Crook and Chase are doing a few shows for Shop At Home, where they try to sell you various things. It's really nice to see Lorianne and Charlie on television again, but I saw one of the programs and it's quite bad. I'm sure it's rather nice for that type of show, but it hurts to see people you like hawking products to the public. I miss their talk show...

Speaking of which, Cynthia Garrett, current host of Later, is not as bad as I thought she'd be. And some of the guests of that show have actually been interesting. She had Adam Sorkin, producer of The West Wing and he had some things to say about that show. Like the most controversial plot line, which was not the interracial romance between the President's daughter and his aide. I think it was Leo forgiving an aide for leaking out a report that mentioned he was a recovering addict. I guess lots of people weren't in a forgiving mood.

SHeDAISY was also on Later. They sang a song and the interview went well. Garrett didn't ask the same old questions, although perhaps the questions were a bit too humorous. Mostly favorite things, pet peeves, greatest problem of today, general things like that...

I'm trying to find a way to save a RealPlayer video file for a friend who really wants it. It's not easy since they use their own protocol (not http) so it's not easy to just download the file with a web browser. As far as I can tell RealPlayer Plus doesn't have a save to disk option, and even this was hard to find because the web site goes out of its way to not provide information on what you're buying. It's like "buy this, here are the new features". Ok, but what are the basic features? Looks like I may end up doing a movie capture with something like Snapz Pro 2...

Oops, looks like Jennifer crashed again. That computer has gotten more unstable in the last couple of months, coinciding with the increasing number of tasks I'm asking it to do. I've already dropped Macjordomo, but I may have to kill something else. Maybe I've had to hard reset it too many times. Or maybe it's because I'm running Mac OS 9.0.4 on it. Whatever the reason, it's starting to get annoying...

I finally got my car back. They replaced a few more things until the alarm finally worked. About time, I was starting to really hate my mom's Corolla. Sure it has cruise control, power locks and windows, and a few other niceties. But compared to my Taurus the whole car is just not as nice. It makes more noise so you have to turn the volume up, the radio antenna is too short so it doesn't pick up stations as easily as the Taurus, the cruise control light is always on, whether or not the car is actually in cruise control or just cruise control ready, it's smaller and gets pushed by the wind more, etc. I'm probably just whining since I'm not used to it, but that was an aggravating couple of weeks...

Now that most shows are on hiatus it's time for the television networks to bring out some marginal shows and see how they do. Survivor has become really popular in the last three weeks. I guess people want to see a bunch of other people eat worms and do other embarrassing things to live. Clerks, the animated show, only lasted two episodes before being pulled by a skittish ABC. MYOB has been ok for the two episodes that I've seen. I bit risque considering that the main character is underage...

On a final note, I'm disappointed that Chris has neglected reading the Mac OS 9 book that I bought him. I want him to read that before learning Java, and he has instead spent his time playing games. I was much the same when I was his age, so I can't really be angry. But he did say he wanted to learn how to program, and it's alarming that he doesn't have enough enthusiasm for computers to learn on his own. It may bode ill when he tries to major in Computer Engineering.