I’ve railed against the high price of cable TV for some time now. As if some cosmic freakiness has come about, TimeWarner cable has given me what I see as a fair rate for the next year.  Sure, I’m still paying over 100 bucks monthly. Sure, they’ve dropped HDNet and replaced it with crap. Sure, BBC America isn’t in HD (yet). 

Work with me here, okay?

Here are a few of the things I am looking forward to once they come hook things up to tomorrow:

Mythbusters. I’ve had to rely on Netflix for the handful of episodes they have. It’ll be nice to see new episodes and new explosions. 

Hey, I like science and explosions. What highly evolved male doesn’t?

Pro wrestling. I’ll discuss this further at The Atomic Drop and On Wrestling.  At length.  

Weeds. I’ve got free Showtime for three months, and the entire last season is on-demand. This is one I can enjoy with Amy. 

Yankee games. No, they don’t offer YES in my neck of the woods yet, but I will get ESPN and (maybe) a regional station that carries the Rangers. 

I also get the MLB network in HD.  Moments after the converter was hooked up, I watched the Yankees win their spring training opener.  It was done in what is becoming “the Yankee way”: a walk-off home run.  Stick around, kids, this could get exciting.

Leverage. Saw Wil Wheaton’s episode and dug it. I’ll try to watch this one as well. 

Doctor Who and Torchwood. I should be through Children of Earth and last year’s Tenth Doctor specials by the time the new series start.  And we might have them in HD by then. 

Turner Classic Movies. March is usually 31 Days of Oscar (big ugly Flash page warning), so I can make good on my “classic” movie watching. 

The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. Both are getting pulled from Hulu. It was always a pain, IMHO, to watch these on Hulu anyway. I’m trying to be more apolitical. 

No, really, I am

I scanned through everything else I pick up, and didn’t see too much to write home about.  I do get to see the film Gummo in HD for free.  I’ve never seen Kids or anything like it, so it should be interesting.

I’ll add more if I discover anything new.  For now, time to get everything optimized!

What stuff may you ask? I dunno, I’m just gonna ramble.

Worst. Transitional sentence. Ever.

Last weekend, the Jets lost yet another AFC Championship game. I’m not the biggest football fan, but I grew up watching the Jets. I also pull for the Giants (some old college buddies had my leaning their way) and everyone who is playing against the Cowboys.

It would have been nice to see the Jets in the bowl, seeing as how I’ve seen the Giants there a few times, Buffalo four times (those were sad days, when I liked the Bills) and those damned Colts once. I think Peyton Manning is a douchebag, but I can’t take away from his skills on the football field.

I’ll still be rooting for the Saints, in deference to one of the few coworkers I respect.

Baseball starts soon. Since the season is so long, I’ve promised Amy that I’ll stick to my usual baseball routine of ignoring everything but the standings until the All-Star Break, then listening to every Yankee game on my iPhone until they’re on free TV in the playoffs.

But hey, pitchers and catchers soon. Can’t wait to see how this new pitching rotation works out.

Speaking of the Yankees, I didn’t get the chance to comment on their World Series Championship. Because I’m lazy, and I was too busy being happy. Say what you want, but the Yankees are another team I grew up with, and it’s always fun to see them play.

They’re coming to Arlington to play the Rangers in August. I plan on taking Amy and sitting in the outfield seats that come with food. Not a bad deal for $40/ticket.

Typically those seats are $35. The two Yankee games are considered “premium games,” which nets an extra $5 for most seats. So even in Dallas, home of the most overrated quarterback in history, they know who people are really coming to see.

Yes, I’m taking potshots at Tony Romo. No, I don’t care.

I’ll Howl again soon enough. Work has become extra stressful. I’m the only team lead on first shifts on the weekend, so I have more to worry about. I’ve also been asked to take more calls, though I thought I’d been managing the call volume successfully.

One of the other accounts just finished up. Nearly all of our overflow agents were with that queue, and they’re all gone now. Including our one Spanish speaking overflow agent. Net overflow agents for the majority of the day: one.

I’m currently seeking better employment. I can do nothing but take phone calls elsewhere for more money. I’m miserably underpaid, more than most people think they are. People I’m responsible for make more money than I do. Which sucks.

What doesn’t suck is exercise. I’ve turned into quite the gym rat. Which has turned my calves into gelatin. New shoes will be necessary, and soon.

Over in the sidebar my DailyMile exercise posts should load. If you follow my Twitter (@attackman) or have me as a Facebook friend, you’ll see them there as well. If you don’t see them for a while, let me know. It means I’m slacking off.

The dryer should be done soon, which means I can walk to the library to acquire the book Flatland, a wonderful science fable. I’ll then head over to the workout room and bust it for 30 minutes on the elliptical.

I would have gone in dirty shorts (eww) but the iPad announcement was this morning. Yes, I want one, but it’s not an immediate must have for me. Not waiting for any features, just the money and maybe a better job so I can consider spending money on things like this.

All morning people have whined about the iPad not having Flash. This will be the last time I say this: Flash sucks. We allowed one company to have control over web content, and they’ve failed to keep up. They continue to make poor software, forcing you to watch your processor melt to watch a video. And it’s not the video that is killing your playback, it’s the Flash container.

I use Weight Watchers eTools on my Mac, which is a Flash app on their website. They have a decent mobile app made in HTML and AJAX, but it doesn’t have all the necessary features. They could implement everything in a nice looking, proper web app, but I gather their devs are lazy.

I looked at the CPU usage for this app earlier. Flash Player, with nothing going on, was eating 5% of my cycles. Anything that requires that much CPU to idle is crap.

John Gruber has a great breakdown of this terrible tech over at Daring Fireball, which is currently pretty trafficky. I guess everyone would rather listen to him, even though he hasn’t said much yet. Here’s the article.

There, now I won’t have to subject Amy to the rest of the rant I started ten minutes ago. Sorry, love. Does Austin have a speaker’s corner?

Time to split. Later cats and kittens.

That all changed when the MLB realized they could make a few bucks off the Internet. They even forced blackouts on the feeds of stations that broadcasted baseball.

Flash forward to now. I’m living in Austin, the YES network isn’t offered here and I’m starved for some Yankee baseball. What’s a displaced New Yorker to do?

The answer came in the form of a $10 iPhone app called MLB AtBat 2009. For my ten bucks, I get audio of every single game through the playoffs. I can even pick which team’s announcers I get. Of course, I always pick John Sterling.

Next year I might buy the MLB.TV package, as it will let me watch the games in HD on my Mac and in SD on my iPhone. But I’ve discovered something this season.

I really like listening to baseball games.

There’s a neat feeling, hearing someone describe the action, fill in stats, and make idle conversation while a pitcher waits to deliver. It’s a very old school feeling, one that’s hard to duplicate.

It really hit me when a Saturday afternoon Yankees-Red Sox game was on Fox. I saw that Tim McCarver would be calling the game and winced. Rather than just watch the whole thing on mute, I hooked up the iPhone to my receiver and listened to Sterling call the game. Sure, the Yankees lost, but he is so good and so unique that I could listen to him read the phone book.

So here’s the the Yankees, having their best season in years. Here’s to the Texas Rangers, who might give the Red Sox a run for their money in the Wildcard race. And jeers to the Red Sox, because they’re the Red Sox.