Longklaw.com

I knew that GameStop gets their shipments around noon, so I figured I might go by and check during my lunch break. I didn’t occur to me, however, that there might be people already at GameStop waiting for that shipment to come. I discovered this when I called GameStop about half an hour before I went to lunch. GameStop wasn’t even sure that they were going to get any today, so those people were waiting on the possibility of getting a chance to buy a Wii. I called Wal-Mart and the lady succinctly told me they didn’t have any.

I went by GameStop anyway on my lunch break and the UPS truck was a couple of stores down from GameStop. There was a line inside and I heard the manager say that the 4 Wiis that came today had been sold. I actually saw two people walking out of the store with them. I decided to wait a little until the craziness dies down before I continue looking for a Wii. The guy at GameStop seems to think that things will die down next week. He even suggested that I try Wal-Mart. The manager seemed really surprised that people were already waiting outside the store when he got there this morning. I jokingly said that I was going to pay somebody to stand in line for me while I’m at work and he thought that was funny. I ended up buying Alias – The Complete First Season and then I went to get some food.

I knew there would be no chance of getting a Wii today since I didn’t reserve one, so I didn’t even try. Unfortunately, no one that I know of is taking reserves, so it’s a free-for-all. I went today to find out estimates on when they would have more and to see if I could find component cables and a copy of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess and its strategy guide even if I don’t have a console to play it on. I figured that I’m going to buy them sooner or later so it couldn’t hurt to get them while they’re available. I had done some searching online, but I figured that I would check around here in Starkville before I ordered anything. My last stop was Wal-Mart and there I bought the last copy of Twilight Princess that they had. I think it was the last unreserved copy in the entire city. I had no luck finding the component cables or the strategy guide, but they are at the bottom of the priority list. I’m hoping that GameStop will get some more Wiis in this week and that I can get one before they sell out. Maybe I can get one while I’m in Jackson for Thanksgiving.

It’s been over 2 years since I last did this, but I’m sharing more Bushisms. I got these from The Complete Bushisms.

“This morning my administration released the budget numbers for fiscal 2006. These budget numbers are not just estimates; these are the actual results for the fiscal year that ended February the 30th.” — Referring to the fiscal year that ended on Sept. 30, Washington, D.C., Oct. 11, 2006.

“One has a stronger hand when there’s more people playing your same cards.” — Washington, D.C., Oct. 11, 2006

“You know, one of the hardest parts of my job is to connect Iraq to the war on terror.” — Interview with CBS News, Washington D.C., Sept. 6, 2006

“And I suspect that what you’ll see, Toby, is there will be a momentum, momentum will be gathered. Houses will begat jobs, jobs will begat houses.” — Speaking with reporters along the Gulf Coast, Gulfport, Miss., Aug. 28, 2006

“I’ve reminded the prime minister — the American people, Mr. Prime Minister, over the past months that it was not always a given that the United States and America would have a close relationship.” — Washington, D.C., June 29, 2006

“I tell people, let’s don’t fear the future, let’s shape it.” — Omaha, Neb., June 7, 2006

“I think — tide turning — see, as I remember — I was raised in the desert, but tides kind of — it’s easy to see a tide turn — did I say those words?” — Washington, D.C., June 14, 2006

“The point now is how do we work together to achieve important goals. And one such goal is a democracy in Germany.” — Washington, D.C., May 5, 2006

“That’s George Washington, the first president, of course. The interesting thing about him is that I read three — three or four books about him last year. Isn’t that interesting?” — Showing German newspaper reporter Kai Diekmann the Oval Office, Washington, D.C., May 5, 2006

“As you can possibly see, I have an injury myself — not here at the hospital, but in combat with a cedar. I eventually won. The cedar gave me a little scratch.” — After visiting with wounded veterans from the Amputee Care Center of Brooke Army Medical Center, San Antonio, Texas, Jan. 1, 2006

Today I voted. One again it was quick and painless. The new touch screen machines were interesting. I decided to see what would happen if I tried to select another candidate’s name after I had made my choice. It gave me a weird noise that was an obvious indication that I was trying to do something that I couldn’t do. I think the checkboxes next to the other names had even been removed at that point. I thought about pushing the back button down at the bottom, but I decided against it. Anyway, the person that I had intended to vote for in the first place was the one who was selected in the end, so I don’t think there was any harm done. The machine gave me the option of printing out a paper ballot to verify my selections and I did.

I don’t think there’s anything exciting happening in the Mississippi elections this year, but I haven’t really been paying as close attention as I have in some previous years.

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 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.

Last night I went to GameStop in Starkville for the midnight release of Final Fantasy XII. It was the first time I had done this for a video game. I’ve been to many early showings of movies and I was out at midnight for the releases of the last two Harry Potter books, but I usually wait on games.

I got there about 25-30 minutes before midnight and there were about 35 people already in there store. It only got more and more crowded as it got closer to midnight. Most of the people were cool but there was one loud, obnoxious guy a few spots in front of me. He would not shut up. I wasn’t the only one who noticed how much quieter it was in the store after he left. I’m glad I got a spot close to the beginning of the line. They started selling the game at midnight and I was out of there about 15 minutes later. I’m glad that I went and got to see all of the excited people. I wasn’t worried about GameStop selling my copy, but I am still glad to have the game in my possession. I got the collector’s edition game and the collector’s edition strategy guide.

Another positive result of the trip is that I finally found a copy of the Tales of the Abyss strategy guide. I’ve been trying to get a copy of this guide since the game came out almost 3 weeks ago. I’m not sure what the delay was. The guys at GameStop could never tell me anything about what was going on. I placed an order with Amazon as sort of a backup plan and they kept delaying the ship dates. Our GameStop only got 2 copies and I got the 2nd one (a guy in line in front of me got the other one).

I had thought about playing for a little while when I got home, but I was too tired. I didn’t even open the packaging. Tonight I want to watch horror movies and Nip/Tuck so I probably won’t play FFXII until tomorrow. From what I’ve seen of the reviews, it’s going to be a lot of fun.

A little over a month ago I ordered RAM for my old laptop from an eBay store called System Electronics. They had mostly positive feedback and I’ve had good experiences buying things on eBay before, so I figured it would give it a try. I used PayPal to make the purchase.

The LCD on the laptop died the next day and I decided not to put anymore money into it I started thinking about buying a new laptop. I emailed System Electronics the next day asking if they could cancel my order. A few days later I got an email saying that my PayPal transaction had gone through. I sent them another email asking if they could cancel the order. A few hours later they responded saying that they had mailed the package that morning and that I should refuse the package when it arrived in order to get a refund. When it arrived about a week later it was left in my mailbox. I took it to the post office unopened and asked them to return it. I sent System Electronics an email informing them that I had mailed it. About two weeks later I hadn’t heard anything from them so I emailed them asking them the status of the return. A correspondence that lasted over a week took place. Basically, they claimed that they never received the package and told me to check on it at my post office. They asked for information like the return date, the address I sent the return to, the tracking number, etc. I knew the return date because I still had a copy of the email I had sent on the day I returned the package. I sent it to whatever the return address on the package was, but I did not right it down beforehand. I didn’t get a tracking number because I simply told the guy at the post office to return the package to the sender. Last Friday, System Electronics said that they would go to their post office again and check to see if there was a package on hold. I still haven’t heard from them again even though I have emailed them since then. This isn’t the first time that they haven’t contacted me by the time they said they would, but I guess they are tired of dealing with me now.

I guess I would have been better off selling the RAM myself on eBay. Maybe they are being honest and they never received the package, but I think I’ll stick with places like crucial.com for those kinds of purchases. More lessons learned.

The final release version of Internet Explorer 7 came out last week and Mozilla Firefox 2.0 should be available today.

I jumped on the bandwagon back when Firefox first started becoming popular. I even tried to encourage people myself to use Firefox instead of IE. After I had been on the bandwagon for I while I gradually started shifting back to IE. Eventually it got to the point where the only time I would use Firefox was in situations where I wanted to make use of the tabbed browsing feature. I don’t think I ever took full advantage of Firefox’s features. The only extension I ever really used was IE View, which is used to open pages in IE when they won’t display correctly in Firefox.

When I tried one of the early beta versions of IE 7, some of the websites that I frequently visit wouldn’t display properly, so I uninstalled it. I didn’t see those kinds of problems in beta 3 and the release candidates, so I eventually made the switch back to IE. Simple things like the inclusion of tabbed browsing and RSS discovery pretty much won me over. Now I rarely use Firefox, which may make me an exception among computer-knowledgeable people. In the techie community, it seems like you’re looked down on if you use IE. Many techies automatically assume that IE users don’t know much about computers.

Early on many made the argument that Firefox is more secure, but now it seems that might not necessarily be the case. Quite honestly, I’m not very worried about Internet security. I worry about it as much as I worry about falling down a flight of stairs. I know what’s safe and what’s not safe to do online. I don’t go to many weird sites. I have anti-virus software, spyware removers, and firewalls so I think I’m doing a decent amount to keep myself safe. As far as someone using an exploit to take over my machine, I don’t even think about that.

Am I just being blissfully ignorant or what?

I took one of those online tests today. This one was a brain test that’s supposed to tell you more about how you think and learn. This is what it said about me. Sounds a lot like me.

Will, you are Left-brained

Most left-brained people like you feel at ease in
situations requiring verbal ability, attention to detail, and linear,
analytical ability. Whether you know it or not, you are a much stronger written
communicator than many, able to get your ideas across better than others.

It’s also likely that you are methodical and efficient at many things that you
do. You could also be good at math, particularly algebra, which is based on
very strict rules that make sense to your logical mind.