Author: Glen Harness

Formerly a computer guy at a big medical center
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Jericho Battle Won (Sort Of)

At the beginning of the fall TV season in 2006, I started watching Jericho. I was intrigued to see how they’d handle the “end of the world” scenario. Much to my surprise, the show seemed very realistic, and the reactions of the characters in the show were very believable. The only “suspension of disbelief” that was necessary was the assumption that several US Cities were victims of nuclear explosions.

Over the course of the first half of the season, several plot lines emerged: can the citizens of Jericho avoid anarchy; is there still a United States of America; who’s in charge of the government; who was responsible for the bombing.

Then CBS made a stupid mistake. They took Jericho off the air for a couple of months; a mid-season break that seems to be popular these days.

The show resumed in mid-February with a synopsis of the first half of the season. Since I had the series set up to record on my DVR, I ended up watching that episode a couple of days later. Things happened, and I wasn’t able to keep up with the shows as soon as I’d like (but I still had them on the DVR). Then I discovered that Jericho was available via Comcast’s On Demand service. They had the whole first half of the season available, so I took the opportunity to watch it again. I didn’t catch up to the current shows until a couple of days after the season finale had aired.

Which brings me to my next point: Network television needs to realize that the traditional “watch it when we air it” paradigm is way outdated these days. Just going by the Nielson ratings isn’t enough. TV networks need to be able to monitor on-demand viewings (from both cable providers and their own web sites). Surely Comcast reports to it’s content providers how many times a show is watched on demand…?

Anyway, after over 20 tons of nuts were delivered to CBS, they cried “uncle”, sort of. They’ve ordered 7 episodes of Jericho for the mid-season next year. The producers have said that they’re not going to use the 7 episodes to wrap up the series, but will proceed as if they were going to be on the air for the foreseeable future.

What that means is that if Jericho’s ratings (by whatever measure) don’t improve, we could be in the same boat again next year, with Jericho ending on a cliffhanger and its fans left out in the cold.

So if you’re a fan of Jericho, you need to get a bunch of folks interested in the show. If you’ve never seen the show, CBS will be rerunning it this summer, so watch those episodes to get up to speed. It’d be a shame for the network brass to cancel it next year after all this effort went in to saving it.

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Bill France, Jr., RIP

Bill France, Jr. passed away Monday, fittingly on a day they ran the postponed Dover Nextel Cup race.

I think that it could be argued that he resided over the Golden Age of NASCAR. He took over from his dad and grew the sport in the way it needed to go. When he left a few years ago, you could almost see the sport start going downhill: TV ratings are declining, historically significant tracks losing dates, cookie-cutter tracks taking their place, competition getting boring.

Granted, during his tenure, he had drivers like Earnhardt, Petty, Waltrip, and others who made the races exciting to watch. But I don’t believe NASCAR made any major changes like they have recently with the so-called “Car of Tomorrow”. The car of tomorrow has proven to be a dog to watch; it hasn’t added anything to the excitement of the races.

Also during his watch, NASCAR held very few Cup events on Saturday night. We’ve just completed a three-week run of Saturday night races. That has a major effect on local tracks, which until recently were where the next generation drivers came from. Nowadays, it seems like most drivers come from some open-wheel series, so I guess it’s a moot point that NASCAR is killing the local tracks.

The current leadership of NASCAR can’t hold a candle to Mr. France. May he rest in peace.

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Implied Consent

I started riding a motorcycle in 1974. I rode a Honda XL250, a street legal dirt bike (nowadays they’re called dual sport bikes). I rode that bike until 1981 (when it got stolen). In 2002, I got the itch again to start riding. I bought a Kawasaki KLR650, a 650 cc dual sport bike. Since there’s no dirt around Nashville, I ended up trading it in for a Yamaha V-Star 650 Silverado cruiser. I’ve been riding that bike now for almost 4 years.I’ve only had one incident where I actually needed the helmet. This must have been in 1976 or ’77 during the summer when I was on vacation from college. In the area of East Tennessee where I’m from, there are a lot of hilly areas. I was on a road near my parents’ house when I saw a little hill that looked like it’d be fun to climb.

The top of the hill couldn’t have been more than 20 feet, so it wasn’t a big one (I’d already had experience climbing bigger hills in strip mines that had yet to be reclaimed). I got a run at the hill and too late noticed it had a little hump in the middle. When the front tire hit that hump, the front end came off the ground. Next thing I knew, I was flying over the back end of the bike, like I’d been bucked off a bull. I landed on my butt and my head went backwards into the ground… right onto a big rock. If I hadn’t been wearing the helmet, I’m not sure what would have happened. At the very least, I’d have been knocked out. Worst case scenario is that I would have died.

You could say then that I know a little bit about motorcycles and helmets. Continue reading “Implied Consent”

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Not So Freeware

Like most people, I have on occasion needed some software that I didn’t have, but also didn’t have money to buy. So I do a Google search for the next best thing: freeware.

Freeware is supposed to be just that, free. But it seems that there are some software authors out there who don’t have a clue. It always cracks me up to see statements like “to keep this software free, please donate”.

Either the software is free, or it’s not. You can’t have it both ways.

On a related note, the big dust up over at Digg a few days ago is still causing ripples to flow though the blogosphere. What’s amazed me most is that I’ve seen a few authors, of both software and books, come out in support of what the Digg owners finally did, which is to capitulate to a bunch of hooligans who have no respect for intellectual property. So I guess that means if someone steals their software codes and publishes it on the net, they’ll be all for it right?

Somehow, I don’t think so.

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NASCAR: A Solution to the Buschwacker Problem

The problem with Nextel Cup drivers taking up too many slots in the NASCAR Busch Series was highlighted last year when a full-time Nextel Cup driver actually won the Busch Series championship. In Happy Hour practice for this week’s Busch race at California Speedway, and in qualifying, nine of the top ten drivers are full-time Nextel Cup drivers. In fact, fully half of the 41-car field is comprised of full-time Cup drivers.

Continue reading “NASCAR: A Solution to the Buschwacker Problem”

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NASCAR Daytona 500 Thoughts

ROUSH REFUGEE ALMOST GETS WIN: NASCAR snatched defeat out of the jaws of victory from Mark Martin in the Daytona 500. After making a BIG deal about how teams are not supposed to race back to the start finish line anymore, and implementing rules and technology to determine running/finish orders when the caution comes out, they ignore their own rules and let the race finish under green after a big wreck on the last lap.
Continue reading “NASCAR Daytona 500 Thoughts”

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NASCAR: Mishmash of events this week

NASCAR DOT WHAT?: I guess I’m getting stupid in my old age. Yesterday I went to NASCAR.com to see how the Truck Series qualifying went, and today I went to see how Busch qualifying went. Neither time was I able to actually find what I was looking for. NASCAR’s yearly web redesign this year is a major step backwards. What happened to the good old days when you could actually get real information from NASCAR.com?

Continue reading “NASCAR: Mishmash of events this week”

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NASCAR 2007: Almost Here

Just had a few random thoughts about things I figured I’d put down here in the blog.

RETIREMENT FUND: Over the last week, there’s been a big deal made out about the fact that NASCAR drivers don’t have some sort of pension or retirement fund. Maybe it’s me, but I think that’s the drivers’ responsibility, not NASCAR. The drivers don’t even work for NASCAR; they’re contract employees for team owners. If the driver wants a pension, then they either need to see a financial planner or put it in their contract. It’s hard to feel for Tony Stewart when he says NASCAR should “take care of us after we race, or take care of the ones that came up before.” Tony, you’ve made more money in one race (even after the owner’s cut) than some of those drivers made in their entire career. You could easily put away part of your money for your own retirement and donate to an “old drivers’ retirement fund” if you wanted. Sports Illustrated writes about NASCAR maybe twice a year; this just sounds like something they’ve dredged up to sell magazines.

A FOREIGN MANUFACTURE IN NASCAR? Everyone’s making a big deal out of the fact that Toyota is going to be fielding cars this year in the Busch and Cup Series (they’ve had teams in the Truck Series for a couple of years now). Purists say NASCAR should only have American made cars and American manufacturers. But the purists haven’t been paying attention. Back when NASCAR ran the Dash Series, they allowed Toyotas to run. And is there really an American car nowadays? Wouldn’t you want to include Nissan, who makes cars just down the interstate in Smyrna, or Honda who also makes cars in the US? What about Dodge? They’re no longer an American company, but everyone was elated when the Pettys could run Dodge’s again.

Perhaps the real point here is that the purists are slowly fading away. As NASCAR continues to get new fans at the expense of the old fans, this manufacturer debate will also slowly fade away.

BROADCAST TEAMS: I still haven’t figured out ESPN’s rationale behind who they’re going to have in the booth. Rusty Wallace is moving over from the IRL booth (except for the Indy 500), which makes some sense. Wallace will have the driver’s perspective, while Andy Petree will give a crew chief’s perspective, with Jerry Punch calling the race. For some reason, Brent Musburger has been named as “host”.

I don’t really need an ex-crew chief’s perspective. If there absolutely has to be three people in the booth, I’d rather have two drivers, like TNN had with Buddy Baker and Neil Bonnett. Speaking of Baker, why hasn’t someone grabbed him for TV? He always had great insight and was funny to boot.

NOT SO LITTLE E: Dale Junior wants a piece of his Daddy’s business. Who’d didn’t see that coming from a mile away? From the reports I’ve seen, it looks like he wants that as compensation for being their driver, which doesn’t make sense. If he wants to own the team, why doesn’t he offer Teresa Earnhardt a truck load of money to buy her (at least partially) out? Maybe if his dad wanted him to have the company, he’d have inherited it instead of Teresa. I think I’m going to go out on a sturdy limb here and predict that he’ll be driving for another team next year.

SHOOTOUT: So the Bud Shootout is Saturday night. I’ve got it set to record on my DVR so I don’t have to watch all the commercials or all the between segment filler. I wonder how many other fans do that now? I honestly couldn’t imagine watching a race nowadays without being able to fast forward through the ads. That’s probably not what NASCAR and the networks want to hear, but that’s the way it is. It’s not like I’m not exposed to a ton of sponsors, so they’re still getting exposures. I just don’t need to see 40 Levetra commercials during a race.