So, where have I been? Uh... discovering torrents. 8-)
My massive old CRT monitor began its slow and painful death immediately after the above happened. Coincidence? Maaybe. Mom offered to buy me a replacement (a shiny LCD which takes up perhaps 30% of the space as the old - technology is bliss!) as an "early birthday gift." Those three words were the worst thing she could have possibly said to me because suddenly I see potental "early birthday gifts" to myself everywhere. I've bought Hot Fuzz on DVD (R2, of course), Vic Reeves' book, a Vera Bradley Bowler bag - half price and in my favorite discontinued colorway, 5 sets of Brittany Birch knitting needles (love them!) to complete my set, a Harry Potter pattern book, and I have every intention of buying a swift closer to b-day. Plus, thanks to my newfound hobby, I'm eyeing a DVD burner and Divx DVD player. LOL. This must stop!
In less illegal and more ironic news, a month ago the landlord surprised me with a beautiful new (to me) mattress and box springs to replace the old squeeky one. The new set is considerably lighter than the old, but still, less than a week later the bed frame (which, solid American construction notwithstanding, had a good 20 years on me) crashed! In the landlord's usual slow-poke ways, a replacement has yet to come so I'm sleeping with the mattress on the floor for now. *sigh* I really hope the apartment is mouse-free at the moment...
Inspired by Crissy and Markie, I've started up my own Tumblr, and I must say I'm really digging it. Ever since I started up the knitting blog, this one has gotten less and less of my time. (Though the knitblog has recently been crying for attention too.) Most of the things I've wanted to blog (links, pictures, YouTube vids) didn't seem enough for a full blog entry, and that is exactly the type of content for which Tumblr excells. For those who may miss the old movie blog, I've started doing mini (very mini) reviews again. It'll also be connect to my Flickr account.. as soon as I photograph anything that doesn't involve yarn. I'm sorely tempted to switch to Tumblr full time. I just wish it had comments. Edit: I got Haloscan comments working!
I'm on DSL day 4 now, so I'm getting used to it but there is still some, well, I guess it's culture shock. In all my years on dial-up, I adapted to its limitations in certain ways. Automatic image loading and browser plugins (think Flash) were always turned off until specifically needed. When reading bulletin boards I'd open threads on different tabs so they'd be downloaded by the time I got to them. Whenever I paused to read e-mail, write a blog entry, or go to the kitchen for a snack, I made sure to have something downloading in the background - whether it be usenet headers or a bunch of graphics-heavy knitting blogs...
<takes a big breath>
It feels so incredibly odd not to have to act that way any more.
So, I had to call Bellsouth AT&T DSL support this morning - something I very rarely do. I hate telephones so much that I'd usually rather slog through on my own until I figure it out, no help needed thankyouverymuch, but I was desperate today. Shockingly, it went well. The guy knew his stuff, and I could understand his accent well enough. However, that doesn't change the fact that it was a simple problem that shouldn't have required a support call to fix. I had changed my account password away from the default via web (as they instruct you to do in the intro packet) but didn't have a clue* how to update it on my end. The solution was super simple and would have definitely been covered in the modem manual, but of course Bellsouth AT&T didn't provide one of those, just an shiny welcome guide full of nice fonts and pictures of smiling DSL users**. Personally, I'd rather take a solid, if dull, ink and paper user manual over online databases (rather useless if your DSL isn't working!) or overseas call center workers, but I suppose I'm in the minority..
--
*Usually I also prefer to install stuff on my own instead of using handy guided CD-ROMs, but this was one computer topic that I will own to complete ignorance of. At Christmas I tried to 'help' my uncle fix his wireless network and made a complete mess of it.
**One photo shows a family of three - one of which is a child - all gathered in the living room, each working at their own laptop. The family that computes together stays together, I suppose.
The last time I spoke to my father he mentioned he'd lately bought Nelly Furtado and Christina Aguilera's latest CDs. Meanwhile, my mother has taken up an interest in Justin Timberlake and Hinder. And me? My current musical interest is... the Beatles. (The Easter Bunny brought me two Beatle CDs. :-)) Also The Feeling (very mellow - reminds me of Travis) but mainly Beatles. How strange it is when your parents are more current with the music scene than you are!
Actually, though, one great use of TiVo I've found is to record MTV or VH1 early in the morning (i.e. about the only time they still show videos) and then fast-forward until a good one comes on. It's a tedious process with little success (VH1 has about a dozen videos it's very, very fond of that repeat continually. Jump Start lasts 4 hours every weekday, and by the end some videos have been shown 3x) but it works for me since I don't listen to radio.
http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/
Download Speed: 1325 kbps (165.6 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 215 kbps (26.9 KB/sec transfer rate)
Eee... We have DSL, baby!!! I no longer have to fear graphics-heavy sites, Flash, or big downloads!
Next up will be getting a hub or switch so I can network the TiVo for Unbox. Hehe.
If you need to reach me, I'll be at YouTube or Netflix's Watch Now for at least the next few days. ;-)
The new University of Kentucky basketball coach is... Billy Gillispie, former coach of Texas A&M. Yeah, I've never heard of him either.
This past few weeks has been a strange trip for UK fans. Rumors came from various quarters that Billy Donovan and wife had been touring the Bluegrass last week (like he didn't have anything better to do such as, oh, prepare for the Final Four!), that they'd been house hunting in the area (why the rush? - did they expect to be chased out of Florida with pitchforks as soon as the announcement was made?), and that they were going to live on a horse farm, of all things. (Everyone knows that all Kentuckians live on horse farms, just like all Irishmen live in thatched roof cottages.) On the flip side, there was a particularly ridiculous rumor that Donovan didn't want to take the job because he'd have to play his former boss, Rick Pitino, every year. *snort* I didn't believe a word of it. There was no reason why he'd want to leave Florida; a respectable, winning program with money and sunshine - what more could you want?
I have to say though that I really didn't care who the new coach would be. My one and only choice was Pitino, and there'd be no way he'd admit he made a mistake in leaving back in 1997. The strangest coincidence in all of this is that it was Gillispie (Tubby Smith's successor) who ousted Pitino (Tubby's predecessor) from this year's tournament - and on UK's home floor, no less. Weird, huh?
Warning: If you don't knit or crochet or etc., stop reading now or you'll just think me silly. :-)
We're getting a Hobby Lobby! A new store is going to open in Nicholasville (i.e. Lexington) sometime in 2007. Yay!!! I hear they have a good selection of dishcloth yarn colors. ;-)
So Lexington has a Joann, 2 Michaels, (2?) Hancock Fabrics, 2 Meijer (strictly speaking, not a craft store but their yarn section is just as good as the others), and now a Hobby Lobby. Oh, and at least three 'proper' yarn stores (two of which I've ever been to *sigh*). All we lack now is an A.C. Moore. Heheh.
Edit: Found a video of Teller talking on YouTube. It isn't the fact that he talks that strikes me so strangely, it's the heavy Philly accent. ;-)
A 2-hour special about Harry Houdini was replayed on the History Channel recently, and while the show itself was very informative (the first adult biography I read was on Houdini and I've been a 'fan' ever since) the thing I was most struck by was that one of the interviewees was Teller - you know, the (usually) silent one from Penn & Teller. But in this case he was heard (and at some length!) but not seen - his face was left in shadow. It's funny how such a simple thing as that can be unnerving. I see that Wikipedia even has a list of occurrences when Teller has spoken in public. Heheh.
Don't you just love a good showbiz gimmick? :-)
Entertainment Weekly spotted Robbie Williams at a taping of Dancing with the Stars and had the smarts to grab him for an interview. Here's an excerpt:
EW: You're not releasing your latest album,Let's Swing Again,in the US. Why?
RW: I decided about four albums ago that I like living here. I get to be Batman by day. I've gotten to the point where I'm famous enough to enjoy my celebrity and do fun stuff without all the crap that goes with it. And it would be insane to invite what I have in the rest of the world into this country, so I'm not gonna bother promoting or releasing records here.
Emphasis mine. It's not much of a surprise, really. Robbie's CDs and DVDs have always been difficult to find here. But I always assumed we weren't getting the albums because sales weren't there - not because of some arbitrary decision to keep one corner of the globe hype free. Frankly, I'm a little offended by this. This country is good enough to live in, it seems, but meanwhile his fanbase here (small but by no means unimportant) are left to fend for themselves in acquiring his works. Of course, with the Internet this is no big task, but it hurts to be practically the only country in the world not deemed worthy of the new releases.
This is our week for spring cleaning. Yesterday I threw out about 100 old taped-off-TV videos. (The rule of thumb: if it's available on DVD, toss it!) Today it was the bathroom. It's amazing how many different shampoos two women can collect!
While in this mood, I decided that my posters had to go. They were all theatre related (there was an Apollo 11 poster up a few years ago but it kept falling down), and as I haven't bought a cast recording since Thoroughly Modern Millie four years ago, I decided they didn't apply to me anymore. So off came all the Phantoms and David Campbell posters. When searching for poster rolls to stick them in, I can across a Rent poster, bought on tour in 1997, stuck on the back of my dorm room door for a few months, then stashed away soon as my brief love affair with that show ended. I thought of throwing it away, but it's still in pretty good condition so it avoided the first dumpster round. Today, for kicks, I hit eBay to see what it might bring in auction. I found a windowcard (smaller, on thicker stock) of the same design that went for $56. Pretty incredible, I thought, but surely a regular poster would go for less. A little more digging and I found an online store selling the exact poster I have for... $225! Wow... LOL. Frankly, I'd be happy to get $5 for it.
While all this cleaning has been going on, I've been taking stock of things that could be sold online: unwanted yarn, unwatched DVDs, VHSs (do people buy these anymore??), computer parts, every Nora Roberts book from 1992-1996, plays from my month-long period as a theatre major, theatre programmes, and about 150 cast recordings. I've been threatening to sell on eBay for years, but I've always been terrified by the shipping portion. Not even taking into consideration the buying/finding of packing materials, the post office is a 2 mile walk from here - not bad but still not exactly pleasant when carting boxes. Recently one of those eBay drop-off stores opened within sight of my house. That will be nice for large items (perhaps the poster..) but I can't imagine dragging a hundred little items over there. I think I've decided on Half.com for most of the media items. It shouldn't be too hard to stick a CD into a padded envelope. Once I get the hang of that I can branch out to eBay for the Playbills and such. Anyway, that is the plan... Hopefully I'll go through with it this time!
1. If you could suddenly speak one language fluently (that you don't currently speak) what would it be?
I've pretty much come to the conclusion that I'm not meant to speak a foreign language. What I'd really like to learn is how to read lips!
2. If you were to suggest a foreign film, that you really enjoyed, what one would you suggest?
Amélie of course. And L'Appartement... Crimson Rivers (the ending of this one is silly but I forgive it because the mood is mesmerizing up 'til then). Switching to German, there's Run Lola Run and Goodbye, Lenin!. I think that's enough. :)
3. If you had to call another country home (other than the one you currently live in) what one would you choose?
I always say Australia, but probably anywhere with a warm climate would do. We've finally hit Spring-like weather here this week, and it's amazing how much more complete I feel with the sun shining and a breeze coming in the window.
4. If you went out to buy an import music CD, what one would you buy?
Hmm.. I'd like to have a legal copy of the Rain soundtrack from New Zealand.
5. If you were to chose an ethnic dinner, what would it be?
Something I've never had before - like Sushi or Thai. It's funny - I felt worldly this week because I bought flour tortillas for the first time. LOL.
After giving Blockbuster Online two months of my life, when I went to cancel today there was a place for comments. "How can we improve?" it said. "Would you mind taking a minute to explain why you've decided to cancel your account?" So I typed up 5 or 6 sentences (more information about the DVDs on the website and on the disc sleeve; either open a store here or shut up about those free coupons; don't leave me hanging for a week wanting to know how Bleak House ends while you suddenly decide to ship #6 from my queue; etc.) and I got the message in the title of this entry. I had to pare my comments down to 3 compact sentences. So... you want to know but not really, eh, Blockbuster?
How about this for some awesome news: new feature-length productions of Northanger Abbey, Mansfield Park and Persuasion are being prepared for a "Jane Austen Festival" on Masterpiece Theatre this November. As if that weren't enough, there will also be a new miniseries of Sense and Sensibility shown at the same time!
I'm most excited about Northanger Abbey. The only previous version of it is pretty darn bad, not even the presence of faves Peter Firth (with seriously scary hair) and Robert Hardy could make it more palatable.