Personal

Today, I’m going to be myself and reduce a day that’s based solely on feelings and break it down mathematically in Mastercard commercial style. It’s completely unoriginal, but hey, it works. Fuzzy box of chocolate truffles: $13 Driving yourself into work so you can go straight to your sweetie’s place: $6 Getting dumped the morning of Valentine’s Day: Priceless It’s not often that I’m going to post anything in depth about my lovelife. The reason for this is several-fold. First, I’d like to keep this site fairly professional. Let’s face it, my post teen year angst just isn’t something that’s going to get CNET to ask your opinion on something. Second, it’s not interesting to the Internet at large. Very personal blogs are only interesting to friends. Finally, the subject of your post may actually read the post. I’d rather not broadcast this to her. ...

I have a habit of getting very little sleep during the week and sleeping excessively on the weekends. It was a system that worked great from the beginning of high school on. At some point though, this changed. If I really cut my sleep short, like less than five hours a night for several nights, my eyes start getting really irritated. I honestly can’t figure it out. First, my right eye starts to feel really itchy. I rub my eye to try to get rid of what seems to be an eyelash, only nothings really there. Naturally, it gets all red and bloodshot. Super. Naturally everyone notices and feels some kind of irrepressible urge to tell me. Hey, Derik, your eyes are really bloodshot. Gee, thanks, I had no idea. I’ve just been rubbing it all day because it feels so damn good. The next question is Is that pinkeye? Well, I don’t know, but considering I don’t have any of the symptoms other than redness and an itch and that it goes away after a good night’s sleep (or two), I don’t think so. ...

A few days ago, Dana told me she had 50 Gmail invites. I naturally got a little irked as I was the one that invited her to begin with. That’s the way it goes I guess. Well, I checked today because I read that one Gmail invite spooler had over a million and a half invites to hand out. I had 50! I sent one to Bob who didn’t want to be left out and added 9 to the spooler. ...

I’ve been thinking about replacing my Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer for some time now. It’s a great mouse and has always served me well. However, considering it was a gift from my ex, it carries some emotional discomfort with it. Besides, it only has five buttons and is wired. Wired peripherals are soo 2003. I’ve done so well with Microsoft mice thus I thought I’d continue to throw business their way. I looked at the Wireless Intellimouse Explorer 2.0 in the “Night Vision” color. I found it listed at Buy.com for less than $20. Kick in a mail-in rebate and a store coupon and the price was $12. I couldn’t afford to not get this mouse. Sadly, it seems that the mouse has been discontinued by Microsoft, catching nearly every retailer carrying the mouse off guard. Nearly every retailer I visited showed the mouse as in stock, but in the several days following my order, all of them marked the mouse as discontinued. ...

I’m sure you’ve all been waiting for an update from yours truly to make sure I survived the blizzard. I have. I spent a good portion of the day cleaning several feet of snow off our deck. Sounds easy enough, but it’s far more involved than it seems. First, I had to use the regular scoop shovel to make a little path and level the snow down enough to use the wide push shovel. Then as mother was using that, I had to try to level down the rest of the deck. After a couple hours of that, the deck is almost finished. ...

A large part of living in New England is learning to either love (or at least tolerate) snow. Normally, I’m thrilled by it. I’m not a skier; I just like the way it looks. Sometimes it’s fun to wad up and throw at your friend as he stammers out a greeting to a pretty girl. That or stick it in the tailpipe of the car that he’s brushing off. Best of all, going out in your friends Ford Taurus as he does donuts and makes his car smell like an old boat. ...

All the best to you and yours in 2005. Special thoughts go to those affected by the tsunamis.

Following my post about Netflix, a new story about Blockbuster came to my attention. Blockbuster has announced that it will no longer charge late fees, or at least that’s how everyone is reporting the policy change. Putting it this way is a little misleading. They are using this necessary change to their business model as a way to promote their own business. The growing popularity of Netflix (and even their own similar service) has demonstrated a strong consumer interest in being able to retain videos for an extended amount of time. Getting burnt by late fees once or twice is enough to drive any consumer to another system. Additionally, the way in which late fees were assessed made little sense. My roommate in college rented a movie and didn’t return it for three weeks. When he finally went to return it, they charged him in excess of $20. This is obviously more than the video cost to begin with and he didn’t even get to keep it. The fees weren’t based upon what it would cost to replace the copy of that movie, but instead based upon the amount of profit lost due to being unable to rent it to another member. Obviously, this was a broken system. ...

I was sorry to read about his loss. What happens following a tragedy can make things even worse. My best wishes to him and his family. I (and his other readers I trust) can wait while he takes the time he needs.

I’m sure you’ve all heard of Netflix, the online movie rental service. In case you haven’t, I’ll explain how it works. You pick a number of movies that you’d like to see. Netflix sends you 3 of those movies at a time (this is the default plan). They mail them to you along with return envelopes (with prepaid postage). You send those movies back whenever you feel like it (no late fees) and when they receive one of your movies back, they send another from your list (queue). To top it off, it costs only $17.99 per month regardless how many movies you get. ...