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Now that I've got my HD TV and am somewhat settled down in the new house, I've signed up for NetFlix once again. I paid more before - $19.95 and $21.95. I rented 19 movies in three months, resulting in a pretty good savings over BlockBuster, and at the currently $17.99 pricing, it should be an even better deal.

Though movies at the Erie "Tinseltown" run "only" $6.50/$6.75 (matinees from $4 to $5), that's a per-person cost. With NetFlix, Carey and I can watch the same movie for about $3. We can go to the bathroom when we want. We can make our own popcorn. We can rent kid's movies for Little One without paying for three people. We can wear whatever we want and save on gas (though Tinseltown is only two miles away).

I don't know at which point NetFlix reduced their pricing from the $21.95 I was paying to $17.99, but I'm glad they did. At $21.95 I wouldn't have re-joined.

Last night, Carey and I had to pick up a 7½" circular saw for my mom. It's listed as $29.99, on sale from $49.99. A pretty good deal. They had none. We went back to the hedge trimmer section where they had a $59.99 Craftsman on sale for $49.99. They had none. We asked if they'd take $10 off the $69.99 Black & Decker. The answer was no. Twice we asked someone to help us, and twice the person went off and then started helping other people.

Of course, Sears had plenty of $59.99 circular saws, and lots of hedge trimmers from $69.99 to $99.99. I've had it up to here (chin or higher) with Sears and their bait and switch practice.

Compare that customer service with that we received from Bosch. On Tuesday, I called and talked with a nice lady. I told her we'd just bought a house and the owner had not left the manual for the Bosch dishwasher we have. I asked if we could have a manual sent, fully expecting to have to pay for at least postage. Today I received the manual, free of charge.

Thank you, Bosch. Screw off, Sears.

Question: Do you have an enemy?

My Answer: I've always said that I don't have the time to hold a grudge. Frankly, I've always found that it's not worth the time or effort. However, I do strongly dislike two people, and they will forever be in my mind as "evil people." I don't go out of my way to harm them or get in their way at all, but I do try to keep tabs on them and I do find myself wishing bad luck upon them.

You are encouraged to answer the Question of the Day for yourself in the comments or on your blog.

Question: When someone says "U.S. Open" do you think of tennis, golf, or neither?

My Answer: My answer is obvious. I'm just glad that usopen.com goes to the golf version of the national championship.

You are encouraged to answer the Question of the Day for yourself in the comments or on your blog.

Question: Does anyone care that Opera 8 for Mac OS X was released?

My Answer: I don't. I was interested in using alternative browsers for about a month, oohhhhhh, four years ago or so. Not anymore.

You are encouraged to answer the Question of the Day for yourself in the comments or on your blog.

Steve Jobs:

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.

From his commencement speech at Stanford.

My parents rented The Cutting Edge on VHS many, many years ago. I was sick or for some reason I was home alone, and my dad was deer hunting. I watched the movie three times in a row. Nothing else to do, right?

"Toe pick" still makes me laugh, and I own the movie on DVD. Well, turns out a friend of mine in LA is working on Cutting Edge 2! It'll star a gal named Christy Romano and "an unknown boy" in her words.

So, there you have it. I know the movie has a few fans out there (I don't really expect anyone reading this to be among them, but you never know), and so they are probably excited.

Carey and I have spent the past few days buying furniture. On Friday, Saturday, and Sunday we visited John V. Schultz, Arthur F. Schultz, and Oak Express. We also checked in at Kaufmann's and a few other smaller places.

We're looking for quite a bit of stuff, making us pretty good customers:

• Dining room table
• Six chairs for dining room table
• Sofa table
• DVD storage
• Desk (for Carey's schoolwork)
• Coffee table
• End table (or two)
• Chest
• Dresser
• Headboard
• Nightstand (two)

Arthur F. Schultz closes at 5pm on Saturdays, and we arrived at 4:50. When we asked to see the bedroom sets, we were directed to the second floor. The man who directed us there made sure we knew they were closing very soon. We took the elevator and found that the lights were off already. So goes Arthur F. Schultz. They didn't seem to have a very large selection anyway.

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What the heck? First Nintendo fails to capitalize on the Internet and 'net-based gameplay. Now this? Nintendo: get your freakin' act together.

It seems increasingly so that the only next-gen console I'll be buying is the PS3. Stupid Nintendo.

I re-did my ringtones today. I last worried about them May 8, 2004, but this time I got a little fancier. First, the list:

Carey       - Amazed
Golf/Work   - Forest for the Trees
Friends     - Good Intentions
Family      - We are Family
General     - You Can Call Me Al

Those are the groups, of course, and each has its own ringer now. General is the catch-all, and I was looking for songs that had "call me" in the title. I like the Paul Simon tune, so, why not? "We are Family" is from the 1979 Pirates team, and has "family" in it. Good ol' Sister Sledge song. "Good Intentions" makes it as a Toad the Wet Sprocket song, one of my favorite bands, and because it's from the Friends soundtrack. "Forest for the Trees" is from the Fore! album by Huey Lewis & the News, and forests and trees come into play when golfing quite frequently. As for Carey and "(Maybe I'm) Amazed," well, that's our song. Logical choice.

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Pals, friends, and family: I have a new home phone number. It begins "814-833-xxxx" and the last four numbers I won't publish here, so email or IM and I'll pass the information along.

Carey and I will prefer to speak on our home phone at any time over talking on our cell phones, of course, though anyone is free to call my cell phone after 9pm or on the weekends. We have plenty of minutes, but we talk a lot so we do watch the time(s) we spend on the phone a little bit.

Carey, having a full-time teaching position with Millcreek School District this fall, began looking for summer work in mid April. After all, we've got a new house! Cash is good, in any form. One of the first places she looked was at the Sylvan Learning Center on Peach Street here in Erie.

Parents can send their children to Sylvan for the low low rate of about $40 per hour. Teachers are tasked with helping three to four students at a time, netting the center anywhere from $120 to $160. Teachers - who must be certified and pass Sylvan's own battery of tests - are then tasked with little more than helping students work on Sylvan-prepared worksheets.

How much are the teachers paid? Eight measly bucks an hour.

My recommendation is simple: if you have a child who is in need of tutoring, find a teacher who is good at what they do and offer them $15 to $25 per hour. You'll pay less and get your child individualized attention that likely fits better into your schedule.

I made more than $8/hour working at Boston Market in 1996.

Question: Do you sell on eBay?

My Answer: Very, very rarely. I'm considering using iSale, but the reviews on MacUpdate are quite mixed. It won an Apple Design Award this year, but that's hardly an indication of anything. If you use iSale, what are your opinions? (P.S. I'll be selling Beanie Babies and a ton of Apple retail t-shirts. If you're interested in any of them outside of eBay, let me know…).

You are encouraged to answer the Question of the Day for yourself in the comments or on your blog.

I've updated my To Do list. I'm up to 35.29%, which just makes me want to add even more un-accomplished things to the list.

Question: What are your URL pet peeves, if you have any?

My Answer: I hate it when "www" doesn't work. For example, http://adobe.com/ didn't work for the longest time (it does today, at least, by forwarding to www.). I don't care for dashes, but I don't know that it's a real "peeve" of mine. I do like common-sense bookmarks, and Amazon.com takes some doing here - they tack on a bunch of metadata that makes it tough to show someone what you're looking at. Speaking of which, here's another peeve (the Apple Store is guilty of this sometimes): URLs that include session IDs. Keep those in the POST or something - let me copy and paste a URL to send to my mother so she can buy the right darn thing without calling me to ask what the URL should have pointed to!

You are encouraged to answer the Question of the Day for yourself in the comments or on your blog.