nrslam

I might have opted for the Blockbuster service, but they were late to the party and I didn't need 2 such services. A week turnaround, though? In it's heyday, Netflix' turnaround was 2 days. You could consistently mail a disk back on Monday and have the replacement by Wednesday, assuming it was available at the local warehouse. Only the obscure stuff took longer. Nowadays, though, it seems to average about a week.

$30 for an XB1 sounds like a deal. I see name brand BluRay players for under $10 at thrifts all the time, though.

I was gonna try to come up with an answer to all these categories, but it turns out I'm pretty simple: give me a jar of good peanut butter and a spoon and you can keep the rest. There's a place nearby that makes peanut butter on site from fresh roasted peanuts and nothing else. No sugar, no preservatives, just peanuts roasted and ground today. Heaven. I'll wash it down with nice, cool ice water.

I just checked and every one of the 30 movies in my queue is available thru the local library system, though some have monstrous wait times. Maybe I've overestimated their exclusivity. It is a little hard to believe that it makes financial sense to pay for those last returns and the staff to process them, but maybe they've got some bulk buyout deal lined up that relies on the inventory being (mostly) intact. Either way, I've got no need to hold onto the final discs.

Time marches on. Netflix has informed us DVD-by-mail subscribers that the service is shutting down with last shipments on Sept 29, with another month just for returns after that. I give the company props for giving us 5+ months notice to get things we want most or can't find elsewhere. Their streaming service is unaffected by this shutdown. Probably time for it to go, what with reduced service, slower mail, some new movies not even getting DVD releases, and the ever-widening availability of streaming. Still, it's been damn convenient and they have a fair number of older movies that streaming services don't carry. RIP red envelopes.

Off topic, but that was the name of one of the Roller Derby skaters at a recent bout I attended.

Novelty songs are big in my house. Monty Python did a bunch, this one is probably my favorite: And way back when, Spike Jones was doing this: Or this, with Honer and Jethro: Some other faves: For classical music lovers/haters, there's: Or just about any PDQ Bach tune, such as: Seriously, I could go all day on this subject.

That happened to me once-pulled out a big chunk of my 401K to buy my house so the tax bill was pretty high. Still cheaper than paying mortgage interest, though, and eventually that money would have been taxed anyway as I withdrew it later, albeit at a lower rate. Just a one-time thing in my case, and unrelated to my 'income.'

Rest in peace, Al. You brought much joy throughout your 78 (!!!) year career. Now I'm off to read one of my old issues of MAD.

Are the consoles equally tough to find? I got a loose one at a flea market several years ago but never paid much attention to it. I seem to remember it came with some sort of Korean pirate multicart, too, but I'm not sure where that ended up.

I'm gonna take my wife to this for her birthday. Too bad she doesn't like Mario.

Nope. I keep finding new things to make the hunt interesting.

I'm the worst golfer in my work league.

Meh. If I'm going to watch Peter Pan, it'll be this one.

Commodore's screw-ups on the serial bus that caused slow disc drive access led directly to development of FastLoad, JiffyDOS, and other speed-ups. As these were big sellers, both Epyx and CMD used the profits to fund later products. So you could make a case for saying there would be no SuperCPU if the C64 didn't have limited disk speed.

I'd have to say it was a disappointment to them, but not an outright failure because it was profitable despite the missteps. The decision to stick with costlier cartridges reduced the profitability of every software unit, drove away 3rd party support and ultimately cost them their dominant market position. It's an interesting thought experiment to contemplate how it might have played out differently had the N64 used optical media instead of carts.

Hooray! Another Pikmin fan. We're you playing this on Cube or Wii? I prefer the new-play-control version on Wii, myself. Now go play Pikmin 2.

Vegetables cooked to a gray-ish mess in a pressure cooker. That was my mother's favorite method for cooking any and all veggies. Yuck! Personally, I liked Hamburger Helper. Much better than ...

2111. Easy peasy.

Wireless wherever I can. I'm pretty sure all the wireless signals bouncing around my house are good for my health

I enjoyed this movie much more than expected, but have no desire to rewatch it. So..... 7?

Wicked was a fun show. The book was a real slog, though.

Mixed bag for me. Some albums just have to be listened to in full and in order, doing otherwise disrupts the story the album tells. Trans Siberian Orchestra records are like this. Some artists, even if I don't wanna hear every song, I prefer to hear chronologically as that tracks how their sound changes over time. The Beatles are a great example. The vast majority of popular music I prefer in random mixes, both stylistically and chronologically so missing songs from albums is a non-issue.

Lloyd-Webber's Phantom of the Opera is a standout for me, especially soundtrack-wise. Saw the original touring company with Michael Crawford for that one. Another favorite is Spamalot, as I'm a big Monty Python fan. That's also the only show I ever saw at an actual Broadway theatre and was lucky enough to catch the first run with Tim Curry, Hank Azaria [who stole the show] and David Hyde Pierce. The play I've seen the most, though, is The Rocky Horror Show, with Little Shop of Horrors a close second. I think this list tells you something about my personality.

I started in the early 90's focusing on carts for old computers (C64,VIC20, Atari 800/XL/XE, TI99, and CoCo). This was mainly because I had started with a C64 and was always curious about the path(s) not taken with the other machines, and stuff was easily found. I generally skipped disk/tape stuff as I lacked the appropriate drives and was mistrustful of old magnetic media. Pivot 1 occured in the mid 90's as I expanded to game consoles, mainly focusing on pre-NES stuff. Pivot 2, late 90s, I'd become obsessed with thrifts and garage sales and started just buying anything that seemed like a deal. Several times I came home with loads of stuff I didn't even recognize. Got lots of crap, and most of my best finds, in this period. It was also a prime time for trading. Pivot 3, early to mid 2000's, the rise of ebay corresponded with supplies drying up and increased competition for what was out there. I tried my hand at both buying and selling online but generally didn't care much for it. Pivot 4, around 2010. ebay had started down the we-hate-our-sellers path so I stopped using them. Now back to being a local-finds-only collector my acquisitions really slowed. On the plus side, I now had more time to play 20 years worth of pickups. Pivot 5, 2020, moved to the country. Hardly ever find anything now. Even more time to play.