In the wake of CBS News’ “60 Minutes” controversy, an influential Republican on Tuesday said he wants to convene a Capitol Hill hearing on TV news operations after the Nov. 2 election.

Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), chair of the House Commerce Committee, told a meeting of the TV engineering trade group MSTV in Washington that broadcast network news divisions “need to have safeguards to prevent reporters from infusing their opinions into news reports.”

The lawmaker said he wanted to hear from execs of all the nets — not just CBS — and threatened to introduce legislation requiring TV news operations to impose safeguards against partisan bias seeping into reports. He backed off the threat of legislation when pressed for specifics.

Barton also implied that TV news is less reliable then the print media, adding that with reality TV such a force in the entertainment world in recent years, many TV news personalities did not begin their careers as “real journalists” working for newspapers and other print media.

Never before had I spent money on a vehicle to get fixed and felt good about it. That is, until now. I think this is maybe because my Honda was always a piece of crap to me. Don’t get me wrong, I loved that car, but I bet if I added all the time up I had it in the shop, or broken down, or doing something else undesirable, and then divided it by the amount of time I actually owned it, I was without a decent ride nearly 80% of the time I owned my little accord.

My Jeep is a different story. I have spent a lot of money on it. It is the first ride I have had that didn’t need work done to it just to make it operate after buying it.

My Jeep has been leaking coolant for the last couple of months, but it was never a major thing until the last week. Before, I could fill the reservoir tank and go a couple of weeks before I would need to refill the tank again. Last week I had to refill it every 5 to 10 miles. Thursday it was at its worst. I took it to the shop, found out where the leak was, refilled the tank, drove to NAPA auto parts and it was telling me it was low already. Filled up at NAPA and before I made it back to the shop it was screaming at me again for the same reason.

Replaced the water pump and the serpentine belt at the same time and I feel so proud of my ride. It is strange how that is. But now I think all of this love for my ride needs to be exercised by detailing it sometime tomorrow. This way I will feel great about my ride without pissing the passengers off too.

For the last couple of weeks I have been doing some more work on my website. Mostly behind the scenes work on the code to make it more efficient. Because of this, and some slowness on LJ I have thought about adding Movable Type to my website and looking for a client, or if I have to, code a client that will allow me to both post to LJ and my website. I want to be able to use PHP on my site to allow more interaction be alas, my hosting service does’t have that as an option. When my subscription is up with them I think i will move on to another host on the conditions that they allow PHP, aren’t slow, and don’t cost a pretty penny every month. Those of you with suggestions should leave them here, or email them to me.

While on the subject of websites, I have been revamping the design of mine, but haven’t quite finished it enough to publish it. I am now on the process of making a nice menu system, possibly from Flash, but don’t have any good ideas, anybody know of a good layout already out there? Something that looks catchy and fun, but not tacky?

So the Hurricane came through Old Cloverdale as well as the rest of Montgomery and Alabama. Winds were rough, and the rain was hard. Tree branches came down to the ground in our back yard, and across the street, amazingly enough, it didn’t touch our house. The Jeep and Civic are in good shape, and everything looks good at this point.

As you can see, my power is back on. It went off at around 7:00am this morning, came back on around 2:30pm this afternoon. The cable came back on about an hour later, and I will be damned if I don’t make this update. Ivan, you were a pussy. I know of sunday afternoon pop up showers that packed more punch than you. Shit.

Still have power, I am impressed. The Tornado Sirens woke me up about half an hour ago, and the winds keep getting worse at this point. Currently, the winds are almost steadily around tropical storm forced winds. It is going to continue at this intensity or worse all the way through tomorrow at 1 or 2 pm I am sure.

I am going to get back to the overly-intense around the clock news coverage. Maybe I will break out the PBR soon.

This may be the last update for a little while. I will try to do so later, but I don’t know how long the power is going to remain on. I know I just ended the previous sentence in a preposition, but what the hell, this hurricane shit is fun. As it is right now, the winds have started to pick up, the rain is coming and going and my spirits are high. I have all the essentials. Flash lights, batteries, junk food, and plenty of beer and liquor to ride out the storm.

Other than acting as IT/Cheif Meteorologist at work, nothing special happened. I still don’t know if I will have to work tomorrow, but they have set a phone line for us to call in starting at 6:30 in the AM to find out. My guess is no, but with all of the money grubbing debt collectors out there, we just may have to. IF I still have power then, I will let you know.

I started work today quite early, 7am to be exact. Much earlier than my normal 1pm start time, but at the same time, much needed. I was able to get a bunch of stuff done after work, when normally I don’t feel I have that kind of time. Wednesday is probably going to come as a shock to me starting work back at 1pm, but I am going to enjoy these two days while they last. Damn, only one more to go, better make the most of it.

I had a lot of fun this weekend. Saturday inparticular was much more than I expected. The Auburn game came on at 11:30am that day, and the previous night I had invited a few people over to watch the game and have some food. I knew Bret would show up, basicly because he is the only other person that actually watches football (or so I knew). Turns out Richard, Chris, John Woolf also enjoyed a little football (or was it all for the food). Anyway, that made my day, well, that and Auburn kicked Mississippi State’s ASS!

Later that day, we all chipped in to help Collette move her heaviest belongings. Then it was off to watch Alabama destroy Ole Miss at Cat’s house. Fun. This must become tradition. Quickly.

Went to fox and hound tonight to meet Bret, Joseph, Earl, Richard, Cody, and somebody I haven’t seen since high school, Amy Little. Had a good time talking about current events, music, football and the such. I hope to see most of them again tomorrow night at the eight.

In other news, I downloaded AudioScrobbler. This is the coolest little app I have seen in a while, and I highly reccomend all of you go and download it for your music player of choice (except musicmatch) right this instant. Here is the breakdown, and why you should download it, and let me know what username you have picked…

Once you have downloaded a plugin for your player, and sign up to the site, it will record every song you play, and then report it to audioscrobbler.com. From there, once you have accumulated enough played songs, it will tell you what your most played songs are, and then give you suggestions as to other music you would like. If you have friends that also have AudioScrobbler (which is why I said you should tell me about it once you have done this) you can see what songs that have played, what theri most popular artists and songs are, and what music you have in common. Kind of like a friendster based on music alone.

I know it is far fetched for my friends to go out on a limb and download something I am tell them about, but if you do download one app I tell you about, let this be the one. Great features, doesn’t cost a dime. Not only that, but they support every major OS (mac, linux, and yes even windows) and almost every player. If you have an iPod, you already have a compatible player (iTunes).

Enough of my rambling tonight. Go to AudioScrobbler.com now!

The funniest line was said tonight on Conan when he was interviewing Bill Maher. O’Brian and Maher were talking about the swift boat ads against John Kerry and mentioning how it was a new low for political campaigns. Bill Maher said it does not matter what they bring up because Kerry actually served in Vietnam and was shot. He deserved his medals, and the swift boat ads should not be as big of a deal as people are making them because while Kerry was serving his country, Bush was in rehab. And I leave you with this quote from tonight.

“[Kerry] could have turned his medals into roach clips and smoked pot with Ho Chi Minh, and he would still look better than  the other guy”  -Bill Maher