Gun Control Question...

The Truth about Right-to-Carry

Funny Slingbox Commercial...

Slingbox Demo at CES 2007

More on the Slingbox

In short, Slingbox lets you watch and watch & control your TV from anywhere with an Internet connection (or compatible cell phone)

Watch the 40 second explanation video here or see it on their website...
http://us.slingmedia.com/page/home The link is on the lower right.

A couple of years ago when it first came out I was intrigued by the concept but at the $250 asking price, I wasn't intrigued enough.

Let me explain what I do at lunch at work. For the past couple of years I've been watching DVDs on this small TV in the kitchen/break room in our office. Work bought the TV but I had to buy my own cheap DVD player to have something "good" to watch. I've spent many a lunch hour watching not just seasons of TV but entire series of TV. That's pretty much come to an end. I've watched all of my 24, X-Files, DS9, Sopranos, The Shield, Nip/Tuck, West Wing and even some movies split across a couple of days. That has come to an end since I've pretty much watched everything DVD-wise.

But, Craig, don't you have DirecTV in the office? We used to... now it's cable ready Comcast (We lost about 40 channels in the switch too) and I did try to watch a few things but I just can't stand commercials (blame 7 years of TiVo) and there's no point in watching something if I miss the 1st 10 minutes or have to get back to work with 15 minutes to go before the show ends, so I looked for other options to keep myself occupied during lunch...

I turned to NetFlix's "Watch Now" On Demand movies & TV. Let me tell ya, that kicks ass! At 4500+ Movies & TV Shows there's plenty to watch (I've been watching the original Battlestar Galactica) but now I have to eat at my desk to watch it. Which actually looks better since I got my new 19" Widescreen LG on my desk. That got me thinking... I seem to remember this thing called Slingbox... I wonder if they're still in business.

They are. Not only that but now they have 3 slinging options at a substantially reduced cost from its debut.

I had to stop at Circuit City to pick up Nick his Guitar Hero 80s PS2 game for his B-day and while I was there...

The combination of a falling price (since it's intro in 2005), a Circuit City sale ($20 off) and a $50 Circuit City Visa Rewards gift card (thank you National City!) that was burning a hole in my pocket led me to finally buy a Slingbox. If I didn't end up liking it, it would be an easy return.

Once home, it was super easy to hook up the unit (especially since I already have 2 data ports behind my entertainment center) and since I'm network savvy, it was easy to configure my router.

I spent about an hour screwing with it on my local machine before the big test the next day (yesterday) at work.

Since I found a way to run my Slingbox from anywhere via a USB thumb drive (nothing to install now), I inserted it into my work pc and checked it out. It was pretty cool to control my TiVo from 18 miles away.

My speed was dancing around 350kbps and while the picture quality was certainly watchable, I knew that Comcast had a better plan for $10 a month which would double my upstream. Last night I upgraded my plan and today at work tested it again.

There is a definite quality difference and I'm glad I did it. I watched an episode of Mythbusters during lunch and actually kept running in the corner of my screen for the rest of the day at work... some People's Court, Judge Judy, etc. It was more background noise than anything else but it's very cool to have that ability... from pretty much anywhere.

Will I keep it?

Yes.

The ability to remotely schedule what I need to record on my Series 1 DirecTiVo is worth the investment by itself. But add that to being able to watch pretty much whatever I want while at work makes it a no-brainer.

By the way... if the iPhone ever gets upgraded with a SlingPlayer client... the UMF may be too strong to resist! I mean come one... DirecTV's full line up + my TiVo in my pocket? That'd be HARD to resist!!

I've been slinging...

The combination of a falling price (since it's intro in 2005), a Circuit City sale ($20 off) and a $50 Circuit City Visa Rewards gift card (thank you National City!) that was burning a hole in my pocket led me to finally buy a Slingbox. More on that tomorrow. An astute observer will also notice that I upgraded my Comcast High-speed internet. I'll explain that too.

Signed up with Audible again...

... This is either time #3 or 4.

1st time (many moons ago... I've been a customer of Audible's since 1999) I got a free Diamond Rio 500 (MP3 Player)
Last time, (Jan '06) I got a free iPod Shuffle for Nick.
This time, I got a $100 Gift Cert. for Amazon.com

I'm gonna use it for a Garmin Nuvi GPS.

I'm committed to a year. I did the 2 books per month plan for $22.99 so that's 24 more books I'll add to my already vast collection of audible audiobooks.

Comcast After...

Comcast Before...

Know your target and what is beyond...

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/08/06/boy.killed.ap/index.html

NOBLE, Oklahoma (AP) -- A police officer shooting at a snake apparently killed a 5-year-old boy who was fishing at a nearby pond, officials said.

Austin Haley was fishing with his grandfather, Jack Tracy, when Tracy said he heard a shot and saw something hit the water just a few feet in front of the boat dock where he was standing.

Moments later, a second shot hit Austin in the head.

A Noble police officer who had responded to a report of a snake in a tree apparently fired the deadly shot while trying to kill the snake on Friday, City Manager Bob Wade said.

"I was told that they tried several ways to get the snake down, but it was still hissing at them and firmly lodged," Wade said. "What I was told is that the owner of the home either suggested or agreed that they should go ahead and shoot the snake, and then everything happened from there."

Tracy thought someone must be trying to kill him and his grandson, so he put the child on the back of a 4-wheeler and drove to his daughter's house about 200 yards away.

"Then two officers came out of the brush over there," he told The Oklahoman. "They didn't tell us they were the ones who had been shooting or that they had shot him. They didn't admit a doggone thing."

The boy was pronounced dead at an Oklahoma City hospital, about 25 miles north of Noble.

Wade refused to identify the officer but said the person had been placed on paid administrative leave pending the outcome of the investigation.

"This is so bizarre it has to be fully investigated," he said. "We're pretty sure circumstantially that it is the bullet from the police officer's gun, but it might be a bullet from someone else."

Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation spokeswoman Jessica Brown said a state investigation was under way, though it appeared the fatal shot had been fired by the officer.

Tracy has little doubt. "I'm not saying the cop shot him on purpose," he said. "But let me tell you -- if I had a kid and put him in this car and didn't put him in a car seat and he got killed on the way to town, they'd charge me with murder ... and what this cop did is a lot worse than that."

This could have been completely avoided if the officer followed one of the basic safety rules... Know your target and what is beyond