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Here are the two new pride and joys of my CD collection:

These CDs are 5 years old but were just recently released by Pioneer in September in the U.S. Originally they were released in Japan when the anime Serial Experiments: Lain was popular in 1998. I had to wait until ‘03 to finally find them. I had caught wind that these soundtrack discs had hit the mainland earlier this year but I was surprised to stumble upon them at my local Best Buy. Believing that I could not possibly be the *only* person looking for these I swiped them up like a thief.

Yes, I know. I’m a dork.

Two good sites for some RIAA spitefullness:

WhatACrappyPresent.com

DownhillBattle.org

I need to get me some of those stickers…

Check out Sony’s handy work. They have created a robot, the Qrio, which can run up to 14 meters per minute. Don’t be fooled by the photos, the robot is only 23-inches high. The robot actually has both feet off the ground for a fraction of a second while running, a major accomplishment for robot makers. It can even hold a fan while it dances. Now if only I could program it to get me a specific type of beer out of my fridge and to walk my dogs.

In an attempt to avoid boredem last night, Courtney and I ventured into downtown for some nightlife. Specifically, we were in search of Gameworks. Their motto: Eat. Drink. Play. Party. I was hoping it would be what I had hoped Chuck E. Cheese would be for my birthday. For the most part it was. I was surprised to see so many kids running around. Gameworks has a very adult feel to it. Right in the middle of the gamefloor is a medium-sized bar. Even so, Gameworks kicked the kids out at 9pm. Court and I had a blast. We spent most of our time and money playing Derby Racing. As you can imagine a video game about horses was right up Court’s alley. It was like gambling in Vegas without the chance of ever winning anything. It was a hoot having to train your horse, feed it the right thing, and properly whip/hold it while racing. Court did take me to town in Air Hockey. I underestimated her hand-eye coordination.

I’m not shitting you. James Brown has been appointed to “funk up” the U.S. government. Read it here. All I have to say is that it’s about time James Brown gets his props.

Yet another time waster. This time you’re a pissed-off shark with human-blood on your tastebuds:

Mad Shark

I signed up with NetFlix earlier this week. A handful of co-workers have told me how great the service is. I couldn’t keep myself from feeling like I, too, had to participate in the evolution. After a minor glitch with registration, I was in and ready to start NetFlixing.

NetFlix’s gig is to send you movies in the mail. You create a queue of movies. They send you 3 movies at a time from your queue, based on the priority you give the movies. You can then keep the movies for as long as you like. Once done, you toss them in the mail and you’ll receive more movies automatically. There’s no need to go to the store and pick out another film. You’ve got a queue so they just continue to send them to you.

The addiction started right away. I haven’t even received a single movie yet but I can’t stop surfing around on their website. Morning, lunch, evening, I’m on Netflix.com I’m adding movies to my queue, ranking movies in search of that one elusive, perfect movie I have forgotten about. It becomes a game much like the Chris Farley celebrity interviews on SNL. “Do they have this movie?! Yeah, that’s a good one. Oooh! Do they have that one? Yeah, I liked that movie too.” I just can’t stop.

The size and quality of your movie queue becomes interesting water cooler talk. “I heard a fable about one guy who has 284 movies in his queue!” Other NetFlixers want to know what you’re watching so they can size up your tastes. What does it say about me when the first 3 films I’ve rented are Old School, Anger Management, and Clockwork Orange?

At some point home improvement will become tiring. Please add sewer mainline drain pipe to the items we have had fixed in the last 2 months. Something, probably tree roots, caused our drains to start backing up. By the time we realized it the drains were not a pretty sight. I will spare you the unnecessary details. Let me just say that I had to do some cleaning up with a ShopVac which now needs a disinfecting with bleach.

I called up RotoRooter again since they did a bang-up job on the water heater. The guy charged me 165 bucks to snake the line. After signing away the 165 bucks he got to work by bringing in an enlarged pipe snake. Unlike the dinky little one I have, this one had to be wheeled in. It had buttons and levers, to the likes I have never seen before. He flipped over his bucket, sat down and pushed a button and my problem was fixed. What a scam. The hardest part of the trip for this guy was hauling the snake up and down the stairs. But then again, would I want to do what he’s doing? Not really.

So, I finally got my technical issues with iTunes squared away and I am now a happy iTunes customer. Rolling Stone has a great interview with Steve Jobs. In it Jobs discusses how they landed the record labels. From the sounds of it, Apple fought an uphill battle. The deals didn’t start rolling in until the subscription-based services started to fail. I am blown away by the fact of how true Jobs comments are. He believes that most people don’t want to steal music. They want an easy way to find music to fill an immediate desire to hear a song. I don’t think he could be more correct. Given the choice between digging through lousy ripped mp3s on a P2P service or just paying a buck to the song on iTunes, I’ll happily shell over the money. The fact that I have to buy an iPod to play it is another story though. I’m hesitant to go balls out on iTunes is there is not an easy way for me to get music without DRM attached to it.