I had quite an electrifying experience at work today. I was putting away some gear because we had it in on evaluation so I was boxing it up to ship it back. One of the devices had a power cable that we made and wired the wires straight into the board. Yep, from the socket to the device. Anyways, rule #1 for any good electrical engineer is to make sure that the plug is not plugged in. So I looked under the table and the plug was not plugged in. Good. So I proceeded to unscrew the connectors holding the wires. I unscrewed the wires and pulled them out. Then I saw what I can only describe as a bolt of lightning striking one foot from my face. This followed by a huge pop and a plume of smoke as I check to make sure I still have my eyebrows. Upon second glance underneath the table, I noticed the plug is indeed unplugged...for a different device. So I just botched the first rule of any good EE. How embarrassing! Luckily the hardware (or me) wasn't damaged. I sure didn't want to own up to that mistake especially when I'm the only hardware engineer on the project. Anyways, God was very gracious to me today. I could have gotten quite a shock.

Yesterday I bought Futurama Season 3 at Best Buy. I love that show. While looking at the growing DVD selection at Best Buy, I noticed that there are ALOT of TV shows on DVD now. I really don't see much reason to own a TV series on DVD. I know this sounds ironic since I just bought one, but hear me out. Most TV shows aren't worth owning. If they are such good shows, then they are probably in syndication. For example, The Simpsons are on TV like 3 times a day. I don't need to own any of the DVDs. I can watch the Simpsons pretty much whenever I want. And how would I decide which episode to watch if given a choice? It would be impossible. But then there are the shows with the running storyline like Smallville or Alias. I can see renting those, but not owning them. Once you know how the story unfolds, are you really going to watch them again? Probably not. So what's left are the TV shows that are really great but completely stand alone in story as far as each episode goes and that aren't in syndication. I like Futurama alot, but it's only syndicated on Cartoon Network and the episodes are few enough so that I have a preference on which ones I want to see. They also have alot of humor that I can relate to. Really weird stuff. Plus it's a big scifi spoof which is awesome. The only other series I can imagine owning on DVD would be The Twilight Zone and maybe the Incredible Hulk. But the studios went nuts over these DVDs for their TV shows. It's just another source of income for them beyond syndication. I remember when there were only a few. What's next, I wonder.

Tonight I watched ER. I don't watch it very often, but it's a pretty cool show. When I haven't watched it for a while and I come back to it, everything has changed for all the characters. A couple of them died! Crazy. Anyways, today I realized how sad this show is. Every single character goes through crazy emotional stress at work and at home it seems. It shouldn't be called ER. It should be called Endless Suffering.