NYTimes just had a piece on how to use rabbit ears to nab the new digital signals.

Tim made an antenna out of metal coat hangers, and it works beautifully. (Now we get about 12 different PBS affiliates. Woo.)

I'm just seeing a lot of chafing under cable monopolies which makes people feel justified/eager to nab content without paying for it, or just look for workarounds.

I'd pay for cable if I could do a la carte channels. All I really want are Cartoon Network and Comedy Central. And possibly Bravo. A la carte channels couldn't be hard to do, but there's no incentive for cable companies to provide content that way.

I don't think the bandwidth issues will be too huge a barrier. It will ramp up because there will be tremendous market demand.

But the cable companies are usually the ones providing the bandwidth that reaches the customers. They have a disincentive to facilitate streaming video.

I'd say I'm getting at least 50% of my TV from Netflix Instant these days. omg Friday Night Lights! I guess people did try to tell me how good it was and I was all 'HS football = meh' but y'all should have insisted.

To me the issue of death and its impenetrability, has to do with the mystery of time.

Because if time is as Einstein describes it, then it's really a matter of my limited perception. My past still exists. My future still exists. My little space on the timeline doesn't go anywhere. I just think time is moving forward in a linear fashion.

So I am still learning to play catch with my Dad in the front yard. And my Mom is still making me pancakes. And I'm still eating green olive and black olive pizza with Julia. And I'm chatting with Fred and Barry at baseball tryouts.

And fifty years from now I'll still be talking about scrambled eggs with Chikat. Or possibly my head will be in a jar.

Having finally gotten Netflix (since I can use it on my BlueRay player), I'm thinking of cancelling cable. Although I may wait until after the Doctor Who x-mas special on the 25th.

The thing I would really like to ahem (since I have cable and tivo) is EBOOKS. OMG. I mean, they're ridiculous expensive! I can go to the used bookstore and get books supercheap ($1-3) but ebooks are sometimes even MORE than paperbacks (even though the actual book is out in paperback, and is years old, etc). RIDIC.

I'm getting into using ginger in my cocktails. I like ginger.

Ginger is delish, and if you come up with any great things to do with my ginger vodka, let me know. It's a bit delicate, so mixing it with stuff is hard.

That said, there's ginger mojitos at the restaurant attached to the ballroom where I dance, and they're YUM. With or without rum.

Is Netflix Streaming Its Way Towards Disaster?

The article argues that the only reason that Netflix works right now is because of the streaming deals they have in place. When those deals expire in 2012, the prices are going to have to go way, way up.

Hubby's watching a lot of TV on Netflix. Unfortunately, he's doing it on my computer, because it has a better monitor and graphics card than his machine. And I hate his machine because it's a laptop and I don't like typing on my lap. And it's Vista. He needs a better computer.

J cancelled for me babysitting tonight because her regular sitter is available suddenly, but she still wants me to come meet the kids this afternoon so that I can babysit in the future. I totally get her being more comfortable with leaving her kids with someone who they are more familiar with tonight, but the sudden disappearance of extra money kind of sucks.

I'm reasonably okay with not existing anymore. I mean, I figure, I won't be around to mind, so what's the point of minding now?

I love cable TV. Call me old-fashioned, or whatever, but I'm not ready to acquire all the cable shows I watch some other way than TiVo reaching out and grabbing them. I mean, I can get illegally and legally downloaded stuff onto my TiVo or my Apple TV, but that requires effort on my part, at least nominally, which most of my TV watching doesn't. So I only do it for the British stuff I don't have a good timetable for.