balki1867

D.C. resident: TSA agent questioned if license from nation’s capital was valid for flight ... an agent with the Transportation Security Administration took a look at her D.C. license and began to shake her head. “I don’t know if we can accept these,” Brandt recalled the agent saying. “Do you have a U.S. passport?’ Full article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-politics/dc-resident-tsa-agent-questions-if-dc-license-legal-for-airline-flight-boarding/2014/02/26/b0855538-9e77-11e3-9ba6-800d1192d08b_story.html?tid=pm_pop

The conversion to digital allowed for a couple of things: 1) Because digital broadcasts require less bandwidth for the same quality, there is the opportunity for simply more channels. 2) The digital spectrum is also carved up differently than the analog spectrum. Before, local channel 4 would have the bandwidth that corresponded to channel 4. Your TV tuned its tuner to the appropriate carrier frequencies for channel 4 content and you received channel 4. Now the stations are just handed the bandwidth and can use it how they want. In other words, they can split it into 6 heavily-compressed channels, or 1 uncompressed channel. From what I've seen in Chicago, most of them split their bandwidth into 2-3 channels of content, with one being a highly-compressed channel showing nothing but traffic and weather. Because of this, a lot more channels have popped up and you need the best signal-to-noise ratio possible to receive some of the heavily compressed broadcasts. That's where the antenna comes in. In Chicago there's a station called MeTV that broadcasts 6 different streams, which are almost all reruns of really old sitcoms. I could never pick it up with a pair of rabbit ears, but I picked up a reasonably good antenna with its own amplifier that lets me get those. I've read about other people going all out and mounting all kinds of crazy contraptions on their roof to watch channels broadcast 30+ miles away.

Someone's already developed a cable box that monitors what shows you watch in order to route advertising optimally. So it won't be long until the day you get done cleaning up from Thanksgiving dinner and turn on the Thanksgiving night NFL game-- and right at the first commercial break an ad will come on for the hot new 'Bob the Builder' Christmas toy (and your cable box already knows you DVR that show religiously for your son). Meanwhile your neighbor, who has a 4-year-old daughter, is seeing an ad for a new 'Dora the Explorer' toy. Seriously, the pro-cable arguments I always hear involve dividing the price by the amount of TV you watch to show that you're paying less than $1/hour for it, making it one of the cheapest forms of entertainment. My counter-argument is that the amount of time you lose watching garbage is actually an added cost (above what you're already paying for the cable connection). I made decision to cut the cord after an evening where I realized that I'd just spent 3 hours watching a reality show where they follow around repo-men to document all the crazy stuff they have to go through. Oh and praise_gibbs, with respect to how quickly new shows get on Hulu-- I'd say its almost always within 24 hours. I travel a lot for work, so its usually my Thursday night routine to fly home, get a cab back to my place, order delivery, do laundry and watch everything I missed during the week on Hulu. Lately, I've been traveling much less, so I typically watch the previous night's Daily Show Tonight Show monologue on Hulu every evening as I'm making/eating dinner.

I've been cable-free since summer and I suggest the following: - Pick up a solid digital TV antenna so you can get all the channels available locally. It's more than you think, as digital signals have longer range than the analog channels you remember from the pre-cable days. This website will help you: http://www.antennaweb.org/ Also, I use this window-mounted antenna at home (in Chicago) and have been pretty happy: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0063705PE/ref=oh_details_o00_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 - Subscriptions to streaming services: I get almost all of my network TV through HuluPlus, and I'm into documentaries, so Netflix is good for that; I'm also a pretty big O's fan, and subscribe to mlb.tv; I'm debating whether I should pick up the NHL package at some point, but I can't get into hockey until the playoffs come around - Integrating it to your TV: I'm not an Apple Fanboy but I've ended up with quite a few apple devices so AppleTV works for me (plus I like being able to airplay mp3s from my phone directly to appletv when I'm working around the house). Since you're not a huge apple fan, I've heard the new Roku boxes are amazing, and actually have more options for other things you can stream (often free) to them. EDIT: I should add that being out of market helps me in this situation, as local games still get blacked out. I'm out of luck when the O's are playing the White Sox or Cubs, unless I'm at the stadium. But yeah, if they're playing the Sox in Baltimore, and I really want to watch, I have to find a bar.

Haha, those were probably organic fair-trade apples from Whole Foods, which each individually came with a family picture of the farmer he's supporting with his purchase.

Haha, It took me a second to even understand what the guy meant with the phone from the 90s and the hashtag symbol. On a sidenote, I hope I don't get ridiculed too badly for this-- but I have *NO* idea was the '@' symbol was for before it became synonymous with email addresses. For the record, I'm well-aware the symbol existed and I *THINK* it might've been a shorthand symbol for the word 'about' since that was the only way I ever saw it used. But yeah, I'm 33 and I've seen it used for non-email purposes <5 times in my life. BTW, #25 is a legit question. I wanted to watch the Finland-Canada hockey game the other day and NBC was showing some weird British drama series.

I don't know if this is the right thread for this, but the Jamaican Bobsled team has their own song, and it's ADDICTIVE:

It actually would be fine. The issue with the one-helmet rule is that your helmet has to be the same base color, so that it can be repainted without switching out helmets. As long as your concept helmet keeps the same base burgundy color in the background they can easily repaint it. The issue that the Buccaneers had last season was that the throwback helmets were white, whereas their current helmets are gold. Apparently, they can't just repaint the normal helmets and would have to use different ones for the throwback weekend. That's why Goodell squashed the idea.

Naked Man Walks Into Chicago McDonald’s, Chaos Ensues http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2014/02/12/naked-man-walks-into-chicago-mcdonalds-chaos-ensues/ CHICAGO (CBS) — In a bizarre scene caught on tape, a man walked into McDonald’s in Chicago–completely naked. The video was posted on Live Leak three days ago. It shows the man parading around the restaurant for about two minutes before police arrive.

I'm in Atlanta for work right now and the city is absolutely dead. Everything is closed. I went to Subway for lunch and had to wait 20 minutes in line because it was the only place that was open.

Haha, I changed email addresses a few months ago and wanted to put my new email address on the Redskins email list. I couldn't see a link for that on the website so I just added myself (again) to the season ticket list with the expectation it'd also add me to their regular "Redskins News" mailings. Lo and behold, 2 months later I'd magically traversed 250,000 names on the list and received a call about a once in a lifetime opportunity to finally get Redskins season tickets.

The almost-blackout for the Packers was a little bit of a perfect storm with regards to what happened. 1) The team sent out the initial order forms when Rodgers was hurt and the team was in their 6-game losing streak. 2) The team changed its playoff refund policy. They used to offer refunds for unplayed games and they instead changed it so any unplayed game money would go towards the STH's tickets the following year. They didn't think this would be a big deal but a lot of STHs didn't want to lock up money for something that looked fairly unlikely at the time. 3) The team clinched the division 7 days before the game was played. So all of a sudden they had 40,000 unsold tickets and only a few days to sell them. 4) The game was one of the coldest in Lambeau's history. Even if you could sit outside for that much time, it's not even safe to be driving from all over Wisconsin to Green Bay, and the Packers rely heavily on fans in Milwaukee, all over Wisconsin, and even Chicago to fill the stadium. 5) This year's Packers are one of the least competitive Packer teams in recent year. That said, given the fact that this happened to the Packers, the NFL and its teams should be paying close attention to their ticketing policies.

They said his arm was still moving backwards when initial contact was made with the ball. It was funny to me because a Bear player was the first to touch it, and you know if the refs had blown it dead, people would be up in arms because that Bear totally would've recovered it if it wasn't for the whistle. Instead... no whistle and the Bear player just boots it.

Considering how often we see guys run back an obviously dead ball for 20+ yards before stopping there was NO excuse for that.

haha, OK. I'm definitely not the expert on that matter. Point taken.

I always get a kick out of the 'War on Christmas' because the original 'War on Christmas' involved Puritans pushing against any public display of Christmas spirit to avoid commercialization of what is the holiest of Christian holidays. Today we openly attack each other for $30 DVD players but get upset about how the newscaster signs off. http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/12/15/newser-war-on-christmas/4031287/

He really likes playing baseball.

It wasn't all bad, here is them during happier times:

Geez dude show some respect. It's bad enough he got killed, but then he died from it too.

Based on the cut-off part of the picture, I'm guessing "Welsh Lady" is a brand name, and that they make some sort of offering of "Assorted Fudge," which was unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it), shortened.

In fairness with the picture from FedEx Field, someone on a non-Redskins board I visit pointed out that there is almost nobody on the sidelines, so calling it the 'start of the 3rd Quarter' is a bit of a stretch when it was still more like the end of halftime. That said, they showed a clip of Philly near the start of the 3rd and it didn't look much fuller -- and that was a generally close game with two teams fighting for the playoffs.

Fake radio call of the end of the Alabama-Auburn game (some bleeped out language) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsLNtp8DFQM

True story: I was at my sister's over Thanksgiving and my niece wrote a letter to Santa saying, "Dear Santa, I already told you what I wanted in the other letter I sent you from school." -- my sister asked my niece what that was, and she said she doesn't remember.

Haha, I was there work in late fall or early winter once and it was just like that. I got up early (since I was jet-lagged) and I had the local news turned on in my room just for background noise. The newscaster was going on and on about severe winter weather and when I finally paid attention I learned it had rained for the first time in 6 weeks and people were going crazy.