Ask and ye shall receive

A few nights ago I asked for free online episodes of "How It's Made".  Amazon.com must read McMillerPDX because lo and behold:

I have at least 50 episodes at my fingertips, all free*, and many more nerd shows at my disposal. Now, what should I ask the Intertube gods for next?

*with amazon prime yearly membership.

I miss TV.

Not really.

We had to pack up the TV and the Tivo for the kitchen.  Only now am I starting to really miss the ol' Boob Tube.  We watch plenty of shows on DVD, so it's not that we're depriving ourselves of much-needed screen time (so kidding).  And I broke down and bought a season of Sesame Street for the kids to watch on the computer or iPad.  But I just miss scanning through the 80ish hours of shows that we rarely actually watch.  Funny how I'm missing the TV/Tivo more than the oven.

Oh, and whatever happened to "How It's Made" from Discovery channel?  I miss that show.  If anyone can find full episodes, I'd be grateful.  I found snippets on the Discovery.com site, but they're partial segments peppered with lots of annoying advertising.  Because I REALLY need to know how that fiberglass hot tub is assembled.

Now that's sticky!

We checked out The Letter Factory from the library yesterday and the kids have been begging nonstop to watch it. It is repetitive, cute, non-confrontational, and all about phonics. And it's driving me crazy! 

Apparently, there's is a whole line of research into what kids like to watch. And not to generate the kind of data that will just sell more frosted cocoa sugar bombs. The book "Tipping Point" discusses the efforts Sesame Street has made with child-based focus groups to make their shows more interesting. It also talks about Blues Clues to be the "stickiest" of all shows, at least for the preschooler set.

So what is it about The Letter Factory, a show that methodically goes through the alphabet with nmenoics, narrated by a daddy and boy frog, that makes it the bees-knees in this house? At the same time it makes me kind of glad that the show they gravitate towards is gentle, educational, and shown to really help kids learn letters. I totally acknowledge it could be much worse. They could be begging to watch this.

Boring backpost

So I'm trying to blog every day this month and this week was busier than I thought.  So it's Saturday, and I'm backposting to Tuesday, which I missed this week, with some "filler".

Here's a little story about me and our cable provider.
August: I took the girls to the store in Concord to upgrade from regular to HD cable.  They told me since I had a Tivo, I'd probably need a special card.  Could I get that card now?  No, try and see.

Fast forward to when I finally get motivated this week.

I do the 24 hour online chat to request the special card.  After some banter, yes, the card will be shipped, for a fee.

They ship a switcher, not the card.

I call customer service. "Hey, you guys sent me this switcher adapter instead of the card I requested.  Can I get the card? No?  You don't have it in stock. Oh.  I'm calling the main HQ and you don't have this conversion card the FCC requires you to provide. OK.  I have to go in-person to the store.  OK.  Well, thanks, I guess."

The next day I take Robin to give back the switcher and get the card.  I merely state, "I am here to get my M-Card." The lady is friendly, then looks up my account.  Then she's fairly curt.  In fact, she says nothing else.  She hands me the requested card.  I try to be witty, "boy, these cards seem hard to come by."  She looks at me icily.  "Yes.  Yes, they are."

Who cares.  Now I have 300 more channels of basic HD cable.  Wheeeeeeeeeee!

The second child?

That's right - we had to adjust the settings on our TiVo so as to ensure the shows we actually watch are being recorded and not deleted.  What did we change? Did we add more educational shows that expand our minds?  Did we include extra news programming to increase our understanding of our world?  No.   We made certain we would not miss a single episode of Reno 911.  Darn you, Lieutenant Dangle and your cheetah-like short shorts!  

Mind you, we do not have fancy cable - limited basic is our choice - and thus do not get Comedy Central.  We rely on late-night reruns on some local channel.  Can you imagine the high-quality programming we would be recording if we did have expanded cable? 

Second most embarrassing confession of this blog post is Lil' E seems to really like watching TV.  Especially Reno 911.  It's going to be an early, high-quality education for this little one.