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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 cover for the 11th and final book of The Sword of Truth series has been released. I’m excited, but not in a dirty way. I don’t think it’ll be out until next year. Right now that seems like a long time to wait.

Update, 3/8/2007
Confessor will be going on sale on November 13, 2007.

Last night I was going about my business updating this site using my desktop computer. All of a sudden the screen on my monitor when black for a second and it came back. I looked at the clock to see if it would be flashing because of a power outage, but I didn’t think that would be the case. After all, I didn’t notice the overhead light go out.

A little later the screen went out again and the monitor started making ticking sounds. The LED that indicates that the monitor is on wasn’t lit. I pressed the power switch on the tower to turn the computer off, but the ticking continued. I was going to wait until what was on TV (The State Within on BBC America) to go off to worry about it more, but the ticking was so annoying that I wanted to take the monitor and throw it in the dumpster. I unplugged the monitor and the ticking stopped.

I’ve never had anything like this happen, but I’m assuming that the monitor is dead. I’ve had it since 2001 or 2002, so it’s probably past time to get a new one. I have a 15-inch monitor that I could use as a backup, but it would be a pain to get to the closet that it is in.

Time to start shopping again.

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.

Congratulations to Randall on getting a Wii. I now know 4 people that have them. I think a lot more people I know would have them if they weren’t so hard to find.

I’ve gotten back into Trauma Center: Second Opinion. I like to relax when I’m playing games, but this game seems to make me more stressed and depressed than relaxed. Maybe that’s just me.

John and I are almost finished with our 2nd playthrough of Tales of the Abyss. There are some things that you can only see during the 3rd playthrough, so I’m sure we’ll be playing again. I don’t think it’ll be right away though. I want to play something else first.

I’ve been so productive at home this weekend (cleaning, catching up on TV, gaming, reading) that I don’t really want to go back to work this weekend.

I think I’m going to lay off the Wii puns in the titles.

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.