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Remember that crappy DVD player I got from DirecTV recently? Well, they sent me another one.

A few weeks ago when I hadn’t received my “free” gift, I emailed them informing DirecTV of this. A few days later I received the first DVD player. I thought that because of my complaint they got on the ball and rushed the gift that they had neglected to send me all along. Now I think that they simply put a second DVD player in the mail.

I decided to put the first DVD player in my bedroom so that I can conveniently watch movies there. I don’t watch DVDs in my room much because I’m spoiled by the surround sound system in the living room. I checked on eBay and that model was selling for about $10. From what I’ve heard these DVD players aren’t that reliable, so I think I’ll hold on to the second one to use after the first one breaks.

That’s it for 2006. I want to wish everyone a Happy New Year.

I’m back in Starkville after a short trip to Jackson. My friends and family were good to me again this year. For my birthday and Christmas I got:

• The Talisman and The Black House, both by Stephen King and Peter Straub
• The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe Extended Edition
• Time & Again Shea Butter
• Fraggle Rock: Doin’ the Things That Doozers Do
• a USB Hub
• a USB Adapters Kit
• money
• The Transformers 20th THe Movie Anniversary Edition
• a Visa Gift Card

Recently I bought Bully for the PS2. It’s mission-style gameplay reminds me a lot of GTA. That’s not surprising since they come from the same company. Bully is rated T for Teen, so I guess it won’t be quite as bad as GTA. I wonder if I can finish the game before I go back to work.

I started reading The Talisman on Christmas Eve. I’m already hooked on it and I’m having a hard time putting it down. I think my friend was right when he told me that a lot of the annoying elements of King’s writing are held in check, maybe because of the guy he co-authored the book with. At least I think that’s what John was saying. I discovered tonight that there’s a mini-series based on The Talisman coming out in 2008.

Please don’t waste your time watching The Wicker Man like I did. It was terrible.

The first season of Coupling was really good. I’m looking forward to watching the rest.

I discovered the option on the DirecTV menu that allows you to watch programs in Spanish when available. I never realized how much fun that could be. It really improves the quality of some programs.

I’ll be going back to work a week from Wednesday. I’m going to enjoy this time off as much as I can.

Yesterday, I finally got my “free” gift for signing up for DirecTV. It was supposed to come 6-8 weeks after they received the form that I sent in. UPS first tried to deliver it last Friday, so I’m going to give DirecTV credit for that and say that it only took 9 weeks.

The item that I got was a DVD player. It was supposed to be a portable DVD player. I figured a portable DVD player would be cool if I ever go on a road trip again. I would have actually wanted to keep it. Why would I want just a plain ole DVD player? Off the top of my head I can think of 7 devices at home that will play DVDs, so this new DVD player is pretty much pointless. It’s a brand that I had never heard of before (Sungale). Judging from the picture on the box, it doesn’t have any kind of numerical display on the front to tell you the time elapsed, chapter number, etc. I haven’t opened the box yet, so maybe I could sell it on eBay for about $20.

I’ve had pretty good luck with original miniseries that air on Sci Fi Channel. Lately, I’ve been seeing advertisements for a new one called The Lost Room. I’m not really sure what it’s about because I haven’t paid close attention to the commercials, but I’m sure it’ll be good. It stars Peter Krause (Nate Fisher, Jr from Six Feet Under) and Julianna Margulies (Nurse Hathaway from ER). I wonder if it’s a coincidence that it starts during the first week of the Heroes hiatus (NBC and Sci Fi Channel are owned by the same company). It starts Monday night at 8:00 CST and it lasts 3 nights. I’ll be there.

I listen to a lot of podcasts during the day while I’m working. On one of the weekly podcasts, Slice of SciFi, there has been an ongoing debate among the listeners over which ship would win in a fight: Battlestar Galactica or the Enterprise. I always cringe when this debate gets picked up again. These kinds of debates have been going on among sci-fi fans for a long time and they fit too nicely into the stereotype of the sci-fi geek.

One listener named Jason left a voicemail that said: “I know this point has probably been beaten to death, but after listening to all arguments over whether the Galactica can defeat the Enterprise in a space battle, I just had to weigh in with my opinion… which is: SHUT THE HELL UP! If I wanted to listen to arguments over which imaginary friend was tougher, I’d go to church”.

I couldn’t help but laugh at this. Anyway, I think the Enterprise would win hands down.

I have been watching several of the new shows that started this year. The last I heard most of them are either canceled or struggling in the ratings the last I heard.

• Heroes (POPULAR)
• Studio 60 (struggling)
• 30 Rock (not sure, but I don’t really like it much)
• The Nine (not so great)
• Vanished (might as well be canceled)
• Kidnapped (canceled)

Part of me is glad that my schedule might be clearing up some, but another part of me hates that interesting shows might not be on much longer. I think the problem is that too many new shows follow the long continuous story (serial) format that made shows like 24 and LOST so popular. It’s hard to find the time or energy to keep up with them all. I’m still watching them out of habit, but knowing what happens doesn’t seem that important anymore so I probably won’t be watching them much longer. The only one I think I’ll still be watching at the end of the season is Heroes, even if some of the others are still on TV.

I got my order from Contacts1st today. It’s been less than a week since I placed the order.

I’m still making my way through Battlestar Galactica. It’s nice to see GOOD sci-fi on TV in the post Star Trek era. I think I’ve even helped create 2 new fans. I ordered Season 2.5 over the weekend and it shipped yesterday. I can’t wait to watch it all.

I rented a game called Black today. I hope it’s worth the time. Since I got it for free it won’t be a big deal if it’s a bad game.

Today I wrote an OpenGL program for the first time in at least a year, probably closer to two years. Funny how the the little things can give you the most trouble sometimes.

I like the cooler weather.

I moved in January and I decided then that cable TV would be something that I would do without. My roommate didn’t already have it in the apartment, so I decided that I could go without it. Since I could barely get two network channels clearly enough to see what was going on even with an antenna, I have been pretty much without TV since then. I did manage to get caught up on all the shows that I had previously been watching, but I was always behind.

Over time I got used to not having TV. I spent more time on other hobbies. There were times, however, that I couldn’t help but feel out of touch with things that were going on in the world (I like to watch the news) and new TV shows that everybody talked about.

With the start of the new TV season I figured it was a good time to jump back into TV. The DIRECTV guys came by today and installed our service. The guy who seemed to be in charge wasn’t the friendliest person in the world. The second guy who seemed okay, but he installed the dish outside so I didn’t see him much. The third guy didn’t seem to speak much English. The lead guy spoke to him using English and a few Spanish words. I tried to help the lead guy connect the receivers to the TVs since I know how to do it and I know our TVs better than him. He didn’t seem to like that and they handled all but the first TV. I can understand why they would want to be ones to do it. One guy went into my room and shut the door while I was helping the lead guy in the other bedroom. Somehow that made me slightly uncomfortable to have a complete stranger shut up in my room. I’m sure it was all innocent and all he was doing was connecting the receiver. The lead guy kept asking to use our phones to make calls. He made the calls in order to get the service up, but you would think he would have his own phone to use for that. He also asked to use our bathroom. I’m glad there wasn’t any major unpleasantness going on in there.

They had trouble getting the receiver activated at first. A few times the lead guy came back in, looked at the screen, and left without saying a word. At one point after he had been gone for a while, I looked outside and noticed that the truck was gone. I went out back and didn’t see anyone there. I didn’t know for sure if he was coming back or not. He had left his clipboard, so I assumed that he was coming back. When he finally came back he informed us that the guy installing the dish wasn’t doing something correctly and that was what caused the problem. At some point while he was on the phone, he handed me the phone to answer some questions. The lady on the other end tried to get me to sign up for some kind of special promotion, but I quickly stopped her. I signed up for exactly what I wanted when I signed up.

Overall, it wasn’t a whole lot of trouble getting DIRECTV up and going. They didn’t have to do anything out of the ordinary that would have cost me any kind of fee. It’ll be nice to get back into this form of entertainment. It was even fun to see TV commercials again. I enjoyed watching Cheat! and X-Play for the first time in a while and I spent some time watching ESPN (I won’t even comment on that game tonight). I started on my newly purchased Battlestar Galactica DVDs last night. I wonder if I can get caught up before the new season starts.

Over the past week or so I’ve been watching the first season of an HBO series called Rome. The twelve episodes depict the period from Caesar’s victory in the Gallic Wars to the time of his death. Although it focuses on Caesar’s rise to power and death, it also focuses equally if not more on the lives of two Roman soldiers: Lucius Vorenus and Titus Pullo. If you’re like me and like to watch shows and movies based on historical events, then this show is definitely worth checking out.

Yes, there will be a second season that will air sometime next year.

I’ll be starting my new job on August 1. I have this week off.

Over the weekend I started playing Star War Knights of the Old Republlic II: The Sith Lords. It’s been sitting in my collection for over a year and a half now. Better late than never. It’s a fun game so far. It’s a lot like the first game, and that’s not a bad thing. As much as I’m trying to go to the dark side, I keep getting light side points. I guess it’s just in my nature to be a good guy.

Over the past few months I’ve been slowly making my way through the complete series of Star Trek: The Next Generation. I’ve seen all of the episodes at one point or another on TV, but now I can watch the whole series all the way through on DVD. I just finished season 4. The show started getting really good in season 3, but season 4 is even better.

My roommate and I are almost finished with our second helping of Tales of Symphonia. The sidequests are what’s keeping us from finishing the game. I’m going to try to make Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks our next joint project.