Longklaw.com

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.

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.

I finally got around to trying Warioware: Smooth Moves this afternoon. It’s a lot of crazy, fast-paced fun. There are so many games that you can play and from what I’ve heard I haven’t even come close to seeing them all. I had heard that the multiplayer mode isn’t available in the beginning. I think that all I need to do to unlock it is complete the single player mode.

I think I first heard about a movie called The Promise on Filmspotting. I watched it today and I thought it was awesome. If you liked Hero and House of Flying Daggers, then I recommend giving this one a try.

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.

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.

Last night I finished reading Song of Susannah, book 6 of The Dark Tower. It was short compared to the last few in the series, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I didn’t mind the story so much as I did the last one. I can’t wait to get started on the last one. Hopefully, it’ll be here by the weekend.

Those Intel Core 2 Duo commercials bother me for some reason.

I saw Saw III over the weekend. It was ok up until the ending.

I think I want to get a Wii instead of an Xbox 360 or a PS3.

George R.R. Martin is upset because PayPal locked his account after his name showed up on a Treasury Department list. It’s an interesting story.

Update (Nov. 9):
Looks like George R.R. Martin’s PayPal dispute was settled after he wrote his blog entry. I doubt that he asked for any special treatment, but I’m sure that fact that he’s a celebrity didn’t hurt.

I hope everyone has a great Independence Day. Today will probably be a movie/gaming day for me. For some reason I don’t really want to do a lot of stuff outside today.

I played the demo for Prey. It reminded me a lot of Doom 3, but this one could potentially be more fun. I’ll definitely be interested in buying it when it comes out on July 10. I’ll just need to upgrade my old computer or buy an Xbox 360 first. So, I probably won’t be playing Prey when it first comes out.

Time to get some BBQ.

This November will see the release of the Transformers: The Movie 20th Anniversary Special Edition DVD. I remember that my sister took me to see this movie when I was young. It was the first movie I ever saw in a movie theater and I don’t think I’ve seen it since then. Yes, I am that old.

Now I recognize some of the actors that provided the voices (Leonard Nimoy, Judd Nelson, Robert Stack, Orson Welles) though I probably didn’t back then. I’m sure I’ll check it out when it gets released.

I have been a Netflix member for a little over 2 years now. I use it mostly for TV shows and movies that would be hard to find at Blockbuster or Movie Gallery. They opened a distribution center in Jackson within the past year, so for the most part the DVD’s get here faster than when they were coming from Georgia. Another positive is that I can keep DVD’s as long as I want to. I usually don’t keep them very long. It seems like a waste of money to hold on to a movie for an extended period of time. My biggest problem is that if you rent a lot of movies, you don’t get a high priority because they don’t make money off you. Google the phrase “Netflix throttling” and you’ll see what I mean.

I promised myself at the beginning of the month that I wouldn’t rearrange my queue for the rest of the month of April. The last time I rearranged it was on April 1. The problem is that I keep moving DVD’s to the top and I’ll never get to some of the movies farther down the list. The only thing I’ve allowed myself to do is remove DVD’s that I rented from Movie Gallery or Blockbuster. I currently have 355 DVD’s (a lot of them are TV shows with multiple discs) in my queue. I don’t know that I’ll ever see them all. Even though I haven’t really been tempted to break my promise, I’m glad the month is almost over. I’ve already planned out what I’m going to make my top 20 items when May 1 gets here. Some of them are made up of multiple discs:

1. Wonderfalls
2. Strangers with Candy Season 3
3. Aeon Flux
4. CS Lewis: Beyond Narnia
5. The Commish Season 2
6. The Rainmaker
7. Capote
8. K-Street
9. North Country
10. Rock School
11. Summer Lovers
12. Angel Season 1
13. Thirteen
14. Holes
15. Conan O’brien 10th Anniversary
16. The Dark Crystal
17. Mulholland Drive
18. Fun with Dick and Jane
19. Interview with the Vampire
20. The Shield Season 1

Weird, huh?

I am enjoying my time in Azeroth. Somehow, it’s better than Starkville. I like the paladin and druid equally at this point. My only problem is that sometimes I have trouble getting into the game. From what I’ve heard, that is a common problem.

I signed up for a one week free trial of DDO. I just have to download it. Unless it takes an incredibly long time to download, I’ll be playing it sometime this weekend.

It looks like Xfire is being bought by Viacom. I remember when I first heard about it on TechTV, back when it was still TechTV. It couldn’t have been too long after Xfire first started up. If only I could remember to run Xfire every time I play a game. If anybody uses Xfire, my screen name is longklaw.

I decided to try Internet Explorer Beta 7 for a little while. I know it sounds risky, but I wanted to try it. I’m ok with IE’s new look. It reminds me a lot of Netscape 8 for some reason. I’m really glad that it has tabbed browsing. That feature is the only one I wish IE6 had. Of all the web sites I went to, there was only one that looked weird when I viewed it using IE7. After using it for a little while I decided it was time to uninstall IE7 and course IE6 froze up every time I tried to use it. Thank goodness for system restore.

Final Fantasy VII – Advent Children finally came out on DVD yesterday. I went to Sam Goody and picked up a copy. I’ll probably be watching it in the next few days. The manager at Sam Goody told me that I had been shopping there as long as he had been manager there, which is a long time. He said that I was one of those customers he expects to see there at least once a week. Though that used to be true and I have started back shopping there recently, I don’t go to Sam Goody nearly as much now that we have a GameStop here in Starkville. Still, it was nice to know that he appreciated my bu$ine$$.

The spambots have found me in my new home. [sarcasm]I am so thrilled about that.[/sarcasm]