So a couple days ago was my two year anniversary of joining tv.com. At the one year point I wrote about much I loved it. Then I was actively posting in the forums, submitting contributions, and devouring the show info pages as soon as I watched any episode. Now... not so much.

Blah, blah, blah about the horrible redesigns. It's been beaten to death by many. For me it was the awkwardness of the show info pages and forums that lost me. And I realized I wasn't alone. People that used to be regulars in the forums slowly disappeared, and so did I. It's a shame that such a great user generated and directed site was squandered and dried up.

Nothing in the forums or show info pages became unreadable... but clunky and awkward enough that I just stopped bothering. In the forums the avatars and user info now takes up more space then most posts, and when quoting posts, well it's just not worth figuring out who said what. And tracking down an episode and finding/reading trivia and goofs... progressively not worth the effort of looking anymore.

Now I only come by on occasion, usually if I'm bored or really need some info, but that's it.

Woo-Hoo!

I am an official karate-kicking 50 contribution TV.com user. Take that, anything that needs to be karate kicked! Especially that penny immediately to the left of the karate kick. Just who does he think he's staring at?

Baseball season is offically under way. I don't care what anyone says, that makes it officially summer. Go Cubs!

So I just finished watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Awesome. My favorite show is Firefly, also created by Joss Whedon. So netflix kept recommending it. I had heard good things about the show in the past and during the writers strike I figured "why not?" Man am I glad I did. By the middle of season 3 I was so impatient waiting for discs, and so disappointed that once I returned them I couldn't rewatch any episodes that I just bought the entire series. It was that good. And now it's done. Which is disconcerting because I have been watching at the pace of 1 or 2 a day and now I have to quit cold turkey.

Woo-Hoo! High 50's in Chicago today. Finally. OK, It's Winter in Chicago and I've lived here for most of my life. I know it's supposed to cold. And I honestly don't mind...right up until around Jan 31st. Then it starts to get old. Plus this winter we just got slammed. Both with snow and cold. Snow is fun and nice the first couple hours, but when it's grey and black after 3 months of sitting on streets yuck. and cold? No reason for that. But we turned the corner. Even if it's going to drop this weekend we're over the hump. Soon summer will be here along with BBQ's Baseball and Shorts.

Yesterday was the 10 year anniversary of the day legendary Cubs announcer Harry Caray died. As a tribute comcast sports aired classic cubs games he called throughout the day, including the Cubs clinching the division in 1984, and his last broadcast in 1997. I DVR'd all of them. Now instead getting cabin fever because it's a crummy 15 degrees in February, I can turn those on and pretend its an 85 degree day in july. Nice.

...For watching old TV shows. I can't say enough about how great netflix is for watching old tv shows on DVD. (And probably Blockbuster too, but I don't know). TV shows on DVD is one of the best entertainment options of the last 10 years. There's a lot of shows out there worth watching that you may have missed the first time around. But buying a season of a show on DVD can run from $20-50. That's kind of a lot for a show that you just want to try, but aren't sure you want to stick with. But it's less then a couple months of netflix. Here's a list of TV shows I've watched thanks to DVD's and netflix:

Star Trek: Deep Space 9

Star Trek: Enterprise

Star Trek: The Original Series

Firefly

Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Angel

Sportsnight

Newsradio

Rome

Some of these shows were so good that I bought the whole series on DVD, when I otherwise would have never even tried them. I've also rented the "bonus features" discs of many more shows I've already seen, such as Star Tren the Next Generation and Voyager.

Today is Super Tuesday. If you live in a state with it's primary today go vote! It is the easiest thing in the world. You are probably registered and don't even realize it. Especially if you've got a driver's licence or went to college. Both places get you to absent mindedly fill out the paper work. You probably did it and forgot about it. It's easy to check online. Just google your city or county and the word voting information or anything similar. You can check online if your registered, the location of the polling place and a sample ballot.

If you know who you want for president but are worried because you don't know about stuff like county boards or judgeships you can leave that part blank. It's called an under-vote and your vote for presidential candidate still counts. Or do what I did. Look up the endorsements of 2 or 3 papers in your area. Most will have links to endorsements on the front page of their site. I'm not saying follow those blindly, but if all of them say Candidate A is good at the job, and Candidate B is an borderline nut job(as one of the minor races near me basically said) that's all you need. Jot that down and vote for the good choice or the nut (your call). To find that information literally took less time then writing this post. And probably just as much as reading it.

So get to it.

So my DVR is set to catch reruns of West Wing. I have no idea when I did that because I had stopped watching the show when it was on in around the fourth season. Best guess is that when I first got the dvr I saw a random episode on bravo one day and set the series recording because I could. I'm pretty glad I did because there was a marathon on last week and now I have like 6 episodes I'm watching. I forgot how really good that show was. It's a nice little surprise when it showed up in my box. I may go back and watch the series on DVD now.

Whoo-hoo!

Exactly one year ago todayI registered on tv.com. It's really not a big deal except I happened to notice it in my profile this morning. I remember joining. I had just started watching the reruns of Star Trek Voyager on Spike. I had seen this site before but was now going to it regularly to see the all the notes andtrivia. Then I realized I had a contribution to make! Wow! So I registered. Except you can't add trivia untill level 3. So I added favorite shows, ranked them, and posted on the forums. Now I'm hooked. FYI the trivia was for Voyager ep 74, The Raven. The borg in Seven's dreams are calling her by the wrong borg name. And yes there's a spelling error in there, and no I don't think I typed it that way.

Well I did it. For the first time since I got my DVR two years ago I have gotten it down to completely empty. It was anoddly strange (and admittedly pathetic) sense of accomplishment. When I got down to 10% I actually really focused on getting it cleared out, watching shows from months ago that I recorded on a whim. When it was done it felt good, like I actually got a big project done that I'd been working on for years. But then I actually began to panic a little. With the exception of Bears games I never watch TV live. Never. I used to hover at around 60-70% full. And a few times got into the high 90's%, even warning me that new shows couldn't record without old shows being deleted. That's around 40 hours of television stored up. Why the downturn in recording? Several reasons. Obviously the writers strike, no new shows on means no new recordings. But I have stopped recording other, older, shows as well. For example, Mythbusters, I used to record older episodes that aired at odd hours that I hadn't seen yet. I'd catch 2-3 episodes a week that way. But now that I've caught them all I don't get any. Same with Star Trek DS9 and Voyager. I don't know how much longer it will stay empty, but it sure is a pain in the neck to sit down and watch tv and nothings on, when I used to have a new episode of shows I loved at my fingertips.

Allright, I'm seriously excited for the fall season. But my big worry is getting into a new show that's going to get the ax. Last year I really like "Knight's of Prosperity" and got into "Daybreak" only to have the rug pulled out. And I didn't start watching "Jericho" specifically because I thought it would get cancelled, and now it's not. I have a new strategy I'll try this year with "Journeyman," a show I'm intrigued by but not sure will last. I'm going to DVR the episodes but not watch any of them for several months. If it get's yanked I won't bother watching and no time wasted. If it's a hit then I can spend a few days watching like it's on dvd. Maybe it's a good idea, maybe not, but I'm going to give it a shot.