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I moved in January and I decided then that cable TV would be something that I would do without. My roommate didn’t already have it in the apartment, so I decided that I could go without it. Since I could barely get two network channels clearly enough to see what was going on even with an antenna, I have been pretty much without TV since then. I did manage to get caught up on all the shows that I had previously been watching, but I was always behind.

Over time I got used to not having TV. I spent more time on other hobbies. There were times, however, that I couldn’t help but feel out of touch with things that were going on in the world (I like to watch the news) and new TV shows that everybody talked about.

With the start of the new TV season I figured it was a good time to jump back into TV. The DIRECTV guys came by today and installed our service. The guy who seemed to be in charge wasn’t the friendliest person in the world. The second guy who seemed okay, but he installed the dish outside so I didn’t see him much. The third guy didn’t seem to speak much English. The lead guy spoke to him using English and a few Spanish words. I tried to help the lead guy connect the receivers to the TVs since I know how to do it and I know our TVs better than him. He didn’t seem to like that and they handled all but the first TV. I can understand why they would want to be ones to do it. One guy went into my room and shut the door while I was helping the lead guy in the other bedroom. Somehow that made me slightly uncomfortable to have a complete stranger shut up in my room. I’m sure it was all innocent and all he was doing was connecting the receiver. The lead guy kept asking to use our phones to make calls. He made the calls in order to get the service up, but you would think he would have his own phone to use for that. He also asked to use our bathroom. I’m glad there wasn’t any major unpleasantness going on in there.

They had trouble getting the receiver activated at first. A few times the lead guy came back in, looked at the screen, and left without saying a word. At one point after he had been gone for a while, I looked outside and noticed that the truck was gone. I went out back and didn’t see anyone there. I didn’t know for sure if he was coming back or not. He had left his clipboard, so I assumed that he was coming back. When he finally came back he informed us that the guy installing the dish wasn’t doing something correctly and that was what caused the problem. At some point while he was on the phone, he handed me the phone to answer some questions. The lady on the other end tried to get me to sign up for some kind of special promotion, but I quickly stopped her. I signed up for exactly what I wanted when I signed up.

Overall, it wasn’t a whole lot of trouble getting DIRECTV up and going. They didn’t have to do anything out of the ordinary that would have cost me any kind of fee. It’ll be nice to get back into this form of entertainment. It was even fun to see TV commercials again. I enjoyed watching Cheat! and X-Play for the first time in a while and I spent some time watching ESPN (I won’t even comment on that game tonight). I started on my newly purchased Battlestar Galactica DVDs last night. I wonder if I can get caught up before the new season starts.

I have so many games that I have: only played once, played a lot but never finished, or never played at all. I decided to come up with a plan to work my way through some of these games. I started by compiling a list of all the Xbox games that I hadn’t completed yet. I picked the Xbox because the Xbox 360 will probably be the first next-generation system that I buy. I figured I could just retire my Xbox if I play all of the games that I want to.

After I made the list I ordered the game in the tentative order that I want to play them. That order is very tentative. Then I went to Gamespy.com, Gamespot.com, and IGN.com in order to obtain estimates on how long it would take to beat each game. For games that I had already started, I tried to estimate how much longer I had to play the game to finish it. Of course I used a spreadsheet for this because I have no life. I know this makes it sound like work, but it’ll be fun. I’m already having fun working my way through KOTOR II. My total estimate for Xbox games is 143 hours. At my rate it’ll take me about 6 years to finish them. The third Xbox and the PlayStation 4 will be out by then. The list and estimates are below. Some of these games I don’t even own yet. Some I may not like and decide not to play anymore. We’ll see how it goes.

There’s a ranking on MSN.com of the 100 angriest cities in the US. The factors that were considered are:

• the percentage of men with high blood pressure
• the rates of aggravated assaults
• the number of workplace deaths from assaults and other violence
• traffic congestion data
• the number of speeding citations per state

My hometown, Jackson, MS, is number 13 on the list. The obvious joke would be for me to say that I’m angry to see Jackson on the list, but I can’t say that. Other southeastern cities and their ranks are: Orlando (1), St. Petersburg(2), Nashville (5), Miami (7), Memphis (8), Jacksonville, FL (9), Birmingham (21), Atlanta (24), Baton Rouge (28), Montgomery, AL (46), and Little Rock (72).

The top two angriest cities are in Florida. I guess I would be angry too if I lived in Florida (just kidding).

Update:
I accidentally left Tampa (12) off the list of southeastern cities.

Over the past week or so I’ve been watching the first season of an HBO series called Rome. The twelve episodes depict the period from Caesar’s victory in the Gallic Wars to the time of his death. Although it focuses on Caesar’s rise to power and death, it also focuses equally if not more on the lives of two Roman soldiers: Lucius Vorenus and Titus Pullo. If you’re like me and like to watch shows and movies based on historical events, then this show is definitely worth checking out.

Yes, there will be a second season that will air sometime next year.

After a recent Sprite spill on my laptop, I got it into my head that I wanted to clean the laptop’s keyboard. On Saturday I finally got around to doing it. I removed the keyboard from the laptop, removed each key, and then cleaned everything with Q-tips and water. I even made a diagram beforehand to show me where all the keys should go once I finished. It took a LONG time. If my warranty hadn’t expired a long time ago, this probably would have voided it. I think that next time I should just buy a new laptop instead.

I was asked to participate in a 14-day study that ended yesterday. I had to keep track of what of beverages I was drinking each day. I was even given a Palm Zire to record all the beverages that I had each day. I tried to record them as soon as I drank them, but that wasn’t always convenient. They asked for information such as: the size of the drink, the time of day, the type/brand of drink, the type of container it was in, what I was doing while drinking, if I drank alone or not, etc. I’m being paid enough to make this worthwhile. I probably missed a couple of beverages here and there, but for the most part I was pretty diligent about recording them. I wonder if I ended up drinking less because I knew I would have to record a lot of information into the PDA every time I had a drink. I wish I could keep the PDA.

Participating in this study made me realize that I drink way too many carbonated beverages. At least 75% of what I recorded was some kind of carbonated drink, with a few waters and 2 sweet teas in there somewhere. There was no alcohol, however. I used to drink a lot more water and I need to get back in the habit of doing so. I’ll be sure to start that…tomorrow.

As I was falling asleep last night I was watching something on TV that had skaterboarders in it and it brought back a vague memory of some game that I played long ago on the NES. I remembered skating on a halfpipe and doing tricks for points. It seemed like there were other events you could compete in, but I couldn’t remember any of them. Of course I was going to go crazy if I didn’t figure out what that game was. I was too lazy to get up a look it up last night and didn’t want to take the time while I as at work today.

Using Google I was easily able to find out that the game was California Games. I probably played it some time around 1989 or 1990. Check out the Wikipedia article for more info. and some pics. I remember not being any good at the surfing event, so I didn’t really like it. I think the rollerskating event was pretty fun though. Nostalgia is great.

I read last week that 37 degree programs at Mississippi’s state universities are being put on probation because they are not producing enough graduates. The programs that were put on probation at Mississippi State (my alma mater) are:

• Trade & technical studies, bachelor’s
• Manufacturing technology, bachelor’s
• Political science, bachelor’s
• Computer science, PhD
• Computer engineering, PhD
• Environmental toxicology, PhD
• Veterinary medical science, PhD

I thought this was interesting because I got my master’s in computer science last year. I thought about the possibility of pursuing a PhD while I was in graduate school, but it was only for about a split second. I have a vague memory of hearing that the PhD program in computer engineering was in trouble when I was in school, but I didn’t know about the one in computer science. It looks like they might be merging the computer science and computer engineering PhD programs in the future.