Domestic Geek

Man, how did it get to be Thursday already? I don't want to miss two weeks in a row, so here's a quick list:

Thirteen Shows I Record on my Dish PVR (it's like a Tivo)

1. The Office
   My favorite show right now. I can't wait for this evening!
2. CSI: Crime Scene Investigation
   Actually, I record all three: Vegas, Miami and New York, but Vegas is still my favorite.
3. Gilmore Girls
   This used to be my favorite show, but I'm not hip to what they're doing with the Luke/Lorelei thing. I know a television show needs angst and drama, but still...
4. Ghost Whisperer
   I started watching this by accident. I refused at first because it was the replacement for Joan of Arcadia (hold grudges much? lol) Anyway, when the tv season went into reruns last year, I decided to give it a chance. I'm glad I did.
5. Supernatural
   I wasn't so sure about this one at first, since it had the dude from Gilmore Girls in it and I never liked that Dean character (especially when he cheated on his wife with Rory—Bad Dean!). I'm really into supernatural phoenomenon, though, so I started watching. I won't watch when I'm home alone at night anymore, though. *shiver*
6. Veronica Mars
   I never had any intention of watching this until it was on the TV at a wing place Marcus and I were eating at one night. I've been hooked ever since.
7. Law & Order
   Once again, we tape all three. My favorite one is Criminal Intent.
8. Without a Trace
   Got hooked on this because it followed CSI on Thursdays.
9. Heroes
   The story is moving a little slower than I would like, but it's still interesting. Dang, this one's got another Gilmore Girls guy in it, too. I liked the character of Jess alot.
10. Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip
    I loooooooove Matthew Perry! The premise seemed dumb, but I'm liking it so far.
11. Mythbusters
    Adam and Jamie are too damned funny! Well, plus I learn stuff on this one, too.
12. Two and a Half Men
    I didn't really like Charlie Sheen, so I almost passed on this one. I was really interested in seeing John Cryer again, though, so I watched and now I'm hooked. This show makes me hurt with laughter.
13. How I Met Your Mother
    I had to see Doogie and the band camp chick. Sometimes the story lines are really lame, but I still like it.

Let's not forget the following that I record, but aren't on now or have erratic schedules: Medium, The Dead Zone, Monk, The 4400 and South Park.

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Hey everybody.

I'm still here, just haven't felt like posting. The change in weather coupled with not hearing from the guy I interviewed with on Friday and realizing my unemployment runs out on the 21st triggered major blahs yesterday. It's starting to feel like I'm never going to find another job. The feelings of worthlessness set in. I started feeling the weight of another crappy Christmas coming. It's only 2½ months away. I had a little pity party for myself. I'm feeling a little better today, though, but not much.

I wanted to post about the little project I had Marcus working on for me. During the Blogathon, I noticed several sites that had audio links in their posts. A lot of people were using a service called hipcast, but that costs $$. People using Wordpress have a customizable flash audio plugin that is really cool and requires just a tiny bit of code in your post. I used Radio Blog Club to put the audio link for my Thursday Thirteen Favorite Songs post, but that only works if they have the song you're looking for in their database and the site is down alot. I know I could just use Object to embed audio, but I like the look of the Wordpress player and the tiny bit of code in the post.

There was a thread on the EE forums where somebody was asking if anybody could make a plugin for EE based on the Wordpress plugin. Stale Betty came up with a solution, but it requires a lot of code in the post and a custom field, so only one audio thing per post. I wanted the ability to have many. Anyway, I put the challenge to Marcus and he wrote me one, using both the wordpress plugin and stale betty's code. The only problem is I also have to use the Allow EE Code plugin in order to use it, but that's OK. Anyway, here's the little bit of code (I assigned it to a custom html button, so I only need to click one button to put it in my post):
{ exp:my_stream name="songtitle.mp3" id="1" }
Neat, huh?

All it cost me was making Marcus a Halloween graphic for his site! Isn't it cool?

I need to do a little more testing by going back and replacing all the songs in my Thursday 13 post. That'll test the "id" function of it. If every song has a different id, then they can't play at the same time. I realy need to get my head straight and figure out how to do these things. I've always wanted to learn php and I like tinkering with code, but this underemployment and depression is kicking my ass.

I've got a final rant I need to make. We get East and West coast stations on our Dish. I've been using the East coast to get the shows I like on CBS. Last Friday, I missed the last 10 minutes of Ghost Whisperer and two weeks in a row I haven't gotten the whole Without A Trace. Pisses me off. I'm trying to bit torrent them as we speak. I've switched to taping the West coast ones. We'll see if that solves this stupid problem. I'm also mad at CBS, the network. Your The Class show is stupid and nobody is watching it. Thanks for switching your line up to put it in between How I Met Your Mother and Two and a Half Men in a lame attempt to gain viewership. You're lucky I was looking for something else in the program guide and noticed your switch. If I had sat down to watch How I Met Your Mother on my PVR and found out then that I had The Class instead, I would've been pissed instead of mildly irritated. Jerks.

OK, enough posting for now. I've got housework and template fixing to do (I have got to get the comments template DONE!). Have a good Tuesday everybody.

I finally installed Yoshi's Vox crossposting extension. This is only a test.

Well, the site is coming along. I've been meaning to clean this template's code up since I originally installed it. Man, that's been years ago. Hopefully this will make it much easier to change the look next time (like after October). I've always wanted to get skinning set up. Sorry to those of you that still have an 800x600 screen resolution. I made sure that the main blog entries still show nicely on your screen without having to scroll sideways. My stats show the majority of readers are using 1024x768, so I decided it was time to start designing to that.

I had high hopes of making it xhtml compliant and valid css, but poo on that. There are too many things that make it not valid (The dynamic headers, the missing alt tags on many images, etc.). It's my personal site. Who really cares? I took the links out of the footer and that's the end of that.

Mmm, I smell Marcus making coffee beverages. I need a break.

My mom was a fountain of trivia and inane facts. She knew a lot of answers on television quiz shows and loved doing crossword puzzles. I must've inherited this trait because my brain is overflowing with seemingly trivial information. Combine my love of learning with my tendancy to retain obscure facts and you'll know why I love the Aviva Trivia Blog!

I tend to have a chronic cough and when it gets bad, even the most potent medicines do nothing to alleviate it. I've often wondered what people did before modern medicine for such common ailments. We all know about honey and lemon as a natural remedy, but a post about coughing stated an old superstition that I found odd:

Take one hair from the head of a person who is coughing and put it between two slices of buttered bread. Now feed it to the dog. Somehow, that is supposed to cure you from coughing.

Too funny that someone somewhere thought that would actually work, huh?

The posts cover a broad range of topics—killer bees, shaving, weird jobs, burial customs...the list goes on!

If you'd like to spend some time learning some new little tidbits or interesting facts, I highly recommend that you visit the Aviva Trivia Blog. Be prepared to spend some time there, though!