On Missed Opportunities

I hate missed opportunities. I let this sit and fester until I obsess over them, going over every possible scenario in my head until I can’t think anymore. There was a situation today where I wish I would have totally done the opposite of what I did. I didn’t do anything bad, in fact, I didn’t do anything at all, and that is the problem. I wish I would have done something. I won’t say what, because it’s really not that important. It’s the principal of the thing that is important.

I really need to start the Costanza Experiment again and start doing the opposite of what I normally do. If I would have stuck with this, I would not be stressing over the missed opportunity today. The real kick in the shin is that I have, in one way or another, been waiting for this opportunity all week. Finally it presented itself in the most perfect way possible and I didn’t do anything. Will the opportunity be lost forever or will it present itself again? Maybe I shouldn’t wait for another opportunity to present itself and instead abide by the old cliche and “make my own opportunity.” That would be the opposite of what I usually do. Enough stressing.

An Open Letter to ABC in Regards to Defying Gravity

Dear ABC,

I know we haven’t been on the best of terms lately. I’ve hated you since you make us wait so long for new episodes of Lost. I get mad at you for not heavily promoting the really funny Better Off Ted. You canceled really original shows like Eli Stone and Pushing Daisies. I want to give you another chance though. Here is how you can get back on my good side: do not cancel Defying Gravity.

I know that there has not been any word that the show will be canceled, but I don’t know anyone who has actually heard of the show, I don’t see any promotion for it, and it has to be expensive to make. That being said, I really think you need to give this show a chance. You almost set it up to fail by starting it in August when not many people are watching TV and you never really promote it, which is a shame. This is a really good show. Sure, the writers play it fast and loose with the science aspect of it, but the stories are good. I really want to follow the “adventures that await the crew as they quickly discover their lives and destinies to be intertwined and carefully directed, not only by Mission Control officials on Earth, but also by an unseen force which is much closer and far more powerful.” Why aren’t you promoting this show more? It is something that hasn’t been done before. It has the sort of mystery that Lost has that can draw people in if they would just know about it. If you cancel it, what are you going to replace it with? Another cop show? Or how about a doctor show? We don’t have enough of those.

Here is what I propose: finish showing this season this fall. Commit to a second season, but in the spring/summer re-air season 1 with a lot of promotion. You need to hook people in from the beginning or they won’t start watching. There’s people like my dad, who I know would love the show but would not be able to watch the episodes available on Hulu, who need some way to catch up.

So in conclusion, we can finally make up if you do me this one favor. Keep Defying Gravity around. Promote it a little bit. If you give viewers a chance, they will not let you down. We can become BFFs again with just a little effort. Don’t turn into my ex-BFF NBC. They never give quality programming (shows like Kings) a chance, and have made me not want to give any new shows on their network a shot for fear that I will like it only to see it canceled after a few episodes.

Sincerely,
Shep

If at first you don’t succeed, lie, lie again

After seeing this town halls lately, I have become increasingly afraid of what direction the right wing is headed in our country. They have made it so that rational thinking is bad and that lies and falsehoods are good. The worst part about it is that people are actually falling for it. It’s one thing to disagree with policies of one party and to back up your position with facts, it is another thing entirely to spread lies and fear monger. Seriously, is this what the right wing has become? These people are disgusting in every sense of the word. The Democrats need to stop the bi-partisan crap and do what needs to be done. It’s been clear since day one that the Republicans are nothing but petty children upset that they didn’t win and will do anything they can, no matter how crazy, to try and get their way.

You lost, get over it. Move on. If you don’t like the policies, draft new ones instead of just saying them bad, us good. They want to kill old people and he was born in Kenya and Heil Hitler. The new motto of the Republican Party should be, “If at first you don’t succeed, lie, lie again.”

A note to Democrats, take note of Barney Frank. This is how you should respond to these loonies.

,

Bat for Lashes Saved My Life

The band Bat for Lashes saved my life this morning. No, really. Let me explain. It all started last night while reading Questlove’s tweets. Questlove is the drummer for The Roots. If you don’t know The Roots, they are a fantastic band and also the house band for Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. Bat for Lashes was a guest last night on Late Night, which is why Questlove was tweeting about them. He said how good they were, so I purchased their album last night.

Fast forward to this morning. I wanted to listen to my newly purchased album on the way to work. Normally I listen to hip hop or 90’s alt-rock on my way to work in the morning, and usually at a fairly high volume. Since I decided to go with Bat for Lashes, a relatively chill band, the volume was not up too high. This is what saved my life. I was driving down highway 94, like I do every morning, and I come to the intersection at Harvester and 94. Shortly before I reach the intersection I notice the car in the left lane was not moving. Normally I would have thought the driver was having car troubles and kept on through the intersection. Normally I would have been listening to the music loud enough that I would not have heard the St. Charles County Sheriff’s sirens going off as he comes speeding through the intersection. But I was listening to Bat for Lashes. So I did hear the sirens, I did stop in time, and I did avoid running directly into a Sheriff’s car at 55 mph. My life was saved because of what was playing in my car this morning.

While I didn’t collide head-on with another car, I did almost get hit from behind. The person behind me was not as observant as I was and almost plowed right into the back of me at 55 mph. Luckily he was able to slow and swerve and avoid hitting me. It was scary seeing him miss me by inches and wind up along side of me. Two catastrophes were avoided this morning and Bat for Lashes saved my life. Nothing like a near-death experience to wake you up in the morning.

Why I Will Not Use Bing

With Bing gaining a percentage point in search market share I would like to point out there are very good reasons on why I will not use the Microsoft search engine.

First off, the msnbot practices in referral spam. If you look at your stats and see random one word searches coming from Bing, you’ll know what I’m talking about. This isn’t anything new, it has been happening for a while. If you are a company that uses search terms to help determine your ad campaigns, this could really pollute your field, making it harder to determine the best keywords. Website owners see a lot of false visitor data, thinking they rank for generic keywords when they don’t.

Another reason you shouldn’t use Bing is because of the fact that Microsoft changed (or tried to change) a user’s default search engines to Bing in order to help them gain more market share.Cnet’s Dennis O’Reilly caught ‘Windows Search Helper’ trying to change his default Firefox search from Google to Bing. Not cool Microsoft. You should never change a user’s settings without approval from the user. What you’re doing is essentially what malware does.

Lastly, yet probably most importantly, is that they game their search results. How do you know you are finding the best information if Microsoft chooses what should be shown first according to their own interests? You can’t, and you can see a very real example of Microsoft gaming the results right now. Go to Bing and search Why is Windows so expensive? When you search that phrase the top results are all Why are Macs so Expesnive. Who knows what other results they are gaming to benefit themselves. This is just one example, there could be many more. There have also been other reports of Microsoft censoring Bing results. I do not trust Microsoft and I do not trust Bing search results.