I just realized on my way into work this morning. that I don’t take as many pictures as I used to. I guess I got tired of taking pictures of the animals and Heather and ran out of things that weren’t just “boring.” As a result, I just fell out of the habit of snapping shots when something less than boring poped up. I’m gonna have to work harder at taking more pictures.

Anyway, a lot of stuff has happened since the last time I updated. Heather and I had been musing about changing the philosophy aroudn how we watch TV and movies. As I had said earlier, we were looking at getting ReplayTV and Netflix. So as of Tuesday, we now have our ReplayTV unit and we started trying out Netflix. We had ordered the ReplayTV unit on Friday, but it was 9-10 days for free delivery. We signed up for the 14 day trial for Netflix at lunch on Tuesday because it was a 14 day trial and on Tuesday, 14 days later would be the first, so we wouldn’t have to worry about not having money. So over lunch, we sat and ate, while adding movies to our queue. I decided to take the afternoon off and push on to the end of the Transformers game and not twenty minutes after heather left, the UPS man showed up with our ReplayTV unit.

Now let’s do some quick math. I ordered the ReplayTV unit on Friday, the 14th, and requested free shipping which was 9-10 days. At best, that would be the 23rd, and yet, here it was, at our house on the 18th, a whole five days early. I was astounded. Best shipping I’d ever gotten for free.

So anyway, back to what I was saying. Heather and I had decided we were going to try these two services and see how our lives would adapt to this new take on entertainment , not being a slave to the TV by watching whatever we wanted, whenever we wanted, though we did have to set things to record to do so; while at the same time, never actually going to the video store, so we no longer really have total control of what movie we watch and when, though we have control of what three movies are at the house at a time). It’s almost exactly the opposite of how we used to view entertainment in our house, so we wanted to see if we’d like it or not. So far, the two services together have been nothing but fun. We’ve spent hours , literally) simply sitting on Netflix.com rating movies that we’ve seen, which results in relatively accurate recommendations that we then consider adding to our already heaping queue of movies we just want to see, recommendations or not. So after two and a half days playing around with ReplayTV, we recieved our first three movies from Netflix. Its been a big week to say the least.

DVDs You Have Out

Tokyo Godfathers, PG-13, Foreign Language & Int’l

Bad Boys II, R, Action & Adventure

Calendar Girls  , PG-13, Comedy

DVDs in Your Queue

Bubba Ho-Tep, R, Comedy 

Secretary, R, Romance 

The Manchurian Candidate, PG-13, Drama 

The Sting, PG, Comedy 

Jackie Chan’s Who Am I, PG-13, Action & Adventure 

Quills, R, Drama 

Pieces of April, PG-13, Comedy 

Super Troopers  , R, Comedy 

Mambo Italiano  , R, Comedy

In the Mood for Love, PG, Foreign Language & Int’l

Artemisia, R, Foreign Language & Int’l 

25th Hour  , R, Drama

Roger Dodger, R, Comedy 

A Beautiful Mind, PG-13, Drama 

Dracula II: Ascension, R, Horror 

Dirty Pretty Things, R, Thrillers 

Happenstance, R, Foreign Language & Int’l 

October Sky, PG, Drama 

Cheaper by the Dozen, PG, Children & Family 

The Family Man, PG-13, Drama

Nurse Betty, R, Comedy 

The In-Laws, PG-13, Comedy 

Day of the Dead, NR, Horror 

Duplex , Widescreen), PG-13, Comedy 

Stuck on You, PG-13, Comedy 

Gangs of New York, R, Drama 

Torque, PG-13, Action & Adventure 

Biker Boyz, PG-13, Action & Adventure 

A Man Apart, R, Thrillers 

Brother, R, Foreign Language & Int’l

The Last Samurai  , R, Action & Adventure

Girl with a Pearl Earring  , PG-13, Drama

House of Sand and Fog, R, Drama 

Win a Date with Tad Hamilton!, PG-13, Romance 

The Haunted Mansion, PG, Children & Family 

House of the Dead, R, Horror 

The Chateau  , R, Comedy

28 Days, PG-13, Drama 

A Fistful of Dollars, UR, Classics 

For a Few Dollars More  , UR, Classics

Hedwig and the Angry Inch, R, Gay & Lesbian 

Rabbit-Proof Fence  , PG, Drama

P.S. Your Cat is Dead!, R, Comedy 

Club Dread, R, Comedy 

My Baby’s Daddy, PG-13, Comedy 

Welcome to Mooseport, PG-13, Comedy 

Eurotrip, UR, Comedy

DVDs Awaiting Release

50 First Dates, PG-13, Comedy

Monk: Season 1, NR, Television

Zatoichi, NR, Foreign Language & Int’l

So one of the big questions I had about Netflix was how it handled new releases. As you can see, I have a secion at the bottom for “DVDs Awaiting Release.” You can actually add movies that haven’t even come out yet. As soon as they’re available, they pop to the top of your queue and are shipped out as soon as you have a free slot for checkout. I tried to add Van Helsing, but apparently it’s not that far ahead of the curve. Admittedly, I’d be pretty impressed if it was though.

So yeah, in the grand scheme of things, we’re spening more money guaranteed , $13 a month for ReplayTV and $22 a month for Netflix) but this may actually save us on rentals in the long run. And since gas is $2.00 a gallon, we don’t have to drive to the store and back to rent things either. The ReplayTV isn’t saving us anything, we had to adjust our budget to accomodate it, but so far, even after three days, it’s been really cool. Oh, and in case you’re interested, I’ll be posting an entry today as to why I went with ReplayTV rather than TiVo.

I’m going to go get some food. We got our new coffeemaker yesterday, and while I loves me some coffee, I need food with it or I’m not a happy camper.

Blue Warrior, we should hang out sometime. I feel like I only see you when I’m trying to kill you.