Well, since I'm editor of the George W. Bush guide, I think it's appropriate that I parallel his speech tonight by doing my own. The State of the TV.com union is... sucky. It took me all day just to get to my own profile, and when I did, all of my friends looked like Howdy Doody. I've seen one person look like howdy doody every once in awhile, but never everybody. People are having trouble submitting, loading pages, posting blogs and comments, and all sorts of things. But I think we'll be okay. :) As I recall, we've had harder times than this. Remember when we didn't have levels at all? I'm going to be watching the State of the Union tonight, just because it affects politics for the rest of the year, and I'd like to know what new fumbles and foibles await us. I didn't get my learner's permit yesterday, because the place is apparently closed on mondays. :( Oh well. Tomorrow is another day. I feel like really learning about people today. :) QotD: Do you speak any other languages? QotD2: If you had to live in a country other than the one you're living in, what would that country be? QotD3: On a scale of one to ten, how annoying is Howdy Doody?

Hello All. I've made a big decision about TV.com. It's hard to explain why I've made this decision. Probably because I have so little time in my life and the particular part of it I'm addressing just isn't worth that time. I don't really get as much out of it as everybody else, so I'm going to stop doing it. I'm going to stop submitting to TV.com. :o Yes, permanently. It wasn't even as tough a decision as I'd imagined. Submitting takes up so much time, and what do you get out of it? Editorships? What do you get out of those? Not much more than pride. In the end I decided that the friendships and community here are a lot more important than the teeny weeny itsy bitsy little dab of pride I get from being editor of the Wil Wheaton guide. ;) So from now on, I'm strictly a community guy. Nothing more than Blopping, Blogging, Posting, and occasionally Reviewing. I trust you guys can keep things in good condition without me. :lol: Also, today I'm going to go try and get my learner's permit. Wish me luck. :) Well, I'll talk to all you folks later. Keep on truckin'.

I know it's kinda stupid to make a big deal about coming back to the site and then stay away for four days, but it's not a really good time to be here. Things-are-a-changing, people-are-a-changing, times-are-a-changing, and a whole new generation of bugs has cropped up in result. That sentence contains a reference to one of my editorships. Is it: A: Stephen Colbert B: Bill Clinton C: Bob Dylan D: David Caruso I'm sorry, I couldn't help that. :oops: So how have things been going? Has the site improved any since Tuesday? Are they getting all the bugs cleaned up? The bugs have never, ever bothered me as much as they have recently. Every other page I went to on Tuesday didn't work. And if I was in any browser besides Internet Explorer, it worked very slowly. Today I'm studying my little driver instruction book, preparing to get my driver's license. So I probably won't be on here much. I'll probably be back on Monday. :) I'll leave you with this: QotD: What are the worst bugs you've encountered on TV.com?

When I came back from Florida on Friday, one of the first things I did was log on to TV.com. And to my surprise, there were new, shiny features. :) Like a new look to the forum page, a new setup in "My Contacts," and 10 of my friends' blogs in the sidebar. So I left the site saying "I've burned out, I've done everything on TV.com thirty times" and blah blah blah, and when I come back they've added new features. Coincidence? I think not. ;) Anyways, my trip to Florida was great and I got to go to Disney again. :o Before you start thinking that I'm Disney spoiled and can afford to go anytime I want, I'll remind you that my cousins work there so they get free passes. Their kids, however, are Disney spoiled. We told them that they were going to Disney and they said "Ok." So let's talk about these new features. First off, I really like the expanded "Recent Friends' Blogs" section. It has allowed me to "Hyper-Blop" by opening up ten of my friends' blogs at once in tabs. And the new "My Contacts" section is pretty awesome. They've broken down my relationships into three groups: My Friends (39), People I'm Tracking (27 :o), and People Tracking Me (7). I think I'm going to clear out that middle group, because I've tracked and interacted with most of those people for weeks, and if they haven't added me yet then I guess I'm just a nuisance to them. :( And that's really pretty much it, but it's enough; It spices things up a bit. I can say officially that my TV.com burnout is gone, and I'm ready to be back on the site permanently. :) So that's it. I guess I'll be seeing you guys around from now on. ;) TTYL. Oh, and congratulations to my conservative Canadian friends (do I have any?) on the election of the right honourable Stephen Harper as Prime Minister. I don't know a lot about Canadian politics except that Paul Martin has insinuated that Stephen Harper is Pro-American. I guess that's a good thing. :? I read his Wikipedia article and understood hardly a word. What is a "Governor General," or an "NDP," or an "MP," or a "caucus colleague?" I went to babelfish but there was no "Canadian to English" translator. Oh well. :D I guess I'll just have to rest on the fact that effects of decisions of the Canadian Prime Minister usually don't make it down here to Georgia (Canadian Decisions melt in this weather), so I'll probably be okay. :) Finally, one last parentheses smiley. May they never return again. (smiley)

So... it's been a week since I started my TV.com break. And what have I been doing? NOTHING!!! That's right, the world without TV.com is utterly boring. And since computer games have been giving me headaches recently (Eye doctor says someone put my lenses in wrong) the only thing I have to do is actually watch TV. And that is seriously overrated. But I don't think I'm ready to come back. I don't have the thirst for lots of TV.com like I do when I come back from a long vacation. Coincidentally, one is coming up. On Friday, I'll be going to Florida for several days, so I'll have virtually no access to the computer. But you can probably expect me back after I get home on Wednesday. In the meantime, I'm still going to stay away from the site. You might find me lurking a little bit, but for the most part, I'm not here. (smirk) I hope you're all doing okay. (smiley) I'll see you all later.

Yesterday, I realized I had a problem. It was around my fifth hour on the site (yes, fifth) when I started panicking. I had finished all my blopping and I was looking for something else to do. I tried forums, but that couldn't keep my interest. So I tried submitting. I couldn't think of anyone I wanted to submit to, and when I did I didn't submit more than two things before I wanted to move on to someone else. So I thought "Alright, let's calm down. Let's write some reviews." But I couldn't think of a single thing I wanted to review. Not a person, show, or episode called me. It seemed like the things on the site could no longer hold my interest. I kept roaming around for something that could, but I came up with nothing. You may not know this, but these are the symptoms of TV.com burnout. When you've done everything you can do at least twice, things aren't quite as exciting. I know this feeling well, since I've had it before. There are many sites that I've spent many hours on, only to leave after a month or so of activity. I don't think this is going to be one of those sites, because I still want to be here. With the others, I couldn't have cared less. But this one is special. Still, I need to take precautions. I'm taking a TV.com break. Maybe for a while, maybe for today. I don't know yet. I just know that I need some time away. I'm going to stay off the site until I miss it; until I can come back refreshed and ready to dive in again. Don't get me wrong, TV.com and I are not getting divorced: we're simply having a brief sabbatical. I'm sure that after a couple of days away, I'll realize why I fell in love with TV.com to begin with. In the meantime, I apologize ahead of time for not blogging, blopping, posting, or scaring people in general. And when I get back someone has to tell me everything that happened while I was gone. Everything. So that's all. I'll catch you guys later, have a good one. PS: Check out my new "About Me" section. I've been meaning to do one of those for some time. And oh yeah, I'm a Golden Girl. And my favorite one too. Yay!

First of all: "Goodbye Spotlight! It was fun while it lasted!" :) Community Spotlight appears to have vanished along with all of our pictures, so I'm assuming that it will return when they come back. Which is good, because I would have felt bad if I was the last Community Spotlight. Today I'm going to explain my ridiculous screenname. This is a big memory trip for me, since it seems to have been blocked out of my mind somehow. It took a lot of pressure to get down to the deepest darkest parts of my mind to find this bit of knowledge, so please, enjoy. :) The year was 2001. 9/11 had just happened. (Bet you didn't think this story would go there, did you?) Like everyone else, I was devasted. I was up at about 1:30 in the A.M. on that Thursday, and I was flipping through the channels. I decided I'd see what they were showing on MTV. I had never watched that channel before, since my grandmother had always taught me that it was evil. But that simply increased my curiosity: What would an "evil" TV station show in a time like this? So I flipped over. They had America-themed music videos, viewers talking about the tragedy, and only a few naked people. I watched it, and it comforted me somehow. It made me feel a bit more in touch with my generation. And from that point on, I was hooked. It was later on that year, and perhaps early the next year, that I signed on to MTV.com for the first time. I wanted to come up with a screen name that had something to do with music because, clearly, it was a music site. And since I like rock music, it had to have "Rocker" in it. As for the Midwest part: I've always tried to make a point of being a Midwesterner born and raised in the South. It's very weird, but I do connect more with Midwesterners (Minnesotans in particular) than Georgians, probably because I was raised by two of the most anti-Southern Midwesterners who happened to live here. So that's where that came from. And after that I started using it everywhere. It became a part of my identity. Sometimes I even think of myself as "Midwestrocker" instead of "(Real Name)." And to me, it's become one word, not two seperate words. It's like, Midwest=Part of the country, Rocker=someone who plays/likes rock music, Midwestrocker=me, someone who can no longer be accurately described by the first two things. When I actually think about it as two seperate words, I don't like it. It's those times that I wish I could change it something. I've thought about adding some Star Trek flair to it and making it "MidwestRiker," but that would get old real quick. So that's it. That's my screen name. Thanks for reading, and have a great 4th day of 2006. (BTW, after an extensive 12 step program, I am no longer addicted to MTV. I only watch it when I get a very strong craving, so that's about... eh, 3 hours a day or so? :) You can't see it, but there's a smiley face there.)

First of all, I still haven't gotten around to fixing my profile. It's been a frustrating process so far, and I'm having a pretty good day. Why ruin a good day by frustrating yourself? :) Second: I promised a review of "Serenity." Here it is: It was awesome. There. If I come up with anything else I'll write an Epinions review and make a few pennies. ;) This is a pretty short blog entry today, because I'm not feeling great. :( I had some roast beef with hidden corn in it... This has proven to be quite hard. There's lots of hidden corn. Corn is evil, but I will prevail. :) Ever since I've been without corn I've been a fitter, happier, and more productive person. And yes, that's the third time I've referenced that particular Radiohead song in my blog. I'll blop about as much as I can. I want to design a new banner today, so I'll be doing that for a while. I'll leave you with a question of the day: Are you allergic to anything? If so, what? If not, what food do you really really HATE?

Yesterday I was merrily blopping along, saying hi to everyone, doing my thing, when I came to Chrisbd1's profile. That's when I first discovered the problem (illustrated above). I made Chris a banner a few months back and it sits, like all my other TV.com pictures, in my photobucket album. When I saw that Chris was having a bandwidth problem, I knew that it was really me who was having the bandwidth problem. I went to my photobucket account to see what was going on because I couldn't leave Chris hanging like that. When I got to my Photobucket account options I saw this: Oh, wait, I just remembered. I can't show you because MY PHOTOBUCKET ACCOUNT IS NOT WORKING. Anyways, there is a certain amount of bandwidth that I'm allowed to use (I'm cheap) on Photobucket, meaning my pictures can't be seen too many times per month or they'll shut off my direct linking. This has never been an issue before because the highest amount of monthly hits I've ever had was 2000, and that was when I was sending out those award plaques. But when I got to my photobucket account it said I had an absurd number of monthly hits: 315,000. And rapidly growing. It's now up to 370,900. I couldn't figure this out. How was it possible? My pictures couldn't possibly be viewed that many times. I was using 133% of my allowed bandwidth so they shut off my direct links; that meant that Chris' banner went bye-bye, but for some reason all of my stuff is still here... strange. I began to think that someone may have hacked into my account, so I changed my password. I then decided there was nothing else I could do, and I came back to the site. When I got here, I spent a little time on the home page because I like to see my own name in the "Community Spotlight" thing. :) It makes me feel better when I'm in a bad mood. And then it struck me: One of my photobucket pictures is on the Front Page of TV.com. It gets downloaded by every single person that visits TV.com. I can't believe I didn't think of it before! Although I was happy to figure out what was wrong, it's almost as bad to know that you can't do anything to fix it. My hit count doesn't reset until the 27th, so even when I do get out of the spotlight my direct linking won't work until then. And now my banner is gone, my photo is gone, and I'm going to have to work out some kind of arrangement with Chris to get his banner up (PM me). But on the plus side, we now know how many hits TV.com gets over a 6-day period. :) Has anyone who's been in the spotlight before had this problem? Is there an alternative I can use? Tomorrow should be my first day completely back on the site. My grandma is going home, so I won't feel guilty for spending all of my time here. :D I'll also review "Serenity," which I got to see last night. So TTYL, and I hope you all enjoy the second day of 2006.

So... First of all, I'm the very first (technically) Community Spotlight of 06! Woot Woot! But... I've had a pretty rough weekend. On Thursday, my family left, and left behind something important: the flu. I was horribly sick all day Friday. I threw up 11 times. A fitting end to 05. And I've also been going through "Corn Withdrawal," so that wasn't easy. Saturday was a great deal better for me, but two of my other family member (and my dog :o) got sick. This, apparently, is an incredibly virulent strain of flu and I hope you guys don't get it just by reading this. :) So anyways, I'm feeling almost totally better today and I'm preparing to head over to grandma's for my black eyed peas. I just thought I'd keep all my TV.com hermanos and hermanas in the know. I should be back to regular blopping/blogging/posting/submitting by Wednesday. Happy New Year to everyone! Let's just hope this one is better.