Holy level upgrade, Batman! This morning's level bug was fun for a while, as it crept up to level 50 for probably several hundred people, but it got to be annoying, knowing that we've got yet another bug on the site, whatever the origin. I wished I had access to the CP so I could have turned off the level updates. Not much on TV last night, although I did watch Ghost Hunters, part of Good Eats, and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart of course. Current Rank: Whammy! Current Level: 32 (56%) Submission Status: Accepted: 4367 Pending: 8 Denied: 61 Total: 4436 So what have you been up to? What is your submission status list like? Don't be shy now.

Two updates? Yeah, why not?! I decided to add an extra set of stats to my usual update, for my own curiousity. Current Rank: Whammy! Current Level: 32 (15%) Submission Status: Accepted: 4290 Pending: 8 Denied: 61 Total: 4359 Point System Per Show: Note: I know I probably missed a lot of shows, but I'll add them as I find them $40 a Day: 344 30 Minute Meals: 955 According to Jim: 10 American Casino: 127 American Chopper: 40 American Morning: 15 American Cooper 360: 577 Becker: 265 Biography: 13 CSI: 239 CSI: Miami: 18 Comedy Central Presents: 804 Countdown with Keith Olbermann: 5 Dateline NBC: 5 Digging For The Truth: 45 Drew Carey's Green Screen Show: 5 Ed: 168 Everyday Italian: 74 Good Eats: 937 Hope & Faith: 264 Junkyard Wars: 222 MacGyver: 7 Mail Call: 11 Meet The Press: 60 Modern Marvels: 4093 Monday Night Football: 8 Monster House: 2 MythBusters: 28 NBC Nightly News: 23 NOW with Bill Moyers: 10 Paula Zahn Now: 10 Politically Incorrect: 130 Real Time with Bill Maher: 873 Scarborough Country: 9 Tactical to Practical: 32 The Daily Show: 8179 The Drew Carey Show: 152 The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson: 1296 The Red Green Show: 1256 The Situation with Tucker Carlson: 657 The X-Files: 326 Trivia Unwrapped: 10 Tucker Carlson: Unfiltered: 726 Unwrapped: 1008 Wild West Tech: 127 World News Tonight: 7

The fall TV season is here now, and I've been busy watching TV. I guess this would explain for the lack of updates here. Supernatural: Not quite sure what to make of this. It does seem a little X-Files-like, as it's been described by viewers/critics. I think I'll actually try and watch this show. Other than Jack & Bobby, I haven't really liked much else on the WB. Prison Break: Very good show. Episode 5 aired last night, and it's only getting better. My one complaint about the show is the character Michael Scofield, played by Wentworth Miller shows no emotion, it's a very one-dimensional character. The lack of character makes him a little bland. Fortunately, there are several other characters in and out of prison who share screen time. CSI Series': The main CSI and CSI:NY series' haven't started yet, but the season premier of CSI: Miami was on last night, and I enjoyed it. The shootout at the limestone quary ended in kind of a lame fashion, however. Right in the 'middle' of the shooting, they go to commercial. Once the commercial is over, the show is back, and all of the shooting is done. What?! The premier of Surface was on last night, as well. I'm not quite sure what that creature is from the ocean, but I admit, it's got me interested to see what it is. When Miles grabbed the monster from the bathtub, I thought for sure he would get attacked, but nothing happened. On the TV.com front, I've not submitted too much, so I don't have much to mention there. Grailwolf made a great list of stuff regarding the crew credits recently, and I think it's worth repeating:

[QUOTE="EKlumppJr"]Why have a default at all, once you make a selection, it should stay selected and not revert to the default when you "search for crew" like it does now. Last time I made a submission, it started out at stunts, but reverted to writer after I searched for crew. It should stay where it is put and not revert to anything else!grailwolf

More than that, the entire system needs to be looked at. - The job selection shouldn't change when a search is done - The search should work the same as the search on the main page - New entries (manually entered crew and cast) should appear in searches - Points should be per entry, not per submission (a submission with 20 crew shouldn't be worth the same as a single name) - There should be a way to enter all the jobs not covered by the drop-down menu (I can only enter about 70% of the crew on any given show, if not less) - Crew jobs should appear on the guide page - Lists of crew and cast should be ordered in a logical way, to make it easier to find what/who you're looking for (especially within the "add" menu, when trying to find previously entered crew to check them off) Frankly, there is probably more wrong with this part of the site than there is right about it. Don't get me wrong, this isn't blind hatred of TV.com. Overall I love the site and I like some of the ideas I've seen and the direction I think the site is headed. However, I really think that more time needs to be spent on the basic functionality of the site before the bells and whistles. Nice bells. Cool whistles. But if we can't enter cast members and see them in a logical list on the guide then that undermines the entire point of the site. Just my $.06 (adjusting for inflation)

The search engine aspect is more wide-spread than just crew, but it's made adding all of the cast ridiculously difficult, made even more difficult with the apostrophe and roman numeral bugs. Hopefully this stuff can get fixed; I know the staff is overworked, what with the fall season here and all. Current Rank: Whammy! Current Level: 32 (15%) Submission Status: Accepted: 4256 Pending: 11 Denied: 60 Total: 4327

I wanted to both say thanks to the staff, and wish them luck. There's no doubt this site's had a rocky road since its launch, but I know the staff has put in a lot of time on some things, and I thank you guys for that. I also want to wish you luck over the next several weeks. I don't mean it sarcastically, I really mean it. The bugs seem to actually be increasing, which I know is a huge problem to fix. They seem to be overwhelming you guys; there are just so many damn problems, and again, I question whether you guys have the resources to do the job. Do you have someone we can call/email/snail mail about this? A particular supervisor at CNET Games/Entertainment or someone else? You guys never really seemed to have enough people/resources from the git-go. You had to actually hire people just to process submissions.

Modern Marvels had a mini-marathon on today. Anyone watch it? I caught a few episodes, but I already saw them recently. Today's problems with the points and levels was annoying for everyone. I thank snide or whoever it was that kicked the servers and got it working again. I was glad to see a few people post in my blog the other day, regarding my post about the PM system. I sincerely hope the site's engineers have this blog bookmarked, because it's important, and if you noticed, we tried to find certain conditions where the PM system works properly and doesn't. As a former administrator for sites, I know that this is half of the battle to finding the root cause and fixing the problem(s). Current Rank: Blues Brother Current Level: 31 (64%) Submission Status: Accepted: 4146 Pending: 6 Denied: 60 Total: 4212

Instead of giving the usual update on how many submissions I have, I've decided to concentrate on the PM system, which needs an overhaul when it comes to processing submissions. [snide are you reading this ;) ] I've received submissions for some shows which don't mention what show it was for. Example: [quote="tvdotcom"]Thank You! Your contribution of the Episode Crew for has been approved. You just earned points towards your TV.com level. Moderator Comments: thanks

Anybody know what show that was for? I do, but not because of the PM. I know it's for a new show, Martha. I thought that maybe shows which weren't in the search engine, maybe didn't get their name mentioned in the PMs, but Martha is in the search engine. So why isn't it included? I've got no clue. I don't quite know how these scripts query the database for that info, but it looks to be broken somehow. I've also received a PM where not only did it not mention the show name, but it didn't mention the submission type (episode crew, note, quote, etc). Very rarely, do I ever get that "This submission was moderated by the TV.com staff." message at the bottom of my submissions anymore. It's like it was turned off. I don't know if it's being processed by the staff or the editor of the show. Obviously I know who's doing it if the show has no editor, but you know what I mean. Another problem I've run into can be seen in this screenshot: Anybody know what show it was for, or what I did wrong? Yeah, me neither. There has been reports of people logging in and opening up ther PM inbox, and have noticed their "new" messages were already read. I've witnessed this myself. I'm not sure why it does this. It's been a rare thing, but I've noticed it at least twice. Then there's the whole problem with rejection comments, or the lack of comments. This has been discussed in the forums, and it must be made mandatory for a TV.com Staff member or a show editor to include a valid comment on why he/she is rejecting the submission. We must include a comment for submitting something, so it should be the same way for rejecting. All good editors will give you a reason for the rejection. What I would include is a submission #, so people could report it, like you would get a "support ticket #", so you can report problems to a staff member. I would recommend hiring another person for tv.com duties, since the staff on-hand seems overworked or spread too thinly. One of the duties for that person would be to handle submission problem tickets. That person would know who processed the submission (specific member name), and what exactly was sent. I may continue with a series of these documented (important) problems. These problem reports are already in the forums, but they get pruned every 30 days, and the bug thread doesn't seem to be maintained anymore.

Modern Marvels has a few new episodes on tonight. Hopefully, I'll be able to catch them. I become editor for a show I had several submissions pending, and I was able to go through them. I don't have much else to say other than to mention I finally got some rain. It's been pretty dry here in the midwest this year. Current Rank: Volgar the Enforcer Current Level: 29 (94%) Submission Status: Accepted: 3923 Pending: 58 Denied: 54 Total: 4035

The season premier of The Simpsons wasn't all that impressive. Prison Break is becoming more and more of a favorite. It's been a while since there was a good drama on network TV. snide's recent blog post has given me a little more hope in the site. The past week has been pretty bad for this site. The lack of communication as of late between the staff and members/editors has led to a great deal of frustration. I hope we get a few more bug fixes this week, especially the bug where search engine doesn't update with new shows/people. This is pure hell for updating guides. Current Rank: Disco Stu Current Level: 28 (54%) Submission Status: Accepted: 3690 Pending: 109 Denied: 53 Total: 3852

FOX has the season premier of The Simpsons tonight. It's about time. The History Channel had a bunch of shows on about Rome last week, but I didn't get a chance to watch them. I hate it when I miss new shows over there. Current Rank: Disco Stu Current Level: 28 (35%) Submission Status: Accepted: 3617 Pending: 104 Denied: 53 Total: 3774

I haven't submitted much today. I spent time going through my nearly 200 pages of submissions in search of what I have left "pending", and most of it's only a month old. There wasn't a whole lot left in June/July. I actually made a little list on paper, most of the stuff is for 30 Minute Meals and Becker. The Becker editor is MIA, and the 30 Minute Meals editor seems to be MIA, but also doesn't have access to the editor's queue. The points and levels were run today, which made me shoot up another entire level. I was on level 26 for just one day, which is very unusual. Current Rank: Shark Jumper Current Level: 27 (7%) Submission Status: Accepted: 3531 Pending: 113 Denied: 53 Total: 3697