Farewell Computer….

I need a night away from the machine, it has been a long day with computers, and while I would love to continue looking at apartments online, the bottom line is, I need air tonight. I have 2 movies from Netflix, and a pizza on the way, so I am going to unwind in the living room and think happy thoughts (or mildly happy thoughts).

I leave you with the following YouTube Flick:

Happy Fake Friday!

Postal Mail is still Good!

Today I got a note from the IRS, it was announcing to me that my stimulus check would be in by 6/20! So this month I get $300 of unexpected, tax-free funds from ol uncle sam - so what to get, what to get… if other outstanding invoices come in too, I’ll have a good chunk of money, but no where near getting myself a Mac Pro - but maybe enough for a camera lens, or a big chunk of a new camera body…. oh so many choices.

Just woke up from a nap with the cat, it’s still nearly 100F, but thankfully the humidity has come down since I laid down for a nap, so it’s liveable, but the big question is… what’s for dinner? Maybe get a nice $300 dinner? lol

Blockbuster Gone Wild!

Well I switched to Netflix because of the ever-raising prices of Blockbuster Online - I remember beta testing their service, and once it was live their offered me the same low rates from the test, then $2 more, then $4 more, to where now the service I was once getting is $35 a month. compared to the $20 I was spending … so needless to say to avoid the trip to Blockbuster to exchange rentals, I switched back to Netflix.

Today in a rut for a movie since Cloverfield was on its way, but I wanted to check out Jumper and the usual bargain racks of 2 for $20, or 4 for $20 were out, I decided to poke around, snagged Jumper, and noticed signs everywhere “$2 a day!” which made me finally find a display that explained the changes and I think it was wise for their brick and mortar stores.

The plan as is such, its $2 a day for new releases, granted the whole “END OF LATE FEES” bit was nice, but it meant up to 9 days on average for a turn-around on a customer returning a DVD, I mean why make the trip the next day if you didn’t have to… right? Well that meant continually low stock, upset customers, etc. (unless of course you were the lucky guy/gal who got the movie for 9 days - but this $2 plan changes that, you can keep the film as LONG as you want for $2 per day, but for a movie watcher like me, who is going to simply watch the film this evening, it’s perfect, its no longer $4.95 a rental for 2 days of watching, it’s $2 for a day, and it’s due back by midnight the following day, so perfect, I can return it after Church, no worries.

I can understand Blockbuster in this, you have to remember say 10 years ago the idea of renting movies online, and I am not talking about Netflix sending you a disk, I am saying Amazon Unbox, Hulu, Vongo, iTunes, etc. there are many ways to buy/rent films online now, why even bother leaving your home? Just use your 2Mb+ connection and download a 2GB flick that’s DVD quality, and watch it on your big tv screen - and that’s exactly what most folks do, with Netflix they are at least offering DVD + Online Watching, so quick and easy indeed.

Blockbuster is sadly going to be on it’s way out of the brick and mortar stores I am willing to bet, with Kiosks poping up around town (at least here) to rent new releases, it’s going to make people rent from their less and less, but at least with this option they are giving folks a chance to get the 1 night rental, wham-bam-thank-you-ma’m and only be out $2, even 10 x 1 night rentals would be $20 a month, that’s cheaper than a fair sized plan on Netflix/BlockBuster online AND cheaper than going to the movies for 2, so I hope it works for them - but I fear it may be too little too late.

Anywhoo that’s my rant for the afternoon, I am off to eat my sourpatch kids and watch Jumper, and try not to realize it’s nearly 100F if not going to be more

Insurance Galore!

So I got home roughly around 10pm tonight, quite a day, but a big chunk of it was hanging at Scott’s after work and enjoying a meal, some games, and good conversation so not much to complain about

I did meet with the insurance lady, it was nice, got some paper work, still going over the bulk of the details, but I didn’t know my employer covers ALL health insurance costs! Yowza! Very nice indeed, only things are optional bits which I am going to sign-up for, mainly Life Insurance ($8 a month), Vision ($8.50 a month), and Dental ($10), so not too shabby at all, going to be nice to have some steady insurance again, might even go in and have them check to make sure I have a brain, or on a serious note get a check up on my liver and see how it’s doing (previously it was over-working) - but nice to know the ability is there if I need it.

Got the bucket list on my Netflix, so I am going to wrap it up here and go zone out and watch it, nice end to a day, I enjoy Morgan Freeman, one of my favorite actors - not just his acting ability, but the man has an amazing voice! He could read the ingredients from a cereal box, and I’d be glued to his every word.

Anywhoo that’s it for me, oh and if this worked as it “should” this should cross-post to Xanga so folks who still for whatever reason follow me there will get to see what’s happening. Night folks!

Update: Looks like a no-go for Xanga… oh well, it was worth a try! Or it does, sadly looks like only if I post from the Wordpress Web End, no XML-RPC posting hrmm.. we’ll see folks.

Cameras, Money, Time, Health, Sleep… aka Monday!

So here we are at the start of a new week - busy, lots of planning ahead, I have appointments tomorrow afternoon as well as Friday, so I imagine the rest of the week will fill in soon - or at least it usually tends to - but I have a meeting on Friday about basically virtualizing all of the desktops which has me torn really, as I love the concept, but the single point of failure could mean a LOT of downtime in “theory” but if the sever is built properly, there should be no issue at all…. but I’ll find out more solid details Friday what these guys have in mind.

The billing issue seems to be getting there, I had hoped it’d resolve today, and I got the apologetic call, some explanation, but I think the payment idea I suggested is going to work, half in the first of the month, other half in the middle - so more or less the same as my work pay system, so not too shabby in the least, going to swing by there after work and pick up a check, and discuss some other things quickly, but hopefully it’s all good - and we can get a game plan going.

Lastly, I feel drained today, just really really tired, which is making me wonder should I go and rest, or goto pancakes & games @ Scott’s here after the meeting, but I am down for bringing OJ, but at the same time I think they’d understand …. if not I know they’ll come for me in the night and I’ll never be seen again…. all due to OJ…. sweet, tasty Florida Orange Juice.

Anywhoo - I am off, getting backups packed up, VM is lagging a bit, not unusual, I think that copy of XP has a leak in it somewhere - but going to get it offsite, shutdown, and off to downtown - so take care all, more later I’m sure!

A week… yowza!

So what a week, sick one day, feeling slowly but surely better again after my brush with heat stroke from Friday, after 28+ power blinks aka power goes on, power goes off, power goes on, etc. you get the idea - the week was going great, got in on Friday and the day started with something coming up right away - Cougar had some locked files and RT errors, so we needed a reboot, not a HUGE deal, happens now and again with strange files held open for no reason. So rebooted, and no issues for most of the morning.

The day went on as any other day, worked on code, looked at stuff, talked to Tiger Direct who wants business, and may get some - but just looked things over then blink 1, around 11:30am the power went out, nothing long-term, but a good minute or so and just as I was getting ready to head towards the server for a clean shutdown (it’s on battery backup) the power came back up - well I think it was a grid issue, with the heat already growing past 100F in some areas, it was getting hot, and my thought is restaurants were cooling things off for hungry folks coming in for lunch, so the power continued to blink from about 11:30am->1:30pm - and it got hot, and I didn’t get to have lunch till about 2:30pm - so a hard long day, but after fixing some issues with the server (for some reason it was setup by the last guy on DHCP! had to re-code IP’s in places) - I finally had the sales gals snag me some grub, and I got to sit, relax, eat - but I think the heat damage was already done.

The day ended nice though, got to share a lovely dinner @ the poon’s and hang out for a while, then it was to home to pass out, I was woken up early 6:59am on a Saturday… to find myself dead tired, but being txt’d which could be any number of things - however it was Rosie sending me a reminder of her Wedding today, but I felt like crap, so I passed back out again, and woke up around 11ish feeling bad, and the reason I think was my sinuses were completely dried out - thus I had a nose bleed or two, so I snagged some food, cleaned up, and took the day easy, including some sleep, some light chatting, and some more sleep, thus missing Rosie’s wedding.

What a day what a day. I have been drinking fluids like a madman, I just got out of a cold bath dropping my core temp down quite a bit, but I am about to go for my 3rd big glass of water, and find some food, the joys of life, makes me want to take another nap for now I’ll just go find some grub and veg a bit. Night folks.

T-Mobile iPhone

So I may have a new phone, and by that I have 14 days to give the iPhone a drive, of course now that it’s out of the box, it’s $40 less back, but at the same time, $40 for a test drive of a internet device, not bad - I know previously I have bad-mouthed the iPhone, and I still have my reservations about it’s abilities and such, but all in all it’s not a bad device thus far, having some hands on time with it at the store, I then took a 3 1/2 hour side-trip to Dan’s for game night.

Can’t say I had a lot of “iPhone Fever” everyone else had rushing home to get it running, it’s a test, and to me that’s not something to be rushed, especially when $400+ is on the line, this device has to have it’s tires kicked, and I have to make sure 100% it fit’s my needs, but so far the “unlock” process went very smooth - had to get 3 files, patched, and good to go - currently it even reads “T-Mobile” at the top, but even on that end I am not 100% sure I’ll be loyal to T-Mobile.

AT&T has some decent offerings, even going to borrow an AT&T SIM and give it a whirl, I have one, but it isn’t activated, but honestly it’s looking good right now, at around $85 a month roughly (which is the price in my mind after taxes/fees) it’s a pretty sweet deal, and where I have 5 favs now, I’d get roll-over minutes in return, so I may switch to Death Star, not 100% sure yet.

I’ll post my unboxing as well as some more thoughts in the days to come, for now I just want to give this thing some test runs… so it’s of to sync some movies, and browse the features/functions. More later.