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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.

Yesterday I used my desktop on and off sparingly throughout the day. It’s in my room and I didn’t spend a lot of time in there yesterday. I noticed a noise coming from the case, but it barely registered with me and I didn’t really pay much attention to it. Late that night when I finally sat down to really use it, I defeated the forces of Isengard at Helm’s Deep and then I attacked Isengard itself (The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-Earth). Once I finished playing I went to bed, but I left my computer running. As I lay in bed, I heard the noise again and it finally hit me what it was. I immediately got out of bed and shut the computer off. A few years ago the same noise started coming from my laptop and within a week the hard drive failed. Back then I didn’t know about the dreaded clicking sound and I learned a hard lesson. I hope that I’ve caught it early enough this time that I can retrieve the important (and not so important stuff) from the drive. This morning I bought a new hard drive and I am in the process of getting it all set up. Hopefully, I’ll be back in Middle-Earth soon.

Oh, and I’ve been playing StarCraft some lately. Call me old school.

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.

The name of the last book in the Harry Potter series has been announced. It’ll be called Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Let the speculation on the title begin.

Longest title ever.

I came a across a story on digg called “A brief summary of 99% of the people you will ever meet in college” that I thought was pretty funny. You can read the original here but I listed a few that I thought were funny.

Johnny Frat Boy – or – Sally Sorority Chick
While there’s certainly nothing wrong with being in a Greek organization, some people take their involvement in these groups a little too seriously. These are the people who can’t go 2 consecutive days without wearing their shirts from some drinking party they went to last weekend. Johnny Frat Boy likes to brag about how many beers he slammed down on Tuesday night, while Sally Sorority Chick acts as though she is too immaculate to be tarnished by your presence. In either case you shouldn’t worry about these two personality types too much because they only associate with each other. This brings me to another point: when you see these people outside of class, it is perfectly acceptable to run them over with your motor vehicle of choice.

Fucking Disgusting Computer Science Major
Fucking Disgusting Computer Science Major is the reason that you don’t want to go to class. He bathes roughly once every leap year and wears the same “totally awesome” Japanese video game (the import version was so much better) shirt for half a semester at a time. No matter how far away you get from him, the stench seems to travel across the room and assault your nostrils. Fucking Disgusting Computer Science Major has no time for the English language, and he will often ask questions that make little to no sense and lack any sort of “grammatical structure.” He’s the only character that can actually give Silent Foreign Curve Destroyer a run for his money on the intellectual scale, but that’s only because he was probably born with knowledge of linear algebra and differential equations.

Major Elitist
No, he’s not in the military! Ha ha! All blatantly bad jokes aside, the Major Elitist is generally some type of science or engineering major who looks down on anyone who might even think about getting a humanities or business degree. After all, we all know that the only thing that’s important is science. All that other mamby-pansy bullshit like “History” or “English” or “the world economy” is just a bunch of feel-good rhetorical nonsense anyway. Besides, any jackass can get a liberal arts degree!

Non-Conformist Conformist
The Non-Conformist Conformist is an interesting species. While he tries to “fight the man,” he is unable to do so without conforming to another group. The Non-Conformist Conformist can be easily identified by his Rage Against the Machine or Che Guevara t-shirt and dark green corduroy pants. During the winter he will be wearing a military field coat from Germany with a patch on the side, and he often carries a wallet on a chain. You can identify him in the classroom because he’ll feel the need to share with the class his opinions of pop culture. He’ll use a condescending tone of voice because he’s better than little sheeple like you. That’s all right though because whether it be the punk, goth, or any other subculture, the Non-Conformist Conformist declares boldly, “I choose to not fit in by fitting in with a DIFFERENT group!”

The Sociable Slacker
This is the guy who went out of his way to talk to you on the first day. Was really personable, seems like a normal, social person. He even suggested trading phone numbers just in case you needed help. Fast forward to the second week of class – he’s not there. Same goes for all the classes until right before the midterm when you get a call. “Hey man, what’s up? How’s it going? Oh yeah, I missed the last class can I borrow all your notes and photocopy them? Yeah, we should go grab a beer one day.” No show again until the final where he calls you up again asking for notes. And that beer? A complete fabrication.

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.

It’s moving day again at the office. This was not a good day for me to oversleep, but fortunately I still got there on time and the moving hadn’t started yet. I’m once again glad that I didn’t have a lot to move. I foolishly put my computer keyboard, mouse, and some cables in my only box so that it would be easier to move. I moved my computer monitor and tower over to the new building and when I came back to get that box, the movers were in my shared office taking stuff out. My box was already on the moving truck. Everything that I labeled with my name and my new office number got moved to the new office of the lady that I was sharing my previous office with. At least I got my stuff, even if it was after noon.

This move seems different than the last one. Everyone is kind of tired, but they seem mostly excited. More of us are in the same place right now. It’s almost like we’re a family that’s been brought together. I think the difference in this move is because: a) a lot of lessons were learned last time and b) the people moving have a different attitude about the move and are just glad to finally get the move over with. Even people who don’t have furniture yet and have to sit on the floor while using their computers are joking about it instead of complaining. I really liked the way that everyone has been helping each other. I’ve been trying to be helpful where I could.

The things I like the most about this new space is that I have much more room and that I once again have a decent amount of privacy. To quote a PJ song, “P-R-I-V-A-C-Y is priceless to me”. I’m in a cubicle, but at least it’s not a small shared office. The first thing I did was rearrange the furniture. I went to Wal-Mart during lunch to buy some cleaning materials and other things and now I’m pretty happy with everything. Here I even have my own whiteboard to work on. I don’t know why I’m so excited about that. The supply room only had black and red markers, but I had to have more variety. I bought a pack with 4 different colors when I went to Wal-Mart.

Some people have really nice setups in their new offices. I’m going to have to visit those people just so I can gawk at their arrangements.

This is the kind of day where you get very little work done. I’m going to try to be productive during the last part of my day.

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.

Last week the folks at GameStop told me that it would probably be today before they got anymore Wiis. My roommate also heard that today might be the magic day when he was out of town recently.

I took my lunch break as early as I could and drove to GameStop. Of course, there was already a line there. They had a sign-up list and I was number 14 on the list. More people came after I did. I heard somebody say that people started getting in line at Wal-Mart last night. I was kind of excited. I figured that some people would get Wiis even if I wasn’t one of them. A lady from work came in looking at Nintendo DS games and I talked with her some. After a while the UPS guy came and he had a few big boxes. The store grew quiet with anticipation. Unfortunately, when the GameStop employee came from the back he said that there were no Wiis. Everyone seemed stunned and disappointed. One guy came hoping to get a Wii and a PS3, but he only got a PS3.

I have a feeling that they’ll get the Wiis tomorrow and it sounded like they may only get one shipment per week. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to go by there tomorrow until later in the day. I guess I’ll try again next week. I’m pretty sure I won’t be standing in line trying to get one again. This will probably be the last update on this until I actually get my hands on one. That Xbox 360 is starting to look more and more tempting.

Update, 2:00 pm
I just spoke to the co-worker who I saw in GameStop earlier. She went to Wal-Mart and found out that they didn’t get any Wiis either.

I don’t really get out of town that much anymore. I went to Tupelo for the first time in about a year and a half. I stopped to fill my tank before I left Starkville. I’ve noticed recently that gas stations are making you prepay even during the middle of the day. Maybe it’s just me. Maybe I don’t look trustworthy. When I go a gas station before a trip, I usually buy something on the inside. I’m not in the habit of keeping a lot of cash on me, so I use my card to pay for my gas at the pump. Then when I go inside to pay for their overpriced items, I have to use my card again. It seems like it wasn’t that long ago that I could just pay for everything at once on the inside. Oh well, it’s just a minor annoyance.