sox, about my Jimmy Buffett weekend (Stu might need some bigger coconuts), and just general things.  I also intended to figure out how I could get a Podcast going for the site.  Then I decided to try an upgrade to my blog software.

So, for the past three days, the stubborn streak in me has gotten the best of me.  The upgrade was supposed to be easy, I even had a couple of helpful sites to make things even easier and not mess everything up.  Then, of course, I didn't really listen to them, then I started searching the internet as to why I was getting this "500" error, then I just started deleting things willly-nilly, then things still didn't work, then I did another internet search for some Perl code that might actually help, then I just prayed that my Frontpage backup had all of the files that I had since deleted and it would upload them as instructed.  Finally, three days later, I'm back up and running with the old version of my Blog software (thank you Frontpage), and until I actually read somewhere, or at least one of the technical folks at my hosting site or the blog software sight, give me some help into how to make the upgrade work, I'm sticking with the older version that was working well enough for me in the first place.

I kind of hate when I get in that stubborn mode, spending days on something that really doesn't have an answer at the moment, but alas, I do that every now and then.  So here's the quick update - I'm not going to really try upgrading things until I get a firm answer so I can at least switch my focus from computer programming to the important things, like Jimmy Buffett, NFL football, movies, music, and what scares me even more, because it usually becomes the "I never get anything done because of," Falll TV programming.  Most of my favorite shows are returning, I'm sure there are some new one coming for me to get sucked into as well, and I might have to buy a new TIVO to keep up with it all.

That’s it for this one! I’m The Dude on the Right!! L8R!!!

Posted by Rightdude at 8:40 PM | Comments (0)