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Two pieces of technology I wanted to gush about for a few minutes.

First, Skype. I feel like the last guy getting on the Skype train. The last hold out. Listen. It’s not worth it. The holding out part, I mean. Skype is pretty fantastic!

We just had a baby, yadda, yadda. My Mom was in town for a few weeks to help us get settled. Having her go home was a big, big change in our little guy’s life. But check this out. Two days later, Evan got to see and hear his Grandma again. Even better, he also got to see and hear his Nanna; and his cousins Kali and Kaitlyn got to see and hear Evan for the first time.

You can only say so much about the video phone concept, and I was still on the fence until we actually tried it. I’m sold. It is intoxicating.

Second is Netflix, again. I’m an old school Netflx subscriber. I left for a while, but came back for lots of reasons. I was bummed for a while that the Watch Instantly feature wasn’t available for Macs for a long time, but they finally came around.

So, last Tuesday I got a surprise Netflix disc in the mail. When put in my Wii, I get to watch all this stuff instantly on my TV. All this content right there to browse and watch. I’m a Dish Network subscriber and have a few minor complaints. The On-Demand stuff is slow; the broadband connection has never worked right with multiple customer service calls. In general we’re happy, but the Netflix/Wii system worked flawlessly within 5 minutes of the disc being taken out of the mailbox.

The timing of these is great, what with the baby leading to us continuing our homebody trend for a bit longer.

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We have the Dish Network, and I have been amused to hear about the recent contract negotiations between Fisher Broadcasting and Dish Network.

Currently, ABC is unavailable on Dish in Seattle and Yakima, WA; Portland and Eugene, OR; Boise and Idaho Falls, ID; and Bakersfield, CA. In its place, Dish is looping their side of the story. They have a constant pipeline into the homes of their customers. In their story, Fisher Broadcasting is asking for a HUGE increase in broadcasting fees. Dish can’t except such a large increase and is fighting for their customers.

Fisher’s story is that Dish is holding ABC’s outstanding content hostage. Fisher is only asking for a “modest increase in the low double digits”, and it’s all Dish’s fault that you can’t watch Lost or Good Morning America. I know this because I heard a random commercial on the radio while driving around town the other day. KOMO/Fisher is resorting to radio advertising to try and communicate with its Dish Network customers. How much cash is Fisher spending/losing with this type of shotgun advertising approach?

I have to say, Dish has the upper hand, and they are coming off as being more reasonable as they are broadcasting other options to get ABC shows and news (Off-Air antenna, online, news from other networks [ouch]).

There’s no telling how long this might go on. But with most well-known shows on hiatus, the most missed content for a while is going to be news and sports. News can be seen on any other network channel, so sports is the problem. There is no pro football on ABC, and hockey, basketball and others are in the middle of their long regular seasons.

I’m not sure how much ABC is going to be missed right now.

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OK. I hurt my ribs about a week ago (Skiing at Whistler). This has me spending even more time on the couch in front of the TV than usual. And I have found it hard to avoid the commercials of Jane Seymour talking about her Open Hearts jewelry that is for sale at Kay Jewelers.

But in watching Jane Seymour, in her little craft house, painting that same symbol over and over. Over and over. Check it out! The same design. Over and over. One continuous stroke, on multiple white canvases. This is freaking me out. It’s a little too Jack Nicholson in The Shining. All work and no play make Jane a dull girl… She needs to get out of that craft house.

First, I was glad to see the election season over so I could stop seeing political commercials. Now I want the holiday season over, so I can get a break from Jane Seymour’s manic heart painting.

Jane. For your own good. Please stop. It’s not healthy.

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There are certain things that just aggravate me on sight. Clog dancing for one. I can’t tolerate it. The smug, yet stilted movements. Ugh. But even worse is Giancarlo Esposito. He has got to be the absolute worst actor ever. Maybe it’s not that simple. How about the least deserving successful actor ever. He is so bad it is almost painful. I kind of feel like a dick for feeling so strongly about this, because I’m sure he’s a nice guy. He’s just so bad.

He has polluted many a show that I like: New Amsterdam, Law & Order, Homicide, Kidnapped, even the movie The Usual Suspects! The moment he comes on screen, his ridiculous over-acting, over-pronunciation and faux-aggravation takes over. He ruins entire evenings for me, because he keeps getting jobs. Even in commercials for shows that I will never watch (South Beach, CSI,…), his ridiculous acting is apparent. I just don’t understand the attraction.

It’s not as if there is a mandate that this guy get a set number of jobs per year. Stop hiring him. Please? Maybe he’s smart with numbers and could go into accounting or something. I find faux irritation in accountants quaint.

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I have worn Levi’s most of my life. My Mom wouldn’t put a pair of elastic-waist jeans on me as a toddler. She insisted on tiny pairs of Levi jeans, and to this day I have a pair of 501s in my jeans drawer.

So, there’s some brand recognition there.

You might have seen a recent Levi commercial. It’s nighttime and this skinny dark haired guy is putting on a new pair of jeans. As he pulls them up, he pulls the street and sidewalk below up into his apartment as well. On the sidewalk, he notices an attractive person checking him out from a telephone booth. He and the occupant walk off into the night.

The occupant of the phone booth? That’s where the plot thickens. There are two versions of the commercial and I just noticed the second.

In the NBC NFL Football version: A very thin brunette woman.

In the Bravo Project Runway version: A hunky blonde dude.

The same commercial, but with two different target audiences. The gay themed commercial was initially airing only on MTV’s Logo network, but the move to Bravo takes it into the mainstream with a very popular show.

Levi has apparently finally noticed that straight people like Levis, too.

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