Encounters with Stupidity

I'm always searching for something to rent at the local movie place. They have 2-for-1 on Tuesday and Wednesday nights. Supposedly, they have around 30,000 titles (including the ones in the "special" back room?). Over the last five years, I've worked my way through most of the movies in the store (but not the back room). At least it feels that way. If there really are 30,000, averaging 2 hours each, it would take almost seven years of solid viewing. I've watched almost all of the AFI's top 100 (overall a good list), and most of the Academy Award winners. The two lists overlap a lot. Since I've seen almost everything, a visit to the video store can be an arduous one. I walk up and down the aisles, looking in vain for something I haven't seen before and isn't totally cheesy. Recently I discovered television... on DVD. Since the local FOX station replays the same five episodes of Seinfeld over and over, I can now rent and watch all the episodes on Seinfeld in order. The problem is, I don't like Seinfeld (much).

Sometime last year I was at Matt Fab's house and we watched part of an episode of Monk on USA. It didn't hook me at the time. However, months later at Casa Video, I picked up Season One, Disc One. I was hooked. Each DVD has four 42-minute episodes. I can easily watch a DVD in one sitting. Addictive... time consuming... bad. All I need is another excuse not to go running at night.
Monk is a clever show, but not too clever. Some parts of it are downright cheesy. But the characters make it brilliant entertainment. In particular Monk, played by Tony Shaloub, will make you feel ok about every little neurosis you've ever had. I won't prattle on about the show here. Just go down to the video store and rent a disk or two. Please steer clear of Civilization, however. The nice thing about TV shows is that there is a finite number of episodes. Civilization can be played forever.

Last night I watched the final available episode of Monk (season 3). Season four is currently about halfway through on USA, but I don't have cable and won't anytime soon. It's the end of an era. Back to work.

You can have too much music in your life. Who has time to listen to it all? A few days ago I bought a satellite radio and signed up for a free 3-month trial. The receiver was free too, with a deal my brother found on fatwallet.com. Actually, with rebates I'll end up making about 25 bucks. My brother is always finding deals like this, where he can do this and that and send in these rebates and end up with $100. Even though it was free, the satellite radio had a negative side effect: it brought me past the brink of music overload. Let's take stock of my current musical options. I'm a dedicated NPR listener, so that or KXCI is usually on in my car. I also listen to NPR in the mornings while reading The Economist as part of my new morning routine (see separate post). At home I also have a few hundred CD's, and an old 10 gig ipod with FM transmitter with another 3000 songs. At work I have my computer with an undisclosed number of tracks. And for good measure, throw in my trusty 512MB Creative Nomad, basically a non-white (ethnic?) Shuffle.
On the rare occasion I stay in a hotel good enough to have cable TV, I'm overwhelmed by the options and invariably get Channel Anxiety. Now I get to experience Song Anxiety every day of my life; in my home, in my car, and at my desk at work. It's important, however, to keep things in perspective. I'm not suggesting that choice is bad, as some researchers are now doing (see recent Scientific American article). Choice is the result of free minds operating in a free market. The best thing about choice is that one can choose to have more or less. When my free trial is up, I'll dump XM radio and 200 choices along with it.

I moved into my current house about four and a half years ago. At the time, both my East and West neighbors appeared to be owner-occupants. Within two years of my arrival, however, both houses became rentals. The East house was sold and then stood vacant for many months, but finally became sporadically occupied in August. The new renters came and went, never staying for too long. It appeared that a group of college guys had preemptively rented out the house for the school year. Until school started, they were using the place as a party house and occasional crash pad. In September, a few weeks after they actually moved in, a Cox cable guy came 'round, apparently installing cable TV. I noted this in the back of my mind somewhere as I had a series of thoughts: Cox cable... college guys... they'll have high-speed internet... it's a 4-bedroom house (I think)... installing wiring is a pain... since they don't own the house they'll likely go wireless... and something like 90% of wireless routers and not secured... probably 99.9% of college kid's wireless routers...
I should say at this point that I do without an internet connection at home. Two summers ago I got a cell phone and ditched my land line, severing the possibility of dial-up or DSL. I've never had cable or dish... too expensive for a one-person household, and way too much of a distraction for an already-distracted grad student with a known weakness for shows such as Junkyard Wars and Chop Shop, not to mention History Channel WWII specials of any kind. When I need the internet, I either travel the 3.5 miles to my office or I walk the 3.5 blocks to the public library near my house.
This brings us to one night in early October, when I sat at my desk in my room working on my laptop. Actually, I was probably either writing a blog entry or playing the heroin-like computer game Civilization III. Earlier that day I had carried my laptop to work and used it at the local coffee shop to surf the web while drinking my Illy double Espressicano (my name for an Americano with so little water, it's closer to espresso). After surfing, I neglected to disable the wireless radio on my laptop. Back at home that evening, the radio was still on, and *viola!*, it picked up a wireless signal. Barely. The signal was very weak, and I didn't have time to even check my email before it kicked me off due to a weak signal. I unplugged my laptop and moved onto my bed, next to the window, which is about 15 feet from my neighbor's house. Now I had moved from "Very very weak signal" territory into "Low signal" territory. Now I could pop onto Pine to check my email.
This is technically poaching. But is it stealing? My neighbors have failed to secure their wireless router, which is very easy to do. But that's like saying it's ok to rob someone's house if they don't lock the front door. I'm not systematically downloading music or large image files (ahem). But I'm still using a service they pay for. Right now, this problem is pretty low on my list of ethical dilemmas. If my neighbors didn't wake me once or twice a week at 3 am with car alarms and yelling in their front yard, and if they didn't toss beer cans and cigarette butts into my yard, I might feel a little bit bad. But the way it is, I don't.
On a related (wireless) note: I'm now picking up a full-signal wireless network called "Free Public WiFi" at my house. This started just a few days ago. However, it doesn't actually work. If I start up a web browser or SSH (to use Pine), I get nuthin. A web search doesn't show any city-wide WiFi in Tucson. Only hotspots here and there. By the way, I'm all for citywide wireless, but it shouldn't be a city-funded utility. Let it be run by competing providers! Let them use any business model they like: free with advertising, or a subscription service or whatever. Don't make it a city utility and make everybody pay for it regardless of it they use it and regardless of the quality of the service. I don't understand arguments to make *any* services into municipal monopolies, besides police services. Fire, ambulance, garbage, water, sewer, phone, and WiFi -- they should all be privately offered services.