A remarkable number of people have told me that they are watching 24 this year for the first time.  If you are now four hours into your 24 experience, let me give you a couple of tips.

• Everything is not as it seems.  Now – this might be obvious, but it’s more dramatic with 24.  Unlike some other shows where you get Lost in the story, 24 twists and turns in ways unimaginable later in the season, partly because the writers are only ten shows or so ahead at the beginning of the season.  By Hour 20, they are practically writing in real time, getting themselves trapped in corners, and magically escaping.  So – don’t assume that the next 20 hours will be on the linear course.
• Good people die – regularly.  If you just saw 9am to 10am, you learned that.  It’ll happen again – probably a couple of times.  It always sucks – sometimes it gratuitous, sometimes it’s not.  But – it always surprises you.
• Wherever Jack goes, carnage follows.  Ok – you probably know this already.  Jack has three modes: (1) introspective Jack, (2) screwed up personal life Jack, and (3) mission Jack.  So far on Day 6 we’ve seen 1 and 3 – look forward to some of 2.  Oh – and the carnage is not just physical – it’s often emotional (especially in Jack mode 2.)
• You can get anywhere in LA in 20 minutes.  Don’t struggle with this – after five years of this, we’ve learned to suspend our disbelief.
• Chloe is right.  Don’t ever question that girl.  Believe it or not, she can shoot a gun.
• CTU hasn’t figured out how to turn cell phones to vibrate.  Those damn things ring at such inopportune times.

One big hint that I learned when I spent the day on the 24 set last year was that the show is set “sometime in the future.”  When I watch 24, I think “today + 8 years” to believe all the technical stuff.  When I was on the set, I noticed all the screens showed that they were running OS 34, which was a good giveaway.  If you are a nerd and you have the desire, grab some screen shots of the monitors and zoom in – there’s often interesting stuff there.

I’ve been watching 24 since Day 1 – Hour 1.  I don’t know why I watched the first show.  I’m a pacifist and not much of a TV watcher, but I vaguely remember being intrigued with the idea of a real time show.  I was hooked from the beginning.  With the hype around Day 6 I speculated that the show had peaked.  However, after just sitting through 8am – 10am on the airplane to New York, the claws of 24 are once again in my brain. 

One last tip – if you are questioning why you are watching it, give it a few more weeks.  Historically, 24 gets really good around Hour 15.  Only 166 hours until next week’s show.

On the eve of 24 Day 6, I decided to read the most recent 24 novel – Declassified: Cat’s Claw.  It was the best one yet and is great brain candy if you are a 24 fan.  It happens way in the past – back when Chris Henderson is running CTU and before Jack and Teri split up.  Kim’s a little younger, but still the same old Kim and gets into some serious trouble that she’s not even aware of from beginning to end.  Yum.

For all you 24 junkies out there, we are within 45 days of the beginning of Day 6.  Prequel’s are starting to show up.  Make your reservations now for a TV near you on January 14th and 15th.

The Season 6 Trailer is up.  Jack is “almost” back.

Do you need a 24 fix? 

Ok – it’s a spoof – but admit it – that was fun.

Yes – admit it – you miss 24 also.  Don’t worry – January 20007 isn’t that far away.  In the mean time, Doug Mitchell sent me a link to a blog he wrote about his search for the CTU Ring Tone.  Fortunately he links through to a few instances of it.  I’ve had it on my Cisco phones for months and I always get a grin on my face whenever my phone rings.

I returned home to Boulder today to a stack of books I’d ordered in the spring about the TV show 24.  There are a pile of them out now – some are additional episodes in print such as 24 Declassified: Operation Hell Gate while others are critical analysis of various seasons.  As I laid on my couch trying to recover from the red eye from Anchorage while simultaneously adjusting to being at 6000 feet, I had a thoroughly enjoyable time reading A Day In The Life.  Keith Topping – a british writer – covered Season 1 in great detail along with his often very entertaining wit (e.g. many chapters have a section called “Points at Which [Teri / Kim] Needs a Slap” as well as a section titled “Logic, Let Me Introduce You to This Window.”)  I was beginning to feel a little 24 withdrawal – between A Day In The Life and the other seven books waiting for me, I think I’ll be fine until January.

Amy and I had a delicious lunch with Pierre-Denis Autric at Ristorante Gallo Romano near Notre Dame. Pierre-Denis met me through my blog, dropped me an email inviting me out to lunch, and – well – there you have it.  At lunch, I discovered that Capgemini just started a CTO blog which has an excellent entry on 24 that evolves into an explanation of user interfaces.  It’s delightful to see 24 continuing to be used as a thematic launching point as well as make a new friend over a great lunch.

Amy and I just watched Monday’s 24.  Oooh was it good.  Since I haven’t figured out how to work the TV here in Paris and I’m not sure if / when 24 Season 5 is on over here anyway, I had to do some work to watch things.

I started of trying my Slingbox, which I love.  However, when I fired it up to watch 24, I got the following message from my Tivo.

Yup – my Tivo crashed.  We installed a new bitching Sonos system for our music a few weeks ago and I got this crash one other time – I guess the Sonos hardware is kicking off too much heat.  Since we’ve been gone since Sunday, I have no idea when this happened, but I decided to assume that it crashed before Monday and subsequently didn’t record 24.  Plus, I was tired of waiting to watch 24 – I needed to watch it tonight.

Since I’m already paying for getting Fox via my DirecTV account, and since I’m a complete 24 addict, I decided that it’d be hard to accuse me of stealing a TV show if I simply downloaded it to watch on my laptop (although I’m sure someone could try – if someone from Fox wants my $1.99, go ahead and email me.)  Apparently, I can now download these for $1.99 from the iTunes Music Store, but I’ve heard rumors that the quality and DRM experience stinks. So, 380mb (and about a half hour) later we sat down in front of my laptop and enjoyed a delicious 44 minutes of 24. 

After a grueling week on the road (I started in Boulder and got to see the ocean off of both coasts and then ended up in Boulder), I just returned to my office at the end of the day to see a copy of 24: The Game running on the PlayStation 2 in my conference room.  In the words of Jack Bauer, “Damnit.”