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A Brand New Car

Well, not brand new but new to me. I finally got a new car yesterday.

My mom’s car was stolen recently and when she got it back it was in pretty bad shape. Since I had planned on getting a new car in the near future, I let her have the old car that I had been driving since 1999 until she’s ready to get something else. I just had to get a new car earlier than I had planned, but oh well.

My new car is a gray Nissan Altima. I realized today that a lot of people around here drive Altimas, probably because MSU employees get discounts on Nissan cars. It had 29000 miles on it. It drives well. It has a lot of room. It’s great for me. The previous owner left his Sirius satellite radio receiver in the car and it’s still activated. It’s not something I would have bought on my own, but since it’s there I’m going to use it. When it gets deactivated, I’ll start up my own account.

Anyway, I’m happy and I’m itching to go on a road trip.

Crime Doesn’t Pay

I got a letter from the U.S. Department of Justice yesterday. A postal carrier was found to be in possession of multiple Gamefly and Netflix rentals. One of the rentals in her possession was either on its way to me or on its way back from me. Her illegal activities had been going on since August 2007. She’s out of custody and her trial was supposed to take place this week. I went to the victims’ website that the DoJ has set up and I can stay up-to-date on the developments of the case.

Since this trial is taking place in California, I’m assuming that the crime took place there and it’s a Gamefly rental. I wish I knew exactly which game it was. It was probably a game that I sent back and marked as sent on their website when they didn’t get it after a while. I think there has been a game or two that I didn’t receive after a week, so I asked for another copy. Whatever the case, at least somebody is doing something about it. The long turnaround time annoys me sometimes. I figured that this kind of thing does happen. Gotta have my games and movies

Bailey

Bailey is my former roommates’ dog. Yes, he was named after the drink. We got him last September when he was about 2 months old. I always took care of him when everybody else was gone. He is a cool dog and the best dog I’ve ever known. This past weekend it was time for Bailey to move away too. I hope I’ll get to see him from time to time. Unfortunately, most of these pictures were taken with my phone, which doesn’t take good pictures.

Elantris

I became interested in Brandon Sanderson when I found out that he was finishing The Wheel of Time for Robert Jordan. I decided to start with his first book, Elantris.

Elantris was a city of magical people whose inhabitants were thought of as gods. Something has changed and now Elantrians are thought of as being cursed. It’s been 10 years since the fall of the city, and book focuses on 3 characters with related plot lines. The story takes place both inside and outside of Elantris.

One thing that attracted me to this book is that it’s a standalone story. It’s not one part of an epic series. Nice! As always with fantasy novels, it took a little while to get into. I think part of it had to do with learning a new universe. I was having a little trouble in my head figuring out how some of his terms should be pronounced and somebody else’s pronunciations might be different. I just had to make myself not worry about that and get on with the book. I also didn’t like the frequency in which Sanderson was throwing out new terms and not really explaining what they mean. There’s no glossary in the back to help clear things up. Eventually, everything was explained enough to understand what he was talking about. Once I started getting into the book, I really enjoyed it. I do remember thinking that there were a lot of surprising twists happening, but that’s okay. I found it interesting that there weren’t many battles. There was a great deal of intellectual maneuvering, but not much physical fighting. I’m pretty sure I’m going to read Sanderson’s Mistborn series when I get a chance.

F.Y.I. – There’s an Elantris glossary on Sanderson’s website. I wish I had known this when I was reading the book.

The Sword and Laser’s current book is Unshapely Things and I’m already reading it. I don’t think I had ever heard of elf punk until now.

• Headcrash, Bruce Bethke
• Childhood’s End, Arthur C. Clarke
• Timeline, Michael Crichton
• Unshapely Things, Mark Del Franco
• Finding Serenity, Jane Espenson
• Serenity Found, Jane Espenson
• On Bullshit, Harry G. Frankfurt
• On Truth, Harry G. Frankfurt
• The Appeal, John Grisham
• Playing for Pizza, John Grisham
• Night Watch, Sergey Lukyanenko
• Day Watch, Sergey Lukyanenko
• Twilight Watch, Sergey Lukyanenko
• Final Watch, Sergey Lukyanenko
• The Taking, Dean Koontz
• His Majesty’s Dragon, Naomi Novik
• Throne of Jade, Naomi Novik
• Black Powder War, Naomi Novik
• Empire of Ivory, Naomi Novik
• Victory of Eagles, Naomi Novik
• Lyra’s Oxford, Philip Pullman
• Unholy Domain, Dan Ronco
• Elantris, Brandon Sanderson
• Titus Andronicus, William Shakespeare

Twitter

Yeah, I’ve gotten hooked on Twitter too. I wasn’t really interested in it at first, but once I started I just couldn’t stop. My profile is here. I’ll probably put a widget in the sidebar one day. If you don’t know what Twitter is, then that might be a good thing.

Amazon MP3

I buy songs from iTunes every once in a while. Sometimes a band that I like will release songs exclusively on iTunes. Sometimes I’m at work and I get an urge to hear a song right away and iTunes seemed like the best option in that situation. Now I think I’m going to start using Amazon MP3 when I want to download a song if it’s available there. Why? Because it has no DRM. With iTunes I can only listen to it on one of the 5 computers that are authorized on my account. I don’t even have an iPod. If I get it from Amazon MP3, I can listen to it on any device I want to that plays MP3s. Also, I don’t really like the iTunes software. I REALLY don’t like it.

Amazon just came out with a new widget that you can put on your website that allows people to preview songs. The owner of the website gets a small percentage of each sale. I decided to try it out.

CUTCO Knife Set

I bought a set of CUTCO knives last summer and I’m so glad that I did. I’ve never had good cutlery like this. They are so sharp. I get a little nervous about hurting myself sometimes because of how sharp they are. If I did accidentally cut something off, I’m sure it would be such a clean cut that it could easily be reattached. Just having the knives around makes me want to cook more. Hopefully in the near future I’ll get back in the habit of cooking on a regular basis (I’ve been saying that since last summer). Maybe I’ll get some forks and spoons next.

The Appeal

Back to my ever-growing reading list. This time I read The Appeal by John Grisham. This is another one of his legal thrillers. The man knows how to write legal thrillers, so I’m glad he’s back to what he does best. What is The Appeal about? A company with a factory in Mississippi has just had a huge verdict returned against them. They were dumping harmful chemicals into the ground and the people in the area started getting sick. They are going to be appeal the case before the Mississippi Supreme Court and the company wants to get a friendly justice elected to the court. I saw an interview where Grisham said that this is the most political book that he’s written. He makes a good argument for appointing state Supreme Court justices instead of electing them. He gets Mississippi, its people, and their attitudes right so the book felt very familiar. It’s a pretty good book and I enjoyed reading it.

• Childhood’s End, Arthur C. Clarke
• Timeline, Michael Crichton
• Unshapely Things, Mark Del Franco
• Finding Serenity, Jane Espenson
• Serenity Found, Jane Espenson
• On Bullshit, Harry G. Frankfurt
• On Truth, Harry G. Frankfurt
• The Appeal, John Grisham
• Playing for Pizza, John Grisham
• Night Watch, Sergey Lukyanenko
• Day Watch, Sergey Lukyanenko
• Twilight Watch, Sergey Lukyanenko
• Final Watch, Sergey Lukyanenko
• The Taking, Dean Koontz
• His Majesty’s Dragon, Naomi Novik
• Throne of Jade, Naomi Novik
• Black Powder War, Naomi Novik
• Empire of Ivory, Naomi Novik
• Victory of Eagles, Naomi Novik
• Lyra’s Oxford, Philip Pullman
• Unholy Domain, Dan Ronco
• Elantris, Brandon Sanderson
• Titus Andronicus, William Shakespeare

What Goes Around

It seems like I get a lot of emails at work that fall into the following catergories:

• A is leaving for a new job. If you would like to make a contribution toward a gift…
• B has had a death in the family. If you would like to contribute toward a plant…
• We’re having a baby shower for C. If you like to buy a gift or contribute toward a group gift…

I like doing it for the most part. It’s a nice and thoughtful thing to do. I’m sure they would do the same for me. Of course it’s always optional, but I used to feel like I needed to contribute something for each one. However, it started to get on my nerves after a while especially when a bunch come up around the same time. Now I’m a little more selective about which ones I contribute to. Is that mean? If it’s someone I don’t know and never see I don’t usually make a contribution. It’s not as bad now as it was when I first started here, but I work with a lot of people so it still happens a lot.

I talked to my sister about this a few months ago and she has the same complaint about where she works. And she’s got a good 10 years on me in the work force. I think part of the reason I started to get annoyed is that I hardly ever carry cash on me and when I do it’s for a specific reason. I always have to go out of my way to get money each time I get one of those emails. Another part of it is that I’m tired of giving away money when there’s stuff that I want need to be doing with it. How selfish!

DirecTV Lawsuit

It’s been about a year and a half, but I remember being upset that I didn’t get the “free” portable DVD player that I was promised for signing up for DirecTV. Instead I got a crappy DVD player and then a second one. I didn’t think about calling in and complaining. I guess I just figured that DirecTV changed their deal sometime after I made the call to order service and something in the fine print gave them a right to do that. Every time I see portable DVD players in stores I kinda want one, but not enough to actually buy one myself.

Last week I got an interesting letter. There’s been a class-action lawsuit filed against DirecTV for not coming through on those portable DVD players. I had no idea. So there are others who got screwed like me. That must be why those two posts I made about the DirecTV gift received a lot of page views back then. It seems like a lot of people didn’t get DVD players at all. It’s great that I’ll finally be getting that portable DVD player. That’s all I want.

This letter about the lawsuit came on the same day that my DirecTV bill came. Is that a coincedence?

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