You know, if you like the Super Bowl, swell, more power to you, but do we ALL have to be beat over the head with it for a week? Do I need to see it EVERY flippin’ time I turn on the TV? I DON’T CARE! Sports belongs on sports channels and during the sports segment of news. I don’t need it during the business report! I don’t need to know how much people are spending on tickets…I don’t need to see snippets of the commercials…I don’t need to hear about it during the entertainment report!

This is one of the main reasons why I like soccer, your scores from the entire season determine the champion, not just one game. This insanity seems to get worse with each passing year, and this year it seems to be leaps and bounds worse.

I can not wait for this thing to be over.

The 6th hour of the 6th day of 24 and STILL no Satchel of Doom! *hugs his own, brand new S.O.D.* Sure, we have Bauer’s running all over the place, making the terror seem even more silly, but they could at least give us some hot S.O.D. action!

Interesting article about a group of EastEnders fans in the Washington D.C. area that rallied to save their favorite British soap. Their local PBS channel, WETA, had informed their viewers they were going to be dropping the long-running BBC soap opera from the line-up due to the cost vs. ratings. It seems the show costs the channel $25,000 a year, with a 2 year minimum. With only 8,000 households tuning in weekly, and the contract coming up, they opted not to spend the $50,000 required to renew.

Enter the fans.

Led by a classics professor and a real estate lawyer, the fans asked if they raised the money, would the channel accept the funds and renew? The channel said they would if they got the funds by January 16th, 2007. The fans went to work and gathered up 143 checks, totaling $52,504 (or ab average of $367.16 per check), and presented them to the station by the deadline. The channel was good to their word, accepted the funds and have renewed the much-loved show.

I have seen a lot of fan drives over the years to save a show, but never one that took such a direct approach, and I applaud them. I’ve heard of buying newspaper ads, mailing in small trinket that is an inside joke from the show, those never seemed to make much sense to me. Cold hard cash? Total sense. Good on them, and I hope they enjoy their two years of British drama, they’ve earned it.

It’s amazing how much time you can kill doing things that really aren’t that important. I slept in until 1:30 PM, something I haven’t done in years and I loved every minute of it.

I then spent my time upgrading my blog software to WordPress 2.1, it’s quite lovely. Some nice new features and a bit prettier in the admin area. Much easier to read, which is fine by me.

I got another hair brained idea…I’m sure I’ll discuss it someday after it’s done. (those who know, don’t say please, I don’t want it out in the world yet!)

And now…another week begins. Oh joy.

So what sort of traffic did BAMForBeginners.com end up having?

Friday, 1/26 - 2,864
Saturday, 1/27 - 2,086

Our best day prior to the current plug from AfterEllen.com was Tursday, 1/25 at 1,391.

This site is getting more traffic in one day than my ecommerce site (AnimeUSA.com) does in a week. No, that’s not depressing in the least!

So…remember how I mentioned the website I was behind, BAMForBeginners.com, got mentioned on Canadian TV? That brought us some traffic, but now comes the site being mentioned by the lesbians-in-media news site, AfterEllen.com. In their weekly column, Best.Lesbian.Week.Ever., they mentioned the current storyline on All My Children and named Bam For Beginners as the place to go and get caught up on the storyline.

Wow.

It generated so much traffic that Google Analytics couldn’t keep up and the updating was way behind the normal time. I’ll post in the near future what the numbers were because, as of right now, I’m still missing five hours of data.

So why do I bring this up again? Two reasons:

1) None of this would have happened if it wasn’t for the amazing folks who went out and found message boards to post links on. Without them, it wouldn’t be getting half the notice it’s getting.

2) It’s getting far more traffic than my company websites! I guess I should have more middle of the night, random ideas!

Just amazing what can still be accomplished still in this day-and-age with everyone and their dog having a website!

According to this article, 20th Century Fox is threatening to withhold some of their movies form Canadian theaters due to the pirated camcorder copies coming out of them unless more of a crackdown happens.

Um….

Doesn’t that just make you lose more money? Follow my logic:

20th Century Fox withholds a movie

Canadians turn to pirated copies online coming out of other foreign countires

Theaters go out of business due to lack of customers

20th Century Fox releases their movie to less theaters and do lousy per screen average due to more people having downloaded the film

There are times where it is better to realize your knee jerk policy reaction to a problem is just going to make the problem larger, not solve it. Sure, piracy is wrong, but if they really think this solve anything…yeah…it won’t.

AGLOCO isn’t the first to do this, but it’s been awhile since anyone has. Since I signed up through Roy, I’m going to steal his explanation as he did it so well (feel free shoot me Roy!)

AGLOCO is the new way to earn money while surfing the web. A small linkbar is installed on your browser and every time you surf the web it shows some contextual ads and so forth. The search engines pay AGLOCO and they pay you. You don’t have to click on the ads or anything. Just keep on it. They pay by the hour up to 5 hours per month. That doesn’t seem like much but if you refer other people to join and they refer other people to join, you earn a percentage of everyone in your pyramid up to 5 levels deep. Yes, it’s like a pyramid network scheme but with no catch and zero downside as far as I can tell. And apparently if you have lots of referrals you can make a fairly hefty some of money or shares in AGLOCO itself.

The reason why you should join now is because the linkbar is still in beta and will be released at the end of February. That’s when the payout starts so get a head start, sign up and start telling everyone about it now cause once it begins anyone whose interested in doing this kind of stuff will have already signed up and you’ll end up at the bottom of the pyramid.

So, in example, I signed up through Roy. When I surf my 5 hours each month, he gets a cut. If you sign up through me, I get a cut of your surfing, and Roy gets a cut, down to 5 levels deep. Now IS the time to sign up as it hasn’t even started yet.

My biggest concern is how this will mess up my screen, but as you can see from this screenshot, it doesn’t look like much. Look above the Start button for the “AGLOCO” logo.

I say why not give it a try?

Yes, lesson learned, no spoilers this time!

As I mentioned last week, no sign of the Satchel of Doom had happened yet on 24! Five hours down, and still no S.O.D.! Did it demand too much money this season? Did it want it’s own trailer? I mean, come on, I located my own for $24 today, and yes…I ordered one. I expect to join C.T.U. at any moment!

Well, Amazing Race finally did what everyone knew they would do eventually…an All-Stars addition. I have had mixed feelings when Survivor and Big Brother did it, but with Amazing Race I think it will be pretty much like any other Race due to the fact there are so many variable that can’t be controlled.

Amazing Race 1
Joe & Bill - They may have come in third, but they never really impressed me.
Kevin & Drew - Old frat brothers, fun, but unimpressive racers.

Amazing Race 2
Oswald & Danny - The only team, as far as I know, to go sweater shopping while racing…they’re hilarious.

Amazing Race 3
John Vito & Jill - One of my all time favorite teams!
Teri & Ian - eh…Ian yells more than I like, but oh well.

Amazing Race 5
Charla & Mirna - Mirna…I’ll be blunt, she’s not a rocket scientist. Charla though is a dwarf, but has a spirit twice her size. Their elimination, and Charla’s speech at their elimination, is the only time I have ever seen the host, Phil, tear up.

Amazing Race 7
Rob & Amber - How many flippin’ times is CBS going to force these people down my throat?!? 2 Survivors, and now 2 Amazing Races. This is the *fourth* chance they have given Rob to win something, will someone please just give him a check already and put him out of my misery?
Uchenna and Joyce - The only team to win their season to come to All-Stars. I loved them, great team, great attitude.

Amazing Race 9
Eric & Danielle - A combination of 2 teams as they started dating after their race.

Amazing Race 10
David & Mary - Yep…Team Kentucky is back.
Dustin & Kandice -The Barbie’s are back. I actually kind of agree with this one, they were fairly smart racers.

Should be a fun race to watch, not all teams I would have picked, but oh well. At this point I’m rooting for John Vito & Jill, I absolutely loved them.

I haven’t posted pics of my boys in awhile, and with the snow today, it seemed like the perfect opportunity.

I know it’s hard to tell, but Winston IS looking in the direction of the camera

Patrick and his snow nose

Teddy…Man Of Action!

Again…I swear Winston is looking at you!

Teddy and his Rough Riders!

Yes…they have coats…they are sexy.

About the only exciting that that happened today was…um…um…I finally got a CW channel on DirecTV? Otherwise mostly a day waiting for snow to fall, which is coming down at a good clip right now. Joy.

Interesting article today via the AP about MySpace has been hit with multiple lawsuits from families that had children victimized by sexual predators they met on the website. The families are suing for millions of dollars with a noble cause behind them:

“Hopefully these lawsuits can spur MySpace into action and prevent this from happening to another child somewhere,” he said.

Ok, you all know me well enough to know I am going to rip on this. The families are suing MySpace because their children met these predators on the MySpace site. Ok….let’s ask a couple of questions…

When the child met the predator, was it somewhere other than their house?

If other than the house, are you suing the location where the child met the predator? They didn’t protect your child.

How did the child get to said location?

If they used public transit, are you suing the municipality that owns the mass transit system they used? They didn’t protect your child.

How did the child connect to the internet?

Probably should sue your internet provider.

The list is endless, but the bottom line is, MySpace has millions of dollars and some “sleazoid lawyers” went to these families and convinced them how they had been done wronged by the big, evil website. Here is what the judges should be pondering:

Were the computers in a common room of the house where the child’s internet usage could be monitored?

Did the parents check their child’s MySpace page? Did they have the page address?

Did they have logging software to check their child’s IM conversations?

This is another example of parents wanting to take NO responsibility in the raising of their children. Nothing that is ever their fault, somehow a website, or a company, or society or any number of things “failed them”. Never mind the parents should be actively involved in their kids lives, it just doesn’t happen any more!

Here are some of the examples from these cases.

Last June, the mother of a 14-year-old who says she was sexually assaulted by a 19-year-old user sued MySpace and News Corp., seeking $30 million in damages. That lawsuit, pending in a Texas state court, claims the 19-year-old lied about being a senior in high school to gain her trust and phone number.

The lawyers who filed the latest lawsuits said the plaintiffs include a 15-year-old girl from Texas who was lured to a meeting, drugged and assaulted in 2006 by an adult MySpace user, who is currently serving a 10-year sentence in Texas after pleading guilty to sexual assault.

Gee…lies were involved…and luring…where were the parents in all of this? Here is a portion of MySpace’s reply to the cases.

But he said Internet safety is a shared responsibility, requiring users to “apply common sense offline safety lessons in their online experiences and engage in open family dialogue.”

WHAT?!? Are they nuts? Talking…with the kids? Are they nuts?!?

Teach your children basic internet safety, keep the computers in a common family area, because, I’m sorry, putting the computer in your child’s room is like inviting hundreds of millions of people in to your child’s bedroom. Somehow I think you are pretty safely guaranteed to get a couple of whack jobs in there. I know…I’m cynical that way.

Interesting article at Business Week today about how the number of homes with a land line is dropping. In the first half of 2006, 1 in 8 homes were using something other than a traditional land line as their phone. In 2003 it was 1 in 20.

The weird thing is the article seems to focus mostly on how this will effect research calls and political polling like this is a great tragedy and how they don;t know they will do their polling. How about mentioning WHY this is happening? Landlines are not keeping up with cell phone and VoIP pricing, and so long as they keep their insanely high pricing structure, the number of homes with old style phones will decrease.

How about instead of worrying about how a few pollers will do their job, what about the thousands of phone company employees that will eventually lose their jobs because the phone companies refuse to lower their fees? There was a ton more to this story, but as usual, poor, lazy reporting and missed the bigger picture.

I honestly can’t remember the last time it was this cold. -2F last night…today’s high was 18…joy. We may get to 33 tomorrow, which would be great as I would like to see some of this ice go away! One of my employees slid off the road tonight on his way home, it is just a general mess. And my hands are freezing at work!

I have added the Share This plugin to the site. Yes, it does create a popup to email my articles or social bookmark them, BUT, you have to choose to click on it. If any one finds it obtrusive let me know, and do tell me why. Thanks!

So, I know most of you are bored with hearing about BAMForBeginners.com, but something very, very cool happened today.

As I was logging in for the morning and checking in with my email, I was getting notes from my fellow BAM fans about if I had heard about the TV mention I got. I had no clue what they were talking about. After a few minutes of tracking down the info, it seems my little fan site got a shout out on a Canadian soap opera info show called “Soaps Up” that airs on A Channel. It seems they were discussing the return of the character Maggie and mentioned if you wanted to learn about the history of BAM you should visit my site and then listed my web address on the screen.

Someone is trying to get me a copy of the video now, but how totally unexpected and incredibly cool!

If you do not understand the SOD, please see my old entry about the powers of the SOD!

And again…no laughing, but I’ve worked my butt off on this.

Monday, the 15th, is the day Maggie (Elizabeth Hendrickson) returns to All My Children. It’s not too late to join the fun, and you can still get up to speed by visiting BAMForBeginners.com.

So join the fun! Catch BAMitis! (I blame Nik for that)

So, while I still think the iPhone will rock, it’s not quite as exciting as it was a mere few days ago. Roy over at q-taro has an excellent entry on how even with all these advances, the iPhone will STILL lag behind most Japanese phones. And, like Roy, I would love to see them release a version of this without the phone, just make it a kick-ass Apple PDA with iPod and PDA functions. Yes, that would make it 100% reliant on WiFi for internet access, but it would still be pretty kicking.

I think a lot of my excitement over the iPhone is more about what it represents, more than what it is. This is a huge step forward for American cell phones, but it still doesn’t catch us up with the foreign ones. It’s amazing how far behind we are on some technologies such as cell phones and internet speeds. I think this also gives us an interesting idea what the next iPods will be like. (I’m figuring there will be a new iPod launch in June or July…watch for it)

So while I’m still excited, it is tempered some with a couple days to think about it. It’s also still a long time until June, and things may change in the phone’s specs by then.