Today is the final day of the November sweeps period, and you can tell who the winners and the losers are based on what you'll be able see tonight. For example, "The West Wing," under the management of ER's John Wells since NBC forced Aaron Sorkin out at the end of last season and unable to break the into the top ten shows all season, is being replaced by a "Law & Order" rerun. And CBS's "Survivor: Pearl Islands" is being moved from its normal Thursday slot to today in order to get its big numbers into the final days of sweeps.

The real question about sweeps, the three times per year events when stations set advertiser rates, is why the advertisers let them exist at all. Why would advertisers let the rates for a time slot be set by special programming that won't be broadcast in that slot for the rest of the year? It just doesn't make a great deal of sense, so I must be missing some aspect of sweeps. If you have a better idea on how these things work, please let me know.

Now that we're through sweeps and all the networks have released all their new shows, its time to make some recommendations. The following are the best new shows of the season and deserve some praise and a slot on you TiVo.

Arrested Development - FOX
A quirky new Sunday-night sitcom about a formerly well-to-do family now facing hard times. The plot, in a way that is reminiscent of Seinfeld, seems to go all over the place during the shows 30 minutes, but everything ties together by the end of the show.

The O.C. - FOX
Fox's newest teen drama. It deserves a look mainly because of the wit of teenaged, comic book-reading, nerd Seth.

MI-5 - A&E
If you missed A&E's imported British drama "MI-5" (it goes by the name "Spooks" when it's broadcast on the BBC), it might already be too late. A&E has already broadcast the first two series (a series is the British equivalent of our television seasons here in the US, except they're usually shorter than our 20-23 shows) of the show. It will presumably be repeated, and when it is, you need to watch it.

Joan of Arcadia - CBS
CBS's girl-talks-to-God drama is better than you'd think, at least for a Friday evening broadcast.

Navy NCIS - CBS
Despite its redundant title (the N in NCIS stands for Naval), this is a very good mixture of JAG and CSI, with all the parts that I disliked from the two shows missing. For example, the NCIS guys do not make the nonsensical non-puns that are the norm on CSI, nor do they go for the over the top gross-out shots of CSI. And the final thing is that these NCIS special agents really are the people who investigate crimes, so unlike both JAG and CSI, these agents really should be running interrogations and doing police-type work that lawyers and crime scene investigators shouldn't be doing. If you like the premise of CSI but are put off by the bad execution, give NCIS a try.

Next time, I'll give you a list of shows to avoid.

Comments: 1 Posted by david on 26 November 2003 at 10:50 AM

For all you vegetarians out there who dread Thanksgiving because everyone else will be gorging on turkey while you're stuck with a plate full of stuffing, I have a solution. The Tofu Turkey. Now, personally, I'd sooner shoot myself than eat this, but I'm sure someone out there likes to eat the catoonish looking tofu turkey, complete with tofu head and tofu feathers. As the tofu turkey's website says, "Unreal! A PETA fave and a lifesaver for real turkeys." Unreal, indeed.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 26 November 2003 at 10:05 AM

Including the one I bought last night, I've been involved in the purchase of two cars. (My parents surprised me by buying my first car when I was away at band camp.) Both times I've traded in cars. And both times I've left a CD in the CD player. The first time, I left a brand new Blink 182 CD in the CD player in my Subaru. This time I left the Something Corporate CD that I bought last week in the CD player of my Echo. I have high hopes of being able to track down the Something Corporate CD, but I'm still a little bit upset with myself for forgetting about it.

Comments: 2 Posted by david on 19 November 2003 at 10:58 AM

I got lots of great advice in the comments of the last post, and I thank all of you for them. However, there isn't really a need to leave any others, because my search is over. This evening, after work, I drove out to a sales office in St. Charles and looked at, drove, and purchased a 2003 Ford Escape. I took some of the suggestions to heart, and I made a few decisions on the at-cost options my discount got me based on them. So I thank all of you for them. Anyway, here's what I bought, with some information disguised to protect the innocent, or something:

I'll post my first impressions once I've had it for more than a few hours.

Comments: 2 Posted by david on 18 November 2003 at 10:38 PM

This past weekend I drove north to Muncie, IN for a friend's wedding. Starting with my drive on Friday from St. Louis to Evansville, I spent about sixteen hours behind the wheel before I got back to St. Louis on Sunday. I spent about 7 hours of the trip driving my Echo and the remainder of the time driving my parent's Solara. The juxtaposition of these two cars, especially on Sunday when I went from the Solara to the Echo with almost no break, made me realize just how much my car is lacking in comfort. Don't get me wrong, the Echo has a lot of things going for it. It sits you up high, giving me much better visibility than I had in the Solara, and it's engine is very efficient, saving me some money on gas. However, the ergonomics of its cabin leave a bit to be desired. I've always been a bit bothered by the distance between the pedals and the steering wheel; its just too short. If your seat is far enough back for your legs to be comfortable, your arms can't comfortably reach the wheel. There are other aspects to the Echo that I'm not too keen on as well. I'd like to have power windows and keyless entry, or at least power locks. And cruise control. I really want cruise control. And the fuel economy of the Echo is good, but many other cars, including the Solara I drove this weekend, do nearly as well, at least on the highway.

The main thing the Echo had going for it in 2000 when I bought it was price. It was very, very cheap. But now that's less a concern for me than it used to be. So I'm in the market for a new car. Well, not necessarily new, but different. I'm leaning toward a Ford Escape right now. And if I buy a used one from work, I get a nice discount, so that's the tack I'm on right now. If you have any suggestions, however, please let me know.

Comments: 6 Posted by david on 17 November 2003 at 4:08 PM

My team here at work is looking to hire an intern for the spring term, which runs roughly from January through May. My supervisor asked me if I knew anyone who might be interested in an internship. Off the top of my head, I couldn't think of anyone who was looking for an internship, but I thought I'd post this message, just in case. In case you might be interested, my team is in the beginning stages of developing a new security application that is used to authenticate the users of all of the other systems that were internally developed. All our coding is in Java and the technologies we've been using recently include EJBs, web services, Struts, and JSPs. You get great technology exposure here, and they'll drop you in and give you assignments just like the rest of us. And don't worry if you don't know much about those technologies; we're just getting started with them and we don't know too much either. So, if you think you might be interested, let me know and I'll give you all the details. My email address is david at -273 dot com.

Comments: 1 Posted by david on 14 November 2003 at 2:57 PM

I've written before about my grandmother and her tendency to give odd gifts of things from her house for occasions such as Christmas. She's in the process of moving to a smaller condo, and I was over at her house today to retrieve a few things that I'd been storing there. Well, because she's in the process of (reluctantly) downsizing anytime I see her I'm forced to leave with a new possession or two. The last time I was at her house I came away with my grandfather's old briefcase. Today was a bit more interesting. The first item I was given was an old "Indian" blanket that smelled heavily of moth balls. I've been assured by my grandmother that this is an extremely valuable piece of Native American hand-crafted artwork. I suspect that it was machine-produced in Mexico sometime in the twentieth century. But the other item was much more interesting.

Apparently, somewhere in the depths of her closets, my grandmother had an old shotgun. After informing me that it had been my grandfather's grandfather's shotgun and making me swear never to sell it, she entrusted it to my care. So now, as I type this I have a four-foot long shotgun resting on my bed. This is all very surreal. Prior to today, I don't think I've ever even held a gun before, much less fired or owned one, and I have no idea what to do with this one.

This shotgun is a Winchester Model 1897. The serial number, 37637, dates it to the second year of Model 1897 production, 1898. Apparently the model 1897 was produced by Winchester until 1957 and it saw service in both World Wars. My model, based on a quick internet search, could be worth $400 - $600 if it still works. Of course, I can't sell it and I don't know if it still works, but the action seems to still operate. Anyway, to prove I'm telling the truth, here's a photo I snapped of the dumb thing:

If anyone has some suggestions on what to do with this, let me know. I was thinking that the back of my closet might be an appropriate place to keep it for the present.

Comments: 3 Posted by david on 8 November 2003 at 8:45 PM

It's always fun when the media has to turn the spotlight on itself. It's especially fun when sports reporters report about other sports reporters getting in a fight at the Rams training facility. Here's the Post-Dispatch article. My favorite part of the whole article comes near the bottom:

Sources said that after the fracas ended, McKenna and Hadley [the two fighters] entered the press room and McKenna indicated that he is proficient in martial arts and could have killed Hadley if he wished.

Doesn't that sound like something a sixth-grader would say after getting into a fight? Also, just to give you all the facts, here is the website run by John Hadley that was mentioned in the article.

Comments: 0 Posted by david on 8 November 2003 at 12:09 AM

Let's say that it's late in the day and you want to schedule a meeting with your co-workers. For example, let's assume that it is 6:13 pm. Now, knowing that a number of your co-workers don't get into the office, what would be a good time to schedule a meeting for the following day? Nine o'clock, you say? Aren't you afraid your fellow employees, who left work more than an hour ago, and who won't be back until nine tomorrow might not find out about the meeting until five minutes after it starts? Not to mention the fact that this is a code review meeting, and your co-workers are supposed to spend some time going over the print out of the code you gave them at least 24 hours in advance. You did give them print outs of your code already, didn't you? No? Well, who cares, schedule the meeting for nine anyway. You wouldn't actually want to get any useful feedback, would you?

*************

As you may have guessed, one of my pet peeves is people who, late one evening, schedule a meeting for early the next morning. I've nearly been burnt by this a few times, so I now check my calendar every night before bed. But what really gets under my skin is that fact that I've come in early for meetings like this on more than one occasion, only to find that the meeting organizer failed to make it in for his own meeting. If that happens tomorrow, I will be very unhappy. Especially since I left a process running overnight that I would prefer to deal with as soon as I get in to work tomorrow.

Maybe I'll go in early tomorrow. Its always nice to be able to leave around three on a Friday.

Comments: 1 Posted by david on 6 November 2003 at 10:39 PM

In case you were curious about where to go to buy an expensive beanbag chair, I'm here to report that the Galleria now has a store entirely devoted to the sale of beanbag chairs. The store is called Love Sac. While researching this post, I found the Love Sac homepage. As the site says, Love Sac is "the alternative to lame furniture." (And I always thought beanbag chairs were lame.) But the most impressive thing about the Love Sac site is their product page, where you may be shocked to learn that the cheapest Love Sac, the one "most often ordered...as ottomans for the larger Sacs," will cost you $135. The larger SuperSac, which "will comfortably sit 3 adults or 19 children," will cost you $440! For the cost of the SuperSac you could buy some real furniture and have some cash left over.

Comments: 13 Posted by david on 4 November 2003 at 11:10 PM