welcome to PTI, my little pretties.

apparently i haven't even posted in february till now. let me feign guilt. alright, i'm done.

and now for a bunch of links you probably don't even care about!

been trying to forget my monthlong drought of no video games (possibly subconsciously spawned by the vague memory of having a controller thrown at me upon last playing), by playing some dynasty mode of NHL 2005. worth the trouble so far. haven't fired up the cube in a while though. seems i got suckered into toys r us' buy 2 get 1 free sale, given that i have yet to devote any real time to pikmin 2, tales of symphonia, or paper mario. alayna sure hated all that reading in paper mario tho.

i watched i heart huckabees, which i thought sucked actually. if you find yourself with some free time, watch something more worthwhile instead. in the same vein, i wish i could blow off work in the middle of the day and go see a very long engagement. according to everyone in the fucking world lately, i should invest 82 minutes in napoleon dynamite. hope it's funnier than it looks.

laynie & i actually got on a plane and spent last weekend in san antonio. does it matter what kind of impression you leave on your girlfriend's grandmother's cousin? not exactly sure what the dating rulebook says on that one. they all ganged up on a few of us and forced us to learn the rules of tripoli (tripoley), so we promptly played for 3 hours. it didn't involve buttons or pixels, and it was still fun. go figure. we had a fun weekend, but the highlight was prolly flying backwards on our southwest flight out there. you think it's no big deal till you realize you have to face everyone else on the airplane. wish i had a speech prepared, y'know?

onto my obligatory tech section...

i'll say that i agree with the notion that apple's not interested in satellite radio in their ipods. an mp3 + satellite combo will prolly soon exist, but if you think about it, what's the point? don't you typically listen to a radio cuz you don't have a handy collection of your music on you?

kinda sad that engadget has started a tivo deathwatch, tracking the company as it possibly circles the drain with such ridiculous financial troubles. i kind of agree with the pro-tivo tech-head masses -- we love our tivo's, but we do not love tivo, inc. could be a sign of bad things to come given that the CEO and president have quit in the last month. they're the perfect example of a company with a terrific concept, yet no idea how to properly transform it into a successful business.

i thought this account of the author's daily digital lifestyle was kinda cool. interesting to see how some people really rely on their gadgets to make their life easier.

also liked this commentary against DRM'ed online music. he does bring up some good points that i've mentioned before, like how silly it is to save a buck or two (did i just use a phrase from those old 1-800-COLLECT commercials?) by downloading an album instead of getting the actual CD.

rick brought up some good points the other day about looking into allofmp3.com, a russian music site that you pay by the megabyte. for most of their catalog, they let you download anywhere from 128kbps to CD-DA (uncompressed off the actual CD) quality. that's pretty sweet. i'm thinking of maybe starting a project of getting rid of all my old 128kbps quality mp3's (or at least the more mainstream stuff) and replacing it with as many 192kbps versions as i can find, even if i have to pay $.02/MB.

thought this article was a decent analysis of how PDAs aren't selling very well anymore. apparently people are starting to realize that it's a pain in the ass to carry around your cell, PDA and mp3 player all the time. a cell phone that functions as a PDA (including wi-fi + bluetooth) that can handle mp3 playlists isn't as far off as you'd think. it'll pull in mobile tv, too.

i'm afraid i have nothing left. you're welcome.

--j