Dad Revisited

Continuing the theme I began last week, I offer the last of my resolutions for 2009.

Resolution 6- Technology as a Tool, not a Toy.
My best friend is my iPod Touch. When we are together, we find so much to share and so many fun things to do. It’s remarkable how she always seems to be there to help me forget what I was doing, reminding me that I would much rather be playing Spiderette or Penguin Lite than attacking the long-overdue items on my Remember The Milk to-do list.

I have a similar issue with my laptop. Here it becomes a bit of an issue, since my laptop is not only a tool for work but it is also the only entertainment I have. When I sit down to work, I am ostensibly sitting down at my TV, phone, and computer all at once. It’s very easy to say “I can just listen to a few podcasts while I work” which morphs into “I wonder what’s in my Hulu queue” and finally becomes “screw it, it’s too late for me to be working anyway!” My multitasking has now become a barrier to the completion of even the simplest task, and so I must resolve to limit my iPod Touch “playtime” to 30 minutes and my video entertainment time to 2.5 hours each day. That sounds like so much when you say it out loud, but it would be an incredible savings of time if I could do it. I could spend 30 minutes after work and still catch a couple of episodes of online TV before bed.

Resolution 7- Upgrades are not Manifest Destiny.
I am renowned for having a short attention span. My entire school career is littered with terrific first semester performance sullied by near inactivity in the second semester. Someone holds up a shiny object, a new activity, or something that offers a bigger challenge than finishing the last vestiges of a report and I am the guy who will run. If you want a long-term project handled, I am not your guy. If you need someone to keep 8 balls in the air without losing his composure, call me. I can make 15 decisions in 10 seconds, but cannot complete the last task on any to-do list.

This love of shiny things makes computer and equipment upgrades very attractive to me. “Ooo! A new mic would make my podcasts sound slightly better!” “Version 19.2.7 has to be better than 19.2.6!” I spend far too much time, energy, and money on incremental upgrades in my life. I don’t need the next big Social Media site. I don’t need a new mixer. I need to do what I can with what I have. When someone starts writing checks for it, THEN I will upgrade. So I resolve only to upgrade equipment and sofware when it is necessary for a paying job OR to maintain security and functionality of my current setup. To prove how true this is, as I write I am running FORMAT C: on my Toshiba laptop, trying to recover it from the debacle of installing XP on it. It’s built only for Vista, and trying to ‘fix’ by installing XP has completely ruined it. It’s a very expensive mistake caused by my endless quest for more more MORE performance.

If you liked these, you’ll like my resolutions for Family and Faith.

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We lock our televisions. We didn’t always do that, but since my wife started working full time, we’ve had a few issues with unattended television use. It’s not about the content (although my wife would like my son’s viewing to contain less violence) but time. Unattended the kids will watch television until they blob up into those immovable obese folks you see on the news who can’t leave their house anymore.

I tried the V-Chip on the TV. It does what it claims to do. You can make sure your kids can’t watch anything other than the ratings level YOU choose. Unfortunately, the V-chip does not limit time. It also does not limit unrated TV shows, so there is no guarantee it will prevent all illicit TV viewing.

Our problem is screen time. The kids will vegetate if allowed. This is where our cable provider has a solution. Parental controls on Verizon FIOS TV give us the opportunity to lock out ratings OR channels. I have all the TV’s in our house locked out 100%. No viewing without parental access. That works great, until one of us accidentally enters the code at the wrong time and the kids see it. The big hassle for adults is that we constantly have to enter the code to watch anything. Channel surfing is out, because you have to enter the code every time. Changing the channels is now a seven keystroke deal.

Of course, the kids figured out a way around it. The DVD player isn’t locked. They can watch DVD’s at any time. It’s much more common now to find some of the very old DVDs getting played now. Clearly they have been through the newer discs and looking for something they haven’t watched hundreds of time. Sure, it’s a pretty big hole, but I believe the real issue with TV is it’s ability to surreptitiously steal an afternoon away from you. You sit down for a 15 minute break, get involved in a show, flip a channel, and suddenly two hours of your day have passed. Cracking open a DVD and sitting down… sure it can steal an hour and a half, but it’s more of a hassle than just flipping on the TV, making it less likely, at least in my mind.

Of course, my wife says one good justification a day is healthy. There it is.

A few years ago, my wife started a Family TV Night. It was Sunday night, and we sat and watched Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. We would all sit and cry over the sad stories, marvel at the extraordinary gadgetry they installed, and then we’d cry again at the homecoming.

I’m over EM:HE. However, as a family we still enjoy sitting down together and watching television. My wife is a big fan of sitting down and watching old movies, or movie adaptations of great literature. We’ve seen To Kill A Mockingbird and Sense and Sensibility among other great pieces of visual and written art. Our tastes do include a few shows that are acceptable to everyone in the family. Below are a few of our choices:

• Monk- We started watching Monk when my daughter started becoming interested in some of the peculiarities of OCD. She still looks forward to new Monk episodes. She was nutty when the show appeared to have killed Monk off, and couln’t believe they would make us wait TWO WEEKS to see the resolution. CAVEAT- The opening of the show usually has a murder, and in some cases the murder scene is somewhat graphic. At 11 years old, that is a ‘pillow over the face’ moment for her.
• psych- Again, my daughter was the primary proponent behind this show. (I wonder if it is because it means she gets to stay up until 11pm to see it!) The humor is fast paced, silly, and in your face. Shawn is nutty and disobedient, Gus is a scaredy cat stick in the mud, and together we howl at them. The relationships are fun to watch develop, there is a cartoon built in to the middle of many episodes, and my son imitates the Verizon commercials made by the leads. He does Dule Hill’s voice perfectly. “”Number 5 just says ‘Egypt!’”
• Clean House- This was not one of my choices. My wife and daughter love Niecy. I can’t believe some of the people they get on the show. I’m sure much of it is staged or edited specifically for TV, but dang! I though MY house was a mess.
• The Daily Show- My daughter doesn’t get to watch this, but the rest of us enjoy this one. My son watches it in reruns. My wife and I watch it when we’re together, and we’ll occasionally share a particular episode on the internet. Stewart’s take on politics is in keeping with the family’s politics.
• Mythbusters- An oldie, but a goodie. Being able to watch things blow up, for real, and not have to worry about the connotation of violence? Come on- it’s science! We don’t watch it as much as we used to, but the occasional topic will peak my interest, and we’ll sit down to watch.

It’s tough to find shows you can watch together as a family, but when you do it’s worth the time. Pop some popcorn (we got special movie-style popcorn cups for that purpose), cuddle up on the couch and settle in for a day/night/weekend of goofing off. We all have so little family time these days- why not make the time?

I’ve always wanted a Tivo. I think time-shifted television is the best idea ever. We have all of this technology at our fingertips. Yet most of us still sit mindlessly in front of the television watching the TV shows on the network’s schedule.

My problem with Tivo is… I’m cheap. Really cheap. I have never loved he terms of the Tivo service, which includes a monthly fee. You can sign up for a lifetime membership, but the membership is not for YOUR lifetime, it’s for the lifetime of your unit. My luck with technology makes me worry about the fact that my unit would outlive the warranty by 10 minutes, and then I’d be on the hook for a new unit AND a new membership.

Since I’ve moved to my weekday crashpad, I have no access to television. I made a trade with the landlords, and we agreed to share an internet connection, and they would not have to wire the apartment for cable. The wireless connection allows me to access the internet, and I get great throughput. I can watch video streamed from the internet. Yeah, you can watch YouTube, and the major networks have begun to show more of their content online. However, it is in their best interest to make it somewhat complicated to find the shows. The longer you are on the website, the more likely you are to find something new that will suck up your time or money.

This is why I like Hulu. NBC, Comedy Central, and many other content providers have begun providing much of their content to Hulu for streaming. The advertising is somewhat unobtrusive. You get a single commercial breaks on a schedule similar to that of broadcast TV (usually 3 per half hour, 5 per hour) and the content restarts AUTOMATICALLY. However, the most exciting part of Hulu is the subscription service. You can subscribe to clips or episodes from shows (you choose) and they show up in a personalized queue on the site, or you can subscribe in an RSS feed. You can also receive individual show feeds if you prefer.

You can share your feeds publicly (social media style), receive email updates when a new clip or episode is added to your queue. For some people, the movie offerings are their favorites. However, I rarely watch the movies. You are not seeing new, top tier releases. They are classic releases, and in some cases never-to-become-classic releases. For me, I just don’t have the time to sit and watch two hours of movies most days. I need that time to catch up on my shows.

My shows? You can check out what’s in my queue, but the highlights include:

• Fringe
• Heroes
• House
• Late Night with Conan O’Brien
• Life
• Mad TV
• Monk
• psych
• Saturday Night Live
• Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles
• The Daily Show
• The Colbert Report

Still waiting for ABC, CBS, TNT, TBS, and others to get a clue about services like Hulu. These guys are doing online video well. You are late to the game. Either steal good ideas from them, or throw in together and do it better. NBC posts shows on both NBC.com and Hulu. There is no reason not to do both. More eyes is better, isn’t it?

And Network Executives, if you think online video is taking away from your vieweship, guess again. I found House on Hulu, and now my wife AND I watch it faithfully.. on broadcast TV.