jeffchin.com

TV to me is dying a slow death. I used to come home from work and knock out 2-4 hours of programs off my TiVo and DVR every night, but with the combination of adding studying to my daily routine and bland story lines – my season’s passes are dropping like flies.

Another factor that has come into play is the addition of 2 magazine subscriptions. I now subscribe to Wired and Business Week. Who knew there’d be so much pressure that comes along with getting a new magazine every week? What are you watching, and is there anything that I absolutely should add to my “keepers” list?

Dropped:
The OC (couldn’t even finish out the final season)
Lost
Heroes
Most MTV reality shows

Keepers:
Prison Break
Grey’s Anatomy
How I Met Your Mother
The Office

Hanging on by a Thread:
24 (Jack, please don’t kill me)
Scrubs

I just started subscribing to the RSS feed of the Official Google Blog the other day because of the addition of traffic to Google Maps, and had to do a triple take on the author of the most recent post: Suggest a Better Translation.

I’m sure my name is fairly common, but it still amuses me to have the same name as a San Fran based music producer (Dave, have you met him yet?) or now a Google employee blogger. At least I know that I snagged my domain name just in time from another Jeff Chin.

Google finally added the option to see live traffic conditions on their maps. This isn’t revolutionary, especially since Yahoo, Traffic.com and quite a few other map services have already had this plotted on a map – but it is important, because now I won’t have to go to those sites for traffic information anymore.

Traffic has become very central to my life because I cross three counties to get to work and when an idiot makes a mistake, it adds time to my commute. I’m not sure where they get the live data about the traffic conditions, but a big concern of mine is accuracy. I change my commute home based on the conditions at the end of the Dulles Toll Road, 495 and 66. There have been times where I look on the map at traffic.com, and the toll road is all red (meaning slow and backed up), but then when I’m driving past the supposedly backed up section of the road (slightly illegally down the middle airport traffic lanes), there’s no traffic to be found.

Today I saved about 20 minutes by looking at this map before I left work. If you look at that map at around 5pm every weekday, you’ll know what I have to deal with. And as a parting shot: Way to be on the cutting edge MapQuest, you’ve fallen (even further) behind again.