Once upon a time, a film crew took over a neighbour's house (with their permission, of course) to film a TV program.

I could watch the activity out of my bedroom window.

This took several days' time to file just on half hour program.

There were, of course the large number of trucks parked at the scene. Food trucks. Dressing room trucks. Lighting trucks (at least four or five of these and some of them were these giant semis). Even shower trucks. And *many* people.

What **ASTOUNDED** me was the sheer number of people who looked like they were standing around doing nothing.

I went downstairs and outside and started asking questions to other neighbours who were watching what was going on. She said that this is usual. Union rules require that each person have a very specific job. An electrician can only connect/disconnect lights. They cannot move anything.

She also said that it take an average of two or three hours to film just a few seconds of what you see on screen.

And *all* of the people I saw were paid union wages. Those wages bump up to 2x for each minute over 8 hours per day.

Folks. That experience taught me that TV shows are not cheap by any means!

That's the traditional carnie trouble call. It could mean anything from a ride about to break apart to a carnie being busted by the local fuzz for being drunk.

Just get out of there, run home, and pray.

The person may be an ******, but that does not mean the article is worthless. It is a lesson to take with you.

One flag would be christian friendly, another flag would be christian naughty, another would be muslim friendly, another could be muslim nauthty, and so forth.

A mysql or postgress database, along withe some perl/python scripts should be all you need to whip out tests for each of the fifty states. In fact, you can have a state table in the database; one row for each of the 50 states and territories. The scripts can then match the flags for each state with the flags for each of the test questions.

I could probably whip up something in less than a day.

I unplugged 32 years ago.

However, after watching a crew do the filming of a tv show here in Portland a while ago, I was shocked at how many people and how long to took to film tv shows. It takes several hours or even days to film what would be about a minute on tv.

Those people are all paid union wages

Those people are paid by advertisers and subscribers.

So, I can foresee one of two things happening if enough pull the plug like I did.

Either we will see worse shows (skimping on the costs of filming) or more commercials to make up the lose of subscriber revenue.

Here in Portland, we have Movie Madness, a video store with perhaps the largest selection of titles on the west coast. If I want to watch something (and most often it's a classic like Sound of Music), I go there and rent a dvd. Four days for three dollars.

I have been without TV for 34 years and I have have an extremely fulfilling life.

I have these wonderful hobbies that give me more entertainment. I happen to a a light artist and I really love it.

If you want to see some of the things that I make during the time I could have watched TV, go to http://www.allyn.com/

If you are in Portland, Oregon, and you see someone with jewelry and clothing that glows in the dark, that's me.

Motors' speeds are governed by the frequency (60 hz). DC motors will go faster with higher voltages. Not AC.

What you will end up with is an overheated motor.