Toothless steals our hearts (and wraps up our dragon arc) with How To Train Your Dragon. We take some awesome listener calls. And we run down the week in geek, including V’s shortened season, Chuck’s extended season, new insight into 2012 and the Mayan calendar, and Fable 3’s not-too-far-away release date.
Your cat sometimes following your rules is a lot better than Rodney does. He burned his paw on a stove burner that I’d just turned off and he was still back up on the counter the next day.
LOL. The Operator has the honor of first reservation for the 2011 Meetup! I should have known. When I made mine and asked if anyone else had called in yet, Nicole said yes, you’re the second.
I have a feeling 2011 may be the best GWC Meetup yet. And that’s saying a whole hell of a lot. 
hmm…can ya tell Im looking forward to it?
Gonna be teh OSSIM!!
Y’all will have to take a ton of pictures and video to post on Flickr this year. I can’t make it! I’m so bummed, but we are taking the kids on a fun Spring Break trip at the same time as the meetup.
can i kindly ask some peeps to pm me the phone no of the hotel along with the code, or chuck could reply to the pm i sent him.
I jsut want to prvisionally book the hotel so then i can pressure the evil bosses of doom.
Phaze
on the “i’m watching old criminal minds here as i sip a fine 12 year old irish whisky” ID
Chuck,
There’s a few realities happening right now in front of our noses. Frist of all, most cable and satellite providers now have to pay each groups of networks a sum for each indivudal subscriber. That’s why networks like NBC and ABC have been pulled at various times from Dish, Time Warner or Comcast. The providers fought to keep rates low for their subscribers and the networks wanted more and more cash to help pay for their programing. In the end, the networks almost always win because people like me complain to our cable/satellite provider and threaten to switch over to a new provider if we loss a certain channel. (By the way this actually happened a few years ago in my town).
In a microcosm the same thing happened to The Deadliest Catch skippers this summer (but in reverse). In this case the network (Discovery) wanted a monoply on the Crab Fishing commercialization. But because two of the most popular boats were going to pull out from the show, it would have killed Discovery’s (arguably) most recognizable and profitable show. So in the end, the Network caved and the fisherman won their ability to capitalize on their fame.
The second point I’d like to make is Hulu. Sometimes I miss a show and try to catch up with it via Hulu when I’m not at home. Hulu runs short ads during the commercial break that are customizable. This means that I get to choose which ads I watch. The commercial breaks are never longer than a minute, and there is no way to not watch them, so I might as well watch something that I enjoy for an ad, right? So this is a case where I’m supporting the show by watching commercials, but it is not as long as a traditional TV break.
Thirdly, there’s always itunes. A lot of shows are downloadable for a few dollars on itunes.
Foruthly, there are now pay-for-recent TV show programming capabilities at hotels.
So there are a lot of ways to catch recent content electronically and still support your show. I suppose sooner or later one or all of these methods will prove successful and will be as common as free TV is today.
~Shooter Out
ooookaaay
i just rang the notel, natalie was not available and when i gave the code the guy i booked it with said the block rate was fully booked.
He said that if it turned out that the block rate was not full he would transfer my reservation to the block rate. I’m booked to check in on paddy’s day (thursday) and check out the monday.
Any help that you can give is appreciated.
Phaze
on the “things confused re meet up but making with the plans and so on” ID
Ok, that’s not right. There’s no way that the block of rooms for GWC are booked up yet. You need to call them back, try after 3:00 p.m. your time and ask for Nicole who helped Sean arrange the rate for our rooms. She’ll make sure to get your reservation correct.
If you like shaun the sheep, creature comforts, see if you can watch Robbie the reindeer, I believe that it’s a good short along the same lines. It’s usually on around at Xmas time.
I sometimes like the way the BBC do the shows such as Primevil or Doctor Who, our episodes tend to last for about 6-10 shows and they do leave you wanting more. The flip side is that you don’t get as much content as US shows.
How does it work with US tv, with the BBC they get paid via the license fee so the funding comes from that. With ITV, Channel 4/Five. They show adverts so get their revenue from that. The only gripe we have sometimes is the amount of repeats that we get, but I would expect that is universal everywhere.
I used to have a stitch doll that was interactive, he had two modes (Naughty and nice). If you said sing me a song, then he would do the aloha a, aloha o. If you said go to sleep, he would make the snoring sound. In my previous work, there was a woman that used to see catologue items (AVON - you must have a US equivalent). Because of this one toy, she went from a regular seller to an area wide seller/manager because people were buying it in the droves. I mean everyone at work had one.
I’m looking forward to the chocolate yummy. Write the note in a PM, be interesting to see what you wrote (or post it anyway). If Chuck is on an english vibe, then he should see if he could sample some of the various teas.
When I was watching ‘How to train your dragon’. I was watching with my son and he was transfixed for a good 30 minutes (he;s about 15 months) and he was loving Toothless every time (kept speaking and pointing at the screen).
Re: Casilda and the book club - I’m currently reading the Daywatch/nightwatch series by Sergei Lukyanenko. I think it would be a great arc as it has were-creatures, witches and warlocks, vampires and other supernatural creatures trying to maintain the balance. I believe there may be a film.
P.S - I wish I could come to the meetup, it would be awesome to meet everyone, intro the family and get a real education on what it means to be kowledge in sci-fi, fantasy related topics.
ok i’m all sorted, spoke to the pleasently perky Nicole and have secured the group rate (79$ plus 13% state and city taxes) for my rom for four nights. woot
if you guys and gals can send me “accomdating to the evil bosses of doom” vibes I’d appreciate it.
See y’all on the flip side.
Phaze
on the “Just did my first wii fit session in like, 106 days, i’m going to be sore tomorrow, especially me arms” ID
PBS (the Public Broadcasting Service) gets some funding from the government, but a lot of it is funded by private donations (with some corporate sponsors.) Much of it is indirect, with viewers donating to local stations, who then pay fees for broadcasting the various shows.
The big networks (the ones with broadcast affiliates) get advertising fees and sometimes payments from cable companies (that last bit has been in flux a lot over the past decade or so.)
Smaller networks (like Syfy) get their revenue solely from cable companies. [ETA-they also take ad revenue, but as I understand it they live and die on cable revenues]
(“Cable” includes paid satellite.)
Re: Casilda and the book club - I’m currently reading the Daywatch/nightwatch series by Sergei Lukyanenko. I think it would be a great arc as it has were-creatures, witches and warlocks, vampires and other supernatural creatures trying to maintain the balance. I believe there may be a film.
The Night Watch series (Night Watch, Day Watch & Twilight Watch that make up the original trilogy and then Final Watch - the fourth in the cycle that completed the story) are a great read. In fact, the ‘25 random songs’ thread on the forum really reminded me of the books, as the random songs that come up on the protagonist’s mini-disk player (and later mp3 player) figure prominently.
Now for a warning, and take it for what it’s worth here gang, in my opinion the movies represented a good chunk of my life that I’m never going to get back, and yes I’m still bitter about it. What’s worse is that I actually rented the second movie after watching the first. The trailers and books are OSSIM, the movies themselves Craaaaaaap. The movies take bits from the first couple books, and mash them together in a bizarre way that really changes who the characters are and represent. What’s interesting is that in Final Watch, the hero references having a weird dream in which he recounts some of the ‘alternate universe’ things that happened in the movies.
I don’t think black cats are bad luck. But I did have a black cat who had bad luck, at least before I got him. My cat Sam, had a nub for a tail. He lost his tail with his previous owner. It was cool to see the nub move when he would “sway” his tail.
And Pete’s Dragon is awesome. Jim Dale’s performance is worth it alone!
Thanks for playing my call… someone with chart-fu should get on visualizing Sean’s taxonomy of dragons posthaste 
I was also a little verklempt with all of the nice things you guys were saying about me! Thank goodness I was alone in my office when that part of the 'cast came on. Me, in comparison to Oprah! 
An area in SF/F literature about which I know less than say, dragons, would be precisely vampire lit. That said - make a thread in the Book Club Selection or Discussion section, I’m sure that a number of the fabulous GWCers would enjoy discussing it with you, and I can add it to the next round of book club voting.
Re: Tivo/DVR ratings: When I watch shows, I skip commercials. But on my favorites, within a couple days, I make sure I let them run through without touching them. That way, it still registers on some of the ratings.
OMG! I can’t believe next week’s podcast is about Garfield’s Hallowe’en Adventure. Our family was vacationing in Bangkok when I was about 6 or so, and out of all the things I SHOULD remember - the beautiful landscapes, the stunning temples, the golden statues, the delicious food, etc, etc - what I actually remember was us at some kind of discount movie store (come to think of it, they must have been pirated tapes), and my mother got me two VHS tapes - Tom and Jerry (I wish I knew which one it was, but it was a collection of shorts and not a movie) , and Garfield’s Hallowe’en Adventure! I watched both so many times I actually wore out both tapes, and I always wondered how Garfield could fit his leg into the peg leg. And I loved all the music in both shows.
I haven’t watched Final Watch yet, but I actually kind of liked the Nightwatch/Daywatch movies. (I actually watched Daywatch first on a plane, and then went back to Nightwatch, and then the books. So maybe it’s because I watched the movies first that I like them, but I found the stylistic choices in the movies to be intriguing rather than bizarre.) The books are better though.
As for Chuck, while I think the Subway thing contributed a whole lot to keeping Chuck on air, I think the weakness of NBC and its programming at the time (or now. And that’s why Chuck is, against all odds, still on air on its fourth season - I mean, NBC has nothing else to air, really - and thank god for that!) certainly helped as well.
Oh, wow. My cat looks an awful lot like Rodney. Mack’s more into phones than computers though.
ETA: whoops, I didn’t mean for the photo to be ginormous. And I’m not sure how to fix that on the forum.
You can resize your photo on Photobucket and save over the original…later it will resize on the forum, after the cacheing refreshes. 
Both kittehs are teh cute!
I was in serious withdrawal till today!
Over the weekend, my ipod got dropped in a melted beer bucket of ice! The hub rescued it promptly, but I wanted to make sure it dried out before hooking it up to the big dog. whew!
I am highly caffeinininated this morn, and have been cackling gleefully over all the fun stuff I’m hearing, and I’m only an hour in!
We, in the GWC, are so spoiled to get long, but often too short, casts to listen to and lift the occasional drudgery of our daily grindstones.
I think my HS route kids believe I’m nuts with all my outbursts of laughing!
mucho monkey love!
me! b!