Yesterday's retrospective blog has allowed me to look at my blog in a whole new way. Mainly, it was never as good as I thought it was. :) Somehow, that's encouraging.

I've got another trip to Wisconsin coming up! On June 30, my mom and I will wake up at 6 in the morning and go to Albany, GA, where we will fly to Atlanta, Ga, and attempt to get a connection to Cincinatti, OH, where we'll have 30 minutes to catch a flight to Minneapolis, MN, where we'll be waiting 12 hours for a flight to Duluth, MN, where we'll embark on a 2 hour car ride to Ashland, WI. Aren't you proud of our nation's airlines and how they can get people to the places they want to go quickly and efficiciently?

Seriously though, it would take a miracle for us to get to Minneapolis at our scheduled time. We have a lot of extremely tight connections and if we don't come into Cincinatti on the same concourse as we're leaving from, we'll be stuck there. Plus, if we do get to Minneapolis we certainly aren't going to hang around the airport for 12 hours... we'll get one of our relatives to pick us up, but that would leave us without our suitcases. Needless to say, it will be a very complicated trip, but I'm looking forward to it.

Have you had any crazy trips before? And yes, we are actually talking about traveling. ;)

So Yesterday I had a pretty good Father's day. I went for a walk at our city track (that no one uses) I read a couple chapters of "The Complete Idiot's guide to Procrastination" (I've been reading it for two years) and I had a nice dinner. Oh yeah, my dad was there too. :)

What did you do for father's day? Anything special?

There doesn't appear to be anything on any channel tonight. I guess I'll try to read some more in my book... after a nap. And some video game time. And, quite possibly, another nap.

So that's my day. Hope you all have a good one. Auf Wiedersehen. (I'm not stealing that from anybody, am I?)

Yesterday was my one year anniversary of TV.com use. :)  But due to an internet outage, I couldn't post anything.  Today I'm going to celebrate a year of TV.com (even though I haven't been too active in the last few months) by looking back on the highlights of the past year, starting with my very first post.  Yes, Danasdude did this first. ;)

6/17/05: My first blog post.  It was very short and no one seemed to notice, but isn't that how we all started?  Also on that day, I picked out my first banner, started posting and submitting, and began stalking the folks that would eventually be my friends.  A second blog post that day got my very first blog comment, from Honeybuzzer.  I haven't heard much about him lately, but it seems he's still around.

6/22/05: Retroactive Postings!  I hope my bringing this up doesn't cause the space time continum to explode...

8/05/2005: First comment by a current friend.  Wow, it took me a month and a half to make a friend?  I had no idea I was blogging all by myself for that long.  In some ways, that was a very fun time because I had a goal; I wanted a high level, a bunch of friends, and an editorship.  Even though I don't really have any of those things, I don't have a real goal.

8/30/2005: My first post with five comments.  It was about Engrish, one of my favortie sites on the web. 

9/18/05: The Emmys take place on my birthday, and Lost wins one.  It was a fun night. :)

9/25/05: My first post with hidden messages... see if you can find them. 

10/01/05: My first blog post with more that 10 comments.  It was about "bloop," a modern sea monster.  I managed to tie that in to TV somehow, because that was back when I was still trying. ;) 

10/08/05: Gamespot and MP3 become Tv.com-iffied, and I'm pushed a little too far.

10/13/05: My first foray into the now defunct CoBB.  I got my blue box from Im2Crazy4U, and, in comparison to the most recent ones, it was pretty primitive.

10/14/05: I start Six Degrees of TV.com.  It didn't catch on.

10/16/05: I complete the first (and apparently last) census of the CoBB.  At least half of the people listed there are either gone or not around very much anymore.

10/23/05: "Fill in the Blank" becomes a regular part of my blog.  It didn't last very long.

10/26/05: I get my first editorship, Terry O'Quinn, while sick with a horrible ear infection.

11/03/05: I named my butterfly Navi, after the Fairy in Zelda.  Wow, I've joined a lot of clubs.

11/09/05: I start getting TV.com fatigue. 

11/11/05: The first "Superlatives" begins.  It was really fun to do, and it forced me to learn all about spreadsheets.  Vote counting is hard.

11/16/05: I wrote a somewhat long blog (considering the subject matter) about Dr. Phil.  I'm now the editor of his guide, and I completely forgot about this.

11/18/05: The end of the first Superlatives.

11/20/05: I had nothing to write about, thus the blog rerun was born.  Several other people began doing blog reruns, and that was fun.  There are a lot of great blogs out there that no one has read, so when you actually have people reading your blog you should bring back the old ones when you have nothing better to do.

11/21/05: I grab the editorships of five people!  Yunjin Kim, Bill Clinton, Stephen Colbert, and David Caruso.  Some people do that every day, but it was a pretty big deal for me.  Also, I officially joined the links union as the "Duke of Infotainment."

11/22/05: My current banner debuts, and I explained every part of it.

11/28/05: I expirement with colorful blogs.  It's these moments that you ask yourself, "What was I thinking?"

12/06/05: Midwestrocker goes to Disney!  And the week I look back on as my best on the site begins.

12/08/05: Friends and I protest the ad banners that appear on our profiles with a protest banner that I made.

12/09/05: I help Angelsxo make a tribute blog for Missribs.  Also, I discovered a way to track blog popularity.

12/20/05: The whole "Corn Allergy" thing begins.  Update: I don't really think I'm allergic to corn anymore, that was probably some kind of psycho somatic problem.  I recently had a pizza from Pizza Hut with no trouble.  It. Was. Perfect.

12/28/05: I become Community Spotlight!  I was the last one of 2005 and the first of 2006 (technically).

1/02/06: TV.com breaks my photobucket account.

1/05/06: I take my first planned break from the site, because I'm bored with it.

1/30/06: I stop submitting to the site in an effort to make it less stressful.  I kept it up until just after the redesign, and I haven't submitted anything since.

2/13/06: The second round of superlatives begins with a nomination round.  All in all, the nomination round made things a bit more fun; there were a lot more winners that way.  It made it twice as hard to count the votes, but that was okay.  On 2/17/06 the nominees were announced, and on 2/24/06 the winners received their medals.

2/20/06: Times get grim on the site, with a mass exodus of folks to "the other one."  I tried to balance myself between the two until it got to be too much.  In hindsight, it probably wasn't a very smart thing to do.

3/17/06: I got a car!

4/11/06: This blog on frazzing effectively marks the end of my regular TV.com posting. 

4/19/06: The site is renovated, and I come back for a little while and submit enough to gain editroship of Dr. Phil's guide.

5/09/06: I blog about my TV.com problems.

6/18/06: I write a very long recap of my first year on the site. :)

So that's it.  It has been a lot of fun looking back on all of this stuff.  I had totally forgotten what an interesting year I've had.  It's been fun, it's been hard, and it's been full of smileys. ;)  I'd like to thank all you guys for a great year.  Adios.

Hey, two blogs in a row! It's been a while since I've done this... :)

Go to Wikipedia and look up any show you can think of. Well, make sure it's somewhat popular. I'll give you an example. Now look in that box on the right... there is a link to the TV.com summary for that show. Pretty much every show I've looked at on Wikipedia now has a link to its TV.com guide right up front. Has anybody else noticed this? Doesn't it make you all warm and fuzzy inside? ;) Anyone who hadn't been here before would think this place was a real classy institution.  BTW, that Wikipedia article on Lost is truly unbelievable. Bet you can't find that in the Brittanica.

So this how my daily routine goes: I wake up, I roll around for a little while, then I turn on the TV. I try to catch one of those morning shows (either Today, Regis and Kelly, The Price is Right, or the Evening News, depending on what time I get up) and then I check my on-screen guide to see what's coming on tonight. That last part has been horribly disappointing the last couple of weeks.

It happens every single year but somehow I'm never prepared. One night you have the Simpsons, Family Guy, Desperate Housewives, Grey's Anatomy, and the next night you have absolutely nothing. Wednesday I found myself watching "Game Show Marathon" (which, oddly enough, is neither a game show or marathon) and I would have rather watched nothing... but there's a part of my brain that shudders at the thought of turning off the TV. And so these are the dark ages.

However, if you're a fan of reality shows this Summer is going to be awesome! You've got "So You Think You Can Dance," "America's Got Talent," "Last Comic Standing," and other ridiculously played out concept shows. I must admit, even I have a couple of reality shows coming up that brighten up the summer. I've been watching "Big Brother" since it started 6 years ago, and I enjoyed last year's "Rock Star" more than any other reality show. Ever.

Plus, the 4400 comes back Sunday. Woot Woot! It's actually kinda fun to have a drama show like that that only comes on in the summer. Sure, you have to wait a whole year, but there's not a whole lot on for sci-fi fans like myself in the Summer and it is a very welcome reprieve from the usual stuff.

What shows will you be watching this summer? Or are you one of those "get out and enjoy life" people? If so, shame on you! You're endangering the livelihoods of thousands of TV employees. ;)

That's all for today. Have a great weekend and thanks for stopping by.

The blogging part of my brain has seriously atrophied in the last couple of months. I can think of absolutely nothing in my life that I could coherently blog about for longer than a sentence. And everyone seems to be in kind of a subdued mood (I tried to say that five times fast and wound up with "some do moon") today, but I don't really know enough to comment on that stuff. So I'm out of luck.

I guess, and this is a doozy, I could actually talk about TV.

Veronica Mars
I'm the kind of person who likes things that other people like. Whether it's because I actually like it or because I think I'm supposed to, I don't know. It's kind of a "chicken or egg" type thing. But a couple of months ago I decided to give Veronica Mars a look thanks to all the critical acclaim and fan fervor. I really liked it. It's witty, stylish, and enthralling. (Coincidentally, it's been called all of those things by critics) But I didn't want to watch the last four episodes of the 2nd season and effectively spoil the previous 40. So I stopped watching and waited for the day that I could get the first season DVDs.

And then, a couple of weeks ago, Target had it on sale for $20. Woot Woot! It was awesome. If you have $40 laying around (because it's gone back up to regular price), go out and get it. Since there's nothing on TV right now (and why would you want to go out and enjoy the summer?) it's the perfect time to get some TV on DVD. Unfortunately, I blew through all the episodes in 9 days. But what a great 9 days it was! Now I have to wait until August 22 to get the second season, and September 19 for the third season to start.

And in the midst of all this excitement , the common sense part of my brain has been pushed aside. See, the common sense part of my brain is saying "This is not good. You are getting seriously attached to a show that has just barely avoided cancellation two years in a row. This can only end badly." To which I say, "Quiet, common sense brain! Your kind is not wanted here!"

Deal or No Deal
Did anybody else see that ridiculous DOND finale Monday? That show was faker than Joan Rivers face. (Some would go with Kenny Rogers, but that's too contemporary for me). This contestant came on the show who was supposedly obsessed with Celine Dion who, low and behold, surprised her by showing up. Only she didn't really show up... she sat in a room with a camera and had her beloved image beamed into the studio. Throughout the whole show she made weird faces and pretended to understand what was happening, for no reason at all. The only entertaining part of having her there was imagining all the people just tuning in saying "WTF is Celine Dion doing behind that family? And why is she flashing her arm pits so much?"

Not only was there no point in having Celine Dion trapped in a box for an hour and a half, but it proved without a shadow of a doubt that DOND is a hoax. Are we supposed to believe that they ask all their contestants ahead of time who their favorite musicians were? Seriously? We're supposed to believe that this woman told them her favorite musician was Celine Dion and they went through all the tricky scheduling issues just to surprise her? Good the thing the contestant wasn't a huge Elvis fan. More likely, they needed a big celeb for the finale, and Celine was the best they could get. So they told their scheduled contestant for that day to pretend to be a Celine Dion fan. I suppose it could have worked out in a less deceptive way, but it's highly unlikely.

I think that's enough for today. :) I hope you guys are having a great day, and thanks for stopping by/remembering that I exist.

Here's a brief round-up of the stuff on my mind.

E3
I caught a few hours of G4's wall-to-wall E3 coverage this week, and it was kind of fun. I've never been very much of a console gamer (the game that excited me most was "Spore" for the PC) but the Nintendo Wii looked great. I'm not sure I'll be willing to spend $300+ on it, but it looks pretty cool. And in the end, wanting is almost always better than having.

Do you play video games at all?

Series Finales
"Malcolm in the Middle" had it's series finale tonight, and it was much better than their recent episodes have been. It was funny, and it ended things in a satisfying way. If Jane Kaczmarek doesn't win an Emmy, it better be because the statues got stolen again. And "That 70's Show" is wrapping up Thursday. I haven't regularly watched that show for several years, so I'm not really sure what's going on (I think there's some site I can go to to find that out, but I have no idea where to find it). And to be honest, I've never found that show incredibly funny. But alas, if I watch a show for more than one episode, I feel like I have to see the finale. Hopefully Topher Grace will make a last minute appearance. It's the least he could do.

What series finale are you most looking forward to?

Grey's Anatomy
The season finale is tomorrow, and it looks like it's going to be nuts. The first part was tonight and... I don't even know what to think. Say what you will about this just-another-hospital-drama, they know how to do a cliffhanger. And tonight's was just the prelude to tomorrow's real cliffhanger. It just reminds me that this year has been one of the best TV years in a long, long time. It's a good time to be a TV geek.

What season finales are you most looking forward to?

Wireless Networking
I hooked up my grandma's computer to our wireless network with a little adapter-thingy, and my computer didn't even seem to notice. We have a good protection program, but apparently anyone can use our network. That's scary. Luckily, I don't live in an apartment building or high-density area (It was a stretch just to pick up the network at grandma's, and she's across the street) so I don't think I have to worry much.

Do you use a wireless network? Are you scared?

Scary?
My family today was having a conversation about how they ran around freely wherever they wanted to when they were kids, and how they'd never let their kids do that. But is this country really that much more violent than it was thirty years ago? Or is that every bad thing that happens get reported for one-hundred hours on five different channels until everyone who's remotely involved has been interviewed twenty times? Thirty years ago there was no cable news, no internet news sites, no lack of actual, important news, and no public interest for all of the tiny bad things that happened. Sure, there were similar stories that garnered lots of attention, but compare those to the stories that get attention nowadays. I'm not going to mention specifics, but I think you catch my drift. Maybe I'm just a cynic.

Do you think crime really is worse today, or do you think the constant media barrage has contributed to national fear?

That's all I've got for now. Thanks for reading, and have a great week. :)

I wrote a nice long blog entry explaining my absence, but it vanished.  Magically.  And now I'm having to write this in IE because Firefox can't deal with this unneccesary text editor.  Great.

Anyways, I'll take my explanation from what I wrote in Malgal's blog.

"I think I've just had a serious case of TV.com fatigue. I broke my own rule: don't try to do too much. I did, and I got a little sick of this place. Now I'm just going to take it easy and stop acting like this site is a job."

That's basically it.  I wanted to blop by too many blogs, post too often, submit too much (hey, I got the editorship of Dr. Phil!) and it got overwhelming.  From now on I'm going to try to take it easy.  I might not blog everyday, I might not blop as much, and I'm certainly going back to not submitting.  I was getting way too stressed out and this site is supposed to be enjoyed.  I honestly don't know how you guys do it.

Well, that's it.  I'll talk to you guys later.

Hey, everybody! :) So I clearly have not been around for a while. And this is because of so-and-so allergies causing me such-and-such kind of problems, but I don't really want to get in to that right now. Apparently, the new site rolled out while I was in absentia and it rocks my socks off. Sure, there are some major probs, but when haven't there been? I'm used to them by now. I have a highly agreeable personality, and I'm sure that in time I will grow to like the bugs, perhaps even love them. ;) So let's see... the new design gets a 5 from me. It's too much like the other two sites, and the color scheme does not look right. It's a combination of extremely light and extreme dark, and it kind of hurts my eyes. But the other stuff is more fun. I give the new emblems a 7 or so. It's fun to be recognized, but after a couple of years of new emblems and chat events, people are going to have emblem boxes that stretch to the bottom of the page. It's a slippery, slippery slope. Also, it seems I'm in the top 500 contributers, and I swore off contributing around January. It just seems a little odd to be in the top 500 when everyone else around me seems to have astronomical numbers that make my 383 subs look like a drop in the ocean. I love the new stats box, but I'm going to miss the stats in blogs. Someone (perhaps one of the founders) needs to write an obituary for the Cult of the Blue Boxie. Oh, CoBB. How we will miss thee... :( Probably my least favorite part of this renovation is the new, excessive toolbar at the top of the screen with all the show genres linked. It is entirely unnecessary and has turned the banner section into a bit of an eyesore. Okay, on to other things. My car broke down Sunday on the way to Albany, GA. :o Luckily, I wasn't driving and we were able to pull over very quickly. We waited in the hot sun for almost an hour before the car was towed away, which cost us $150. Plus, the repairs and the second towing will wind up costing us $350. So we've actually spent the exact amount of money it would have cost to buy the car on fixing it. Life is funny that way, isn't it? I know I haven't been blopping or blogging at all (I've dusted everything over at the computer so I'm going to try to spend more time here) but I'm still planning on doing the Superlatives in May. I haven't come up with an excellent name for it yet ("TV.com Idol" is the best one I've thought of so far, but I'm concerned about that becoming cheesy) so it will remain the superlatives for now. I'm giving you fair warning now so you'll have three or four weeks to push for a win. :D Write good blogs, be really funny, and try to act smart! I'm not going to compete this time, so there are a couple of categories up for grabs. That's all for today. I must say, the new features have given me an urge to submit stuff, and I'm going to have a hard time obeying my vow. The sad thing is that I can't break it discreetly anymore (not that I did before) because my pendings are put in that little box. So if you see a few pendings in there later tonight, go easy on me; it's hard to commit yourself to laziness. :) TTYL.

Have you ever heard the term "Frazzing?" I think if you have, you'll know just how familiar with it you are. "Frazzing" is a now popular term coined by Dr. Edward Hallowell to describe the unhealthy multitasking that permeates our lives. Talking to someone on the phone, e-mailing somebody, watching TV and writing down notes is frazzing. Driving, listening to the radio, and text-messaging (one of my friends does this often) is frazzing. Right now I am writing a blog, eating lunch, watching Star Trek, and listening to music. I have 14 tabs open in firefox and three other windows running. I am frazzing. And this is just what I'm doing for fun. But it's what I'm accustomed to. I'm not stressed out and I'm not pushing myself. But at the same time, I'm having a hard time focusing. It took me about a minute to write that last sentence. I'm sure I would enjoy what I'm doing and do it better if I turned some of this stuff off, but then I'd feel like I wasn't doing anything. I'd feel like my time was being wasted. But I might as well try it, just for today. I'm turning my TV off, I'm turning off Windows Media Player, and I'm finishing my lunch. I am going to spend the day focusing on only one thing at a time. So here are my questions of the day: Are you a frazzer? Do you feel like you're doing nothing if you're not doing everything? Are you frazzing right now? ;) That's my blog for today. I'm don't have a lot planned today, so this experiment will continue unabated. I think it could be fun, but it sure is quiet...

If you're wondering why I haven't been around the past couple of days, it's because I've been in an utter state of confusion and uncertainty. Friday was my big allergist appointment. I haven't been that nervous about going to a doctor in a long time, mostly because of the stories I've heard about it. My uncle says that they checked him for a corn allergy by injecting him with corn, after which he felt so incredibly good that he compared it to heroin. Of course, minutes after that he was utterly miserable. But it's good to know that if I ever need a fix, I can inject myself with Pepsi. ;) We got to the doctor's office and had to wait an incredibly long time, both in the waiting area and in my room. Don't you find it odd that there are 982 magazines in the front waiting area of a doctor's office and none once you get back to your room? You're going to be waiting in your room a lot longer than you're going to be waiting in the waiting area, plus you'll be more nervous back there. There's got to be at least 120 years of college between all the doctors there and they can't figure out where they should put their magazines. But I digress. Finally the allergist came in, and he reminded me a great deal of Forrest Gump. This did not inspire much confidence. It also turns out that he is just a little bit crazy. In the 10 minutes I spent with him he managed to suggest that my father is trying to kill me, I should take up lumberjacking, and Mars would make an excellent home for me. He also seemed intent on proving that all of my problems centered around an excess of snot, which they do not. I was sent to get tested for allergies. I followed a nurse through what appeared to be a labrynth of exam rooms, storage closets, and other lobbys to a room with a table. On that table were three boxes, each one filled with about 40 blue pins. All in all, I was pricked about 109 times on the bottoms of my forearms. Each one only hurt a bit, but it added up. After it was done, I was naseous, dizzy, light-headed, and hot. I seriously thought I was going to pass out. The nurse who did it told me to put my head down and started fanning me. Apparently, this happens often. For each thing that I was allergic to, a huge welt would develop where I was pricked with that thing. I had 20 welts. I am allergic to all grasses. I'm also allergic to certain trees, such as walnut trees, elm trees, and birch trees. The other things that showed up were cat pelt, barley, and peanuts. No corn. When I got back to the allergist, he prescribed me anti-allergy medication that I knew for a fact had corn. He said that maybe my corn allergy was in fact based on my grass allergy, since corn and grass are so similar. This makes little sense to me, but neither did the lumberjacking. I took my medicine like a good boy, and got a serious case of lethargy, chest pains, and iatrophobia. So that was that. I went to the allergist and I'm almost no better for it. I don't really know what to do at this point, thus the confusion and uncertainty. Well that's it. I don't really know how to end this blog since the story isn't really finished. I guess... Thanks for reading and have a nice day. :)

My solution to writer's block: I've started a "Blog Ideas 2" notepad document, and I'm just going to spit out everything that's in there on the first day. So here's a round up of everything that's been in my mind over the past day. Driving I've been taking on a few more difficult driving tasks. I went into town for the first time yesterday, and actually drove on the interstate. Which wasn't half as scary as I thought it would be. It was coming off the interstate that was scary. The off-ramp had a sharp turn with signs posted throughout saying "Careful for flips!" "Don't let a truck fall on top of you!" and "Best get off this road, ya varmint!" Okay, I made up those last two, but the point of the signs was true; lots of accidents have happened on that off-ramp. But I got off it safely and I'm ready to do it again. I'll do it until I'm not afraid of it anymore. Movies Last week I saw the movie "V for Vendetta," which was good, but a little unrelatable. I just can't imagine a world like that existing... And last night I saw "Crash," the Oscar winner for Best Picture. And it definitely deserved it. That was a very very good movie. I'm kind of on the fence about the ending (I usually like stories that wrap up nicely), but I understand it: all of these people's lives crash together, they change, and then they move on. It's not a real ending, because that story never really ends. Idol I have my predictions for American Idol tonight: the bottome three will be Taylor, Bucky, and Elliot. And Elliot will probably be the one leaving. He was very good, but he just doesn't fit in with the rest of them. And if it weren't for it being Country night, Bucky would be going home. He was in his element last night, and blew away the other folks. Next week, though, Bucky's a goner. That's all for today. I'm going with my grandma to get my new lenses and to get her pacemaker checked. TTYL. :)