Whine & Cheese

Flat

As you may have noticed off to the right, I have moved onto another book after my 'lil 'ole attempt to get through a summer of Faulkner. Though you may think my current selection, NY Times reporter Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat, is an equally odd choice.

A book that swirls around the topics of out-sourcing, in-sourcing, open sourcing, off-shoring, supply chains, and work-flow software is not exactly the type of the book you worry about getting sandy on a beach or wet by the pool.  But I am plowing right through it!

While I have only read the first 100 pages or so, I have already lost count on the number of times my jaw has dropped open.  I like to believe I am fairly "up" on current events and trends, but Friedman fleshes it in fascinating fashion (how's that for some alliteration!)... sure you know something about outsourcing and web browsers... but it is hard not to be stunned by the details and the impact these things have had on world... Friedman purports has changed dramatically in the last 5 years or so (and it is hard to argue otherwise!)... thus the whole concept of this book... technology has leveled the playing field... the world is flattening.

Heck, I'm a product/part of this new flat world.  I have been working on my own for about 5-6 years now... something that likely would not have been possible even in the mid-1990s.  But technology makes us seem like we are any other worker in high-rise office at a 9-5 job... not bed-headed, bare-foot, with Regis & Kelly on the TV.

Consider this work scenario ... a media company in California wishes to do a customer satisfaction study, they contract the work to a two-person consulting "company" in Virginia, who then sends the phone survey portion to a call-center in Oklahoma and the back-end result-oriented work to a company near Boston, that Boston company is partnered with a 3-person company in Arizona.  When the study is completed, Oklahoma emails the data to the Virginia and cc's the folks in Arizona... the Arizona folks send the reports/results back to Virginia... where charts and graphs and recommendations are completed and sent back to the original California client.

Welcome to my flat world. Needless to say, I don't actually meet any of the above parties in person, and often times, I don't even have to talk to any of them!

But this same thing is going on all over the world.

Call about your lost luggage on Delta Airlines and you get a hold of Susie... "Susie" is likely in a crowded call-center in India where she learned how to speak "American" (and perhaps just a cubicle away from "Mike" handling tech support for Dell)...

Call for a reservation on Jet Blue, you will probably be talk to a Mormom housewife working from her Salt Lake City home...

Hiit the McDonald's drive-thru in Illinois, the person on the other end of the speaker box may be in Colorado Springs...

Drop your broken Toshiba PC off at the UPS Store, guess what Toshiba never sees it... it is repaired, and sent back to you, by "Big Brown"...

Hurricane headed for Florida? Wal-Mart computers know to stock their stores with extra beer and Pop-Tarts...

Fascinating stuff, huh?  Ok, still not a mindless beach read... but still a very "real" world page-turner.

Weekend Update #50717

A fairly low key weekend... I was still partially hibernating from my Friday laser treatment but otherwise it was just too damn hot around town to really want to go out and do anything.  To give you an idea, on Sunday morning our indoor/outdoor thermometer showed 100 degrees at 9 am!  Yikes!

So here's the run-down:

So yes, no serious after-effects from the laser.  It still looks pretty roughed up, but most of the bad looking parts are on my neck, so it did not really prevent me/us from heading out for a quick bite or to the pet or grocery store (though my paranoia did feel some extra eyes on me).  No pain... just waiting for the bruise-like portions to clear up (which should take about a week) and then several more weeks to see what effect the treatment had on the actual birthmark... it is just one of those unpredictable things... some areas clear better than others.

As you may have noticed, managed some cosmetic tweaks here on W&C as well.  I was shooting for something a bit more ambitious but it didn't quite work out... so basically I just moved from a sidebar - main - sidebar to main - sidebar - sidebar.  I am sure you are terribly impressed!   But in order to accomplish that I had to move to an advanced TypePad template... and I also learned a bit more on playing around with a CSS stylesheet... so just baby steps thus far... but at least it looks a bit different from the regular cookie-cutter templates... though it is still definitely a cookie!

Saturday Night at the Movies returned... our TiVo has been well-stocked with films of late... we opted for the light and fluffy Win A Date With Tad Hamilton.  It was totally formulaic, so ultimately not very good... but the lead actors were all very likeable, so that totally saved the film.  It was my first real exposure to Topher Grace, who I am guessing will make a career out of playing the adorable dork... Kate Bosworth was quite charming and beautiful... and do I have to really say anything about Tad Hamilton himself... Josh Duhamel?!!  He was just drop-dead gorgeous in every scene he was in... if I am ever feeling old, I should just watch it since he made me feel like a teenager... umm, well, a teenage girl... but you get the point!

Our Saturday night movie pushed watching the Big Brother 6 nomination episode to Sunday.  As suspected, HoH Eric soaked up the power of the position faster than you can say "human growth hormone." (Did I just say that?!)  Eric obviously did not get the Reality TV 101 Handbook of what generally happens to alpha males... unless he can instill some fear in his posse (which is totally possible) he is going to be crying on the couch with the Chenbot pretty soon. 

WARNING: Minor BB Spoiler Ahead
I have not been reading the BB boards this year... so not keeping up with what is going on between shows from the live feeds... but caught this tidbit on the always informative Reality Blurred website.  Seems like Eric charged at Michael sometime on Sunday... but don't worry everyone is still in the house despite a past history where fighters were unceremoniously shown to the door early.  The profanity-laden transcript (which will probably not fully make it to air on Tuesday's episode) of the fight is at the first link... apparently things got really rocky when Michael said that Eric had "a small penis."  Ha!  This season just may turn out alright.

Smokin'

Ah, what price beauty?   Well, $300 after a $100 discount for being a nice guy...

Just got back from having a laser treatment on my birthmark... and boy was it a bit of different experience than usual!  After taking about 2 years off waiting for my doc to get a new laser (thus the patient patient discount), finally got back in today for a full treatment on my face and neck (you may remember that I had a test portion done prior to our big vacation).

The old laser was an interesting experience... kind of like a large magic marker pointing at spots on your face and the a rubber-band kind of snap when the laser hit the mark.  This new machine was kind of like a wand... and while there was no snapping, it pretty much felt like what I would imagine a curling iron feels like when it hits the skin (not that I would ever know that).  Too give you an idea I had 100s of "zaps" with the old laser, today it was 81.

So it was a much broader scope and "quite warm" as I told the doc (translation in my head: That's f#ckn' hot!!).   It was so hot... (everyone now:  how hot was it?)... that when I opened my eyes after he did a spot on my chin there was smoke rising off my face... don't worry, just some lazy shaving on my part this morning with some errant hairs going up in smoke!

It looks pretty bad for awhile too... right now the areas that have been done are turning a nice deep shade of purple... so it looks like I have been banged and bruised and on the wrong end of an alley fight, probably not too different from David Gest once Liza got thru with him... and oh, it feels like the worst sunburn I've ever had too.  My skin simply "shrieked" when I headed outside into the hot sun and into my fatally hot car.

I know this all sounds crazy... but really it is just a brief amount of "ugly" and discomfort for some incredible results.  Areas that have been done in the past have really cleared up tremendously after receiving treatment... and while I have certainly come to terms with the birthmark as I have aged, it is defintely nice to see it fading away.  Technology is pretty great sometimes.

BB6: Eviction Week 1

Don't have too much to say about the first eviction show on Big Brother 6, still not really bonding much with this bunch just quite yet.  Ashlea seemed like a bit of a wet blanket... it seems like it probably just takes all the energy she has to get out of bed each day... so she was pretty much dead wood... though strategically, as a not terribly fierce competitor, she probably should have been kept her around.

But what a bummer about the "secret pairs."  They were officially unveiled to us television viewers last night... and promptly followed by a segment where it appears most of the hamsters had already figured everything out on their own!  But I guess these days it is hard to pull off a reality show twist... and I am pretty sure that if I was in the house I would have believed that I was the only pair.

I guess it still will be interesting how it all falls out.  With Ashlea's departure, the pairs are pretty equally divided - 4 female/male teams, 1 female/female pair, and 1 male/male pair and Janelle. 

If new HoH Eric is smart he should probably go after the females...  the guys are still at a 7-6 minority... as gender alliances always seem to come into play.  Get rid of Janelle (who will likely swing to the females) or go after the April/Jennifer pairing.  However, in the short time we have known him, Eric seems to be one of those megalomaniacal types (is that related to egocentrical?)... they probably have to wipe up testosterone off a seat when he gets up!  So who knows what he is going to do!

Emmy Roll Call

Emmy nominations out this morning... as expected, a lot of new faces thanks to the departure of such Emmy regulars as Frasier, Friends, and Sex and The City... and the lack of qualifying season for The Sopranos. 

So my thoughts on the major categories (shows we watch are in blue)

Comedy Series
Arrested Development
Desperate Housewives
Everybody Loves Raymond
Scrubs
Will & Grace
Pretty pleased here... W&G is just a shadow of what it used to be... though it says something about the sad state of sitcoms that I can't think of a replacement for it.  Hurray, for Scrubs first ever nomination in this category!  Though I suspect Raymond (in its final year) will probably win most of the comedy categories.

Drama Series
Deadwood
Lost
Six Feet Under
24
The West Wing
Again, not too much to quibble with...

Lead Actor - Comedy Series
Jason Bateman (Arrested Development)
Zach Braff (Scrubs)
Eric McCormack (Will & Grace)
Ray Romano (Everybody Loves Raymond)
Tony Shaloub (Monk)
Hurray for Zach Braff... first time nominee...

Lead Actor - Drama Series
Hank Azaria - Huff
James Spader - The Practice
Hugh Laurie - House
Kiefer Sutherland - 24
Ian McShane - Deadwood
Well can't provide too much input here... my notably missing are Matthew Fox (Lost), Martin Sheen (West Wing), Peter Krause & Michael C Hall (SFU).

Lead Actress - Comedy Series
Marcia Cross - Desperate Housewives
Teri Hatcher - Desperate Housewives
Patricia Heaton - Everybody Loves Raymond
Felicity Huffman - Desperate Housewives
Jane Kaczmarek - Malcom in the Middle
As suspected the Desperate Housewives dominate... and Sex and The City syndrome as Eva Langoria begins what I suspect will be a repeated journey of being the the lone non-nominee (ala SatC's Kristen Davis).  Although she is just adorable, personally I think Teri Hatcher is a bit over-rated (is she a better actress than her Lois Lane days?). Debra Messing is bumped and, once again, is the only W&G cast member not to receive a nomination.

Lead Actress - Drama Series
Jennifer Garner - Alias
Patricia Arquette - Medium
Mariska Hargitay - Law and Order: SVU
Glenn Close - The Shield
Frances Conroy - Six Feet Under
Like the actor category, not a whole lot for me to comment on here... is this the first year that WW's Allison Janney has not been nominated?  Granted she would have been the biggest of dark horses... but I would have liked Christine Lahti in here for the ill-fated Jack & Bobby.

Supporting Actor - Comedy Series
Jeffrey Tambor - Arrested Development
Brad Garrett - Everybody Loves Raymond
Peter Boyle - Everybody Loves Raymond
Jeremy Piven - Entourage
Sean Hayes - Will & Grace
A pretty crowded category here, with a lot of omissions... guess we'll have to wait until next year when the Raymond supporting duo drops out of the running.  But where or where is John C. McGinley, Dr. Cox on Scrubs?!?!  I think I would put him ahead of even Zach Braff as a more deserving nominee!  Also missing... any of the Arrested Development guys (even before Tambor IMHO)... Will Arnett (Gob), David Cross (Tobias), Michael Cera (George Michael), and Tony Hale (Buster)... also no Desperate Housewives men make the cut (granted their roles are less comedic).

Supporting Actor - Drama Series
William Shatner - Boston Legal
Terry O'Quinn - Lost
Naveen Andrews - Lost
Oliver Platt - Huff
Alan Alda - The West Wing
Glad to see some of the Lost guys here (and probably the two most worthy nominees)... notable absentees... Alda gets here on his rep, but what about the regulars from West Wing... or heck, even the much more seen Jimmy Smits?

Supporting Actress - Comedy Series
Doris Roberts - Everybody Loves Raymond
Jessica Walter - Arrrested Development
Holland Taylor - Two and a Half Men
Conchata Ferrell - Two and a Half Men
Megan Mullally - Will & Grace
Kind of strange than none of acting noms from Two and Half Men are men... but anyhow.  Jessica Walter was the name I was looking for on this list... so, for that, I am pleased.  Sadly no Sarah Chalke (Scrubs) other gals from Arrested Development Portia de Rossi (Lindsay) or Alia Shawkat (Maeby)... or even Nicolette Sheridan from DH.

Supporting Actress - Drama Series
Sandra Oh - Grey's Anatomy
Tyne Daly - Judging Amy
Blythe Danner - Huff
CCH Pounder - The Shield
Stockard Channing - The West Wing
Not too familiar with the noms here... and, though I love her, probably would not have included Stockard.  My notable absentees... Lauren Ambrose (Six Feet Under) and Yunjin Kim (Sun from Lost)... and heck why not Mary Lynn Rasjkub (Chloe from 24).

So who are you glad to see on the list? Any of your favorites not make it?

It's A Scorcha!!

Ok, an oddly slow work day... so have to bore you with a weather post!  As you may have heard, the West is really heating up... and you know what that means for us Phoenix... MEGA-dry heat!   We should really be getting some rain and humidity up this time of year... but it looks like our monsoon might just become a NONsoon!

How other cities get excited about the first snowfall... our weather folks get orgasmic over the first 100 degree day... and thereafter, any day where we might break a record.  Yesterday, we broke a record for the day at 115 degrees ... and it was the hottest day in town since August 2003.  The record for today is 114.  I just checked our own indoor/outdoor thermometer... and it is already at an unusually high temp for this time of the day...

So keep checking in and see how we're doing this afternoon... will try to update on the 1/2 hour.  Keep in mind, we live in a cooler suburb of Phoenix... haha!

1:00p: 106.8 degrees fahrenheit (indoor: 82.0)
1:30p: 108.0 degrees (indoor: 82.6)
2:00p: 109.2 degrees (indoor: 82.8)
2:30p: 109.9 degrees (indoor: 82.6)
3:00p: 110.7 degrees (indoor: 82.6)
3:30p: 111.2 degrees (indoor: 82.2)
4:00p: 110.8 degrees (indoor: 81.7) - coolin' off?!
4:30p: 111.0 degrees (indoor: 81.9) - back up a smidge
5:00p: 111.6 degrees (indoor: 82.2) - climbin' again

5:15p: Our weatherman has sadly reported that we only managed to tie a record high temperature today - 114 degrees at the airport.  2005 now joins three other years for the record high for this date.  No glory in that!

5:30p: 110.5 degrees (indoor: 82.2) - fading fast?
6:00p: 109.4 degrees (indoor: 82.2) - keeps on droppin'
6:30p: 107.1 degrees (indoor: 82.6) - brrrrr!
7:00p: 106.0 degrees (indoor: 82.8) - plummeting...
7:30p: 103.1 degrees (indoor: 82.4) - "i really can't stay...
8:00p: 100.2 degrees (indoor: 81.5) - ...baby it's cold outside"

Well folks, time to put this 7-hour look at Phoenix weather to rest for today... tomorrow it is only supposed to be 113.

Television Potpourri

A bit of a mish-mash of some recent television viewing...

Have you been watching Morgan Spurlock's 30 Days on FX?  If not, I highly recommend it!  Go. To. TiVo. Now.  We have watched the first two episodes (four episodes have aired to date)... in the first episode, Spurlock tried living on minimum wage (well kinda) for a month...  while in the second episode, a guy tried to reverse the aging process with shots and supplements.  Well-done, fascinating and highly palatable viewing!   Episodes are repeating, so check the schedule.

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Six Feet Under rises from the grave!  I am a huge SFU fan, but thus far it has been a serious downer!  So much so, that I have had a hard time getting into this final season.  But thankfully the last episode ("The Rainbow of Her Reasons") restored my faith... just a wonderful mix of comedy, drama, and quirkiness.  Let's give some credit to the return of Patricia Clarkson (Ruth's wacky sister Sarah) and Kathy Bates (Bettina) to breathing some life back into the show.  Loved the Ruth/Claire bedroom scene... really did not like them fighting, much prefer their wary "I don't really get you" relationship.  Loved Claire entering the corporate world and how classic was the "You Light Up My Life"/"You Ride Up My Thighs" fantasy singing sequence?!!  BTW, that was really Lauren Ambrose singing... did you know she is a classically trained opera singer?!!? 

Oh, and kudos to me... several weeks ago while watching SFU I mentioned to Todd that the actress who plays David/Keith's wacky surrogate Mary should really play Jan in a Brady Bunch movie... so much to my surprise, TV Guide arrives in the mail this week and gives "cheers" to actress Jennifer Elise Cox... who DID play Jan in the Brady Bunch movies!  Sometimes I scare myself...

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Since I have a bit of Amazing Race fan/reader base here... I should mention that this week the Game Show Network (GSN) has started re-airing the show from the very first episode.  It airs daily at 9 pm and repeats at midnight.  Jeff has already noted that GSN hasn't made it very TiVo-friendly (both airings will show up if you do a Season Pass or have a TAR ARWL set up)... there are ways around it (setting up a manual/repeat recording), but it is still kind of a pain.

While I would love to watch it all again, I am not sure if I can keep up with an hour long new episode every day... makes it very hard to tame the TiVo Now Playing list.

We just watched the opening sequence of the very first episode last night... and ah, how the memory fades!  Of the 11 teams, I could recall just about half of them... jumping out the most were... Kevin/Drew, Joe/Bill (Team Guido), Frank/Margarita, and Rob/Brennan. Also, while I could have done the "how many years ago was it?" math in my head (TAR7 just finished)...and it should not have been a surprise... it still made me gasp to see the WTC towers in the opening sweep of the NYC skyline.

W&C Express Lane

As you may have already noticed, another new sidebar item here... its the W&C Express Lane!  Yes, I admit not terribly original (let's say I have borrowed the idea from many a blog)... just figure there often times that I see a story/headline that is not really worth a full-blown entry...  so this gives me an opportunity to share it without wasting too much of my (or your!) time!

Right now it is prominently featured in the upper left hand position... but I am sure it will move around in the future.   Hope you enjoy it!

Stick A Faulk In Me... I'm Done

Dear Mr. Faulkner,

I had really planned to spend the summer with you, but unfortunatley it looks like I am going to have to cut it short.  While I have no doubts that you deserve your reputation of one of the great American writers, I am just not having much fun reading your works.  While As I Lay Dying was a challenging read... I managed to understand and get through it.  I really liked how you used different narrators to piece together the story of the Bundrens trying mightily to bury their family matriarch.

However, you lost me with The Sound and The Fury.  I managed to muddle through the first section and a half of your book... and after many a vow to do so before, I officially threw in the towel last night.  I found myself reading words instead of a story... and honestly I did not know what was going... and perhaps more sadly, I did not care.  The Benjy section really threw me... hard to ease into a book where the narrator is a 33-year old "idiot" who has "no concept of time or place... sensory stimuli in the present bring him back to another time and place in his past, instantly and without warning."

I got that description from this thing called the Internet... in today's world, if you have questions in life you can pretty much find the answer on the Internet.  Back when I was in school, if you did not understand a novel you would buy this little yellow and black booklet called Cliff Notes to help you out. I am guessing these days the kids don't even need to go out and get it, thanks to all the information on the Internet.  However, I am not in school any more... and while, I do like a challenging read, at this stage in my life I don't feel I need to do extra research in an attempt to understand what is going on in a book. As it is, there are too many books I want to read and not enough time to read them...

My apologies for not given it my best effort, but I tried... really!

Ed

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Dear Oprah,

Oh O!?! I don't know about this summer's book selection.  You usually don't let me down with your book selections.  I have really liked that you have moved to the classics, it gives me a good reason to read the books and authors that I never got around to in my youth.  But I was just not getting any enjoyment with your Summer of Faulkner trilogy.  I had never read Faulkner, so I was actually excited to finally get around to it... but boy, he is not very accessible!   If you told me a few years back that I would have no serious problems getting through a Tolstoy beheamoth of a novel... and not be able to get through a relatively short Faulkner novel I would have called you crazy before you could yell out "And you get a car!" for a second time.

In introducing this series of books, you said "you cannot call yourself a real reader unless you have read some of Faulkner"... well I don't know what my decision to quit reading these book(s) says about me.  I consider myself a "real" reader... so I will take it that a book and a half of Faulkner counts as some.
 

As I just told Bill above, I still plan on reading more this summer... but it will just be something that I like.  I am guessing I am not the only one who is waving the white flag on these books.  I appreciate the fact that you are trying to challenge readers, but I am just hoping that this selection won't discourage folks from picking up another book, any book.

I will still give your book club another chance, but give us a little break next time, okay?!

E

DIRECTV Input

Ok, looking for some advice/feedback here...

Kind of started out as a bit of joke when we learned that the only way we could get LOGO (the new "all gay, all the time" network) in our area was thru DIRECTV satellite service.  Now, this is NOT the reason we are considering it (really!) ... getting DTV has been on the back-burner for awhile primarily for HD.  We can get an HD package with our current cable provider... but without a HD TiVo, it didn't seem to make much sense to do so (since 95% of what we watch is TiVo'd).  So, DTV has an integrated HD TiVo... and thus we're thinking about it...

So looking for feedback on...
Overall experience/satisfaction with DIRECTV?  DTV TiVo?
HD is it worth it?  Is it THAT much better?

Pros...
More digital channels + HD
More programming than we currently have (with "premier" package)
HD TiVo + ability to TiVo 2 programs at same time

Cons....
Don't really need
About $700 initial cost (for a HD DVR system according to their website)
HD channels still an add'l charge p/month
More $$/month (+ would keep basic/extended cable channels)
Yet another TiVo