I use to watch podcasts religiously. When I worked at Intralot, I'd watch video podcasts during my lunch hour, and listen to audio versions during the day. Ever since I moved to Nebraska.gov I've pretty much quit watching them. The biggest reason is I don't have an office anymore, so during lunch I go to the lunch room, and during the day I'd need to use headphones. I have gotten a pair of headphones that I like, so I've been using them to listen to music, but I need to get back into the groove of watching/listening to my shows. They're informative and funny, and honestly during my recovery from the accident, they helped me keep my sanity. Being alone in a house 24 hrs a day was horrible. But to have that schedule of at 4 o'clock tune into Tech New Today, to find out the latest news and be entertained for a good hour, or Tuesday evening watch shwood and JuRY be jackasses for hours helped. It truly was the little things. But now I'm healed-ish, and I haven't seen JuRY spit out a racist slur, or Tom educate me in weeks. I should, they're like friends I drifted away from, and I don't want them to go. So here' to reconnecting with old friends.

Tech News Today, NSFW Show, Geekscape, Weird Things

Luckily for me there were good people right behind me. By the time I had my wits back, I heard people asking me if I was OK, and saying they had already called 911. I never saw any of them, since I was trying to stay as still as possible, which meant laying face down. I do know a guy was holding a rag to the cut on my forehead, a gal was keeping me talking, and another gal who recognized my truck had called my brother Bob. Being in an accident sucks, but having your brother help load you into the back of an ambulance is a whole 'nother feeling.

I got diagnosed with a hairline fracture of my C7 (neck) vertebrae, and compression fractures of my T8 and T12 (mid back) vertebrae. I spent about 2 weeks in the hospital, a week out at my folk's, and then a total of 2 months in a neck and back brace. I got out of the braces on May 6th.

On March 7, 2011 (my mom's birthday) I was heading into work. I'd been at Nebraska.gov for about 4 months. It was nice, the office was laid back, we were busy but it never seemed stressful. It was a crappy morning sleety, foggy, and overall a crappy winter/spring morning. As soon as I pulled out onto the highway I punched the gas to see if it was slick. It wasn't, Highway 79 never seems to be bad. The road crews generally have it cleared. So I went on my way to work.

Around Agnew I noticed the road wasn't as clear as it was so I started slowing down, I had a couple vehicle behind me, and they were keeping pace so I figured "OK they think this is a good speed too". Well when I got to the curves a few miles from the Raymond turn I slowed down. Slick roads, a pick-up and curves are never a good combination. I made it past the first curve fine, went over the rail road tracks, and into the next curve. This curve I didn't make it out of. The tail of the truck slid out from behind me, I turned into the skid on reflex. One benefit to all the stupid driving I did as a kid, I know how to control a skid. As I was going sideways I saw on coming traffic. Here is where my recollection and what actually happened may differ. From what I recall, the ass end came around, so I turned into the new skid, this time I'm facing towards the open field, and I figure the open field is better than the oncoming traffic, so I go in, thinking it will be a bumpy ride, but it can't be as bad as hitting a mid size SUV head on.

Unfortunately, I was wrong, I went off the road sideways, and down a 5 foot incline, when the truck hit the bottom of the incline where it met flat ground my truck started to roll. By my brother's best guess I rolled 1 1/2 times, from the witness who was right behind me, and came to my aid, he said I went around about 3 times. I honestly have no idea, all I remember is rag dolling inside my truck, and seeing glass shatter as my head met the passenger window, right as the truck comes to a stop. The next thing I did was groan, one of those guttural, pain induced, groans ...

There are times that I wish I put into words the way things make me feel. I never had a talent for putting my thoughts to paper, which is probably why I suck at blogging, but that is also the purpose of this blog. To try and hopefully succeed in the future.

This is one of those times, after reading this my eyes were teary. One thing I have noticed is I seem to cry a lot easier after my grandma passed away. It's odd that I notice it, but before I never seemed to tear up at movies or anything, but afterwards, a song can get me weepy eye.

Well my job hunt is over, it was quicker than most, but there were also times that it seemed it was taking forever. I started it about the middle of August, and I start my new job in the middle of November. So 3 months, really not that bad in the scheme of things.

But now the nerves shift from "will i find a job" to "did i make the right choice". From the 2 interviews it seemed like a nice place to work, smaller office, and the people I'd be working with seem pretty cool. I've always been a pessimist, and I have a low opinion of myself, so of course I'm going to question myself and abilities. But I also know I'm stubborn, and will refuse to fail, so I'll bull head my way through it.

Here's to the future, and to remembering a great history. I'll miss my coworkers at Intralot a lot, and I hope they all land on their feet.

I'm a creature of habit, so days like today bug me. I took the day off to do a job interview. Did the interview and I thought it went well, but I thought all my interviews went well. On the drive home my truck was acting up, so I did some troubleshooting with it, and it got worse. After talking to my bro and mechanic, more than likely the transmission is shot. So it'll be about 2 grand to get it fixed. While I'm waiting for Bob to come up with the truck and trailer to haul my truck in, I get a call from the place I had an interview with. I have a 2nd interview on Wednesday with them. So I guess I did do well in the interview. Got the truck hauled in to the shop, got home and started to relax, and since it's raining outside, none of the over the air stations are coming in, so can't watch any of the usual Monday shows I watch.

In my never ending search for one box to rule them all. Google TV looked to be that box. Anything on the web could be on your TV. Well that's dam near exactly what I want, but today 3 of the big 4 networks said they will block Google TV.

Old business holding onto their outdated business model. They don't want their internet viewership to take over. They make their money from ads they sell that air over regular TV. I'm sure they make some money from the internet viewership, but they don't want the internet to be people's first choice.

The tech community says they're stupid and going to die off. Maybe they will, but if they do, what are we going to watch? Yes, I watch podcasts, but they're mostly talking head shows. There really aren't any dramas/action/comedies in there. They're just informational. No podcast can match the budget that CSI or Lost has.

I also don't think the networks are in any danger of dying off. I think we in the tech community have a very narrow view on the world. The networks will change when they want to, because they're the ones holding all the cards, any site has to get their agreement to show their shows, they're the dealers, and we're the junkies.

So with all the job hunting I see the term "fast paced work environment" a lot. After the past 2 weeks I've had, I ask why is fast paced a good thing? Maybe they don't mean higher ups making decisions and deals, and then coming to the people who actually do the work and say, "we need this done in 2 weeks". Never mind it'll take about 4 weeks to do it, it has to be done in 2 weeks. I wonder what the term is for that work environment?

Sometimes computers are the passion of my life, and other times they are the bane of my existence. Lately they've been the latter. Since I can't get satellite, and the cable in Val is a joke, and over the air stations come in horribly bad, my only choice for watching anything is through computers. So I have a media PC in my living room, and a media PC in my bedroom.

Well the bedroom one has been giving me fits. A couple weeks ago the harddrive died in it, so I got a new one. Got the main bits installed on it, used it for about 2 days, and now the power supply went out. Granted it is about 5 years old, so stuff is going to break, and the power supply did go out in style. Loud pop, blue sparks and smoke, but now I have to get a new one.

I did some checking into media extenders, and there are a few that interest me, but for right now, a 40 buck power supply trumps a 100+ for any of the media extenders.

So this weekend, we pulled out an old hand pump well on the farm. When we looked over the edge of it, we couldn't see the bottom, so we knew we had to fill it in. Since one of the kids or animals could fall in, and that would be horribly bad. So we filled it in with dirt. A lot of dirt. It took longer than me Bob or dad thought it would, but we got it full.

After we were done I got to thinking about it. My great grand-dad and other people, mostly likely, spent a lot of time hand digging this well. And laying all the brick around it to make it a good well. They put a lot of sweat into it, and now a hundred years later we had to fill it in, because it was dangerous. A hundred years from now, it will probably just be flat land with a bit of concrete and brick there, and nobody will know anything about it.

One thing that I love about the internet is that when something cool pops up, it is easy to spread to your friends. Or if you are a content creator, you can easily put it out there for everyone to see. Now the one down side to that is everybody and their grandmother can be a content creator. So there is a whole lot of shit to shuffle through to find the gems. But dear god this is a gem. It's a fan made title sequence for AMC's new show The Walking Dead.

THE WALKING DEAD "Opening Titles" from Daniel Kanemoto on Vimeo.

"Critics don't know shit." This comes up quite a bit with movies and TV shows. The latest instance is for a new show, Lonestar, on FOX. The critics loved it, said it was the best pilot out there, bar none. Well it debuted to the public, and man were the critics wrong. It pulled in about 4 million viewers. Now for the main networks, this is a death sentence. Shows with 6 million get canceled.

So it looks like a case of critics don't know what they're doing. They say it's awesome, the public says it sucks. Whose right? Well I say the public is right, if the job of critics is to judge the popularity of a show. Which is what most people assume is a critics job. But most critics don't judge popularity, they're analyzing the art of television, not the art of making money. Which is why I don't listen to critics when I make my choice on what to watch.

Critics are big on shows that make you think, that study the human element, that push the boundaries. Now there are shows that I enjoy that fall into these categories, but they also fall into another category. Entertaining/escapism. Why do I love Dexter, because he kills bad people, and there are times that I want to kill people who annoy me. I don't enjoy it, because it shows the inner mind of a sociopath. I believe the general public is with me on this.

So I never understood why critics get so much attention. They're critiquing on a scale that most people don't care about. Their audience is a small percentage of the population, but I'm betting that there is a larger percentage that want to be perceived as part of the small percentage, and that's why critics get so much press.

So premiere week of 2010 is about done and here's my take on it.
Monday
Chuck is still great. How I Met Your Mother is getting back to Ted's hunt for his mother, which the whole show is suppose to be about, and it looks like it's still got the comedy chops entering it's 6th year. Castle is still rocking it (somebody please make Nathan Fillion the star he deserves to be). Chase and Hawaii Five-O look like 2 new shows that I will be sticking with. I was very impressed with Hawaii, good action and good light hearted moments. Plus the beautiful scenery, AND it's set in Hawaii. The Event, you are the next Lost, you're picking up right where Lost left off, disappointing.
Tuesday
Tuesday is pretty thin for me. Sons of Anarchy which has been going for a few weeks now is still badass. FX is one hell of a network. The other show is NCIS, last season it was starting to lose me, and it looks like this season is continuing the trend. But hell it's been on for 8 seasons, it can't hold my heart forever.
Wednesday
Undercovers vaguely kept my interest, I like the idea, but could definitely do without the annoying, hero worshiping side kick, and the breadcrumbs of some bigger reason they were brought back in to the CIA. But I'll give it a few more episodes. Terriers another FX show that's been on a few weeks, is bringing the heat like any other FX show, very good.
Thursday
The Big Bang Theory is vying for the top spot in my heart. This show just keeps getting better. Fringe is filling the SciFi void in my heart, that SyFy has left. Seriously stupid fucking name SyFy, it sounds like a venereal disease. Nikita is another new show that's showing promise. Shit My Dad Says, should of stayed a twitter phenomenon. It's a lot better in bite size portions than as a half hour sitcom.
Friday
My favorite show for 5 going on 6 years is Supernatural. I love this show, horror, classic rock, and brothers being bad asses. Plus a glorious classic American muscle car. This show, has always brought it, and will continue to bring it. Outlaw I'm kind of on the fence about, I like the idea of a big wig bucking the system, but not sure it'll keep my interest.
Coming soon...
A new season of Dexter, I can not wait for it. No Ordinary Family, I love the premise, I'm sure it can surpass the horrible Fantastic Four movies, but can it come close to The Incredibles. I hope so, but won't be holding my breath. And the king of all waiting games. The Walking Dead, coming Halloween night, I will eat that show up with a spoon.

The fall TV season has begun. It's always an interesting time of year. You get the joy of your returning shows, the anticipation of new shows, and the sadness of old favorites no longer worth your time.

Castle and How I Met Your Mother still hit it out of the park for me. I haven't watched Hawaii 5.0 or Chase yet, but they're ones I plan to check out in the next day or two, and House is starting lose it's luster for me.

I suppose I should explain the House comment. A friend of mine just got into House in the last few months. He's been burning through the seasons, and his comments remind me of how much I use to love House. Gregory House is an asshole, he's brilliant but an asshole. I wouldn't want to be his friend, but I sure as shit would want him on my case if I was sick. Last season and this season's premiere seem to have forgotten that. They're concentrating more on House and Cuddy's will they/won't they relationship. I don't give a shit about that. I haven't given up on House completely, but it's not the must watch for me any more, and that's sad. Saying good bye to a friend is never fun, but sometimes, you grew up to be different people than who you were when you first met.

So everybody loves Mad Men. I watched the first season of it, and it didn't float my boat. Don't get me wrong I'm not saying it's bad TV. I can see why people love it, it just wasn't my cup of tea. A lot of people say they love it because of the attitude, then men were men, wore suits and ties, smoke and drank at the office. And part of me wonders if it's because the coasts are more "modern" then the midwest. Here in the midwest we're a bit closer to the 60s than they are on the coasts. My dad worked, my mom stayed home with the kids, dad smoked, and family is the most important thing there is. I'm not saying I'm right, but just a thought I had.

I watch quite a few podcasts. And every once in a while I have the thought, "I should do a show". I generally make people laugh, and I'm a pretty smart guy, from what people tell me, but then I hit the road block. What would I do a show on. TV? Movies? I love watching them, but I don't really have the in depth knowledge that it takes to do a show on them. My opinion usually ranges from I loved it to I hated it. But I generally don't get much more in depth than that. I can't analyse why I liked it or disliked it. Hell I have trouble coming up with stuff to blog about, how could I do a weekly show.

Well I turn 30 tomorrow. I own my truck outright. The bank owns a house and I get to live in it, and make monthly payments. My job will disappear in about 10 months. Yep, that about sums it up.

I just don't like social networks. Facebook has come out with it's latest privacy invasion feature. Facebook Places, it lets you update your exact GPS position. And of course it's confusing to disable, and they automatically allow your friends to check you into a place. This is horrible, stupid, and business as usual for Facebook. But my problem with social networks is simpler than this.

Ninety percent of what is posted on Facebook, Twitter and I suppose Google Buzz (I don't know what happens there, because I've never used it and I know of no one who does) is complete pointless crap. I don't care that "your weekend went to fast" or that "i'm so glad it's friday" or an update about some dumbass game whose only purpose is to milk money out of you. I do use Facebook, and Twitter. But about all I post on Facebook is links to things I find interesting, and Twitter I mostly use to follow some celebrities I'm fans of, and they usually post interesting tidbits/behind the scenes pictures.

The one thing that amazes me about Facebook is that people who never used myspace, or really much of the internet at all, have signed up for Facebook accounts. These are the people who go to Google and type in Facebook to find it. That just astonishes me, and scares me, because they're the ones who have no clue how much of their information is being spread over the web.

There are many things about job hunting that suck. Trying to figure out which postings to go after, trying to find the postings, a lot of companies don't use the job sites, they just post on their own website, updating your resume, doing the interview. Now I'm great with computers, but when it comes to explaining to a person why I'm great with computers, horrible at it. Updating my resume is where I'm currently at in the process, and since I've had a job for six years, it's a little out of date. I've been looking around online, and apparently there's no standard, so I'm just taking the average from everything I'm coming across. One of the high notes has been asking people to be references so far every "boss" (higher up person) that I've asked has been very willing and happy to be one. So that's nice, sitting in my little cube I kind of forget the people out there who see the design as an image, and have no clue how that's going to turn into a functioning website, and then I pop out a few months later with it realized as an actual website. Cue Sally Field "You love me, you really love me".

This animated movie was throughly entertaining. The big appeal of it for me was the Superman/Batman relationship. These 2 are the heavy weights of the DC Universe, and I've never really thought about their relationship. You can tell their good friends, and as with all good friends they give each other shit. Which adds humor to the movie and I really dug it. Some of my favorite exchanges.

Batman: Do me a favor and lose the sense of humor. Superman: Do us both a favor and buy one.

Superman: Why is it that good villains never die? Batman: Clark, what the hell are good villains?

Batman: You're late. Superman: I'd explain but I honestly don't think you'd understand. Batman: Lois? Superman: Ya

"parkour (pronounced par-KOOR): In the strictest sense as defined by David Belle, Parkour is the art of moving through your environment as swiftly and effectively as possible using only the human body"

I just watched District 13: Ultimatum, which is a sequel to, you guessed it, District 13. They're french films that have a great deal of parkour in them. It is truly amazing to watch these guys do this stuff. Jumping off buildings that the rest of us would think would kill us. The first time I've seen any is from Top Gear which is a BBC auto show. The clip is embeded below. The amazing shit happens about a minute in.

So I'm a geek with a few interests, movies, comics, but my biggest is TV. I came across a site which makes my TV addiction much more manageable. ShareTV.org. It started out as a torrent tracker, but now it has evolved into something different. It's a TV community, you sign up for an account, mark all of your shows that you like, and then in your profile you get your own schedule. You can see which of your shows are coming up, and if they're new episodes. There's a lot more to the site than just this, but I have my schedule bookmarked and with 1 click I can see what's on tonight. It's truly great.

So it happens to everyone from time to time. But right now it's happening to me, and all my coworkers. I suppose it's part of working for a company that is a contractor. Contracts come up for renewal and sometimes you're on the wrong end of the stick. It sucks.

On a side note, Hulu is being all kinds of laggy for me tonight, so a friend reminded me of this site. It let's you know the health of the internet at large. http://scoreboard.keynote.com/scoreboard/Main.aspx?Login=Y&Username=public&Password=public

So got to play Tech Support for my bro. The antivirus had handled the infection, but in doing so it borked the TCP/IP driver. So I tried a few things, none of which worked. Tried a system restore, which failed the first time. Turns out the restore point was quarantined, so I unquarantined it, did a system restore which worked. Then used this http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/virus-removal/remove-tdss-tdl3-alureon-rootkit-using-tdsskiller to kill the virus, which was back due to the restore. Then ran Malware Bytes and so far so good it seems. Moral of the story, don't be afraid to unquarantine a file when you're working a problem.

Since I don't have satellite/cable and only limited broadcast TV I've been inventive with where I get my entertainment. I've got a PC connected to my TV, and I have Hulu Desktop installed along with Boxee They both let you watch shows that are on the internet. Well Boxee has an add on that lets you view TWiT. TWiT is a internet based network that generally centers on tech things, but it is slowly broadening its catalog.

I've been finding myself throwing TWiT up on the TV when I'm cooking/cleaning or doing whatever just to have some background noise. The live stream definitely isn't polished, it's watching the sausage being made. But I find myself enjoying that just as much as the final finished product. The flubs, and behind the scene banter just give it a charm that's nice to see. It pulls the curtain away from the "celebrity" of the hosts, and reminds you they're just guys and gals who happen to be on a show. My new favorite is a Tom Merritt. He has knowledge and credibility in the tech world so his opinion carries weight, but he's charismatic as hell to watch, and just overall entertaining.