I have to admit that the changes here are small since it appears to mainly be graphical, to match TV.com and Mp3.com, but I like the new look.  There are far fewer bugs here than at TV.com, perhaps because Gamespot received more engineers... who knows?!

Well, it's finally Friday, it's about time. Quite a week around here. Thanks goes out to snide and smushmeg for your work on the points. Hopefully, you two can figure out the remaining bugs with the contributor point system; that would be a wonderful thing. Also, I want to thank emaldalani, who has been doing a great job. She doesn't get much attention from the folks in the forums, but I know she's working hard on things, and I appreciate all of the help she's given me, especially this week. From what I've been hearing and seeing with my own eyes, the submission queue is dropping, but there are still a lot of submissions in there, so I hope snide reads the PM I sent him, and implements the changes I suggested, at least temporarily. CSI received a lot of submissions this week, course what do you expect from a fairly popular show?! mini2z seemed surprised and thankful for the quick turnaround in submission processing, which I was thankful for his noticing it. Anyone catch Ghost Hunters this week? I was floored when they caught those sheets moving 'on their own', but felt a little deflated when Steve and Dave Tango noticed that the footage was faked by someone. Don't fool around with their camera equipment, they'll notice. Last night on Late Show with David Letterman, Dave had Jon Stewart on. He talked a little bit about his baby boy, and announced that he and his wife are now expecting a girl. Congratulations go out to them. Current Rank: Wardrobe Malfunction Current Level: 34 (20%) Submission Status: Accepted: 5776 Pending: 66 Denied: 64 Total: 5906

What a funky little title, I know. I'm quite happy to see some changes in the points system, although there do appear to be a few issues for some folks, but I'm sure those will get ironed out. I noticed I lost all of my points for three shows, as you'll see below. Anyway, I went ahead to check out the points updates and compare them to what I listed them as here on Sept 20th. Note: Points in parenthesis are the old figures. $40 a Day: 376 (344) 30 Minute Meals: 2115 (955) According to Jim: 10 American Casino: 127 American Chopper: 40 American Morning: 17 (15) American Cooper 360: 976 (577) Becker: 535 (265) Biography: 13 CSI: 440 (239) CSI: Miami: 30 (18 ) Coach: 2 (0) Comedy Central Presents: 805 (804) Countdown with Keith Olbermann: 12 (5) Dateline NBC: 5 Digging For The Truth: 50 (45) Drew Carey's Green Screen Show: 5 Ed: 174 (168 ) Everyday Italian: 82 (74) Good Eats: 1068 (937) Hogan Knows Best: 10 (0) Hope & Faith: 344 (264) Junkyard Wars: 222 Legendary Lighthouses: 5 MacGyver: 9 (7) Mail Call: 41 (11) Martha: 45 (0) Meet The Press: 60 Modern Marvels: 4372 (4093) Monday Night Football: 0 (8 ) Monster House: 0 (2) MythBusters: 0 (28 ) NBC Nightly News: 23 NOW with Bill Moyers: 10 Paula Zahn Now: 10 Politically Incorrect: 130 Real Time with Bill Maher: 894 (873) Scarborough Country: 9 Tactical to Practical: 32 The Colbert Report: 39 (0) The Daily Show: 9084 (8179) The Drew Carey Show: 161 (152) The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson: 1682 (1296) The O'Reilly Factor: 5 (0) The Red Green Show: 1257 (1256) The Situation Room: 12 (0) The Situation with Tucker Carlson: 784 (657) The X-Files: 326 Trivia Unwrapped: 10 Tucker Carlson: Unfiltered: 726 Unwrapped: 1026 (1008 ) Wild West Tech: 171 (127) World News Tonight: 7

I can't wait for these points to be updated. Hopefully, just hopefully, the levels will be affected and we'll actually see them moving more than 2 or 3%.

Not much to say... too frustrated with certain things here today. emaldalani is trying to help me keep my cool though. Current Rank: Borg Queen Current Level: 33 (67%) Submission Status: Accepted: 5573 Pending: 75 Denied: 64 Total: 5712

It's the first of the month, so why not give a little update. Besides it's been a while. Not much on TV tonight, it seems all of the networks are re-airing their shows, which is fine, since much of it is crap anyway. No need for a new episode of garbage. Thanks goes out to emaldalani for adding two shows I submitted. I've got a few more shows to submit. Current Rank: Borg Queen Current Level: 33 (64%) Submission Status: Accepted: 5320 Pending: 24 Denied: 64 Total: 5408

Although the PM system isn't fixed, I felt it couldn't hurt to bring more attention to the Search Engine problems on the site. I know the Levels and Contributor Points are the main focus of the engineers, or seem to be, judging by the posts in Smushmeg and snide's blog postings as of late, but I hope they take a look at the Search Engine soon after they get that other mess worked out. By far the biggest problem with the search engine is the inability to update the search database with newly added people and shows. For editors, adding cast and crew can be a major pain in the ass when you can't find people you already added, for another episode. Of course the short-term bypass would be to add the person again, but this of course ends up with duplicate entries for that person, and there's already an ever-growing list of duplicate names which need to be deleted. I don't think it's fair to waltmor or any other staff member to have them constantly have to go and delete these duplicate names, when fixing the search engine would allieviate a lot of headaches around here. From a general user's point of view, not being able to find new shows is also a problem with the search engine. It's just not right that we have to rely on a staff members blog to get the list of newly added shows, you know what I mean?

Since snide didn't seem to like my idea of letting me take over the points, I figured I'd use this new post to thank the data team for all of their work on the submission backlog. I've noticed my number of pending submissions drop to under 5 a couple times this past week or two, which is a great sign. I know you're doing a pretty good job, so thanks, guys.

I bet that title got your attention. What bug has been the most talked about, the most complained about? Yes, the contributor points and levels bug(s). Why do the points roll back when updated automatically? Why do the levels not work properly on the weekend? It seems to be a problem with the automatic updates; turn the damn things off, and let me run them manually. Whatever needs to be done (click a few buttons, enter some mysql queries, etc), let me do it, what do you possibly have to lose? I'm here before the staff is, and before most, if not all the mods are. This should give snide a good laugh this morning.

Happy Birthday, snide! We finally got some rain here. We're still 8 or 9 inches short for the year, which is terrible considering how many farmers here in the midwest are hurting. Lots of terrible crops, which is going to mean we'll be paying more for the food. Anyway, now that CSI is back on-air, the submissions have been flying in. It's the only show I seem to have to moderate submissions for, but it's a piece of cake to handle. I really don't have much to add today. Current Rank: Whammy! Current Level: 32 (75%) Submission Status: Accepted: 4607 Pending: 17 Denied: 62 Total: 4686