Campus Cable

I just moved into Western's campus apartments a few weeks ago, and I'm just starting to get used to life in a new place. Life in WMU apartments has a few differences from life in normal dwellings. One such difference is the fact that I now have different television stations from the rest of Kalamazoo. I have what they call Edu-Cable, complete with Asian, Russian, and Bollywood channels. It's not a new thing. I had Edu-Cable when I lived on campus a couple of years ago. And this will not be news to many Western students.

I no longer have the Sci Fi Channel which, quite honestly, is not much of a sacrifice. The only thing worth watching there is Battlestar Galactica, but I'll probably be too busy to watch it on TV and will probably end up downloading the episodes anyway.

But something I noticed that I found rather peculiar is the fact that they have a different Weather Channel for college students. As I was getting around for work one morning, I was expecting to find the usual pleasant colorful palette of greenish-blue that the Weather Channel normally uses to hue its local on the 8's. Instead, I found an ugly mix of blue and orange backing a very rough looking display of graphics. Why the different color scheme? Well, it's the college version of the Weather Channel, of course! I don't really get this. Isn't the weather the same for everyone? Why have a different version for WMU? Perhaps there's a really good reason for this, but I don't see it. I'm being nit-picky, but it bothers me.

That being said. I now have a channel that I didn't have before: NASA TV. That's right, baby. For the last couple of days, I've been able to monitor the progress of the International Space Station and Endeavor in orbit and fully embrace the geek side of myself. I love it because they don't dumb stuff down for you. Most of the time, you're just peeking in on NASA missions and watching their live feeds. There are some stunning visuals too. I could just sit and watch the ISS's view of Earth for hours.

I like the live WMU cam too.