Author: chuma

How can so much stuff be packed and yet so much stuff is still around? Will moving be awful, hellish hell or will our volunteer packers come through and not die of exhaustion? Tune in on Thursday…

The Home Show sucks ass. Oh, and here is the BIG SECRET: all of the prices on the price sheets are X’d out. The actual price is listed below, next to the item’s entry in the list, but the numerals are printed backwards. So, and item might look like:

BLUE COMFY CHAIR      [product ID]      87126     $699.99

The actual, “member” price is $621.78, represented by the number 87126. Stupid. I have the feelign they are getting around some kind of pricing laws by doing this… also you need a $29 membership to buy almost anything there. And it’s still expensive. Blah. What a bust.

In other news, I bought a really nice new learning remote at Best Buy. It looks like this and was only $30, which is awesome for a six-function learning remote. I entered the TV and VCR via the numeric codes no problem, and “learned” the usual functions of the DVD remote in about 5 minutes. Sweet. And only $30! I don’t remember learning remotes being so cheap. Dad: go to Best Buy and buy this remote, IT WILL WORK WITH THE STARCHOICE RECEIVER.

Saw a little movie called Spider on Thursday, directed by David Cronenberg. Since Sandy had to watch a few of his films for her Canadian Cinema class last semester, we delved into a few of his classics a few months ago – namely The Fly and Dead Ringers. Spider was a really great film, not a gore-fest by any means, but I actually found it very suspenseful. If you don’t mind watching the first 30 minutes of a film trying desperately to figure out what the hell is going on, then you will enjoy this. I don’t know where you’ll be able to see it other than at an indie cinema, but try to find it.

As usual with Cronenberg’s films on IMDB, the comments on Spider are completely bipolar: people always seem to love or hate his films. Sometimes I wish I had an IMDBPro account just so I could write comments on films.

So I lost my security pass for work two days ago. I went to the building management office yesterday to order a new one, it costs $25. In the meantime I’ve been signing myself in at the front desk.

So I go this morning to pick up my replacement pass, $25 in hand. But wait! They’re not allowed to take cash. I don’t have anything else. And here is where being friends with the building management & security people is key: since the person knew me, she gave me my replacement gratis and said “Oh, this replacement pass stuff is silly anyways.” Cool.

The other day Oliver (the cat) killed our multi-remote. (It’s probably just a loose or broken battery connection, but I haven’t snapped the thing apart to look at it yet). This morning I discovered that he has broken the front output tray on my Personal LaserWriter NTR. DAMMIT! I use the front output because I usually put stuff on top of my printer, blocking the top output. When we move I’ll have to put my things such that the top output isn’t blocked… as you can see from the link Sun Remarketing doesn’t even have that part, which means it’s never getting fixed…

can’t wait. can’t wait. so much stuff in boxes… so much stuff that still has to be put into boxes…

Sandy has been bouncing around the idea of getting a laptop again. Previously, she used an old Toshiba Satellite Pro brick before giving it back to her dad. Now she’s thinking about something that will be nice and small for taking to Seneca every day. I instantly thought about a nice, slim Sony Vaio 505 series. One inch thick, under five pounds, yum. Or a 12″ Apple iBook, although I’m not sure how she’d take to Mac OS X. Her brother wanted to sell her some P4 laptop clone… thing… that was frankly rather big. For 99% of sane people, who are going to get a lot of use out of their laptops, the most important factors are:

• Size and weight
• Battery life
• Reliability and track record

The third point there being the most important. When I was a desktop tech at a big company you have no idea how many dying Dell CP/CPi laptops I saw. I’ve seen first-hand how damn great IBM ThinkPads are, and I’ve heard only good things about Sony. The Sony even comes with its own docking station, for chrissakes.

Hey! My cell phone came back from repairs today – and they replaced it with a new one! Sweet.