“Dr. Horrible’s Sing-a-Long Blog,” a three-part musical starring Neil Patrick Harris, Nathan Fillion, and Felicia Day, follows NPH’s Dr. Horrible, a “low-rent super-villan,” as Whedon describes him. The Bad Doctor tries to woo the woman (Day) and defeat the superhero Captain Hammer (Fillion).

According to the fan site doctorhorrible.net, Part 1 will be released July 15, Part 2 on July 17 and Part 3 on July 19. They will be made available for a limited time. After that time has passed, Whedon says it will be made available in various ways, including a later DVD release he says are full of extras.

Between Whedon, Fillion, Harris and Day (who has been drawing some fan acclaim for her own web series The Guild), this should hit most of Geekdom in all the right spots. Here’s the trailer:

There have been reports of some cable companies scaring customers into uprgrading to digital packages lest they lose their picture altogether.

Over the past couple of months, the National Cable and Telecommunications Association has been running
PSA that for the most part is a small-F.U.D. buster. However, as detailed as they were explaining how cable customers would keep their signal, the omission how this also applies to the satellite companies was also notable. Which leads to the question from many of the non-switchover-savvy, “Wait, do I have to switch to cable? Is Dish Network (or DirecTV) not good enough?”

I realize that the production and airtime was on the NCTA’s dime, but why couldn’t they have just added the words “or satellite” to their explantion, and make it an actual public service?

If you have questions on the upcoming switch from analog broadcasting to digital broadcasting, go to dtvanswers.org.

I mentioned in an earlier post how much I liked David Ford’s latest video for his song “Go to Hell.” I wound up buying his latest album, Songs for the Road, less than 24 hours later.

Ford’s rasp is both melodic and melancholy; his lyrics bounce between introspection and commentary. “Go to Hell” is the first track, a bit more somber than the latest video.

My biggest complaint about ‘Songs’ is that it’s too short. Nine songs, most of them are around three minutes long. Still, the quality:quantity ratio is very high.

“The Train” brings to mind Van Morrison–though less mystic. The lyrics for “Song for the Road” are as vivid as the music is beautiful. “Requiem” appears to be his summation of the shortcomings of our culture. “St. Peter,” perhaps my favorite track, is grim acceptance set to what could easily pass for a rousing drinking song.

Bottom line: Worth the purchase.

In the 3 minute tirade, according to ESPN, roughly one word in every 11 was a profanity. One of the more memorable quotes referred to the regulars that attended each home game. Night baseball was a little more than 5 years, two months away, so every home game was played in the afternoon.

Eighty-five percent of the ****** world is working. The other fifteen percent come out here.  A ****** playground for the ***********.

So as the previous quote indicates, the following “video” is clearly not safe for work.

More on the tirade:

• ESPN
• Chicago Sun-Times
• Chicago Tribune

(Image courtesy SeattleWeekly.com. You can check out their top 10 rants of all time by clicking the link.)

Now, I’m sure the chat was already scheduled, and they were merely stating a fact that, yes, the Cubs were in first place. But given the fact the Sox were leading a competitive division in which many had picked them to finish fourth, and that the Cubs had to fight their way to the top of arguably the weakest division in baseball, a division that they were picked by most to win, well, it just seemed a bit… misplaced.

Find me a Sox fan that doesn’t hate the Cubs, and I’ll show you they are either a casual Sox fan, someone who’s close to a Cubs fan. Why? Because we Cub fans (and I do say we as I am a lifetime one), on the whole, are stupid.

(Marty Brenneman is still a complete tool. One can make an argument for many teams having the most obnoxious fans in baseball. To go on air and write Cubs fans off when you yourself said you haven’t seen Yankees or Red Sox “with any degree of regularity” just contradicts your point.)

I used to hate the Sox, mostly because of the fans. Then I realized they’ve got every right.

We put stock in billy goats. We demonize one man in a group of many fans who reached for a foul ball, instead of the manager who wrecked the arms and futures of two bright young pitchers by overworking them. We hoist up a mediocre announcer as a diety. During my lifetime, we packed the seats at Wrigley while the Tribune Company laughed all the way to the bank, investing very little in the team. They’re not losers, they’re “loveable” losers. That makes it fun. “Hey frat boys, come to beautiful Wrigley, get drunk, you’re not going to see a game, you’re going for an ‘experience.’”

And we look the other way when the Trib finally starts putting together a contender in hopes of making the team more pallatable for sale.

And we think shirts like this are funny, let alone profitable.

Meanwhile, the Sox have been the red-headed stepchild of Chicago for years. This is a team that won the World Championship less than three years ago.

I’ll always be a Cub fan, i think, I have many good memories of being a Cub fan, but those memories usually center around my family and friends. But you won’t find me badmouthing Sox fans any time soon.

(Image courtesy of the BBC.)

William Shatner’s Denny Crane character has devolved from eccentric to absurd.

Every singe case ends the same. All lawyers from Crane, Poole and Schmidt in court in a given week are up against long odds. In each case, they give a long, drawn out speech, finding a way to tie even the most mundane detail of the case to current events–more specifically, the many argued failures of the Bush administration–and every time, they win.

There’s way too much politics packed into each show. It is to the point where BL creator David Kelly is browbeating his audience with his stance on current events. It reaks of self-indulgence, especially in cases like this past episode, where Alan Shore (played by James Spader) went in front of the Supreme Court, spent most of his allotted time–you guessed it–yelling at the nine highest justices in the United States. After he collects himself, he gives the game-saving summation, and Kelly had three characters gush about how proud his speech made them.

Full disclosure: I actually, more often than not agree, with the broad strokes of their rants, however, don’t we get enough of that in cable news and the blogosphere?

I like John Laroquette. I’ve liked him in pretty much everything in which I’ve seen him. Which is why it pains me to ask: What is he doing on the show? He’s not the hardass, because he lets too many things slide. he’s not the guy who has his employees’ backs. He’s barely there as a straight man. Either he was brought on just for his name, or the writers have yet to figure out what do with him.

I could go on for a half-dozen more paragraphs, but the point I’m trying to make is that the show has run its course. Let it fade away without inflicting much more damage.

The song is off his latest release, “Songs for the Road.”

I saw him open for Gomez in 2006, and he did something like this on stage, one try. It was pretty damn cool, even if you have a good idea how he was doing all of it.

We moved to a rural area a few years ago, where everyone had a dial-up connection and satellite TV. I really needed something faster if I wanted to do any type of work at home, instead of driving into “the city” to the office. I heard about Direcway, and as part of my next contract, I was able to get them to pay for the service.

Now, I had no illusions about what I was getting into, including high latency (1200-2500 ms) and service interrupted by rain. Still, what I got was nothing but aggravation and bad service.

To be fair, the first few years were adequate. Then, for roughly a year, my connection would trickle down to the point where I timed out of every site I visited shortly after 8 a.m. Sometimes, I’d have random issues at night, and that’s when I called tech support. Though support is a very loose term.

I would call their support number, where I would promptly have to sit through a 30-second explanation of how I can do all types of wonderful things I can do by wonderful things I can do by logging on to their customer service site. Which would be great… if I could actually connect to the site!

Moving on, I’d get the technician, who would promptly attempt to do their job and diagnose the problem. However, the problem was rarely solved. In fact, I called so often, that I would make sure to do those before I called so we could get past that. However, after explaining the symptoms, my recent history of bad service, and the steps I’ve already done to diagnose the problem, they would promptly say, “OK,” then ask me to do all those steps I already did.

During this 12 month period, Direcway was bought out and became Hughesnet. I was running out of patience, and though I was out my contract period, my sources cable and DSL were nowhere near the horizon for our area. Then, 15 minutes into one random call someone suggested upgrading my modem to the new HN7000, that may fix my problem. He emphasized the “may.” But “may” was still a better option than my current situation, so off we went.

“How much?”

“$199.”

“Seriously?”

“Yes, it’s $199. Or we have a lower rate if you choose to resign for 15 months.”

“How much is that?”

“$49.”

I clenched my teeth and gave the go ahead. So the modem arrived, and I still had problems, though they appeared a bit more random. You can imagine my tone on the immediate call I made to HN tech support. However, the modem offered more diagnostic tools than my previous modem, and there was some
magic code that told them I had set off the three words that would come to be the bane of my access: Fair Access Policy.

Simply put, if I download more than 200 megabytes in a 24-hour period, my connection gets throttled. It doesn’t matter what it is or from where I got it. You can’t contest it; you just have to sit there and take it.

OK, so let’s say for the sake of argument that my connection going down at 8 a.m. every day after doing some light web surfing was enough to trip the FAP. Why couldn’t they tell me that? Why did they let me buy a new modem for something that, as enraged as it made me, was supposedly under my control?

(Oh by the way, three months after I re-upped my contract, DSL came to our subdivision. Great. Now they tell me.)

Well my tipping point came when, after I powered up and sat through 30 minutes of a FAP-like connection, I checked to find out that I had blown my Fair Access Policy. Even though both of my computers had been powered off for 24 hours and war drivers aren’t exactly common out in our neck of the woods.

I called Hughesnet, and apparently I blew my download limit when the only thing I was doing was playing Super Smash Brothers Brawl on my new Wii. Offline–I wasn’t connected to the WFC. No system updates were downloaded, so when did I blow my FAP? Finally, I had him switch me to the billing department so I could know–to the minute–when I could cancel without having to pay the $300 penalty. I thought I had a roughly month left, because I could do, you know basic math an all. Imagine my delight when I was told they didn’t have me under contract.

Guess who had DSL installed within five days. It’s cheaper, faster, and NO FAPS!

So the point of this whole point of this sob story is to tell you that if you know someone in a rural area, just have them stick it out with dial-up until broadband comes their way. Sure, Hughesnet doesn’t sell themselves as more than just a way to surf the web faster, but as things like podcasts and streaming video gain popularity, it won’t be long till they are doing more than basic web surfing and blowing their FAP, and wind up with a connection that seems no faster than the dial-up they wanted to drop in the first place.

In fact, on one of the pages, the production team apparently pasted in the FAQ for the message board script vBulletin.

After a moderate search of TNT’s L&O site, Google, and YouTube, I could not find a clip of this online, but those of you with TiVo or any other type of DVR, get the pause button handy next time you see it.

Last Wednesday, an earthquake measuring 6.8 on the Richter scale gave Seattle residents an afternoon they will remember for quite a while. Miraculously, there were relatively few injuries and no fatalities. The region lies on an active fault line, and while the Seattle area is not unfamiliar with quakes, it caught more than a few by surprise. Travel southeast across two time zones to New Madrid, MO, the namesake of the New Madrid Seismic Zone. The area is roughly 500 miles due south of McDonough County. The fault lies almost halfway between St. Louis and Memphis, was the site of one of the most intense earthquakes in North American history.

It was not just one earthquake that rocked the lower Mississippi River valley. The Center for Earthquake Studies at Southeast Missouri University website reports that there were 2000 measurable shocks over a five month period. Five separate times the Richter scale topped 8.0–hundreds of times stronger than the 7.0 San Francisco “World Series” earthquake of 1989–and eighteen times Missouri quakes rang church bells on the eastern seaboard. Buildings in the city of Boston were damaged, 1000 miles away from the epicenter. Survivors told of the ground rolling in waves, the destruction of New Madrid, the creation of Reelfoot Lake, and change of course of one of the world’s longest rivers.

A magnitude-8 earthquake may not recur for a few hundred years, but the chances of a 6.0 or higher earthquake happening in the first half of the 21st century is great. The Center for Earthquake Research and Information at the University of Memphis states a major quake affecting the Missouri/Illinois area is likely to happen. Researchers say within 15 years there is a 40 to 60 percent chance of an earthquake measuring roughly 6.3, and an 86 to 97 percent chance of one within the next 50 years. If a 6.0 earthquake were to occur as predicted, geological differences between the land east and west of the Rocky Mountains would cause more damage in Missouri than it would in California.

Like all natural disasters, there are several myths and misconceptions surrounding earthquakes. The ground does not open up, swallowing everything standing over it, according to CERI. The ground can, however, cause several shallow crevices, but there was “no reliable account” of anyone falling to their death. Another myth states that a major earthquake cannot occur in a region that has several smaller earthquakes—those little quakes could be a precursor to a major event.

CERI recommends that all family members know how to turn off the gas, water and electricity. Heavy objects such as bookcases, entertainment centers, mirrors, and cabinets should be anchored to walls whenever possible. Never place heavy objects over beds, and should be kept lower than the head height of the shortest member of the family.

Illinois Transportation Secretary Kirk Brown announced the 2001 Earthquake Response Conference for April 18-19 in Carbondale. The two-day conference will include a simulated earthquake to test the state’s emergency response. The Illinois Department of Transportation has an Earthquake Preparedness Plan and conducts exercises to test its procedures to ensure the department is ready to respond.

For more information regarding the New Madrid Seismic Zone, the New Madrid Earthquakes of 1811-12, or Earthquake safety, visit www.cusec.org, www.semo.edu/ces/, and www.ceri.memphis.edu.