Why I love the BBC show Torchwood

Torchwood is a great show for many reasons, most of which is the shows exploration of human sexuality. Too often people fear what they can't categorize, so they put labels on things. Nothing was born with a label, it is people that decided to call dogs "dog" and cats "cat" and it was people that invented the words heterosexual, homosexual, and bisexual. Torchwood doesn't use labels; Ianto doesn’t call himself bisexual, he just is who he is. No one on the show uses such labeles because it’s not natural. These labels weren't used until recently in human history. If you were to go back in time to the ancient Greek and ancient Roman empires, homosexual behavior is commonplace. No where in the ancient texts is that label used though, instead it's called "love." Man on man love, or man on boy love, are two terms often used in those texts to describe the actions. The only rule regarding this act in ancient Greece was that once you were married all other actions had to stop. This is something that should still be practiced, once you're married stop having affairs. In these days you hear all too often about married men and women cheating on each other. And they call this being civilized? I don't even know why people get into relationships if they want more than one partner, just stay single.

Torchwood recognizes that sexual attractions can’t have rules; you can't tell someone "don’t be attracted to that person, they are the same gender as you." The show breaks down the artificial barriers that the fearful put up around human sexuality, and reinforces that this kind of behavior is normal; just as it has been for thousands of years before a group of hateful narrow-minded people decided to put a taboo on it.

FOX movies now stream on iCloud

I noticed today something new on my Apple TV, FOX movies that I previously purchased via iTunes. So now the last of the hold outs is finally on board with iCloud movie streaming. Unfortunately, one of my movies from FOX isn't visible Family Guy Presents Blue Harvest – the first of three Family Guy Star Wars parodies.

Viacom is acting like a bitch

Viacom is having a pissing contest with Direct TV so they blocked all their content on EVERY Viacom website (comedycenter.com, etc.) as a way to punish Direct TV customers. However, instead of just punishing Direct TV customers, they are punishing EVERYONE! No matter which cable provider you have, it doesn't matter. Rather than detect who your provider is, they are blocking access to the entire Internet. Go ahead, go to any of the Viacom owned websites, full episodes are blocked.

Thanks for being a bitch, Viacom. You went from being a small jerk to a full blown asshole.

I'm getting sick and tired of Verizon FiOS

In the beginning of March of this year I signed up for Verizon FiOS for two main reasons. Cablevision refused to fix their broken Internet, my connection was going down several times a day for a couple of months with no relief. The second reason is that I knew FiOS had the FUNimation Channel, which is something I wasn't getting with Optimum. At this point, I could have chosen a different provider, or gotten a cheaper tier with FiOS that didn't include FUNimation, but I went with the more expensive package for that one channel. Within two weeks Verizon removed the channel without any notification (I'm aware that older customers were notified via email, but I wasn't). So I'm stuck with a two year contract and I don't even get the channel that caused me to sign up in the first place.

Last week I received notification in the mail that two more channels are being removed, though I never watched them or even heard of them. However that doesn't change the fact that channels I paid for are slowly being removed.

Not only that but their equipment sucks. Their provider Wi-Fi router kept knowing me offline when in "mixed mode" so I had to change the settings to give a 802.11n signal only. Because of this, I still need to use my AirPort Extreme in bridge mode to support the few older devices in my house that only support b/g. Also, the sound keeps going out on my DVR box (all other boxes seem to be ok, it's just the DVR box that the sound goes out on). I have to constantly unplug and replug the HDMI cable just to get the sound back.

Verizon, if you keep this BS up, pretty soon you won't have any customers at all!

Everyone that is fed up with Cablevision and looking for a new provider, avoid Verizon. Try Direct TV or DISH Network instead. Or you could just "cut the cord" completely and just stream content online via Amazon Instant Streaming, Netflix, and Hulu Plus.

Why everyone should use Time Machine

Time Machine allows you to make regular backups of your computer system on an external hard drive. Today I was cleaning out some old music files in iTunes that I no longer wished to have, and accidentally deleted the wrong songs; not realizing until after I emptied the Trash. I went into my Time Machine backup and restored the entire iTunes folder to a backup that was done two hours prior (I could have backed up to an hour, but I wanted to be extra sure everything would be fine). This is a good reason for everyone to keep regular backups, whether it be automatically with Time Machine, or manually on your own.

Check gmail for what it marks as important

I just noticed (since I hardly ever use the web version of Gmail) that they have automatically marked EVERY SINGLE EMAIL as "important" - every one since they first introduced the feature. This makes the feature completely useless. So check your gmail account and make sure only what you want labeled "important" is, and everything else isn't. You can consider this a Public Service Announcement.