K-Squared Ramblings

Chenoweth Emmy

Awesome! I never thought I’d see Kristin Chenoweth & Pushing Daisies as trending topics on Twitter! Congrats on the Emmy! (I must pull out those DVDs.) #

Bad Timing and Too Short a Season

I keep putting off washing my car & then finally getting to it right before a freak storm…or the arrival of a giant cloud of ash. #

Pushing Daisies "The Complete 2 Second Season." I know it was short, but I'd swear it was longer than that! #

Pushing Daisies Mini-Review

Pushing Daisies had a satisfying don’t-call-it-an-ending. Looking forward to the comics. #

Teppan Timing

Went out for teppan at 7. Figured we’d be home in plenty of time for Pushing Daisies. No, it’s teppan – we got home w/ 10 minutes to spare! #

TV Shows: End of Spring Status

A quick look at TV shows we’ve been watching this season.

Lost – Good season, learned a lot more than I expected about DHARMA, major cliffhanger. Renewed for a final season…in 2010. (Hard to believe that’s less than a year away)

Pushing Daisies – managed to maintain the tone & quality, but canceled halfway through the year. Supposed to get the last 3 episodes starting at the end of the month. A 12-issue comic book miniseries has already been announced.

Bones – I only saw a few episodes, but liked them, and Katie’s been watching it regularly. Fun off-format season finale w/ a nasty cliffhanger. Returning, according to the voiceover during the credits.

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles – turned our to be a surprisingly solid, complex show. No word on renewal yet, but I’d like to see more. Update 6: canceled.

Dollhouse: Started off weak, but got really interesting as the season progressed. It’s not a comfortable show by any means. No word on renewal, but if I had to choose between this and T:SCC, I’d take SCC. Update 2: Unofficial sources say it’s renewed, but I wouldn’t count my actives until they’re all back for their treatments.

Heroes: I gave up 2 episodes into the “Fugitives” arc, but Katie kept watching. Deeply problematic show but its high points were very good. Renewed, and I hope it’ll improve next year.

Better Off Ted – fun, painful, quirky all rolled into one. Sort of like a less-nerdy Dilbert or Office Space. I’d like to see more, but it doesn’t seem likely. Update 3: Holy crap, it’s been renewed! That’s a bigger surprise than Dollhouse!

Castle – favorite of this year’s mid-season replacements. Would definitely like to see more, but would be okay if this turned out to be all. Unlike, say, Drive. Update 1: Cool! It’s been renewed!

Battlestar Galactica – finished off with a very good final season. Caprica, on the other hand, was tedious. May take another look at it when the series launches.

Update 4: Forgot to mention The Unusuals, which we checked out, but neither of us found interesting enough to stick with. The ads built it up to be…well…unusual, and it wasn’t. Castle and Bones both routinely dealt with more unusual cases. For anyone who did like it, prospects look dim. Update 7: canceled.

Update 5: EW has a running tally of all the network shows.

Update 8 (May 18): The decisions are in for all of them now. I’m sad to see Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles canceled (especially in the same week that Terminator: Salvation opens), and I’m still annoyed at losing Pushing Daisies halfway through the season, but the other shows we watch have had a remarkably good survival rate this year.

Pushing Daisies, WaMu, Bees, Ubuntu and Vortex

• Brian Fuller talks about the future of Pushing Daisies #
• WaMu building has taken down its sign. Giant Chase banner at street level. #
• Guy w/ sign by side of road: “Homeless kind soul stuck in vortex.” I get the 1st half, but WTF does “stuck in vortex” mean? Downward spiral? #
• Retweeting @ThisIsTrue: possible cause identified for honey bee colony collapse #
• Odd: If Ubuntu is the biggest desktop Linux out there, why is my torrent for 8.10 64bit idle? Fedora 10 64bit found 7 peers in 30 seconds. #

Pushing Daisies Back in May!

Final 3 Pushing Daisies episodes to air May 30-June 13! #

Pushing Daisies Season 2 DVD coming in July

There’s a relief!

TV Shows on DVD reports that the second season of Pushing Daisies — the complete second season, including the final three episodes that ABC hasn’t bothered to show yet — will be coming to DVD and Blu-Ray on July 21. Just in time for Comic-Con.

The article is dated April 1, but they swear it’s not an April Fools’ joke, and indeed Amazon is accepting pre-orders with a July 21 release date.

I’m still somewhat bitter at ABC for canceling the show, though not as much as I could be. It really did have “Too good to last” written all over it, and I’m still astonished we even got a second season (never mind that it managed to live up to the first one). Mostly I’m bitter that ABC held onto those last three episodes. They could have shown them at three in the morning. In a DVR world, fans would have managed to find them. Or they could have put them on their website, or sold them through iTunes.

Anyway, TV Shows on DVD has more box art and descriptions of the extras.

Shop Savvier

Android Community reports that ShopSavvy will soon be getting real-time inventory data from local stores. This will be very nice, as I’ve run into the occasional issue where things didn’t quite line up.

ShopSavvy is an app for Android phones that uses the camera to scan product barcodes, then looks up pricing from local and online stores. You can also do a text search if you don’t have a package handy.

Two failures I can think of were:

Outdated Sale Price. I wanted to pick up the Pushing Daisies DVD set. ShopSavvy told me that Circuit City (this was before the liquidation) had it for something like $18. I got there and they wanted something closer to $30. I forget whether it was a sale price that had just ended or whether it was only some locations that had the cheaper price.

Web/In-Store Discrepancies. After dithering for a year, I finally decided to get a new printer this weekend. (Okay, the old one stopped working.) I found a decent price/feature combo on TigerDirect, then found a much better price for the same printer on Amazon, but I didn’t want to wait two weeks for delivery or spend an extra $20+ for faster shipping. So I looked it up on ShopSavvy, which told me that MicroCenter and Costco both had it for just eight dollars more than Amazon.

I looked up the printer on MicroCenter’s website, which claimed it was in stock at the local store. But it also claimed it was refurbished. I went to the store, found the display model on the shelp, saw the price I expected (with an “As advertised!” note), and no mention of it being a price for a refurbished model. Then it turned out that they didn’t have any in stock.

So I hit Costco. As near as I can tell, they only sell the printer through their website, but ShopSavvy listed it under local. As long as I was there I looked at the printers they did have, but nothing matched the specs I was looking for. (Small mono laserjet with built-in network, preferably wifi, for less than $150.) Finally I just ordered it through Amazon, who in a fit of amazingness shipped it immediately, and say it should arrive tomorrow.

In this case it would probably still have failed with MicroCenter, since their website had the wrong info (or else someone bought the last one in the time it took me to drive there), but I would at least have known there was no point in looking at Costco.

G1 photo by spdorsey

Midseason TV Watching

Battlestar Galactica
As we move into the second half of the final season, will all really be revealed? Season Four has been good, definitely better than Season 3 (which IMO got bogged down by the Starbuck/Apollo “plot”), though the logic of the Final Five Minus One doesn’t make much sense.
– Returns Friday, Jan. 16 @ Sci Fi 10pm

Bones
I’m not the one watching this, but Katie’s still hooked, so I guess it’s still good.
– Returns Thursday, Jan. 29 @ Fox 8 pm

Fringe
We both gave up after something like 4 episodes. It seemed like they were trying too hard to be The X-Files, too focused on the conspiracy and everything fitting “the pattern” and being tied to work in this one lab…and then there’s the problem with not bothering to research the regular science or think through the consequences of the totally-made-up “fringe” stuff that gave the show its title. The only thing worth watching for was John Noble’s mad scientist, Walter Bishop.

Lost
After a couple of seasons of floundering, Lost came back very strongly last year. Having an end point to work toward certainly helped, as did opening up the format from present with flashbacks to present with both flashbacks and flashforwards. At first the flashbacks were great for showing what motivated the various characters, what brought them to the island, what issues they were still working through, etc. But after a while they started answering questions no one asked (”The secret of Jack’s tattoo!”) or re-treading old ground. Adding flashforwards to post-Island events really added to story possibilities, and they made thorough use of it.
– Returns Wednesday, Jan. 21 @ ABC 9pm

Heroes
Alternately fantastic and infuriating. I’ve gone into this recently, so I won’t repeat it here. That’s what links are for. With luck, Volume 4 will fall more on the fantastic side.
– Returns Monday, Feb. 2 @ NBC 9pm

Pushing Daisies
As good as ever. They managed to somehow maintain the tone while moving forward with character development and further exploring the consequences of Chuck’s resurrection.
– Sadly, canceled. Word is that ABC may show the last three episodes next summer. SUMMER. *grrr* Just show ‘em in a 5am marathon so they can be released to iTunes, Amazon Video and DVD, willya?

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
This still hasn’t totally grabbed me the way Heroes or Pushing Daisies has, but it’s been an interesting, intricate take on the Terminator mythos. And oddly enough, I’m far more interested in the second half of this season than I am in the upcoming Terminator: Salvation movie. Sadly, Fox has moved it to the Timeslot of Death.
– Returns Friday, Feb. 13 @ Fox 8pm

Dollhouse
Not much to say about this one, since it hasn’t aired yet, but I’ll at least take a look at just about anything developed by Joss Whedon. Eliza Dushku and Amy Acker won’t hurt, either. Unfortunately, Fox has placed it in the Second Timeslot of Death, right after SCC
– Starts Friday, Feb. 13 @ Fox 9pm

(TV Guide via Blog@Newsarama)

Eternal Song & Roam If Your Phone Wants To

• Ah, security updates! On a Friday! Such fun! *grumble* #
• Watched Wednesday’s Pushing Daisies last night. “Eternal Flame” is STILL stuck in my head. #
• G1 auto-roaming explained: his phone connected to T-Mobile UK and thought it wasn’t roaming, so it kept data active. #
• Appears to be an epidemic of low tire pressure here. Waited in line for air plus another car behind me. #

East/West, TV & Sudafed

• The East/West terminology always bugged me too: http://xkcd.com/503/ But then, living in California, I figure we’re also Pacific Rim. #
• What makes people think it’s OK to post insults/threats just because your old blog post isn’t what they wanted to find on Google? #
• You know, it would be nice if ABC would SAY things like “In 3 weeks” when they’re going to preempt Pushing Daisies 2 weeks in a row. #
• I like having (nearly) full movement in my arm again. #
• End of an era: Our last box of real Sudafed has expired. #

Cross-posted at LiveJournal.

Pushing “Pushing Daisies”

What with all the media buzz surrounding Pushing Daisies, it seems to me as if you’d have to be pretty dead not to have heard of it. Not to worry, though: protagonist Ned can help with that. Temporarily, at least. You just have to get him to touch you before 8 pm (7 central) tonight, October 3, to bring you back to life…and then keep him from touching you again, or you’ll be permanently kaput. And you’ll miss the show. (It’s on ABC.)

I attended a screening of the pilot at Comic-Con this year and was very pleased with what I saw. It’s hyper-colored, sweet and snarky by turns, narrated by Jim Dale (who did the Harry Potter audiobooks), and hey, Ned is a baker. I’m sold. I can’t wait to see it, and I’ve already seen it. Let’s wake the dead with these ratings.