It's Only One Week Into 2006 and...
Sunday, 8 January 2006 00:22![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dr_phil_physicsStopped at the post office this morning and it was packed. If you haven't mailed it now, remember the rates are now up. 39¢ for first-class and 24¢ for each additional ounce -- my beloved Priority Mail Flat Rate envelopes are up twenty cents to $4.05.
Thankfully, we cleared all our "end-of-year" letters to friends & relatives by Thursday, so it'll be Mrs. Dr. Phil's first round of bi-weekly bills that get the honor of hitting the new postal barrier. And my next story submission. (Though I did put the new postage on the SASE for the December 30th WOTF entry, since it'll come back sometime in March or later.)
It's Dark
Besides about fifteen straight days without sun -- welcome to winter in the Great Lakes -- the front windows are dark. We had some 300 "icicle" lights on our front porch, which we always run through Twelfth Night. We'll leave them strung up through the winter, because they really help during early morning snow scooping of our driveway.
Catching Up With Everyone Else
I received a NETFLIX gift subscription for Christmas. Mrs. Dr. Phil and I have talked about doing NETFLIX for quite a while -- she thought about starting when I was off to the 2004 Clarion workshop for six weeks. Anyway, she got the one-at-a-time deal.
The day after we got back from North Carolina, I whipped out the PDA and Wi-Fi/DSL'ed to NETFLIX and found that Pocket Internet Explorer worked just fine.
We've been too cheap to buy HBO during our 22 years of marriage, so our priority is to check out all the great series we've missed all these years. So first up is Season One of The Sopranos, followed by Six Feet Under.
The NETFLIX registration and website works quite well and they've got a distribution point in Lansing MI, so we got a three day turnaround between our first and second disks. Given that we'll soon enter that TV dead zone between football and March Madness, we should be able to keep up a decent pace. (grin)
The One Downside
I'm going to have to get a decent DVD cleaner. So far, every DVD we've ever rented -- two each from our local video joint and NETFLIX -- has had a skip or dead spot on it. I see people handle CDs and DVDs with their fingers all over the disk faces and the disks just aren't 100% forgiving. Fortunately we've been able to get around the short gaps.
Dr. Phil
Thankfully, we cleared all our "end-of-year" letters to friends & relatives by Thursday, so it'll be Mrs. Dr. Phil's first round of bi-weekly bills that get the honor of hitting the new postal barrier. And my next story submission. (Though I did put the new postage on the SASE for the December 30th WOTF entry, since it'll come back sometime in March or later.)
It's Dark
Besides about fifteen straight days without sun -- welcome to winter in the Great Lakes -- the front windows are dark. We had some 300 "icicle" lights on our front porch, which we always run through Twelfth Night. We'll leave them strung up through the winter, because they really help during early morning snow scooping of our driveway.
Catching Up With Everyone Else
I received a NETFLIX gift subscription for Christmas. Mrs. Dr. Phil and I have talked about doing NETFLIX for quite a while -- she thought about starting when I was off to the 2004 Clarion workshop for six weeks. Anyway, she got the one-at-a-time deal.
The day after we got back from North Carolina, I whipped out the PDA and Wi-Fi/DSL'ed to NETFLIX and found that Pocket Internet Explorer worked just fine.
We've been too cheap to buy HBO during our 22 years of marriage, so our priority is to check out all the great series we've missed all these years. So first up is Season One of The Sopranos, followed by Six Feet Under.
The NETFLIX registration and website works quite well and they've got a distribution point in Lansing MI, so we got a three day turnaround between our first and second disks. Given that we'll soon enter that TV dead zone between football and March Madness, we should be able to keep up a decent pace. (grin)
The One Downside
I'm going to have to get a decent DVD cleaner. So far, every DVD we've ever rented -- two each from our local video joint and NETFLIX -- has had a skip or dead spot on it. I see people handle CDs and DVDs with their fingers all over the disk faces and the disks just aren't 100% forgiving. Fortunately we've been able to get around the short gaps.
Dr. Phil
no subject
Date: Monday, 9 January 2006 17:09 (UTC)Do be careful, though, in getting the discs out if you receive a lot of mail. The packaging is very thin (a small sleeve and a paper envelope); if the disc gets wedged in between other mail, it can easily crack or break. You don't want anything happening to all those Winslet flicks. (grin)
Andy W.
no subject
Date: Monday, 9 January 2006 18:40 (UTC)Dr. Phil
no subject
Date: Tuesday, 10 January 2006 14:31 (UTC)The first two seasons of the Sopranos are remarkably good--too good to last, actually. Season three falls way off and four and five are about the same. It's not that they're bad (because they're still better than 90% of what's out there) it's just that they're not as good.
If you like westerns, check out Deadwood too.
--Trent
no subject
Date: Tuesday, 10 January 2006 17:54 (UTC)Now I know why I couldn't find Deadwood in NETFLIX, I was searching under Tombstone. Yes -- that was another of the HBO series we want to add. And when it comes out in DVD, we'll go to Rome as well. (grin)
Murder, death, mayhem -- tra-la!
Dr. Phil