More Satellite Nonsense
Well, another day of NFL Sunday Ticket. Green Bay finally managed to eke out a win, though they did everything they could to give it away at the end. I actually spent a good chunk of time during the early game messing around with the audio settings on the satellite receiver and my Sony audio receiver. It looks like none of the Sunday Ticket games have five channel sound, which is kind of surprising. I always thought that they flash those “5.1″ banners at the beginning of football broadcasts, so I expected I’d get a surround feed out of the box. No dice, either on the Sunday Ticket channels or on the local broadcast of the game. Movies on HBO sound pretty nice, though. It’s amazing what’ll happen when you read the manual.
Germany’s Most Disturbing Home Videos
Since it started getting wet around here about a month ago we’ve had a bit of an ant problem in our kitchen. We tried keeping food out of the kitchen as much as possible, but all that seemed to do was make the ants increase their search radius. I tried some Raid dry ant baits, but they would have none of it.
Yesterday, we got some of these Terro liquid ant baits. Spilled a bit of it in the sink and one of the scouts had found it by noon. By 2:00, there were so many crowding around the goop that they were having to crawl over each other to get at that sweet, sweet nectar. There were a ton all around the perimeter of the drop of bait I had spilled and they were making their way into the trap itself. More continued to stream out of the wall and attack the two traps they had found. So many were around the bait that I thought we had a bunch of dead ants blocking access to the bait by the live ones.
Then we got home from dinner last night, and they were all gone. Apparently all the ones I thought were dead were just busy drinking that stuff up, and it looks like all of them other than two made it back to the nest. I left the traps out again today and was kind of hoping for a second round coming to take the bait because it was just so cool to watch, but it looks like one day of bait has stopped them cold.
Next time, I’ll take a picture.
“The Wire” Posts Will Continue For The Forseeable Future
Good news: There is a Wire blog, Heaven and Here.
Bad news: The writers of the blog have HBO On Demand, so they’re watching the show one week ahead of us Satellite heads.
Guess I’ll have to read carefully. Hell, one of their first posts adresses this very topic:
What this also says is “fuck you, water-cooler,” and that’s another strange side-effect. Even for this blog, the challenge of drawing in the disparate viewers of The Wire will depend in part on how we can manage the expecations of those who have religiously watched the show at its appointed hour, those who snapped it off On-Demand at the earliest possible time, and those who have already downloaded the whole season.
As for “already downloaded the whole season”, believe me, I’ve tried. Apparently my pirate skillz are not what they once were, though. Still, it is somewhat annoying not being able to head over to Television Without Pity’s The Wire Thread to read and discuss the new episode. Really, the only day it’s safe to head over there and not worry about spoilers is Sunday night after the episode airs for real. From 10:00 Central until whenever the next episode shows up on On Demand (Midnight? I’m really not sure.), everybody is on the same page. After that, people are on scheduled dictated by their Television delivery systems.
Those with cable have the episode officially and legally whenever On Demand puts it up. You’d think that the illegal downloaders would be the next group to get it, but actually taking a look on a couple sites right now, only Season 4 Episode 1 is in the wild. There’s no reason people couldn’t video capture the On Demand episode and get it out on the Bittorrent sites, but it doesn’t seem to be happening. I wonder why this is? Do they have some sort of ethics and not want the episode to be out there until it has at least aired once? I kind of doubt that. Is it a question of quality? The people who seed TV shows do seem to take pride in putting the best possible video out there, and I assume you wouldn’t get a HD signal On Demand.
Regardless, those of us without HBO On Demand won’t get the episodes until a week later. Another thing about that. I understand that it’s probably a technical limitation that keeps HBO On Demand from being offered via satellite. But NFL Sunday Ticket? That’s only available via DirecTV because of the NFL’s dumb exclusivity agreement. So it’s not any technical limitation that makes me choose between getting HBO On Demand and NFL Sunday Ticket, it’s a bunch of legal agreements between the NFL and DirecTV.
Which just kind of makes me feel like a sucker when I sign up for DirecTV so I can get Sunday Ticket and not have to go to a bar every Sunday because I don’t want to watch the home team. What about renters who can’t have dishes installed? Too bad, no NFL package for you. What about people without a good view of the southern sky? Too bad, no NFL package for you.
But back to the topic at hand. There’s another The Wire resource over at Slate. A few seasons ago they had psychiatrists write weekly about that season of The Sopranos. This season they’re doing it with The Wire, and it’s going to start next Monday. I remember really liking the Sopranos commmentary, so I think this’ll be fun to read as well. I wonder who they’re going to get to do commentary… Teachers? Police? Former drug dealers? Also, why hasn’t Heather had anything to say yet?
One last thing… A friend was in the DC area for a wedding last week, and brought me back some Baltimore souvenirs. I now have a nice Baltimore shot glass and a bag of peanuts seasoned with Old Bay that were so good I’ve already found another source for them. Thanks Jen!
The solution is to sleep more
After gorging on all 39 episodes in Seasons 1-3 of The Wire in the space of ten days over the summer, having to wait a week between every episode in Season 4 is a bit maddening. I did get my DirecTV installed in time for the official premiere of Season 4, and yeah, it’s pretty much as good as everybody is saying.
Still, like I said, a summer of Netflix fueled TV binging has really made it seem like that’s the way TV should be watched. This year we’ve watched six seasons of David Simon’s first show, Homicide: Life On The Street, watched seasons 1-3 of The Wire, caught up with Season 1 of Weeds, rewatched the BBC’s version of The Office, caught up with Season 5 of Curb Your Enthusiasm, watched the full run of the BBC’s serial-killer show Wire In The Blood, Season 1 of Larry Sanders, Freak & Geeks, and the first four seasons of NewsRadio. Dang, no wonder we were able to go so long without cable. We weren’t not watching TV, we were just rewatching all the old stuff we had missed.
I don’t know how I’m going to make it through this season of The Wire spaced out over sixteen weeks. More than any other, I really think this show is better viewed on DVD. The plot builds slowly over the course of a season, so it’s nice to be able to watch in three or four episode chunks.
Still, it’s not like I’m going to wait for Season 4 to come out on DVD. I’ll be watching every Sunday night this fall like some sort of dope fiend. Also, God Bless You HBO. Thanks for not leaving us twisting in the wind and just getting the announcement of a fifth season out of the way. It’s great that David Simon is going to be able to finish what he started. I just wonder what he’ll do afterwards…
And I’m Spent
Over to the Dallas/Jacksonville game to see if I can at least see the Cowboys lose.
Hey, Terry Glenn, Terrell Owens… It’s almost getting so there’s a reason to hate the Cowboys again.
There’s One More
Wow. Fucking up kickoff coverage now.
Oh, and still getting blanked as of the fourth quarter.
I Paid For Satellite For This?
So it’s halftime of the Green Bay/Chicago opening day contest. As of that end-of-the-half missed-by-six-miles field goal attempt, every phase of this Green Bay team has sucked. Offense, Defense and half of Special Teams. (They haven’t fucked up any kickoffs yet, and that fake punt was kind of cool.)
Well, nowhere to go but up from here, right?
Satellite Install: Last In A Series
The installer showed up about an hour late, but I have no complaints as he installed the system in a pouring rainstorm.
There is a channel called “Game Mix” that shows up to eight games at once, and allows you to select which audio track to listen to. You can then press “Select” to zoom that game to full screen.
It’s beautiful. So beautiful.
I think I’m going to cry.
Cable Update, Since All Are Interested
My cable install was supposed to be Tuesday morning. There was a mix-up at the cable company and I ended up taking a half-day off work for nothing as nobody showed to install my cable. Given another few days to think about it, I changed my mind. No, I’m not going to remain Better Than You, I’m going completely in the other direction.
DirecTV is currently running a promotion where if you sign a two-year contract and sign up for NFL Sunday Ticket, they’ll give you four months free. Since you’re paying for the Sunday Ticket package in four installments, you’re still paying $70 for those four months, so it kind of works out that you’re getting Sunday Ticket free this season.
Still, I’ll take it. I’ve heard nothing but good things about Sunday Ticket. I’ll get to watch Green Bay get trounced all this season at home without having to go to the crappy bar that is no longer owned by a Packer fan and is staffed by bartenders and waitresses who clearly would rather be watching the Chiefs, but don’t want to tell the loyal Green Bay crowd to go away on Sundays.
It’s going to be sweet. Every game! Why I didn’t do this sooner I couldn’t tell you.
Bex even has her own receiver so she can watch something else while I monopolize the living room every Sunday for the next seventeen weeks. Or wait! I could bring that second receiver downstairs and monitor two games at once!
Who’s up for football viewing this Sunday?
