my comcast killer is here

i'm building a home theater pc (htpc) for my ummm... home theater. it will take over for the comcast box. yeah, that's right, i'm cancelling my cable service in a few weeks.

now i have nothing against comcast really. i've had really good service with just a few complaints. i love my dvr. it's just that i don't watch enough "premium" tv to justify the $80/month i pay now for digital silver high definition with dvr. and they're going to raise rates again this year?

espn? espn.com. nfl network? nfl.com. internet@internet.com.

what do i usually watch? 24, house, scrubs, arrested development, lost, and maybe the oc. and eagles football. and guess what? that's all local and FREE. not only free, but FREE IN HIGH DEF if you have a hdtv tuner and cheapo antenna.

go here http://antennaweb.org/aw/welcome.aspx and see how close you are to the broadcast antennas. i'm 6 miles away and i'm surrounded on all sides by skyscrapers and i still get a 95% reception for high definition stuff.

i'll post more later. my parts came in today and i'm assembling as we speak.

awesome

Exxon posts biggest profits ever...again:

http://money.cnn.com/2006/01/30/news/companies/exxon_earns/index.htm?cnn=yes

"The results pushed up Exxon's profit for the year to a staggering $36.13 billion -- bigger than the economies of 125 of the 184 countries ranked by the World Bank. Profit rose 42 percent from 2004."

sonuvabitch.

clean your computers

protip:

your computer has intake fans which draw in air at the front of the computer. the air passes through the computer case and helps cool the magic inside. the air that gets sucked in not only contains air, it also contains dust. so the inside of your computer builds up a lot of dust over time which can clog fans, trap heat, and reduce your computer's ability to move heat out of the computer. it can also potentially be fire hazard as dust has been known to spontaneously combust.

so once a year, grab a can of compressed air, take your unplugged pc outside, open it up and spray the shit out of it.

wandering stars, for whom it is reserved

it's about frickin time.

Portishead to Release New Material
Published: 2006-01-05
After nearly eight years, Portishead are recording a new album. The band has almost finished recording a new album according to group member Geoff Barrow. He tells BBC 6 Music that they are doing another record. We've never actually broken up, or parted or whatever. Even though we haven't played for years, we still see each other and writewe just haven't released a record in a really long time.

The band will be playing Bristol Academy on February 19 to raise money for Oxfam's tsunami appeal. The band will not be playing any new material at the show, but will feature singer Beth Gibbons performing acoustic.

quantify your secret racism

In the test's most popular version, the Race IAT, subjects are shown a computer screen and asked to match positive words (love, wonderful, peace) or negative words (evil, horrible, failure) with faces of African-Americans or whites. Their responses are timed. If you tend to associate African-Americans with "bad" concepts, it will take you longer to group black faces with "good" concepts because you perceive them as incompatible. If you're consistently quicker at connecting positive words with whites and slower at connecting positive words with blacksor quicker at connecting negative words with blacks and slower at connecting negative words with whitesyou have an implicit bias for white faces over those of African-Americans. In other words, the time it takes you to pair the faces and words yields an empirical measure of your attitudes. (Click here for a more detailed description of the test.)

The elegance of Banaji's test is that it doesn't let you lie. What's being measured is merely the speed of each response. You might hate the idea of having a bias against African-Americans, but if it takes you significantly longer to group black faces with good concepts, there's no way you can hide it. You can't pretend to connect words and images faster any more than a sprinter can pretend to run faster. And you won't significantly change your score if you deliberately try to slow down your white = good and black = bad pairings.

Project Implicit

happy chinese new year

chicken feet

popzao

james lipton, otherwise known as the guy from the actor's studio and the arrested development warden.

speaking of celebrity news

yes, kate and charlie are engaged. may they have annoying and irresponsible short mean kids.

and yes, jack bauer is awesome even off the set.

let me reiterate

charlie is the most irritating and incompetant survivor of them all.

i hope he is eaten by the invisible underground black smoke mechanical dinosaur.

derek, i sent you the email

containing everybody's emails for dim sum.

uc high school can burn for all i care

i work a few blocks away from there...

Drexel student pummeled and videotaped by high school students
By Robert Moran
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER

Four University City High School students were arrested for randomly beating and nearly killing a Drexel University graduate student by shoving him into traffic in West Philadelphia - all the while videotaping the attack, police said today.

"It's a very disturbing film," said Lt. John Walker of the Special Investigation Unit of Southwest Detectives. "It's just mind-boggling."

The 30-year-old student, a Haitian immigrant whose name was not released, was assaulted on 36th Street near Spring Garden Street at 1:10 p.m. Friday as he was walking to his apartment nearby, Walker said at a news conference late this morning.

The immigrant wants to leave Philadelphia.

"He's very fearful of his life and of living in that area," Walker said.

The four students - ages, 18, 16 and two 17-year-olds - had left school early and were walking along Spring Garden and taping themselves planning the random attack. They all face attempted murder and related charges. Three of the four are basketball players at the high school.

i hope they all get attempted murder convictions and get masturbated on by the legal system.

ps. if you're going to commit a crime, don't tape it.

fuck santorum

Santorum is touting his roots in reform

He once compared Congress to a rat's nest, and its entrenched Democratic leaders to bullies who "don't want anyone else to play in their sandbox." Rick Santorum, as a freshman representative and founder of the reform-minded Gang of Seven, set out to topple both.

The roles are now reversed.

Fifteen years later, Santorum is one of them - the third highest-ranking senator in a Republican leadership shaken by a corruption investigation.

So last week, fighting an undertow of anti-incumbent voter sentiment similar to the one that helped rush him into Congress in 1991, Santorum returned to his reformer roots. He stood alongside Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.) at a Capitol Hill news conference and vowed to shine more light on lobbyists and the lawmakers they seek to influence.

"It's an opportunity that is very comfortable to me," Santorum told reporters, describing himself as "one of the original congressional reformers" who helped expose the House banking scandal in 1991.

Critics Question Timing of Santorum Bill


WASHINGTON - Two days before Sen. Rick Santorum introduced a bill that critics say would restrict the National Weather Service, his political action committee received a $2,000 donation from the chief executive of AccuWeather Inc., a leading provider of weather data.

The disclosure has renewed criticism of the measure, which Santorum, R-Pa., maintains would allow the weather service to better focus on its core mission of getting threatening weather info out in a "timely and speedy basis."

Opponents say the bill would endanger the public by preventing the dissemination of certain weather data, and force taxpayers to pay for the data twice. The bill would prevent the weather service from competing for certain services offered by the private sector.

AccuWeather, based in State College, Pa., provides weather data to a variety of outlets, including media organizations such as The Associated Press.

"I think the timing of it is what makes it so suspect," said Melanie Sloan, executive director of the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Government, a Democratic-leaning watchdog group. "It's like here's the money and you're going to do what I want."

Santorum said the $2,000 contribution, received from AccuWeather CEO Joel Myers on April 12, came during a fundraiser in State College that happened to be two days before the bill was filed. He said he has worked on the issue for three years.

The donation was disclosed in the April filing to the FEC by Santorum's PAC, America's Foundation.

"I don't think there's any coincidence between the two," Santorum said. "It's just that I happened to have a fundraiser in the town he was in."

Combined, Joel Myers and his brother, Barry Myers, AccuWeather's executive vice president, have donated more than $11,000 to Santorum and the Republican Party since 2003, according to FEC filings compiled by PoliticalMoneyLine, a campaign finance tracking group.

Barry Myers said it was ridiculous to think there was a correlation between the "modest" donations and the filing of the bill.

Santorum said his campaign could likely raise and spend $25 million for the 2006 election.

"We have no connection to how bills are filed, or how they are drafted or dropped at any given point in time," Myers said.

Dan McLaughlin, press secretary for Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida, which is home to the weather service's National Hurricane Center, said the April 12 donation is suspect. Nelson has written to President Bush in opposition to the bill.

"It certainly raises questions about motivation as to why someone would push a policy that is so obviously crummy," McLaughlin said.

Under the proposed legislation, the weather service would be allowed to offer particular types of services only if the private sector does not offer them, a provision similar to rules the agency was guided by for 14 years until last year.

When the rule changed, the weather service and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration expanded into areas already served by the commercial weather industry, according to Santorum's office.

In his letter, Nelson said Santorum's bill would bar weather service forecasters from giving one-on-one interviews to media. He also said it could inhibit pilots' access to data the weather service provides to the Federal Aviation Administration online. When four hurricanes struck Florida last year, the weather service Web site received 9 billion hits, Nelson said.

the irony is fucking delicious. feel free to reblog this to get awareness up. this is an election year and the country would be much better off without this clown in office.

good news, everybody!

Here's the official word on Futurama!!
David X. phoned me about an hour ago and said that this Futurama project
is a done deal! Here's the word from DX---
There are 4 DVD movies that we'll start recording at the end of July or
August.Full feature length FUTURAMA movies.
Everybody is excited to get back together--as I am!

Into the Future,
Billy

more ad news

Showtime Arrested Talks Confirmed

Source: Variety
January 20, 2006

Showtime entertainment president Robert Greenblatt told Variety that the cable channel is in talks to pick up Arrested Development from Fox. "We're very interested in making it work for us," said Greenblatt.

"We're having productive conversations with Twentieth, but we're a step shy of closing a deal," Greenblatt said -- but a pair of major obstacles could still botch plans.

"(Creator Mitch Hurwitz) has not yet said, 'I want to continue to do the show,'" Greenblatt stated, adding Hurwitz's participation would be required if Showtime were to produce new episodes. "Also, 20th is asking for substantially more (coin) than what Fox is paying to license the show. It's very expensive.

"That said, it certainly fits what we do, and I'm a big fan of the show," the executive continued. "We're all trying very hard to make it happen."

Greenblatt insisted that bringing over the ratings-challenged comedy to Showtime made sense: "If even only a fraction of the Fox audience came to Showtime, it'd be a hit show for us."

this is so delicious

this is so weird that it must be great.

ankle update

it's been about 14 weeks since my grand ankle injury of 9/25/05, never forget.

i've only started working on it for the past couple weeks. yeah, it's been that long without running. it feels like it's been that much longer.

i've started doing 45 minutes on the elliptical machine at resistance 6 or 7 to get my heart and legs back. i did a half a mile jog on a treadmill this past weekend and that felt good. tonight, i got to about the same distance and then the back of my ankle told me that i shouldn't keep going. :(

i just need to go slowly and get my ankle used to the pounding on the treadmill before i can take it outside.

it's going to be slow getting back to where i was before (5.4 miles on the parkway). i hope to be back in 5k shape for the may 14th komen philadelphia race for the cure. it's a nice leisurely 5k that i think anybody can do and train for in a month's time.

oh please be true

'Arrested' developments

TelevisionWeek (from which I also stole the headline) is reporting that both ABC and Showtime have offered the producers of "Arrested Development" deals to continue the series on their networks. And it's all above board because when Fox reduced this season's order from 22 to 13 episodes, "the reduction triggered a clause in the show's contract enabling producers to shop the series elsewhere," sayeth TVWeek. The producers are said to be "mulling both offers," a one-year deal from ABC and a two-year deal from Showtime, part of the CBS fambly.

i chuckled in joy

holy shit again

i think we can safely append 3 or 4 more kills to jack's tab tonight.

i swear ctu has more moles than the western seaboard.

i should also note that 24 totally punched lost in the mouth and yelled that this was his house. i agree.

will arnett on conan

omg 24

holy frick.

i cannot believe how awesome the first two hours have been. <3 jack bauer <3

also: jack bauer kill count from 7am to 9am = 3

championship games set

AFC -- Pittsburgh at Denver 3:00 p.m. CBS
NFC -- Carolina at Seattle 6:30 p.m. FOX

lol patriots

hahahaha. the patriots reign of tyranny is over!

god bless the internet.

freee.... as a bird

lols

carbonite

february 10th, book it!

OUT OF THE BLUTH: Fox has announced a Friday, Feb. 10, two-hour season finale that's what the memo says, season finale for Arrested Development. In the season finale that's what the memo says, season finale Fast Times at Ridgemont High's Judge Reinhold will guest-star, as well as Arrested headliner Jason Bateman's real-life sis, Family Ties alum Justine Bateman, playing a woman who may or may not be Michael's half-sister.

passing it along from a friend

10th and Bainbridge
Charming bi level, 1 bedroom + a loft perfect for office or guest bedroom ,fireplace,EIK, W/D, GD, central air, whirlpool tub, balcony w/French doors, covered deck, pets welcome. Safe neighborhood. One blk to Superfresh, CVS Whole Foods. Avail 2/1. JUST REDUCED ! $1275/month. Call Jay [email me for phone number]

electronics

just for future reference:

SON HTDDW660 Sony Home Theater System (HT-DDW660)
SON HTDDW660

SAM TXP3064W Samsung 30" HDTV Monitor (TX-P3064W)
SAM TXP3064W

microsoft live is pretty hawt

rss portal thing.

whips google reader, in my opinion.

no arrested developments currently scheduled...

2. What are some other Mid-Season backup shows not yet scheduled for the 2005/06 Season?

ANSWER:
BACKUP SHOWS (to air sometime in later this season - sometime in 2006):

o THE LOOP [NEW COMEDY]
o FREE RIDE [NEW COMEDY]
o NANNY 911 [2ND SEASON]
o HELL'S KITCHEN [2ND SEASON]
o SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE [2ND SEASON]
o ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT [Remainder of 3RD SEASON]

starting at 300k

holy moly, they're going to finish this in two years at 20th and market.

those crazy asians

neat stuff at ces

dual core laptop?

dual core graphics card? 2x in sli mode = 4 gpu cores? holy moly.

attn tea lovers and posers

i got my order of tea in from this place and it is amazing. i got enough for like half a year. totally worth it and the shipping from canada only took a week.

westcoast peppermint, chamomile bliss, vanilla plantation, sublime, philospher's brew, and green dragon.

sweet jesus

dell 30" flat lcd.

i appreciate my 20" flat. i can't imagine appreciating a 30" flat.

top 50 music videos of 2005

via bamf.

oh hell yeah

i have no idea what it means.

but it's certainly rocking.

sending some stuff to army

i've got two shoebox-sized boxes that i'll be sending to anthony in iraq. i'm filling it with toiletries, bootleg dvds, snacks, and contraband. good times.

i guess it's over

According to FOX's schedule for next week there are episodes of HOUSE in place of AD.

Yeah, Fox put in two back to back episodes of House for next weeks slot. So this pretty much is the end of Arrested on Fox unless they change something around.

so the eagles season is finally over

an abysmal season. and i'm glad that it's finally over and done with. there's a ton of problems with the team that need to be remedied via free agency and the draft. it'll be very interesting to see how much the team changes over this offseason.

the eagles need a ton of help at defensive end and tackle. quarterback pressure with a 4 man front is priceless and we can't even get pressure with a 5-6 man blitz anymore.

i also think sheldon brown should've made the pro bowl. he was a goddamn super tyranosaurus rex in a few games. i think the defensive line's lack of pressure totally negated his talent this year.

my new years resolution

1680x1050 and 1024x768.

next potluck

for the takeout potluck at my apt.

Super Bowl XL -- Sun., Feb. 5 on ABC -- Ford Field, Detroit, Mich.

evites and other logistics to be worked out soon.

happy new year, bitches

here's hoping for a good 2006.