Derek Bodner’s Blog

I watch 24, and more or less enjoy it. At the very least, I have worse ways to waste an hour of my time. Suspend your belief in reality and it can be compelling at times.

But my lord, do they need a tech geek. It’s not like they can’t still have outlandish, completely implausible scenarios. Just use the right jargon. Or, at the very least, don’t use the wrong jargon. I’d rather have them literally make up words than use real words in completely the wrong context.

Phrases like “they sent this video to our subnet”, which was said in today’s episode, should not make it to the final release.

Outside of sports, there are only 2-3 shows I watch with any regularity, one of which being The Shield, which I have watched from Episode 1 of Season 1. It’s a shame to see the series go, as it was one of the more entertaining for me in recent times. I do have a few thoughts and criticisms on the way it ended. It’ll probably sound like I didn’t like the ending, when in reality I think it was one of the better ones of recent dramas. I’m just overly critical of things like this.
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One of the few shows I still watch tonight is having its series finale. Some predictions:
- Vic will try to save Ronnie, but fail.
- Vic will find out about Corrine, which will be his punishment (that the one thing that matters to him and the one he sacrificed Ronnie to save will turn on him).
- Shane won’t make it out alive
- Dutch will end up killing Lloyd, in self defense fulfilling the cat episode from a few years ago.
- Claudette will have a nervous breakdown.

I recently broke down and bought a tivo. I don’t really watch much TV, but I mainly wanted one for sports. I tend to not always get out of work on time, and miss the first half of a lot of Sixers games. It’s also nice to be able to tape college games (It’s going to make tournament time infinitely better), and for the rare shows I do watch, it’ll be nice to know I won’t miss any.

Anyway, I ended up getting a series 2 tivo, mainly because I didn’t feel like paying for a series 3, who are still comparatively expensive. I found a really, really good deal on an 80 hour series 2, so I went with it.

I originally set it up in our bedroom, as my main use for it wasn’t so much for live tv (fast forwarding live tv would be nice, though), but to record stuff when I’m away. The TV in our bedroom was pretty much only used in the mornings, and since the series 2 is only a single tuner, I didn’t want to tie up the TV at prime time recording my sixers games and prevent Elyssa from watching TV during that time.

I then decided to take the cable box out of the bedroom, as we really only watch stations we can get on basic cable in there. I brought that into the living room, and hooked the tivo up to that. I have the cable box without the tivo going to input1 in the tv, and the cable box with tivo going to input2 on the tv. The cable box with the tivo hooked up is on the ground and turned around, as I don’t need to change it since the tivo controls it, and the two boxes signals never get crossed up. So now I can have something recording on the tivo, switch inputs, and still be able to watch live tv. The ghetto dual tuner tivo for a third of the price. All in all, the setups nice. It’s nice not missing the first half of sixers games, that’s for sure. And I’ve been extremely impressed with the tivo interface. I don’t even care if that makes me a non-gnu/linux purist.

Now, I liked Transformers as much as anyone growing up. But this is just…..wow….
http://www.wkyc.com/news/news_fullstory.asp?id=3828

Decided to install Windows Vista today. Don’t worry, I didn’t do anything crazy (like install it as my primary OS). I have WinXP installed as a VM in VMWare-Server, so I cloned the VM, and upgraded that installation of XP to Vista.

I’ve barely used it, but what I can say is:
It looks really nice. The graphics and usability of it is very well done. If you have 1.5+ hours of free time for the install, 10 gigs of free space, and 4 gigs of memory, then this OS is for you (that is, if the compatibility check passes).

Everybody has their opinion on the Sopranos Series Finale on Sunday, here’s mine.

I especially liked the part when …

Yeah, that about sums it up. For a series finale that had as many loose ends to tie up as the Sopranos did, that was a very underwhelming episode to a great series. The Phil Leotardo scene was a great scene. But it was a great scene surrounded by 30 minutes of filler on each side. For every loose end that was tied up (Phil getting whacked), 5 more were opened up (The profession of Meadow’s fiancée and how it conflicts with Tony, the new rat in the family, etc). And this very well may have been David Chase’s intention. We started watching during the life of the family, and we ended watching at just another point in the family, not necessarily the end.
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