I was watching Heroes last night and I realized that all of those Pinehearst business cards that Daphne’s been handing out have a toll-free number on them. It’s not a one of those fake 555 numbers either. It’s real!

877-309-7463

They have a website too.

For more than a year Mac users have had access to TVShows, an automated TV show torrent downloader. It’s a handy utility, but it left Windows users out in the cold.

I just found out about Ted and it does basically the same thing as TVShows, but it works on Macs and PCs alike through the “magic” of Java.

Both of these apps go out and search for new episodes at regular intervals. If they find one, they automatically queue them up in your torrent client of choice. It’s so easy!

Without them you’d need to find an episode guide, check air dates to find the name/number of the latest episode, and finally hit up a torrent search engine to find that episode in an acceptable resolution with a decent number of seeders. Both of these tools automate that process. It’s the closest thing to a Tivo season pass you’ll come across in the world of torrents.

It’s also a decent solution to not paying for TV if you don’t mind things like watching shows in less-than-SD quality and the ever-present threat of the almighty ISP ban.

It started with a trickle this year.

Christmas Creep.

I’m not talking about the Grinch.

I’m not talking about retailers putting Christmas decorations out in September.

I’m talking about the vinyl sharity sites that rip and share old Christmas albums. They’ve started slipping new albums into the ether and already my compulsive nature has me downloading music at a record pace.

It’s hard to keep up, especially with RapidShare’s 15 minute download restrictions. Whenever you think you’ve got “everything,” another rss feed updates and you find yourself sitting in a queue, ready to grab the next holiday bundle and crank it through your favorite mp3 tag editor.

Christmas Forever, Cheerful Earful, Big Balls of Holly, FaLaLaLaLa, Hi-Fi Holiday, and A Christmas Yuleblog are just some of the sites that are now (or will soon be) sharing more Christmas music than you ever thought existed.

The Sharity season starts in earnest the day after Thanksgiving. Grab what you can until that day comes, because the firehose – once opened – will pin you to the wall and your mouse-clicking finger will cramp up before you can say eggnog.

Now’s probably a good time to note the death of America’s own Rudy Ray Moore, aka The Human Tornado, aka Dolemite. Dolemite movies were a staple of latter-day high school sleepovers and I can still remember some of his hilarious routines.

Let’s have a moment of silence.

…

Okay, silence is over. On with the downloading!

January 16th

That’s the day that Battlestar Galactica returns to TV. Confirmed by SciFi.

DCA’s Blue Sky Cellar opens to the public on Monday. It’s a preview center for what’s to come in Phase I of “Operation Fix DCA”, a four-year, 1.2 billion dollar damage-control salvage mission.

The OC Register has photos.

It’s clear that a lot of time, money, and energy went into this plan…and yet the whole lame-o California theme, outside views to Anaheim, outdoor queues, outdoor attractions, and Paradise Pier area remain. These are fundamental problems that can’t be addressed with a simple makeover.

It’s kind of like getting plastic surgery. No matter how many times you go under the knife you’re probably still an ugly person deep down inside!

I’d kind of prefer to see them just tear the whole place down and start from scratch. I’m kind of a jerk though.

I should just admit I’ll never be happy with whatever they build unless it’s a west coast version of Epcot.

Culdcept DS came out in Japan today. I’m nearly certain there’s no hope of a US release after Culdcept Saga failed to make a dent at retail…

I think I know enough of how the game is played to navigate through the Japanese menus.

Ergh. Maybe not.

Have you ever tried to program your electronic thermostat? I’m not talking about setting the temperature at any given time…I’m talking about setting up a weekly program- breaking up each day into chunks of time and specifying a temperature for each chunk. It’s not hard, but it typically requires a lot of button pressing and manual reading.

I just heard about the ecobee and it looks nice. It claims to make at-home HVAC management easy as pie.

The touch-screen interface is nice, but it’s also wi-fi connected so you can check weather reports from the thermostat or even set up programs remotely from your PC.

I’m part of the elusive “I won’t buy a thermostat if it’s more than $150″ market, so if they can bring the price down I’m seriously considering getting one when they go on sale in early 2009.

In order to capture the elusive “I won’t buy a game console if it’s more than $200″ market, Microsoft lowered the price of their Arcade bundle to $199 a while back. This is great for poor people and cheapskates in general, but the Arcade system doesn’t contain any external storage at all – no hard drive or memory card.

The Arcade is a perfect fit for you if you enjoy playing games from the very beginning every time you power on. If you want to save your progress, download content, or even just make a gamer profile then you need to buy a memory unit or a hard drive. Which is fine I guess…

The problem is that the new 360 dashboard, launching November 19th, requires 128MB of external storage space. If you’ve got a 360 and no storage devices, you’ll now be eligible for free or cheap storage by entering your serial number and console ID over here.

Arcade owners will get a refurb 20GB HDD and 3 months of Live for $30. Older Core owners will get a 512MB memory unit free or a refurbished 20GB HDD for $20.

I have registered to participate in the upcoming 2008 CHOC/Disneyland Resort Walk in the Park to help raise money for Children’s Hospital of Orange County. If you would like to sponsor me, please click here. Thank you!

There’s no shortage of sad guys on trading floors these days.