respublica

While stuck at home, try boxing

We watch the morning local news every day, sometimes channel 2, other times channel 5 and we've become fascinated by KSDK (5) in St. Louis' traffic reporter, Monica Adams. Like many TV reporters, she's reporting from her home and it turns out she's quite the fitness fanatic. Most every day she is shown in her basement surrounded by all types of professional fitness equipment. Every day we're more amazed by what she's showing us what we can do.

We had a huge laugh when she focused on her professional boxing bag hanging from the basement ceiling. Rather several big boxing bags. She put on the gloves and began whacking the bag while describing how this can help our fitness. Another day the full basement was shown with all the machines. It has been quite an eye-opener and so different from other reporters who report in their kitchens or office in front of bookshelves.

Here is a link to all of her basement reporting. Scroll down to the videos and one is the boxing lessons. The others are great too even though not many of us could duplicate this.

What's cooking?

While spending all our time in the house these days just like everyone else, the thing which I've focused on is food. What do we have, what can we make, how long will it last.

I'd guess this is difficult for many people, especially those who don't ordinarily cook. If you haven't learned the basics of roasting, frying, baking, boiling, it has to be quite a learning experience. Back in the early days of the Food Network, the programs revolved around real cooks, chefs, etc, actually teaching us how to use knives for chopping onions, garlic, slicing meat. Also how to use vegetables-roasting, boiling, baking etc. When was pasta done. Then there was the baking-measuring, use of baking powder and soda, how to frost a cake. They even discussed which pans and pots worked best for what.

This was very helpful to me and the cooking stars did this in a friendly, often funny way and I learned a lot. Now the Food Network is all about competition among various cooks. Not really helpful. Now is a good time to bring back people like Ina Garten, Tyler Florence, Emeril Lagasse, Jamie Oliver, Giada De Laurentiis, Bobby Flay, Alton Brown, Rachel Ray, Martha Stewart and on and on.

If they can't be brought back for some reason, how about re-running their old shows.

These have to go away

TV commercials are a fact of life, we either ignore them and use that time to get something to eat or use the bathroom. Or resume a game on the iPhone. But, one company's commercials just can't be ignored and they are part of every news, sports, regular programming all day and all night and I have to say, I just can't tolerate them. It's the Liberty Liberty Liberty gang. That jingle is the most aggravating.

I wonder how much business the Liberty company is getting after spending what must be a ton of money on shows and sports every day. They've annoyed us so much we automatically turn the sound down when the ad begins.

The things you find

While going through old boxes in the basement over the weekend, I came across this gem. No idea of the date but we figure it has to have been taken when Dale was with the Lutheran Hour. If you don't know who these people are, you may be too young.

Name his wife, I'm pretty sure many of us recognize the man immediately, but I had a memory slump trying to remember her name.

What to do when there is nothing to do

This was weekend we learned what it was like to not have television, computer and wireless anything. While planting some flowers early Saturday morning, Dale shoved his shovel into our buried cable line. Everything inside the house stopped.  Well, not everything, the washer was still going, but the things we count on went out.

I went around checking things and hoping this was going to be an outage area wide so that the cable people would send someone out. But finally after an hour I realized it was just us. I knew this by going out to the yard and saw where Dale had been digging. The ground was exactly above where the cable line was buried as it was laid from the back of the house to the pole at the edge of the property. I asked him if he'd noticed an orange cord and he said yes. It never occurred to him that this may have been our cable line. He did admit to moving it as his dug, but didn't think he'd actually cut into it.

But he did.  Calling Charter or probably any cable provider is a pain. You get the automated answer which will require pushing one number or other and answering "yes" or No" to a mechanical voice for any number of questions. I gave up the first time since none of the choices met out situation. I tried again later and again was frustrated. Finally I decided to just press 0 when the voice came on and sure enough I got a real person finally.

She set up a time for a service person to come out Sunday morning. So we had all of Saturday and Saturday night to pretty much sit around and try to find things to talk about in a very quiet house. We both found our cellular data almost used up by the time we headed for bed. We've never been in that position before and we both wondered what it would mean if out cellular allotment ran out before the cable guy got here. Would our phone just shut down and be useless?  We did not find out because we managed to squeak by.

I spent some time during the boring Saturday giving some thought to getting one of the Over the Air antennas. They are pretty inexpensive and at least we'd be able to watch local things that night. So I did it. I went out to Best Buy while Dale was out running other errands and bought an over the air antenna. It sounded so easy.

But like all tech things, easy is in the mind of the beholder and in the tv's they own. Turns out we have a TV without a built in tuner which you must have in order to make the over the air antenna work. Who knew? Lots of tv's are being made without them these days. If your TV has a coaxial cable slot, you're good. If not you have to buy some other part to make it work. I will not buy another part. I may just use this over the air antenna on a different tv one of these days.

Technology! Always wanting you to buy one more thing.

Nasty business

Last night was tough on the fans of the Dallas Cowboys and Seattle Mariners who subscribe to Charter Spectrum cable. They weren't able to see the playoff games since the Fox Network channel was taken off the air. It's still off the air and has been for at least 3 days. It's a nasty bit of business being carried out by Charter and more guiltily, the Tribune company, parent group of Fox Network and others. All have been off. All because the Tribune company wants more money from Charter and Charter won't pay.

This angered so many football fans last night as I saw while reading the Twitter feed for Spectrum and the Tribune group. Most were threatening to cancel cable tomorrow or on a rant over how much money they spend on cable and the greed of big providers is horrendous. Most want a refund on their bills for the days channels have been off air.

I can sort of agree with refunds. Why pay for what you don't get. I would prefer to pay Charter/spectrum for a certain number of channels we really watch and forget the scores of channels we don't. How this is going to play out is anyone's guess. Who will give in first?  I'd guess charter will give in, they have the most to lose if many of us decide to go to a streaming way of viewing tv and quit them.

I do miss the Fox2 local news each morning, but do we want to go out and buy a cheap over the air antenna and then figure out how to set it up?  Or, subscribe to various streaming groups and puzzle out how to use them? bleh

Charter Spectrum in a cost battle

It was quite a surprise last night to switch over to Fox2 News and find it was off the air with nothing on the screen but a message telling us Charter Spectrum and the Tribune company were at odds over a price increase. Over 24 major city markers, including St. Louis, are affected. The gist of the dispute is the Tribune company's demand that Charter now pay more than twice the former price to host their stations.

If you don't have Charter nothing has changed. I don't really blame Charter for being ticked off, a double jump in costs desired by the Tribune company is quite a jump. But, with more viewers leaving cable TV for streaming and other means, everyone in the business is scrambling. I'm not sure who to feel sorry for in this situation, maybe neither. The cable costs are always rising and we are not in the mood to figure out how to steam stuff with various apps.

"Broadcast channels in major markets suddenly went dark for Spectrum TV customers on Wednesday as Charter Communications — the nation’s second-largest cable company with over 16 million TV subscribers — failed to sign a new programming contract with Tribune Media."

It's hard to say whether this will be settled quickly, but if not we have to get our local news from other channels, and, if it goes beyond the weekend, lots of people will be frustrated at not being able to watch some of the NFL football playoff games. Thankfully, the Bears will be on NBC. I do miss Fox2 News in the morning because they stay with news for a couple hours longer than the other 3 networks.

Peaceful weeks

For the past couple of weeks we pretty much gave up on watching any of the cable news channels and I haven't felt this free in a long time. We stick to the local news these days and sports and HGTV.

A weather story with something missing

Fox2 weatherman, Dave Murray, put up this story last night:

"THREE WEEKS WITHOUT SUNSPOTS: The sun has been blank for 21 straight days--a remarkable 3 weeks without sunspots. This is an almost decade-class event. The last time the sun lost its spots for 21 consecutive days was in the year 2009 coming on the heels of an historic solar minimum. With the current stretch of blank suns, solar minimum conditions have definitely returned."

After reading this, are you like me, wondering the age old question: What does this mean? There is no explanation of what solar minimum means or the difference for us between no sunspots and sunspots.

I'd be interested in knowing.

Antiques Road Show hits St. Louis

Tonight at 7, PBS, Channel 9 in St. Louis, will feature St. Louisans getting their antiques evaluated. I'm not sure that show, which has been on for ages, has ever been here so it might be interesting to see what is brought.