I just stumbled upon a copy of a remastered version of Tears for Fears – The Hurting. Rock. I’ve been looking to replace this forever. It is definitely one of my all time favorites. Listening to it now, it still rocks. Mmmm.

The other night I decided I wanted to start tracking the books I read, along with some thoughts on them. So, there’s now the books section of this site. It won’t be updated too often, but I plan on having my current reading queue in there, which will hopefully help me keep on top of reading more. And of course, all the book links go to Amazon. The first one up there is just some short comments on Harry Potter since I finished that the other day. Enjoy!

The other night I finished Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Overall I thought the book was pretty good, though I really think she could have shortened it by a bit. The only thing I can imagine is that a lot of the little details she set up in the book are things that will be addressed in one of the next books. One thing I did like is that she really has made her world into quite a dark place. Well, it was getting dark by the end of the last book, but definitely got darker in this one.

On the things I didn’t like. There were lots of things that happened in the book that just felt too obvious. I wasn’t really surprised by much of anything (as I was in the last book). This one also just felt a little weaker than the last one. Even though you find out a lot about why things are happening by the end of the book, it just didn’t really wow me.

Overall, if you’re a fan of the series it is a pretty good book. Even if I didn’t find it as engaging as the last one.

Jennifer of scriptygoddess.com writes about her (hellish) experiences with BuyMusic.com. Here’s the first two (of many) problems she experienced:

First problem. After you buy an album, you need to download it. Sure, I knew that. What I didn’t know is that you have to download EACH SONG INDIVIDUALLY. One click per song. With Two large sized albums with many songs on it – it can be just a LITTLE annoying.

Ok. We’re compromising, right? I’ll suck it up and deal.

After all the songs downloaded, I tried to play them. Second problem. Before each song plays – it has to download and verify your license. You can’t mulitple select a bunch and do this. You need to do this before EACH SONG will play. [Edited to add: “Verifing your license” means another window pops up that asks for your buymusic login and password… you enter it… it thinks awhile… it thinks some more… Then it comes back and says click “play” to actually play the song…]

Ok. Getting a little annoyed here, but still willing to suck it up and deal. [scriptygoddess]

The whole experience sounds positively dreadful. Especially when I compare it to my iTunes experience, where the biggest issue was the first day or so when the system was so overloaded by everyone going there. Fortunately, I can’t even look over BuyMusic.com’s site because if you aren’t running IE on Windows it throws you at a nice ol ‘Fuck You’ screen. You can’t even browse the site at all. Nice and user friendly.

And to end things off, here’s some other BuyMusic.com tidbits from stereoboy.org.

When I grow up, I wanna be a Jedi.

First post in my book blog, just to make sure it all works correctly.

Janet Long: “Part of being sane, is being a little bit crazy.” [Quotes of the Day]

Oh I am a happy anime geek. Miyazaki’s Nausicaa is coming out on DVD. Okay, so it is Region 2. That’s not a big deal, my DVD player can handle it. The big decision is which version to get. I have to admit that the ultra mega special release is very tempting.

So I got my parent’s DSL set up today. I think my mom is going to be forever hooked on the Quicktime Movie Trailers site. They each now have their own email address, which will be handy those times when I want to mail my mom and find out what to get my dad for his birthday. The only thing that sucked was my experience at the Apple Store today. I stopped by the one in Hartford on my way to my parent’s place to see if they had any Airport cards in stock. Unfortunately they didn’t, but the sales person said to give a call later because they were due to get some today or tomorrow. 4pm rolls around and I give a call to the store and ask if they got any in and if they could hold one for me. They say “no problem”. I duck out and drive over there to find that no, they still don’t have any in stock, they don’t have any idea who i talked to, and are sorry they can’t help me. I was pretty annoyed because I had wanted to get that set up too. Oh well, next time. I’m just glad to get them all set up.

I’m off to Hartford, CT for the day. My parents are getting DSL and they want me to set it up for them. I’m actually kind of psyched since I’ve been pestering them to go high speed for ages. It’s one of the things that drives me nuts when I’m down there visiting. It’s. just. so. damn. slow. to be on dialup.

And I’m planning on picking up an Airport card for their Powermac G4 and making it into a base station so that I can be wireless when I’m down there too. This means I can sit out on the porch and be a geek. Woohoo.

(Now if the weather would just get a bit nicer).