Dear WFSB,

Yes, it's snowing. We get that. It's been forecast for several days. And you are showing a playoff football game. Even though it's Baltimore vs Tennessee, some CT residents actually want to sit in their warm, snug houses and, you know watch the game. These people do not need to have approximately 20% of their television screens filled with a crawling listing of all the towns and cities in Connecticut that have overnight parking bans, due to the storm. Oh, look, bingo is cancelled at churches in Milford and Ansonia. And Thomaston still has an overnight parking ban, as does Waterbury.

And, some arcane rule means that, even though Comcast carries WCBS from New York, when WCBS and WFSB have the same programming scheduled, the WFSB feed appears on the channel allocated to WCBS. As a result, the only way I can avoid seeing, yet again, that Stonington has an overnight parking ban, along with Thomaston and Tolland, is to turn off the TV and go shovel some of that snow, or something.

ETA In another instance of the awesome power of an LJ rant, within a few minutes of this posting, WFSB decided that they no longer needed to give screen real estate to a repetitive listing of storm closings.

I suppose I should be grateful that Comcast is willing to provide a pixelated, artefact-ridden video signal with distorted audio for The NHL Network for the World Junior game between Canada and the US. But, somehow, I'm not. Out of all of the digital channels on my system, including the other sports channels that they throw in for free when I pay them $7.99/month for the NHL Network,* this is the only one that they can't manage to keep on the air. I've subscribed to this channel for two months, and this is the second time the channel was unwatchable, and there have been two additional times when there was no signal at all (I suppose that counts as unwatchable as well).

The good news, though, is that by the time I called to complain, so had many others. I'm not the only hockey fan who'd planned to stay in on New Years Eve and watch this heavily bally-hooed game. There were multiple trouble-tickets open on this issue. It's nice that they recognize that hockey fans care about actually seeing hockey, not to mention that if they sell a value-added service for $7.99/month, they ought to actually provide that service. All of the Comcast CSRs I've talked to about problems with the NHL Network have been quite pleasant, as was the tech who came out last week. But that doesn't negate the fact that I can't, ever, count on watching scheduled programming on the NHL Network.

ETA: Picture and sound are back, with 4 minutes to go in the second period, within 2 minutes of my posting. If I'd known I had that power, I would have posted this during the pre-game!

*This is a matter of framing. Comcast would say that they are selling me a package of about a dozen sports channels (NBA-TV, NFL Network, channels dedicated to tennis, NASCAR, college sports, etc.), but, if it weren't for the hockey, I wouldn't be subscribing, so that's what I'm paying for, and, if I watch an occasional hockey game or Thursday night football game, well, they're available, but nothing actually worth subscribing to.

WFSB in Connecticut just cut into the Jets-Seahawks game, during play, with a breaking news item: The storm is over. It's stopped snowing. Yep, that's worth interrupting a Jets drive for.

Good job cutting out the last minute of the third period of a tied game for the monthly test of the Emergency Broadcast System.

Aside from anything else, the test failed, as the audio wasn't audible.

From this morning's NY Times

Summary for those who don't care to click: it's possible to eat well for under $50 a person, not counting wine. Gee, ya think?!?!?

So, for a NY sports fan, there's exactly one football game worth seeing this Sunday, Jets-Dolphins. (The Giants opened and won on Thursday night.) My cable system carries two CBS stations, one from NY and one from Hartford. According to the on-screen guide, the NY station has the Jets game, and the Hartford station has the Patriots-Chiefs game. In fact, both have the Patriots game. I spent 15 minutes in hold-hell on Comcast, along with all the other Jets fans in New Haven County, only to be told, by Ramona, that CBS decided that the Jets-Dolphins game should only be shown in the NY metropolitan area. Ramona gave me a CBS phone number which I can try tomorrow to complain. I'm sure that CBS will tell me that it was an NFL decision, not their decision. (Can you tell that I've been down this road before?) But, meanwhile, the Patriots' season is over before it began, and there's 15 minutes until the Mets telecast begins. So, I'm stuck with my choice of two different Fox channels showing Eagles-Rams. The Eagles' season is alive and well, at least for now. But I just want to know when the NFL hired fan-relations coordinators away from the NHL? Seriously.

I understand the fireworks impulse, really I do. No matter what the local laws are, people like bright, shiny things. And they like blowing stuff up. So, fireworks, which combine the two, are a natural. Even if neighborhood kids ignore all rational safety precautions when they set off fireworks in the street in front of my house (well, almost in front of my house). At least there's been enough rain in the past few days that they're unlikely to set vegetation or structures on fire (unlike in some parts of the country).

But what I will never understand is the impulse to set off fireworks before the sun has even set, at least an hour and a half before it will be possible to see and enjoy the bright and shiny. Can anyone explain this to me. (And, no, it's not the same as sneaking downstairs to open your Christmas presents before everyone else gets up.)

I ran out this afternoon to run some errands, in the heat of the afternoon. One errand was to fill some prescriptions in the Stop and Shop pharmacy. Since I didn't have any grocery shopping to do (I already knew that store doesn't stock Worcestershire sauce without HFCS), I wandered through some other stores in the same plaza. One of these was a Modell's sporting goods store I'd never been in (it's relatively new). Like most stores of its ilk, it doesn't stock much in the way of actual sports equipment. Instead, there are racks upon racks of "authentic" league jerseys. There was a central area with a lot of kids' stuff. Given the season, it's not surprising that the bulk of the stock was baseball-related; mostly there were Yankee and Red Sox shirts, but there were some Mets shirts as well. And, along with the actual jerseys, there were derivative shirts, mostly "Joba Rules".

There was another rack in the middle of the store with Celtics jerseys, not surprisingly, as they're in the NBA finals. And there were assorted football jerseys, mostly Patriots and Jets, but there were assorted other MVP-types (a Tomlinson Chargers jersey, for instance, and lots of Tony Romo Cowboys jerseys).

In addition, there was a wall display right by the entrance, with jerseys mostly from New York and Boston area teams. There were several styles of Yankee and Met jerseys (Wright, Jeter, Chamberlain), a few Red Sox jerseys (Papelbon), a Rangers sweater (Drury), (unbelievably) a Knicks jersey (Curry?), and a fair number of Cowboys jerseys (Romo). Then there was a Manning jersey. My first reaction was that it was nice to see Eli get his due. But then I looked again. The jersey was blue, but closer to royal blue than to navy blue, and it didn't have any red trim. And unlike all of the other jerseys, it was missing one of its hang tags. All of the others had a tag with a holographic NFL logo and another tag with a holographic logo of the team. This jersey only had the league hang tag. And the clincher? The number on the jersey was 18. Now I don't tend to memorize football players' jersey numbers, but this just didn't look right. So, when I got home, I checked the Giants' roster, and Eli does, indeed, wear number 10. The 18? That's big brother Peyton's number with the Indianapolis Colts who, coincidentally, have royal blue jerseys.

I'm not sure what the point of this deception is. Anybody who's going to drop upwards of $100 on a football jersey is far more likely than I am to know the difference between a Peyton Manning #10 Colts jersey and an Eli Manning #18 Giants jersey. On second thought, someone buying a Fathers Day present might not. Oh well.

(Yes, I do have Paul Lucas' Uni Watch blog on my Google reader feed. Why do you ask?)

I was doing a bit of vacuuming on Saturday, and realized that the bag was full (yes, I have an old-fashioned vacuum cleaner, with a bag). So, I changed the bag, taking the last spare out of the closet. The logical thing to do at that point was to buy a new package of bags, so I'll have them the next time I decide I need to change the bag. I bought the vacuum cleaner maybe four years ago, at Bed, Bath, and Beyond, and have bought replacement bags there, when needed (using one of the ubiquitous 20% off coupons). So when I went out to do errands, I stopped in, only to find no vacuum cleaner bags. I asked a clerk where they were, and was told that they no longer stock them, but that she would be glad to put in a special order. Special order vacuum cleaner bags???!Q?!? Nuh-uh. In what possible world does this make sense? Fortunately, they stock the bags I need in Stop and Shop (as well as, I discovered later, Shaws and Target).

And another thing. Ice cubes. According to Consumer Reports, the most frequent cause of service calls on modern refrigerators is broken ice makers. And my refrigerator has, for the second time in seven years, a broken ice maker. This leaves me with three options. I can pay for a $100 service call to get the ice maker fixed. I can pay somewhere around $1000 for a new refrigerator with a working ice maker (and, unlike mine, a filter on the water line to the ice maker). Or I can do without an ice maker. Consumer Reports also says that if the refrigerator is more than a few years old, it doesn't make sense to get it fixed, as newer refrigerators are much more energy efficient. But I'm spending a bunch of money this summer on other home improvements, and the refrigerator still works perfectly well (aside from the ice maker), so I'd like to defer getting a new refrigerator as long as possible. That leaves option three. Or does it?

The other day, it occurred to me that I don't need an ice maker to make ice. I could do it the old fashioned way, filling ice cube trays at the tap (with filtered water!). However, when I moved into a house with an ice maker in the refrigerator, the ice cube trays that I had previously used went into the Salvation Army bags, and are long gone. No matter. I could buy some more. Not so fast. Here's a list of merchants who don't stock ice cube trays: Bed, Bath, and Beyond (I'm sure they would have special-ordered!); Stop and Shop; Shaws; Target. It took two days of errands to discover this. A little web-surfing last night revealed a few sources, all with minimum shipping costs exceeding the price of the ice cube trays! On the other hand, if I drive 30 miles on a quest for ice cube trays, that's $4.20 worth of gas, at today's prices. However, I had one last place to try. One of the web sites I turned up last night selling ice cube trays was Walgreens.com, and there's a Walgreens less than a mile from myself. So I headed out this afternoon to see if the store had them in stock. They did, but they don't any more! And I will have ice cubes this summer. With a little luck, I can put them in the bin attached to the ice maker and still use the dispenser/crusher.

If — and this is an almost unimaginable if — the Senators' free fall were to continue to the point of their missing the playoffs, it would stand as one of the greatest collapses in sports history. People would speak of this bizarre season in the same way they remember the 1964 Philadelphia Phillies blowing a 6 1/2-game lead with 12 games to go in a baseball pennant race, or Greg Norman squandering a six-stroke lead going into the final round of the 1996 Masters.

Roy MacGregor's piece in Tuesday's Toronto Globe and Mail

It's so nice that he still thinks of the 1964 Phillies as having perpetrated the worst late-season collapse in baseball history.

The 2007 Mets thank him.

The NFL playoff schedule for next weekend has been showing up on Yahoo.com in a singularly incomplete fashion for the past few days. Memo to Yahoo: The Patriots actually have to play a game in order to move on the the AFC championship game!

OK, so the rain forecast for this afternoon turned into freezing rain and then a bit of snow. It's December, and things like that happen. But, yet again the Public Works Departments of New Haven and Hamden acted like they were in one of those cities below the Mason-Dixon line where "do nothing; it will melt" is a viable snow-removal strategy.

Depending on route, I live 8-12 miles from work (8 miles on surface streets, 12 on the highway). Given red lights and left-turning traffic, it takes me, under normal circumstances, 15-25 minutes door-to-door. Today, it took almost an hour. Some of the slow-down was other drivers being appropriately careful. But most of it was that no sanders had been out. The main streets weren't particularly treacherous, as there was enough traffic heat to keep the roads from freezing over. But, right in my neighborhood, driving was an adventure. I passed one fender-bender, already attended by the local police, and another car parked at an interesting angle in somebody's yard. The last three blocks to my house involve, in order, a gentle uphill, a gentle downhill, two stop signs, and a 90° right turn just before the left turn into my driveway. I fish-tailed my way up the gentle slope in the left lane, fortunately with enough momentum that I didn't slide back down and grateful that there was no oncoming traffic. On days like this, stop signs are suggestions only; there was no cross-traffic, so I just glided through, with the primary goal of going slowly enough that the zig-zag turns involved in actually getting into my driveway wouldn't be a problem. As it happened, they weren't, and I got home just over 55 minutes after leaving work.

It always amazes me that people will pay large amounts of money for authentic athletic jerseys bearing the logo of their favorite team, along with the name and number of their favorite player. (We won't talk about people who personalize their authentic jersey with their own name or who inauthentically buy a New York Yankees jersey with a name on the back along with the number.) This is obviously yet another way I am totally out of touch with popular culture, judging by the number of jerseys I see when I'm out and about. And even I was moved by the story I read somewhere in the wake of Katrina of someone who was plucking survivors off of roof-tops and who was offered, in thanks, by one of these survivors his most valuable possession, a filthy, sweat-stained Allen Iverson jersey.

Today at Best Buy, as I was waiting for assistance in selecting a new XM radio, I saw a shlubby guy walk by wearing an Atlanta Falcons jersey. One of my favorite sports experiences ever involved the Falcons. But that was in Atlanta, at a Hawks-Pistons game, while the Falcons were upsetting the Packers on a Saturday night in Green Bay. Here in Connecticut, I've never seen a Falcons jersey before. Patriots jerseys dominate the landscape, and there are also plenty of Giants and Jets jerseys. And, of course, there are always bandwagon fans, so Steelers and Broncos jerseys have had their day, and it's not unprecedented to see someone in a Cowboys, Dolphins, or Redskins jersey either. It wouldn't shock me to see a Colts jersey, and there's always the black Raiders jersey as fashion statement contingent. But Falcons? Not so much.

That's just a minor puzzlement, though, compared to the personalization. The name on the back of the jersey: Vick. I can see owning such a jersey, as much as I can see owning any other personalized jersey. But taking it out of the closet this week and actually wearing it out of the house? What ever was he thinking?

(For those on my FL who aren't clear just why this is such a questionable decision, click here for all the nauseating details.)

I've never read any of the Harry Potter books, and have no interest in doing so. But I recognize the mass psychosis that is Harry Potter fandom. I don't understand that level of devotion. But I was one of the hockey fans compulsively hitting Refresh on my browser on the first day of the free agent signing period. I view that as understandable interest, but I can understand that someone who doesn't care about hockey—indeed, about any sport—could view that level of interest as perversely excessive. Different strokes and all that.

And I don't blame bookstores for organizing events in honor of the Harry Potter publication. After all, they're in the business of making money, just as the publisher is. And the publisher is certainly entitled to distribute books but embargo their sale before the official publication date. It's a marketing strategy that can, but doesn't necessarily (how many people actually lined up to buy Windows 98 the minute it became available?) increase demand.

Likewise, I understand the anti-spoiler ethos within the fan community. People want to discover each juicy nugget precisely as the author intended. However, while it would be cruel of me to divulge a plot-point, or a pseudo-plot-point, that's a matter of consideration to friends, as I don't share the anti-spoiler ethos as an ethical stance.

Well, the best-laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley, as they say. Either a distributor or a bookstore screwed up. Copies of the book were sold, including one to the NY Times. The newspaper had, presumably, received an advance copy so that they'd be able to publish a review as soon as the embargo was lifted. But, if a Times staff-member can walk into a bookstore and buy the book, well, that transaction wasn't subject to an embargo. And, the Times indeed published their review.

I understand that fans were annoyed. But, once you know that there's a review, you don't have to read it! There were letters to the editor today complaining that the Times had published spoilers. Whether there were spoilers or not in the review I'm not in a position to say, but there certainly wasn't much enumeration of plot. But the Times as an institution didn't violate either the terms of the publishing embargo or some implied social compact about spoilers.

Oh, yeah, and there's no Easter Bunny. Deal with it.

I had to go in to work briefly today, as there was one matter I really had to deal with that I couldn't deal with remotely (I'd tried on Tuesday, and, due to the cluelessness of a software vendor, hadn't been able to). On my way home, I stopped at the grocery store. One of the items on my list was liquid bleach, as I had a $1 off coupon for my preferred brand (while not officially "chemically sensitive", I've had enough reactions to artificially scented products that when I find a brand of something that doesn't make me itch, I tend to stick with that brand). This bleach comes in 50 oz bottles. Most of them were labeled 16 loads, but one bottle had the 16 crossed out and replaced with 20. The bottles looked like they were the same size and shape, and when I picked them both up, they felt like they weighed the same. Indeed, both specifically said 50 oz.

So, I looked at the instructions. On the bottles labeled 16 loads, the instructions said to fill the cap to line 3. But, on the bottles labeled 20 loads? Those instructions said to fill to a point between line 2 and line 3.

Yeah, that'll do it. Use less bleach per load and your bottle of bleach will, indeed, last for more loads of laundry.

So, the (baseball) All Star Game is in San Francisco this year. As in the past, the starters are elected by fan vote, both in stadiums and on the internet. Reserves and pitchers are elected by players. And a few players are added by the managers, in consultation with the Commissioner's office. All of this is subject to the constraint that there must be at least one All Star from each team.

Barry Bonds plays for San Francisco, and is on the verge of breaking the all time career home run record, set by Hank Aaron. While record chases are ordinarily played up, this one is different. It's different because, even in the absence of direct proof, virtually everyone is convinced that Bonds took illegal substances (anabolic steroids or growth hormone). The circumstantial evidence is suggestive, but it's not entirely clear exactly how these substances that it hasn't been proven that Bonds took as part of what, by all accounts, is an intense training regimen might or might not have contributed to his mounting home-run total.

As part of the All Star Game hype, interim fan vote totals are released. Through all of the run-up to the game, Bonds was in fourth or fifth place in the fan voting. So various sports discussion shows and web sites were rife with speculation about whether the players would vote Bonds in as a reserve and whether the commissioner (who still hasn't made public any decision about how Bonds' breaking of Aaron's record will be treated by baseball officialdom) would make sure that Bonds would appear in the All Star Game in his home ball park.

The All Star rosters were announced today. And among the starters, voted in by fans, was Barry Bonds. So, the National League manager and the Commissioner of Baseball are off the hook. And the votes weren't even counted in Florida. How convenient.

I'm taking a vacation day today, since I have to pick someone up at the airport later this afternoon. So I started dealing with junk mail. I had two fund-begging letters, both from Good Causes (TM). In order to guilt me to give, both included sheets of return address labels. In the past, these were quite useful. However, now that I pay most of my bills on-line, I almost never use the mail. Hence, I almost never use return address labels. And, because of the paper they're printed on, these aren't recyclable.

I'm really not inclined to give further to organizations that waste donations in this way. I'm talking to you: Audubon Society, Nature Conservancy, Doctors Without Borders, Connecticut Food Bank, Democratic National Committee.

So, alice_q, your LiveJournal reveals...



You are... 13% unique
(blame, for example, your interest in hand-knit socks.)
and 38% herdlike
(partly because you, like everyone else, enjoy hockey).
When it comes to friends you are normal. In terms of the way you relate to people, you are keen to please.

Your writing style (based on a recent public entry) is conventional.

Your overall weirdness is: 33

(The average level of weirdness is: 29.
You are weirder than 69% of other LJers.)

Find out what your weirdness level is!

This is just weird: because you, like everybody else, enjoy hockey??? Would that it were so; NBC might have actually stuck with OT of the clinching game of the Eastern Conference Finals, instead of switching to the Preakness pre-game show!

When asked to stand for a moment of silence for Memorial Day, to remember soldiers who have died in battle, the appropriate thing is to be silent. What is not appropriate is to chant "USA, USA".

Also, whose bright idea was it to have Stephen Stills sing The Star Spangled Banner a capella?

And, Versus producers, I really don't give a damn what Jerry Bruckheimer or Cuba Gooding, Jr. thinks about this series.

I ordered some yarn from JoAnn.com last week. The confirmation gave me the tracking information, as follows:

Tracking Number: 1Z XXX XXX XX XXX XXX X
Type: Package
Status: In Transit - On Time
Scheduled Delivery: 05/08/2007
Shipped to: HAMDEN, CT, US
Shipped or Billed on: 05/03/2007
Service Type: GROUND
Weight: 2.40 Lbs

Package Progress
Location Date Local Time Description
HARTFORD, CT, US 05/05/2007 7:16 A.M. ARRIVAL SCAN
STRATFORD, CT, US 05/05/2007 6:13 A.M. DEPARTURE SCAN
05/05/2007 4:39 A.M. ARRIVAL SCAN
PARSIPPANY, NJ, US 05/05/2007 2:36 A.M. DEPARTURE SCAN
PARSIPPANY, NJ, US 05/04/2007 3:23 P.M. ARRIVAL SCAN
MAUMEE, OH, US 05/04/2007 5:57 A.M. DEPARTURE SCAN
05/04/2007 4:50 A.M. ARRIVAL SCAN
WYOMING, MI, US 05/04/2007 1:00 A.M. DEPARTURE SCAN
WYOMING, MI, US 05/03/2007 6:00 P.M. ORIGIN SCAN
US 05/03/2007 5:41 P.M. BILLING INFORMATION RECEIVED

Tracking results provided by UPS: 05/07/2007 8:19 P.M. EST (USA)

What gets me is the last two steps. Stratford is about 20 miles southwest of my home; Hartford is about 30 miles north of my home. I don't understand why a package moving from Stratford to Hamden would have to spend the weekend in Hartford. If I check on this tomorrow morning, I fully expect to see that the package has gone back to Stratford, on its way to Hamden, as it's the local sorting center.

Think about this the next time you want to complain about high shipping rates.