Messages

961

WeatherSTAR Tech Support / Re: **NEW POLICY** 8/17/11

« on: August 17, 2011, 02:00:09 PM »

Yes, and some of the same people here have made 4 or even 5 requests in any given time.

Yeah, that's definitely an abuse of the privilege.  Maybe such people should get their own Stars. 

962

WeatherSTAR Tech Support / Re: **NEW POLICY** 8/17/11

« on: August 17, 2011, 12:48:22 PM »

I agree with this policy.

Some, but not all, of the requested changes have seemed somewhat frivolous and just an attempt to custom-tailor the Star to one person's personal preferences, ignoring the fact that many, many other people see the same Star, too.  I hope that my one request to reduce the amount of ocean on a map to less than 50% doesn't seem so frivolous in comparison.

963

Hurricane Central / Re: Tropical Storm Gert

« on: August 17, 2011, 11:38:54 AM »

Gert is long gone, so that's seven tropical storms in a row with no hurricanes.

This is the first year since naming began that there hasn't been a hurricane at "G" or earlier, though the latest first hurricane, which was a "G" storm, formed in September, so we've still got some time left to break that record. 

964

TWC Fan Art / Re: Weatherlover's Artwork

« on: August 16, 2011, 07:59:33 PM »

This one looks much better.

965

General Discussion / Re: The Front Porch

« on: August 16, 2011, 05:15:46 PM »

Ugh, why do people always do immature things like that? I would hope the fire alarm isn't pulled while I'm in the bathroom!

Not every time a fire alarm goes off does someone pull it. They are required to have regular fire drills.

Once a semester, twice at the maximum, unless certain colleges choose to have more.  So it's more than likely that a fire alarm that goes off after the first week of school is not a drill, but a prank, a false alarm, or an actual fire.

966

TWC Fan Art / Re: Weatherlover's Artwork

« on: August 16, 2011, 05:14:41 PM »

Weather Bulletin

Does there have to be such an extreme gradient from red to black?  Maybe from red to a dark red would look better than the larger change from red to black.

967

General Discussion / Re: The Front Porch

« on: August 16, 2011, 05:12:04 PM »

Unfortunately, classes have started for me already, but I'm not in my dorm yet. My morning nausea/vomiting is really becoming a big problem. It's been happening everyday now for 4 days. The doctor thinks that I'm very anxious and that my stomach is overproducing acid, so I'm on Prevacid right now. Unfortunately, not much change yet. I'm pretty worried about this, and I really don't want it to be anything serious. I feel okay in the evenings, but mornings are miserable. Anyone else have anything similar to this? I don't think I'm that afraid of school. I am so clueless, though, and quite worried.

You just have to convince yourself that you don't have anything to worry about.  Horror stories about miserable roommates and neighbors, fire alarm pranks, and so on, are really the exception rather than the rule.  You'll enjoy the freedom from home life, the chance to explore new things, and you're certain to meet a lot of interesting people.

Not only now that it's all over and done with, but even when I was still in college, it seemed like those years just flew by so quickly.  Enjoy it while you can!

968

General Discussion / Re: The Front Porch

« on: August 16, 2011, 05:09:36 PM »

Being in the shower when the fire alarm went off was always one of my biggest fears while living in the dorms. I avoided it for over three years until one morning last year, it happened. Not a good experience.

I was lucky that it never happened to me!  However, out of a justified fear of that happening, I always brought a full set of clothes with me to the shower.  I can name plenty of times, though, when some poor, dripping wet sap ended up having to exit the building in just a towel. 

969

Everything Else TWC / Re: General TWC Discussion

« on: August 16, 2011, 05:07:18 PM »

Glad to see Terri Smith is still at TWC.  I remember when she first started and spent a lot of time on the overnight shift, which is when I watched TWC during summer vacation from school... much to my grandmother's grief. 

970

TWC and your Cable Company / Re: Cable Channel Sharing

« on: August 16, 2011, 05:05:19 PM »

Nickelodeon and ARTS/A&E used to do this.  Nick during the day, A&E at night.

Right - I remember that!  And when A&E got its own channel, that gave the reason for Nickelodeon to develop Nick-at-Nite.

Nick-at-Nite was actually quite a good channel from when it started in the mid-1980s until the second half of the 1990s.  Classic sitcoms and other shows.  Excellent!  Then it degenerated into "classics" that barely seem out of their first-run status.

971

General Discussion / Re: The Front Porch

« on: August 16, 2011, 02:13:53 AM »

word of advice to those staying in resident halls/dorm rooms...don't ever set off the fire alarms overnight. you'll be dead the next morning. 

During my freshman year I lived in a dorm building just for freshmen.  Idiots set the fire alarm off in the middle of the night at least three or four nights a week every single week.  And I'm not exaggerating, either.

The fire department was just down the street, but they had to not only check for a fire, but also check every single room to make sure that everyone has evacuated the building.  (As the school year went on, more and more people stayed in the building for obvious reasons, even though they got in serious trouble for it.)  The average time we spent standing in the street in the middle of the night was just under three hours.  During the winter they usually opened the lobby of the student union for us to get out of the cold, but that stopped after the fifth or sixth alarm in a row, so from that night on we had to stand outside no matter what the weather was.

Because of all that, I started sleeping in a full set of clothes with my boots or shoes (depending on the weather) and my coat right next to my bed.  It honestly took years and years and years for me to get out of the habit of wearing street clothes at night - it really did!  To this day, my heart literally stops whenever I hear anything that sounds like that fire alarm, especially if it's at night.

972

TWC and your Cable Company / Re: Cable Channel Sharing

« on: August 16, 2011, 01:14:51 AM »

During the early days of cable TV, has there been a time where cable networks have to share the same channel spot(s)?

Oh, my, yes.  Ignoring pairs like Nickelodeon/Nick-at-Nite and Cartoon Network/Adult Swim (which are basically just separate programming blocks on the same channel run by the same company), the 1970s and 1980s certainly did have shared channels.  Bravo and A&E are two that come to mind immediately, but there were others.  It was very expensive back then to run a 24-hour cable network, to acquire and/or produce programming, run the satellite uplink service, and so on, and so forth.  I was born in 1982, and I remember when a good number of cable networks used to sign off every night just like the broadcast channels did.  (Yes, really!!)  Other channel numbers were split between two networks, so that when one went off the air, the other went on.  This decision was usually made by the two networks to coordinate their time, share transponders, and so on.  But, even then, there were still plenty (given the far lower amount of channels available at the time) of 24-hour cable networks.

I'm trying to think... when we first got cable in the 1980s, the channels went as high as 64, I think, but with plenty of gaps in between, so we probably had only 50 or so channels available.  However, we had fewer at my house, since the only premium channel we subscribed to was HBO.

When my area was served by Paragon Cable, three networks had to share the same spot: Prevue Channel, Sneak Prevue (for PPV promos), and Playboy TV. Here's how it was arranged on Ch. 24 on a daily basis: From 5AM to 11PM, they have The Prevue Channel showing in its entirety in its first and last hours. From 6AM to 9PM, Sneak Prevue would occupy the :10-:22/:40-:52 slots with The Prevue Channel showing in the remaining slots. The final 15 minutes of Prevue Channel were scrambled at 10:45PM to switch over to Playboy TV from 11PM to 5AM. It's kinda confusing, but that was their arrangement up until 1999 when Prevue/TV Guide Channel finally had its own spot.

Good heavens!  That seems needlessly confusing, not to mention irritating if you were a late-night channel surfer trying to find one of the few good shows to watch that late.  My cable company always had Prevue on its own channel, Sneak Prevue was on the next channel, and we never had Playboy.  However, the second of the two PPV channels (the first being "Viewer's Choice" and the second, I believe, called "Spice") showed pornography overnight.

973

TWC Fan Art / Re: wxgatlin's artwork

« on: August 16, 2011, 01:08:07 AM »

Looks fantastic!

974

TWC Fan Art / Re: Weatherlover's Artwork

« on: August 16, 2011, 01:05:40 AM »

Significant changes since the picture posted above. 

Wow - that is clever!  I honestly wouldn't mind seeing that on my TV. 

975

General Discussion / Re: The Front Porch

« on: August 16, 2011, 01:04:26 AM »

Oh, the dorm life.

My first roommate used to watch porn at all hours of the night and invite the whole floor in to watch.

My second roommate used to like watching me wake up every morning as he stood over my bed.  He was gone within a few days after I discovered him doing that.

My third roommate was pretty nice, but he snored so loudly he could be heard in rooms at the other end of the hallway through two closed doors.  He moved into a different building after a couple of very sleepless months for me.

My fourth and fifth roommates were more or less normal and very agreeable people.