Second Impression (and Ramblings)

Bionic Woman is definitely a must watch.  I love that the people behind the bionics are - supposedly - not a government agency.  A shame it’s on opposite Kitchen Nightmares, which is ultimately a business show, and not remotely a cooking show as some might imagine it would be.  Nor should that be surprising to viewers of Hell’s Kitchen, which is as much about finding restaurant management talent as it is about cooking ability.  Not many business shows on TV.

If anything, Kitchen Nightmares has fallen into a pattern where it tends to come down to one person in particular (besides the owner who allowed it to happen) being the problem.  At least Mike, last night’s gaping wound, had certain skills that could make him ideal in that job, and a good compliment to the owner’s more introverted nature.

What made me cringe was the ways in which it reminded me of the business I’ve been in the process of closing down.  Which, I suppose, is why the whole eleven-odd years is worth a book about what happened and what not to do.  I haven’t gotten back to working on that yet, but after some thought I think the very beginning should be the conversation between me and one of the remaining partners, in which he noted that we needed a managing partner with authority, but that one former partner, both the key to what success we had and perhaps the biggest problem, would have left promptly had we done that… but then, he left anyway.  Absolutely right, and not the first time it’s come up.  Even the guy we spoke of thought so, except he thought it should be him, but he was utterly inappropriate to the task.  At least I think the remaining partner who was opining never saw himself as the one to be in charge.  His part of the story was not being unhelpful, but hanging back and basically waiting to walk into a risk-free, well-paying job that others of us would have built things up enough to create for him.  Your basic thirty years as a loyal cog in the same company personality in a world where that’s obsolete and in a position of particular risk and need to be aggressive.

Anyway, way off topic here.  I mainly wanted to talk up Bionic Woman.  We didn’t watch the 8:00 sitcoms, and saved Top Model for Sunday, when it rebroadcasts.  We cleaned instead.  I had cleaned the kid’s room and we rearranged furniture and moved their desk into the room.  We actually managed to fit the desk, two chairs, crib, bureau, Sadie’s big bed, love seat, and two boxes of toys, but I tossed a bunch of things into the living room, making it even worse.  Then I did the kitchen, aided by Deb, and she did the living room, aided by me.

I just need to get computers for them at their desk.  Not sure if I will give them exactly the same ones.  The one that Sadie has been using is really better and newer than I had in mind for them.  The other one is in rough shape, with the CMOS battery holder broken, so I might do a drive transplant into a Pentium and call the 486 junk.  Being a DOS install, it should take the transfer fine.  On the other hand, I might want to give them both Windows 9x machines and transfer the DOS games and keybangers to both, maybe make sure at least one has sound and can play Magic Schoolbus.  We’ll see, but it’ll be so nice to have the kitchen table back.  Eating in the living room is a bit unstructured for them, even if they do sometimes eat better because they are watching TV.

1. Yes, the Bionic Woman is clearly the best new show on network TV.  But then Heroes is the only real competition on network TV.

   Posted by Dave  on  10/05  at  11:34 AM  from  Indy
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