i got the bad news last night, while channel surfing before going to bed. a scrolling message crawled across MSBNC: effective july 15th, MSNBC will only be seen on comcast digital cable. this must be a mistake! MSNBC is the channel i watch the most, as i usually have it turned on during the day, to get my daily dosage of (mostly) political news. i like MSNBC's viewpoints over all the other news channels, especially in an election year. how can comcast do this? there's a bunch of other channels they could've taken away that i wouldn't miss. golf channel, anyone? by snuffing MSNBC for the regular folks who can afford to get digital cable, comcast is eliminating one of the few liberal voices on television. now the only ones left are CNN and FOX. i rather stick needles in my eyes than watch those! how will i live without contessa brewer, or norah o'donnell? what about keith olbermann?! (btw, why is his bio photo 10x bigger than everyone elses?)

the funny thing is (insults to injuries) comcast keeps on eliminating channels but the prices never seen to go down! fortunately, ever since that time i started to get crappy analog cable reception, the tv in the living room is hooked up to a comcast digital box, so i'll still be able to watch MSNBC, just on some random triple digit channel number. i just wish there was more cable competition in cambridge instead of this comcast monopoly. there's always satellite television, but that seems like a lot of equipment hassles and i don't even know if i have a clear light of sight. rumors been floating around that verizon FIOS might be coming to cambridge, but i haven't heard anything definite. whatever the alternative though, the days of hooking up multiple tv's to just a single incoming cable wire appears to be over. with digital television, it seems like you need a digital decoder for every tv, and of course the cable company makes sure they charge you for every unit. with all this new fancy technology, why does the simple act of watching television seem to be getting more and more expensive?

today marks the 28th monday of the year. monday always throws me for a loop. i can never remember what day it is on monday. i often get it confused with tuesday, and only when i bring out the trash (and notice that i'm the only one) do i realize i've gotten my days mixed up. today i waited to hear back from client S with my list of bug fixes. i've never made a first delivery without some bugs being discovered. of course it's always nice for the client to find a few, gives them something to do. the bug list wasn't too bad, but i got another one of those seemingly simple fixes that turned out to be pretty complicated. i was starting to cut it close, but managed to eke out a clean version after the 2nd revision. my parents went to the supermarket and asked if i wanted to go to pick up some groceries, but i declined because i was still working. when they came back, i got a ride back to belmont for some much deserved home-cooked dinner after not eating anything the whole day. my sister had taken hailey out but came back right during the dinner. we noticed hailey had chewed up a pair of my sister's shoes. she's currently teething and seemed restless, chewing on anything she can get her jaw on, including hands. several times she'd snap her teeth for no reason, and we saw she had already lost two of her front baby teeth. she also kept on barking, which we thought was her trying to tell us she wanted to go to the bathroom. my sister took her out on a long walk to tire her out, but when she came back she was just as hyperactive. hopefully the house (and the shoes) will survive until she can get all her adult teeth in.

the weather today was weird; we were supposed to get thunderstorms but the only precipitation was a brief shower in the early morning. i was betting it'd rain so i could avoid a trip into the garden but by the end of the day we still didn't get anything. thankfully there was a cool breeze, and it never got very humid, although my parents had their a/c turned on.

while washing my aircast in the bathroom sink back at home, i noticed something poking out from beneath the faucet. there's a small gap there that's usually a home for dirt that i have to clean out once in a while. apparently it's also a good place for seeds to germinate, particularly mulberry seeds, which i usually wash off in the hundreds after a visit to the garden. so it looked like a seed somehow got underneath the faucet and managed to germinate from the water that normally collects under there. i'm kind of fascinated by this plant's amazing will to survive at all cost. instead of throwing out the seedling, i decided to plant it in a cup of dirt, give it a chance to live.