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I saw the last episode of Rome last night. It was a great, although sad, end to a great show. The 2 seasons of the show were comprised of 22 episodes. It was decided due to budgetary concerns before this season started that this would be the last one. Since it is based on historical events, I suppose they would have eventually run out of stories to tell. I like the idea of a show lasting for a short period of time and going out while at its peak quality instead of dragging on forever. Besides, I have too many shows that I’m trying to keep up with. That being said, the second season of Rome was the reason that I subscribed to HBO and I hate that it is no more. Be sure to watch the DVDs.

Netflix recently introduced a “Watch Now” feature that allows you to watch movies on your computer. It was only available to a limited number of customers in the beginning. I noticed last night that I can now use this new feature. It doesn’t cost anything extra to use.

I’ve read that watching movies on your computer is going to be the way to go in the future. Throughout 1999 and most of 2000, my computer was the only DVD player I had at the time and I didn’t mind watching DVDs that way. I don’t mind watching stuff on my computer from time to time. If I miss show I sometimes watch it on the network’s website or download it from iTunes. For the most part, however, I prefer to watch movies and TV shows on my TV.

That being said, I’m sure I’ll make use of Watch Now. The selection is limited right now, but I’m sure it’ll grow. Only 5 movies of the 160+ in my queue are , but I’m sure I’ll find other stuff that I may not have thought of to watch yet or stuff that I know I want to see but haven’t added to my queue yet. For example, I keep hearing that Red Dwarf is a great sci-fi show. I checked and all 8 seasons are available to be watched online. There are only 6 or 8 thirty-minute episodes in each season so they should go by quickly.

I’ll try watching something this weekend and write more about it once I’ve had a chance to try it out a few times.

Tonight I finished watching the second season of Alias. My sister and brother-in-law liked this show and I had heard good things about it. I watched the first season recently and now I was ready for the second season.

I started out not liking the season much. I was getting annoyed with all the stuff dealing with Sydney’s mother. How many times did they have to go to her because they needed information and had no other choice? Once I got past the first few episodes, I didn’t want to stop watching. A major milestone happened that I didn’t think would happen until much later in the series, but the show doesn’t feel old.

Don’t watch the previews for the second season that play at the beginning of the first disc. I think they gave too much away. I already have the discs, so they didn’t need to convince me to watch it. Since I read a lot of entertainment news so I hear about major events on TV shows that I don’t watch. I had already heard about the surprise revelation at the end of the season finale back when the show was still on TV even though I didn’t know exactly what point during the show’s five seasons it occurred. It seemed like a big event on the show and a surprising plot twist. However, I had completely forgotten about that until they mentioned it in the previews. It would have been a fresh surprise when I got to that part, but I was expecting it the whole time I was watching this season.

It was a great season and I’m looking forward to watching season three sometime soon. I almost picked it up when I returned season two to Blockbuster, but I decided to wait a little while.

Sci Fi Channel will be airing a marathon of The Dresden Files on Wednesday, February 28, beginning at 5pm CST. They’ll be replaying all 5 episodes that have aired so far. I recommend giving this show a try if you haven’t already.

Episodes 1 and 2 were really good, but episodes 3 and 4 were much better. I haven’t seen episode 5 yet.

From what I understand Sci Fi has been airing the episodes out of order and I hate that. The episode that was supposed the be the pilot won’t be seen until March. However, you should still be able to follow what’s going on without any problem.

I ended up buying this monitor as a replacement for my CRT that died. It’s fine for what I need it for and I get a rebate if I remember to fill that form out. I seem to be partial to Samsung products these days.

I watched Parenthood the other night at its still good after all this time. My mom was a member of Columbia House (when they had VHS movies) and that was one of the movies she bought. The fact that I still remembered most of it even though I hadn’t seen it in around 15 years means that I must have watched it over and over again. “When you’re slidin’ into first and you feel a sudden burst…”

I finished reading Black House by Stephen King and Peter Straub. It’s the sequel to The Talisman. It’s a much different book than The Talisman. The whole style seems different. A lot of that may be because they were written about 20 years apart. It’s still a great book, however. There’s a lot of Dark Tower goodness that people who were fans of that series will enjoy. **minor spoiler warning** It even had a warning about continuing past a certain point at the end just like book 7 of The Dark Tower. **end spoiler warning**

Speaking of The Dark Tower, I hear that it may also be made into a movie or TV series.

I went online to pay my DirecTV bill a few days ago and saw that I owed over $200. It turns out that they charged me fees that I had been told I would be charged. I paid the amount that was due on the last bill, waited a day for the payment to go through, and then called them to have all the extra charges taken care of. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and say that they weren’t trying to cheat me. It probably happened because my call got disconnected before the guy could finalize the deal and the second lady didn’t know that I wasn’t supposed to be charged those fees.

Those Amazon.com ads on the right side of the home page seem to be different depending on whether I’m using Internet Explorer or Firefox. I wonder why that is.

I got pulled over for not wearing a seatbelt of all things. The one time I wasn’t wearing it and that happens. I discovered at the time that I didn’t have a recent insurance card on me. I had 3 expired cards, but not one that was up-to-date. I also discovered my driver’s license expired in about 2 months ago on my birthday. I had no idea. Time flies in the real world. He let me off with a warning on the seatbelt and expired driver’s license and only gave me a ticket for no insurance. Once I go show them proof that I do have insurance, I’ll be set.

Update, 2/26
Stephen King has now confirmed that The Dark Tower will be adapted by LOST co-creators J.J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof. How much did they pay him for the rights? $19. Somehow that’s not surprising.

The DirecTV guy came yesterday and the first thing he said was that he wasn’t going to be able to give me a DVR. He would have had to do some drilling because I needed to have a second line from the satellite to the receiver. I live in an apartment complex and they won’t allow any drilling. When I first had DirecTV installed they used existing cabling, so drilling wasn’t necessary then. He said that I could have gotten the DVR without a second line, but I would only be able to record what I was watching at the time.

I wish they would have told me ahead of time that I would need a second line. Maybe if I had done more research I would have known myself, but it seems like I shouldn’t have had to. I was upset that I wouldn’t be able to get a DVR, especially after all the hassle I went through. Maybe I’ll come up with a better solution than the VCR.

I decided that it was time to join everyone else and get a DVR. I tried to avoid it, but now I’m giving in. The main reason is that 3 shows that I like air simultaneously on Sunday nights and 2 shows air simultaneously on Monday nights. Also, there are channels that I haven’t watched much and I think it would be cool to just record a few hours of programming here and there just to get a sample. And finally, I like the idea of watching TV on my schedule and not being stuck to the network schedule.

I still have a VCR, but the shows that I recorded looked and sounded terrible. I’ve tried recording on my computer using my video capture card and so far that’s been a big pain. The problem is normally with the audio. I always hear the TV through my speakers, but sometime the sounds coming through the microphone is what gets recorded. I’ve messed around with the software settings and I can’t get it to work 100% of the time. When things don’t work correctly I usually have to pay $1.99 to buy the episodes on iTunes.

When the capture process does work, I normally try burning the episodes I record to DVD so I can watch them on my TV (I throw the DVDs away when I’m finished), but the video quality is always terrible. Any suggestions on DVD encoding software?

Thankfully, DirecTV offers a receiver with a built-in DVR. From what I’ve read it doesn’t have all the features of TiVo, but all I really need to be able to do is record and watch the shows. It does allow me to record 2 shows at once while watching a 3rd. This is great for my Sunday night problem and my Monday night problem as well. DirecTV’s website says that all I have to do is pay a $5.99 monthly fee.

When I went online and started the process of upgrading one receiver to a DVR receiver, somewhere during the process I got a message saying that I would have to pay $50. I called their customer service number to ask what this fee was all about. The guy told me that he couldn’t see any reason why I would have to pay $50, but instead I would have to pay $99 for the box and $19 handling. I said no to this. I knew that if I had signed up for the DVR when I first got DirecTV, it would have been free except for the monthly fee. I searched online and confirmed this. After thinking about this some, I sent an angry email to them. I got my hopes up about finally having DVR and I get hit with these charges that I wasn’t warned about before. I got a response to my email saying that someone would call me within the next few days to discuss what they could do to make me happy.

They called while Heroes was on, so I called back later that night. I don’t get noticeably angry with people very often, but I was pissed by the time I got off the phone and they could tell. The pin number they gave me to use when I called back didn’t work. I had to go through their automated system. I got transferred to the wrong department 3 times before getting to the correct one, and I had to explain my situation each time. I was in Wal-Mart right before the last transfer. The reception was so bad that I could hardly hear what was being said. I had to stand in one spot in Wal-Mart just to get a clear reception. I had to play their little game, where the price went from $118 down to $50 and then finally down to $19 to cover the shipping and handling. He had told me that he couldn’t give me a better deal and kept doing “research” as I argued to find better deals. I knew from the beginning that if he wanted to give it to me for free he could have. He once told me that I might be able to get a special offer after I had been a customer for a year I might be able to get a special offer. I unkindly told him that solution wasn’t going to do me a lot of good now. After speaking with him for a long time, I got annoyed and asked him about cancelling my satellite service. I was never serious about that. That’s when he did some “research” and made the offer of $19. I just settled for that because I didn’t want to be on the phone anymore and I didn’t think I would get a better offer. When we were finalizing everything, the call got dropped and I had to go through their automated system again and explain to another person what was going on. It was almost midnight at this point and I was driving home and just wanted to go to bed. Thankfully, everything went pretty smoothly after this point. I’m glad that I saved $99, but it took a lot of aggravation to do it.

The DirecTV guy should be coming tomorrow to install everything. The timing is great. Lately when I’ve heard about shows that I wanted to watch, I’ve written it down in my notepad. This weekend there are 6 shows I want to watch, some of them overlapping. I’m hoping that everything goes well.

That whole Dirt experiment lasted only 2 episodes. I was so bored when I watched the second episode. I forgot to watch the third one and I wasn’t too motivated to try to catch the replay. From what I’ve heard, I haven’t really been missing anything.

I’m now giving a different show a try on Tuesday nights: The Dresden Files. I know that new episodes debut on Sunday nights at 8 CST, but since so many other shows come on at that time I’ve had to watch the replays. The Dresden Files reminds me of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and I hope that it catches on.

Word came out last week that HBO has acquired the TV and film rights to George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series. It’s currently my favorite ongoing series. It even inspired the name of this website.

Turning a series like this to film presents some problems. Do they make a miniseries or movie based on one book or do they combine several books? The books are so long and jam-packed that a lot would be lost in either case. I think they have come up with a great solution. They are making it a TV show and each season of the show will cover one book in the series. Why has no one tried this before? I’m sure it’s a long way off, but I’m excited.

I had a lot of fun with the Wii last night. I played the tennis, baseball, and boxing parts of Wii Sports and they were pretty cool. I messed around with a lot of stuff on the menu, created a Mii, etc. I was able to browse longklaw.com using the browser that you can download. My friend number is 1875 7438 9934 0398. I purchased Super Mario Bros from the Virtual Console and plan on giving it real try tonight. I had the most fun playing The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. I wish I had gotten a Wii while I still had time left in my break and not on the first day back to work. Oh well. There’s always the weekend.

I got a gym membership again today. I’m not even going to try to plan a schedule because I know I won’t stick to it. I just want to go and do something a few times a week.

I saw the series premiere of Dirt on FX the Tuesday night. Those commercials that I’ve been seeing over the past few months got on my nerves. I had heard that early reviews of the show were bad, but I was surprised at how much I liked it. It was fun and mean and crazy. Maybe it goes downhill from there. I really don’t need another TV show to keep up with.

I ordered HBO because Rome starts back on the 14th of this month and The Sopranos will be back in April. A benefit is that on the various HBO channels they’ve been playing a lot of movies that I’ve been interested in.