Yesterday I was setting up a computer for a colleage and showing him how to use Apple’s iChat program with the iSight camera to do easy video chats. He asked me how much the setup cost and I told him the program is free and the iSight itself is $129. He was astounded by how *cheap* it was, while I was busy saying that Logitech makes a perfectly good camera for $60.

Truth is, he’s right. I’ve been doing weeks of research on a new video conferencing system that, all told, is going to end up costing $15,000 or more. The Polycom PVX software, which is supposed to provide pretty good video chat, is $250. The cheapest set-top units are at least $3,000. That Apple could enter the marketplace with a hideously easy, amazingly wonderful quality video conferencing system, and give it away for free, and charge only $129 for a very nice little camera with stereo sound, ya know what, he’s right, there is something wonderful about that.

Yes, there is Microsoft NetMeeting and all kinds of other third-party video conferencing and collaboration tools, but Apple took something that no one had gotten right and gave it to the masses in a form that Just Works ™. There is much to be said for that. And it sure is difficult to explain to people why it is that the $15,000 unit won’t do everything they want and more, when a $129 system for Apple can do at least half of it.

Lots of people are playing with Google’s Desktop Search as an alternative to the terrible built in Microsoft Windows search features. On the Mac, of course, we have Spotlight, and Microsoft claims that their new Longhorn product, now called Windows Vista, will have wonderful integrated search as well. These search systems index the entire computer, allow you to search from the desktop, and display a combined list of all different document types that contain the relevent words.

Which is all well and good.

So here is my problem. On the web I have Google, which gives me powerful searching. It also has taken away some of the tools that other search engines allowed, like boolean operators (Windows AND Doors NOT Microsoft). They don’t seem inclined to put them back. Sure, this makes search easier for normal users, but it takes away some of the power. Even more powerful are things like regular expressions, a language for constructing highly complex searches looking for different combinations of letters and numbers and patterns in very sophisticated (and confusing to understand) ways. Again, not a tool for Joe User, but if search is really becoming central to our lives as Google (and Apple, and Microsoft) claim, we need more sophisticated tools for searching. Booleans and regular expressions are some of those tools.

Other tools we need: pluralization and spelling derivation. If I’m searching for “color” I also probably want “colour,” “colors,” and “colours.” If I’m searching for “person” I might also want “people.” And I want accents. If I’m searching for “facade,” I also want “façade.”

Some search tools do some of these things, some do all. Some are better than others at indexing and at finding. If search is so pervasive, I want good search *everywhere.* Sure when I use Google to search the web I get good results, but when I use the search field in my blog I often can’t find what I’m looking for. Spotlight on my desktop is good at finding some things, but doesn’t let me do sophisticated queries. The search built into my mail client has some good filters but is not very extensible or customizable. And the search built into my web browser is nearly useless.

What I suspect and hope will happen is that Apple will release a SearchKit system to integrate search across their operating system, much as they have integrated displaying web pages with WebKit. This ensures that everything displays the same and takes advantage of all of the built in features of the operating system. A powerful SearchKit framework should make it trivial for programs to incorporate powerful, extensible, customizable search. Apple seems to be ahead of Microsoft on this one, integrating their Spotlight search into the mail and address book programs. But I expect Microsoft to do something similar. And hey, maybe Google will release something like that as well, and let people built Google search functionality into their programs.

Of course we will continue to have the same problem — different search systems with different algorithms and different features will behave differently, continuing to make our lives interesting. But at least things will be, on the whole, better, just as they are continuing to get better, slowly, in fits and starts, on the pervasive search front. Next thing we need to figure out: something more useful than our file and folder and desktop metaphor for interacting with our computers. Because come on folks, I love the current concept, but there are have got to be some interesting new ideas out there for things that do it better.

Well, that happened. My first wedding experience, and it sort of felt like a birthday party, ya know? Like you’re celebrating something supposedly monumental, but nothing has really changed? Yesterday they were engaged, today they are married. Tomorrow, well, tomorrow they’ll be in Scotland. I guess that is a somewhat monumental change, after all. The moment that really did it for me is one that barely anyone else really noticed, wrapped up as they were in the winding down festivities and getting on their way. It was at the end of the party when Adam and Jess and company walked off towards the car, and I realized that the receding back I was seeing was the last glimpse I would get of Adam in the flesh for, well, who knows how long. But this is not unprecedented — other friends have moved away. It just makes things different. So very different.

After that Amy was anxious to get on the road but for some reason I felt like dawdling. I helped Adam’s dad, Steve, load and unload a few things, but really I just enjoyed meandering around, petting the kittens, realizing that I was pretty close to touching an electric fence, saying hi and by to people, and just enjoying the beauty of Rhinebeck. It is a very, very neat place. Eventually we did get back on the road, and so it was, 3 hours there, 6 hours of excitement, and 3 hours going back the way we came. Oh, by the way, the pizza place in town is really yummy, they even had toasted ravioli!

Anyway, I’ve pared down my 150+ pictures to the eighteen best, I have some more good ones that I can put online if there is demand, but mostly they’re similar scenes, and I wanted to keep the impact high. Here are the photos of the day and here is the same thing in slideshow form.

Goodbye for now, Adam, and good luck.

The blog has reappeared from a hiatus/power outage, as have I. Yesterday, with the help of Kevin, Alex, and Igor, I moved most of my belongings from 5A Union St to 87 Monument St, my new home for at least the next year. Last night I slept here for the first time. This morning I took the bus to work for the first time, and had my first day on the job without a direct supervisor, as my boss Jesse’s last day was on Friday. I was called into my first official meeting today, i.e. one where I actually was being consulted about something. And when I got off the bus today I took my first outdoor run since, oh, I don’t know, freshman year.

You see, I am contemplating running my first half marathon, next January. Up until this point I’ve slowly improved my treadmill running, going further and faster to the point where on a good day I can now go about 4.5 miles in 50 minutes, including warm-up and cool down. For me, this is pretty impressive, considering that around this time last year I considered a mile or two an achievement. For someone who wants to run a half marathon, this is a long way off. Between work and comtemplating the move and taking care of other things, I have not been to my Medford-area gym in two weeks. Today I ran from the bus stop home, and ran the 1 mile distance in about ten minutes. It was hard! I’m sure part of it is that I’ve been out of practice for the past two weeks, but a lot of it is running outside — the pavement is harder, the air hurts my lungs, and I have to worry about streets and people and cars. One mile run in a not incredibly impressive time, and my throat really hurts. It is good I reached home when I did, because I could not have gone much further. Not an auspicious start to my future marathon career, is it?

On the radio yesterday they said that a state senator from one of the nearby towns is pushing to expand the lunch hour for school children. He (or she) believes that a longer lunch hour will make the students less lethargic and better able to concentrate. He claims that right now they are rushed to scarf down their food and have little time to play or have fun. The school officials response was short, “more lunch equals less learning.”

The lunch period here is *twenty minutes*. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? His “radical” proposal is to increase it to *thirty*. While I was in school, I saw my lunch hour slip from 40 minutes to 35 to 30. Does the extra time mean their precious test scores go up by a point or two? Because I’ll tell you what it does not do — it does not make for happy, healthy, productive students.

But oh wait, I forgot, that’s why we have exercise programs, expensive diet regimens, and lots and lots of ritalin.

The other day the new roommates and I went to Cheesecake Factory, and I, as usual, ordered my standard fare without looking at the menu: the Mile High Meatloaf Sandwich. Things were going well until about half a second later, when the waitress let it be known that the menu had recently been “updated” and my precious meatloaf was *eliminated*. First Corner Bakery, now this!

The horror! The humanity! Why, oh why, would they eliminate such a marvelous delight? Is it because they decided that it undercuts their traditional meatloaf dish? Was it not popular enough? The Mile High Meatloaf Sandwich was thick egg bread, toasted, with grilled onions on top, with meatloaf on top, with a mound of mashed potatoes on top, with crispy onion strings on top, all surrounded with barbecue sauce. It was *amazing*. Their replacement is a meatloaf sandwich with lettuce, tomatoes, and dijon mustard. She asked me if I wanted that instead. ARE YOU JOKING?

Long story short, through the marvelous efforts of my wonderful waitress and the kitchen staff, I was given a passable imitation of my precious sandwich. It was lacking in some details, including the correct bread, the onions, and the right kind of barbecue sauce, but it was good enough…and it may well have been the last Mile High Meatloaf Sandwich ever served at a Cheesecake Factory. It was quite an honor for me to savor it, now excuse me while I slip off into this corner here, curl up in a fetal position, and cry.

I was reading reviews of the Shure E4c earphones on the Apple Store and, my goodness, people can be stupid. Half of the reviews were from people who seem to Get It and understand how “in-ear” drivers work, the other half posted reviews either without ever owning the product or after using them for only a day or so. Look, of course you can spend your $200-300 buying a big pair of cans or a speaker system. So do it. But I love my E3cs. I’ve had them since last December and at this point getting them in my ears is almost effortless, they stay very well, they don’t hurt, even after a few hours, and the sound is excellent.

These things are quality, and you have to give them some time. You have to play with the various sleeves until you get the right fit in your ear. You have to play with moving your ear around with your hands until you can seat them properly to get a good seal. And you have to take a week or so to let your ears get comfortable wearing them. And, in my case, you have to offset the weight of the big heavy cable with a few strategically placed alligator clips on your shirt, especially if you are going to use them while running, as I do. But after that, you’ll love them.

Here is my evidence that these earphones work *too* well. I have to worry about wearing them while outside because they form such a good seal and provide such nice sound that I often won’t hear people around me or even ambulance sirens. And when I’m at the gym and someone says something to me, all I see is their lips moving until I can pause my music. I love my Shure E3cs. Give them a real try and you won’t be sorry.

Today I was reflecting on strange coincidences and the way our lives can take turns we would never expect. This isn’t an original theme, of course, but it caused me to remember an email I received on January 31, 2003. It was from a stranger named Kelli who worked for Student Events at Brandeis and wanted to set up a meeting to talk to me about their web site. I had previously met with the person above her in SE, and he had promised to give me certain information. I sent her back a courteous email saying that I would like to have some information to work with before we met. She said she’d get back to me and forwarded the request to her supervisor, who never responded. The next time I met Kelli was over a year later, at Formal.

What would have happened at that meeting? Probably not too much, but maybe we would have realized we had a common friend in Adam. Maybe I would have realized she was an interesting person. Maybe I would have had some type of meaningful conversation with her before our first one, one year and four months later. Maybe not. But its a fascinating missed connection, seeing as what happened so much later. Could the connection have caused subtle but important changes in my life? Is the fact that we got together later an indication that reality is self-correcting? Or does it mean nothing at all, and its just the sort of coincidence that occurs every day?

I’m pretty sure its the third, and there is no deep meaning here. But it is fascinating none the less. Because think of all the times you’ve passed someone or been introduced and forgot a name or not gone to a class or missed a meeting or turned around just as someone may have been approaching you at an event. Think about that phone call you almost made or that person you just avoided running into on the subway. Now imagine if something else had happened. And maybe somehow you found yourself, oh, I dunno, lets say, in a relationship with that person for the better part of a year. It sort of boggles the mind.

Life is pretty amazing.

Four years ago last month, I “crossed the line,” in the words of the Tustin Unified School District by bypassing their internet censoring software, and then shared my story on Salon Magazine. At the end of that article I pledged to do my part to protect civil liberties and help the spread of the internet as a democratizing force.

I’m proud to say that my high school dream has been fulfilled — on Monday I start work at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School. Back then I saw myself as a lawyer, but in the intervening years I’ve become less convinced that law is my passion. But my passion for understanding and shaping the development of the internet and new technologies as a force for social change has not lessened. And I’m proud to be able to join the Berkman team and, in my own little way, help nudge things along.

In preperation for my work I’ve done a bit more poking around the Berkman web, and found it in some ways frightning. After four years at Brandeis I felt like I had a pretty good handle on the pulse of the school and knew a lot of what was going on. Now I’m diving into something completely alien, and I see that I haven’t even scratched the surface of all the projects that Berkman is in some way connected to. Its weird being the new guy; I’ve gotten used to being the seasoned veteran.

But perhaps in another way it is good. By my senior year at Brandeis, the young whipper-snappers climbing the ladders of student government were treating me like a crotchety old has-been on his way out rather than a wise elder statesman. It was a really weird feeling, that shift from the knowledgable mentor role to “disillusioned old guy who just won’t let go and seems to stand in the way of everything we want to do.” Perhaps now is about the right time to really dive in to something completely new and exciting and different. Perhaps this is just want I need to get the passion back.

I never would have imagined, four years ago, that this is where I would be today. But I’m always telling people my simple philosophy that things generally seem to work themselves out. And I really do believe it. Just hang in there, and when you least expect it something great will happen.

At the last minute I started to dread this year’s Fourth of July celebration because last year was so wonderful, just hanging out with people on the Esplanade, listening to the Boston Pops, watching the fireworks from really close, and developing friendships. This year was different because Kelli and Kevin hosted a barbecue beforehand, which was fun even if I was a bit out of my comfort zone with all of the new faces that I didn’t know were attending. Kelli was kind enough to get me a cookie cake for my birthday, which was really thoughtful of her, all things considered. I got into my groove a bit more when I started hanging out with Igor and Alex and Jaina inside, but they all split off to go see the fireworks.

The remainder of us met up at an apartment in Kenmore Square to sit on the roof and get a relatively unobstructed view of the events. Pretty good, considering we didn’t have to stake out a spot in the heat for the entire day! Going up the fire escape…sort of scary though. Afterwards we went downstairs and hung out with the very nice new people, which I started to enjoy a lot more, at least until it started getting way past my bedtime, at which point I started getting upset because my very finnicky sleep schedule, which I’ve finally started to stabilize again, was getting all out of whack. Amazingly, despite getting home at 3am and not falling asleep until 4, I did manage to wake up at 10, which gives me hope that I’ll be able to quickly get back on track.

I think I went into the whole thing with the wrong attitude, and, in retrospect, enjoyed myself in spite of it. Were I to do it again, I would behave differently, and I hope I get another chance to hang out with some of the new people.

I’ve posted photos of the night on Flickr, you can also view a slideshow.

I spent some time in New York last week seeing my parents and sister Shaina, who is staying there for the summer while attending a program at NYU. Kevin was kind enough to offer me a lift and we saw two shows, Rent, which I’ve now seen three times and continue to enjoy quite a bit, and Altar Boyz, which was a hilarious spoof/take-off on Christian boy bands, staged as if it was a concert. The songs are annoying in that boy band kind of way but incredibly catchy and funny, and I find myself listening to them over and over. Highlights include the love song where the hunky one sings, “girl, you make me wanna wait,” and the acceptance song where the obviously gay one sings about how terrible it is to be tormented and made fun of for being Catholic. And what good Christian boy band is complete without a Jewish member who writes all the lyrics?

With the family I saw Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, starring the funny John Lithgow along side Norbert Leo Butz, the hunky star of Last Five Years with a silly name, who steals the show with his wacky physical comedy. Sherie Rene Scott, also of Last Five Years fame, along with things like Aida, plays the love interest, while Joanna Gleason is uninspiring as a side character. I didn’t find the book wonderfully inspiring, and the groan-inducing jokes rubbed me the wrong way much of the time, but it was a feel-good romp with a slighly unpredictible ending and some really, really funny moments.

I’ve posted some photos of the trip on Flickr, you can also watch them in a slideshow.

A little while back I had a sidebar item called “currently” that gave a short account of what I was currently up to. It’s been down for a while, but here is a post for today.

Currently reading System of the World, listening to Weird Romance, specifically the song where she asks him if they’re getting divorced (“And do I say that I spend the night/Among miraculous particles of light/And can’t miss a single minute passing by…”), watching Avenue Q (meaningful), Altar Boyz (hilarious), and Dirty Rotten Scoundrals (campy), thinking about life, change, and wasting time, taking bad photos, yearning for the gym (among other things), and missing Indian food.

And that, as they say, is that.

Staying at a hotel, I am given the benefit of seeing a newspaper that I would never otherwise be caught dead reading — _USA Today_. In this morning’s edition, two front-page articles are about such incredibly obvious phenomenoms that I can only hope it is simply shoddy _USA Today_ reporting to blame, but I expect that these two items are making news all over the place today. What a sad world we live in.

“Health spending soars for obesity,” we learn from a new study. This comes on the heels of two phenomena observed over the past few months and years. First, health costs are rising *a lot*. No one quite knows what to do about the health care “crisis” in America. Second, more and more people are becoming obese. A recent study, widely misinterpreted among the press, revealed that there is very little difference in life expectancy among those who are overweight, for a few reasons. First, our expectations of weight in this society might be a bit low, meaning that people who are just ten or fifteen pounds overweight might be just fine, thank you very much, especially older people, for whom a bit of extra fat serves as a protective cushion, so to speak. Secondly, we have developed medical ways of managing health conditions that are often the result of high weights, including diabetes and heart disease. While the nightly news saw this as a sign that people should stop worrying about weight, because being overweight is healthy (ha!), the real conclusion was that treating these associated ailments is *profitable*, and so the health care industry is having a field day.

So let us put these two things together, shall we? People are getting increasingly heavier, by eating bad foods, not getting enough physical activity, and not caring about their health. Because of this, society and health insurance must bear the increasingly high costs of keeping these people alive. At the same time, health care costs and premiums are spiraling out of control. Wait, you’re saying THERE’S A CONNECTION? That’s what _USA Today_ was kind enough to report on this morning. Not that there aren’t other factors. Notably, the way we manage old age and our reluctance to allow terminally ill patients to die is another MASSIVE factor leading to incredible health care costs and public health burdens, but obesity is certainly one major factor to consider. And now a “study” has officially “found” this to be the case. Hooray for us. Does someone want to do something about it yet?

Item two is even more straightforward, so I’ll spend less time obsessing over it. In short, companies have started to realize that in this complicated connected world with increased competition, lower prices, and more consumer choice, being *bad* to your customer hurts your bottom line! Airlines, hotels, and other businesses are FINALLY realizing that keeping the customer happy helps to inspire brand loyalty and keep customers, which is much cheaper than more and more advertising to try and catch the elusive new customer. Keeping people happy means they come back, they tell their friends, and your bottom line improves! Shocking!

Scrappy startups like JetBlue apparently were some of the first in this new era to empower their front-line employees to resolve customer complaints by actually changing things, apologizing, and offering incentives in the form of free meals, gift certificates, and free merchandise. This “new” “approach” is called “service recovery,” and it means training and empowering the employees on the ground to actually take the time and make the effort to *fix* the customer’s problems and make the customer happy. Amazing! Innovative! Powerful! Thank goodness someone finally figured this out.

I’m the first to admit that the customer is not “always right,” but generally when you’re paying good money for a service, you have a right to expect that service to be delivered. If a company messes up, it is easy for you to walk away. If they make that extra effort to fix the problem, the customer feels like they are being cared for and becomes more loyal to the brand. Sometimes its not about getting something free or a perk, sometimes it is about a sincere apology and someone actualy working to resolve the issue quickly. After all, if you’re on a family vacation, which would you rather have? Four hours of inconvenience and a $100 gift certificate, or an attentive staff that fixes the problem in five minutes and has you on your way? Your time and your happiness are often more valuable than perks. Companies would be wise to realize that delivering what they promise and keeping the customer satisfied is the best way to keep a customer, and its cheaper than quick fix approaches. I hope this trend will continue, and we will start to reach a better equillibrium.

And thank GOD that _USA Today_ was there to report on this amazing and innovative new marketing trend! A trend that so many of us might just call “common sense.”

I’m fascinated by the world of medicine, but fascinated from afar. Because in many ways, our modern medicine is barbaric and disgusting. We can work miracles, but they require poking, prodding, and pain. We cut, we zap, we stitch. Medicine is an antiseptic world, but we are still flesh and bones, and we are still messy, and treating us is messy. I respect doctors, their work, and the marvels of modern medicine, but that doesn’t mean I have to feel comfortable with it.

I don’t like needles. I don’t like seeing them, I don’t like having them jammed into me, I don’t like watching things travel into or out of them. I can feel them go in, I can feel them stay in, and I can feel them after they’ve been taken out. They’re not something I willingly like to inflict on myself. And that is one of the major reasons I’ve never given blood. The second major reason is that I’ve never really understood the process of giving blood, and even reading the Red Cross web site and looking at some pictures has not helped much. The third reason, a bit less major, is that I’ve never been in a position where I’ve seen the direct effects of giving blood. Its all very abstract to me, where the blood goes and what happens to it.

Today I gave blood, and I want to relate the details of it so that other people like me (and I know of at least a few of you) can have a better perspective on the process. It was about what I expected, which is to say, a little nerve-wracking, sort of painful, but all in all not a terrible experience.

Continue reading “How to give blood”

Its funny to have to think more now about future employers reading this stuff. Funny because it makes it harder for me to just come out and say thing I want to say, like how I woke up this morning and I felt like I was choking, choking on life. I can’t do this anymore. I can’t sit in my room all day, cut off from the world. I need to find some way to connect, but I just don’t know how.

I was talking with someone on the phone last night and he told me that last summer was one of the happiest times of his life. He was uncommitted and unattached, not yet having to worry about a career or life direction, able to spend time with family and with friends, to go places, to just have fun.

I agreed with him. Last summer was pretty amazing. And its not that every waking moment was amazing — there was a lot of boredom, even some sadness. But I had a job doing interesting things with interesting people. I had wonderful weekends doing fun things with fun people in a fun place. I had time to think and read and play on my computer, but not too much time. I had time to myself, but also time with others. And last summer was also the start to an amazing relationship.

In the waning days of summer I wrote a recap that described what I had learned about the world an myself. At the time, I wrote:

I’ve learned that I’m afraid of what comes after college, of the mundanity of real life. I don’t enjoy working eight hours a day at doing the same thing, I don’t enjoy office politics and meetings that don’t accomplish anything and doing things that aren’t interesting and new. Most of all, I don’t enjoy the prospect of not being around friends all the time, not in a place where I can just go knock on a door or send an IM and meet someone for dinner. Of being out somewhere in the wide world, disconnected from everyone I’ve met and known over these past three years, seperated by geography and life circumstance and the demands of work, and the limitations of time and money.

I think that was pretty spot on, and I don’t think my feelings have much changed. Unfortunately, I also don’t think there is much I can do about it.

I’ve learned that optimism is better then pessimism, but sometimes pessimism can be hard to shake.

I’m in a rut. When I get a job, that will be a major step towards getting out of it. But current life events do cause me to question some of my base assumptions, like what I’m still doing on this coast, what I’m doing in the Cambridge/Somervile area, and what my future holds. This isn’t an easy journey. But I guess no one said leaving college would be easy.

Change is unending, change is inevitable, change must be embraced, for change is the basis for life. If only change wasn’t so damn hard.

She rounded the corner and pedaled up the street, bag slung over her shoulder. Aside from her the place was deserted. A welcome splash of color, of life…

The other day leaking gas lines (apparently) caused manhole covers to explode and Central Square to lose power. At the same time, my street lost power from a downed electric line. Ours was repaired quicker. 🙂

Not sure if they’d be related in any way, but it was pretty strange timing. I took a few pictures down Mass Ave of the dark streets (boy does a city look different without power!) and posted them in my Flickr photostream. Notably, Walgreen’s lacked power but remained open all day, with employees toting flashlights accompanying patrons on their shopping expeditions.

I’ve also posted some shots from my walk yesterday around the MIT area.

* Photos of the power outage and my walk through MIT (there are 8, click “next” on the right to move forward.)

I’ve decided to give Claritin another go. Starting tomorrow, I’m taking the non-drowsy combo Claritin/decongestant each morning for five days (that’s when I run out of them). I’ll report back on my progress.

I have some nasal decongestant spray stuff that says to use 2-3 sprays per nostril no more than once every 12 hours, for not more than 3 days. It says if you use it too much it can just make things worse.

Well, I don’t know if it is making things worse or if things are just bad in general, but my constantly stuffy nose makes it difficult to breath during the day, while running, and especially at night. It makes it hard to fall asleep and makes my sleep unproductive. I’m starting to think that some of the problems I’ve had for years with sleep could be at lesat tenously related to this nose thing.

So I’ve been taking one spray per nostril for far more than the last 3 days…it makes it a lot easier for me to go to sleep. I don’t know how much its helping with the actual sleeping. There is probably a better solution to this problem. One day in the near future I’ll (hopefully) have my own job and my own health insurance and I’ll be able to read the information and login to the web site and learn about the network, and then I will finally be able to visit a doctor about this, and none too soon.

Add _Grey’s Anatomy_ to the list of shows to watch. Which means I now have, in order of most-enjoyable to least, the following shows that are currently broadcasting:
# _Battlestar Galactica_
# _House_
# _Grey’s Anatomy_
# _Gilmore Girls_
# _The Simpsons_
# _Doctor Who_
# _Daily Show_
# _Stargate SG-1_
# _West Wing_
# _Stargate: Atlantis_
# _Family Guy_
# _American Dad_

I’m also watching _Deep Space 9_ on my computer, and the _Gilmore Girls_ inclusion is a bit misleading because I’m still on season 1. Oh, and occasionally I catch an _ER_, but that’s not really my fault.

And since I only get 13 channels of cable (and certainly don’t get the BBC, home of _Doctor Who_), watching most of these shows requires downloading them. If I could buy ’em on iTunes, I would. Damn MPAA(Motion Picture Association of America).