90 thoughts on “October 10, 2011: No Spoilers, Please”

    1. What I do is type the text I want in the spoiler tag, highlight it, then click on the spoiler button. The text string should look like:
      (square bracket)spoiler(square bracket) Spoiler Text (square bracket)/spoiler(square bracket)

    1. i've got an extended streak of bachelorhood coming up. that seems like a great time to start watching breaking bad.

      1. These spoilers are major, all y'all.

        Spoiler SelectShow
          1. Also contains a season five spoiler for The Sopranos, and a season one spoiler for The Wire.

            Spoiler SelectShow
              1. Spoiler SelectShow
                1. Spoiler SelectShow
                  1. Spoiler SelectShow
                    1. Spoiler SelectShow
                    2. Spoiler SelectShow
                    3. Spoiler SelectShow
                    4. Spoiler SelectShow
                  2. Spoiler SelectShow
        1. I'll spoiler you!

          Spoiler SelectShow
          1. Spoiler SelectShow
  1. Is anyone watching Homeland (brought to you by the folks behind 24)? I watched the pilot late last night, and I understand the second episode aired yesterday evening (we don't have cable anymore, so I'll have to wait until it hits the web). I'm attempting to withhold judgment, but the show seems to possess great potential to piss me off.

      1. The précis: A recently rescued American POW (captured during the invasion of Iraq), played by Damian Lewis, may have been turned by his captors into an America-hating terrorist. Only Claire Danes, a Starbuck-esque CIA operative, is onto him. Alternatively, the American POW may merely be a plot device to explore the apparent psychosis of the Danes character (she takes anti-psychotics, which she has hidden from her bosses in Langley) and her paranoia-fueled desire not to let another 9/11 occur on her watch.

        1. Funny you mention Starbuck...that actor played 24's final "surprise" evil character. 24 had more illogical plot twists and turns from good to bad or vice versa than pro wrestling has in any given year. Everything was broadly good and evil, except for the couple of seasons where the show was at its best (and I guess it sorta was then, too, it was just better-written).

        2. IIRC, David Bianculli suggested, in his review on Fresh Air, that Homeland gets much more interesting after the second episode, but I could be making that up.

      1. The email was waiting for me this morning. They've always been so good with customer service that I expected them to come through with something, but backing up from Qwikster entirely is a pleasant surprise.

        1. Am I the only one that really didn't have an issue with the Qwikster idea (aside from the name)? I had thought the price would remain the same for either the streaming only, DVD only, or combined service with the intent to simply keep the two services separate for ease of use. Personally, I liked the idea of having two areas to go, which would have made searching for streaming movies much easier. Plus, that would have reduced traffic on the streaming site so movies would load faster, even though I don't have any issues with that right now. Honestly, I think people are just getting worked up over this because they like to bitch and moan, and for those falling into this category:

          Members bashed the idea on Internet message boards, complaining it would be difficult to visit two separate websites to rent and watch movies.

          are just kinda incompetent in an internet sense.

          To boil it down, I think Netflix just flubbed the PR of the price increase and now nothing they do will be met with anything but hostility.

          1. I'm with cheaptoy - didn't seem to me like the worst thing in the world. Sure it was a stupid name, but oh well.

            I'm also angry that I randomly bought a few shares of Netflix stock in 2004 and watched what happen to their value in the past 3 months.

          2. Well, I think customers were also under the impression that what they had would increase dramatically in price once the split came. Those who thought it would be "confusing," though? I don't get that.

            (And yes, "Qwikster" was a stupid name. I could have lived with it, but ugh)

                1. It takes all kinds.

                  A handful of years ago I realized there was another "spookymilk" out there...he occasionally posted on skiing message boards, and he had a limited vocabulary, about 25% of which was hate speech. He seems to have disappeared.

                  1. My cousin has a very, very unusual last name. He was a sports writer for the Nebraska student paper in the mid-90s. At the same time, some other nut in Nebraska was writing weekly letters to the editor to the Omaha World Heraldbasically calling for God Tom Osborne's head. Then, people would read his name and start calling for the school paper to oust him. Good times.

          3. As a consumer I don't want to have to navigate two sites, and pay two bills, for the service that netflix is providing. The breaking point for me was the convenience factor, and the absolutely brain dead way they rolled out their changes.

            1. One problem with the proposed split was that now you can search for a movie title and then decide whether or not to stream it or to have it mailed. Under the proposed system you'd have to basically search for the same movie twice, then decide what means it should be delivered. The other stuff was minor inconveniences but inconveniences nonetheless. The great thing about Netflix is how easy it is to use, that would have been lost or at least diminished.

          4. I wonder if to some degree this is a matter of Netflix misinterpreting their customer data. They seem very data-driven, and my presumption is that the data show their users to generally either stream a lot (and use few DVD rentals) or stream very little (and use many DVD rentals.) And it probably also shows those who do both regularly are avid users, which they might expect to value the service more highly. Under this presumption, they probably figured that with the price increase, their customers would "pick a side," and having picked their side, would only really want to know whether they could get something on DVD or whether they could get it on streaming, or they did both so much that they'd still (grudgingly) pay for both services.

            What they could have been undervaluing is that people who, say, stream infrequently may still really value that they can stream when they want, even if they're not doing it as often as they rent a DVD.

            I wonder if one of their motivations behind the split was just to get more data on what the streamers want most. Currently if a DVD isn't in stock (or released or whatever), you can still add it to your queue so you can get if it does come in stock. They don't seem to have that option for streaming. I don't know if there's some marketing or technical reason why you wouldn't have that option for streaming, but if they allowed users to have some kind of streaming wish list, they would have a better idea how to allocate their money when purchasing streaming rights.

            1. I never noticed that non-feature until I attempted to mess with my BIL's streaming-only subscription. It was strange that they wouldn't allow such lists to be created. Although the studios are the ones who make the decisions as to what should be allowable for streaming, I assume Netflix goes to them with specific queries.

    1. scroll down in that link to see a notice that All Things Considered will be profiling Omar Ansari of Surly Brewing today.

  2. If it's not one thing, it's another. I got my replacement HD from Lenovo today. Does it work? Can't say. The bracket they sent it to me in doesn't fit in my machine. But they've put the screws in so tightly I've only gotten 2 of the 4 out and one of those I had to get out with the needlenose grabbing the head. I've completely snipped away the bracket to get to the screws and they're still not coming out. It's like they used a NASCAR air-wrench to put these in, which it always the way to go with delicate electronics.

    1. Things are looking up. I got a third screw out, enough to rig the bracket together. BIOS recognizes the HD now and the OS install is progressing nicely. Another 30 minutes or so and I should be good*.

      *Assuming I've not jinxed myself by saying that

    2. That's a bugger. And since you're working on a hard drive, you probably don't want to use any of three best methods for loosening stuck screws - impact driver, penetrating oil, and heat.

  3. I know I've said this before, but the state of job applications is ridiculous.

    300 questions, all of them clearly with a certain answer in mind. The only people weeded out from this process are the illiterate. What a waste of time. I should ask the companies that write these application questions to reimburse me for the time I didn't spend writing.

  4. Quiz on demographics:

    Rate the following states in percentage of men married three or more times from most to least (original list in alphabetical order):

    Arizona, California, New York, Rhode Island, Texas, Wyoming

    Spoiler SelectShow
    1. Spoiler SelectShow
      1. Doesn't mean they're marrying different women.
        Went to a wedding this weekend on my wife's side. Got to talking to my wife afterwards and found out that so and so had been divorced for a while, only to remarry. (All before I joined the family.) On the other side of her family, she knows that her uncle X had been married to Y, the mother of his children twice, but my wife can't remember if Y is his first and third wife or second and third wife.

    2. Spoiler SelectShow
      1. Spoiler SelectShow
        1. Spoiler SelectShow
    3. Spoiler SelectShow
      1. Also, divorce settlements in California tend to discourage serial marriages, or so I heard when I was in the Corps, which has a worryingly high divorce rate.

    4. The Milkmaid has an uncle who just got married for the seventh time. Amusingly, he still says "this time it's going to stick" every time, and thus far doesn't appear to realize that he's the problem.

        1. That's actually something I'd love to know. This uncle has some money, but not "I need to marry that guy" gold digger-type money. It seems he's forthcoming about this stuff with his women, so I have no idea what the deal is.

          As far as it goes on his end, he lives in Alaska, but I've been around him twice - both times, unsurprisingly, he was about to get married again. Hearing him go on and gush about these women, my theory is that he finds being in love boring, but the act of falling in love is what he craves.

    5. Spoiler SelectShow
    1. Fun Wyoming story- me and the wife'n'kids went to a water park in Casper last summer with my brother and his wife. I'm pretty sure we were the only four adults there without tattoos.

      1. Hey, same thing in Eagan, MN. Not my thing, but if it was, I'd go somewhere other than where these people were getting them. Lots of really bad tats.

  5. CC to '-6 - Your print is in the mail. Let me know when it gets there. I threw in a bonus that I'll explain later.

  6. I heard a "Gimme Shelter" cover on the way home tonight. IT was more of a facsimile than a new adaptation, and one that I don't think captured the original very well. I got to thinking "Who would I like to see do 'Gimme Shelter'?" I came up with Adele for the female accompanist, but I couldn't think of the band to do the Stones' parts.

    1. Parliament covered the song at one point (with Ruth Copeland singing?), but I thought the instrumentals blew the vocalist out of the water, and that's not really what you want with this song.

      Of the current crop of artists, I'll see your Adele and raise you Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings.

Comments are closed.