Two Things

1) My Cable company, Charter, dropped the NFL Network mid-December with no warning. I have written to the VP of programming:

I have been a Charter subscriber for over five years.

In December of 2005, with no warning, the NFL Network was no longer being carried on Charter. After 3 days of waiting, thinking perhaps there had been some sort of issue with the feed; I called and was told that the NFL Network had told Charter to stop carrying the channels. I then cancelled my Sports Tier, since the only reason I had it was for the NFL Network. Frankly, the content on the Sports tier is substandard, and not worth the price. I would suspect that this is why the number of subscribers to this tier had been so low and probably lower at this point.

The NFL season will soon be upon us again, and this year the NFL Network will begin broadcasting games. I intend to watch those games on my new HDTV, and I hope that I can continue my relationship with Charter. If I have to, I will move to FIOS (soon to be available in my neighborhood) or DISH, or DirecTV. My preference is to stay with Charter for TV, and Internet. I guess that is really a decision left in Charters hands.

Please let me purchase the NFL Network again.

I received a very condescending e-mail back saying they understand my passion for the NFL, and I may find it hard to believe that others do not share that same passion, and do not want to pay for the NFL Network. Charter says they will only put NFL Network on the Sports Tier, and NFL Network does not want that.

I am thinking of writing back that there are any number of channels that they are forcing me to pay for in order to get the few channels I actually do want. (MTV comes to mind as does Lifetime and Oxygen). On my Charter 'Big Value' they carry NESN, which carries all of the Boston Red Sox games. While I love the Red Sox, I am quite sure that not all others love the Red Sox, and do not want to pay for NESN, yet they have to.

2) Cole - The kid is very physical. Not in a bad way. Its not like he is fighting with his brother, he is just physical in the sense that he is always jaming his body into tight spaces, running, dancing a jig, or just contoring his body to reach his objective. While Jordan will sit back and think about a problem, Cole just attacks it head on, yet he is very logical in the attack. If he tries something, and it does not work, he tries something else. It is fascinating to watch.