Results tagged “geek”

Photo from theshanghaieye

A few weeks ago it came to our attention that what appeared to be a large price tag-shaped sign was affixed to the front of a building under construction across the street from Zhongshan Park. The sign was under wraps, but the shape alone was enough to conjure up images of Best Buy and many high school hours spent searching in vain for movies and music that they don't keep in stock. Now despite the fact that Zhongshan Park already has a Gome, Yolo, Suning, and a host of other crappy electronics stores, we couldn't help but get a little nostalgic for the good old days, when buying a print cartridge just meant you had to pick up the box and take it to the register. No red stamps, no getting an attendant to take it out from behind bullet-proof glass, and no waiting around for someone to go find the 'real' product after you've paid and shown your stamp to the requisite three to ten people.

Austinist makes it easy for us, with Candidate on a Civic Building, Blank on a Blank, and Penguins on a Freeway (warning: sad).

We suppose this is what we should expect from an illegal hookup. Why illegal? Because there is no legal alternative. Believe us, we'd be the first in line to sign up for a reliable and legit satellite dish, if one existed. But it doesn't. We use Dream satellite TV out of the Philippines, only they don't know about it. It's the same service most people use here, we think. Last summer, tired of Chinese historical dramas and infomericals, we finally called one of the numbers on one of the hundreds of satellite fliers that overflowed from our mailbox, a husband and wife team showed up at our apartment, and she held on to his belt while he risked his life installing the satellite outside out our 13th floor window. We paid around RMB 1,600 -- a one-time fee, they said. They warned us that sometimes service would would go out -- the company in the Philippines, knowing that thousands (millions?) of people in China are using their service for free, will occasionally re-scramble their codes (or something like that) -- but that wouldn't be a problem, because all they need to do is get us a newly coded card to put in our box. They would do that free of charge, and the most we'd be left without satellite service would be a couple days. Two hundred bucks for lifetime satellite TV? With nothing more to pay ... ever? Life was good. Fifty-two channels (Dream 890 is the plan we appear to have) ... most of them in English. We even had a soft-core porn channel that seemed to be on an endless loop of tantric sex how-to videos and B-movies starring Kari Wuhrer (that channel has since been discontinued).