I’ve been a Netflix subscriber for most of this year now and it’s a great service. But what’s turned it into an awesome service is that box in the picture over there. That’s the Roku Netflix player and it rules so much. It lets me stream 10,000 or so TV and movie titles over the internet and onto my TV. Not new releases so much, but plenty of really great old stuff. All that’s required is that I keep my Netflix account. The quality of the movies is just as good as DVD and looks great on my 26″ LCD. I’ve heard that they’re going to start offering HD content soon, but I don’t even care. I’m happy with it the way it is.

This thing makes me even happier than I ditched 100% of my DVD collection last year. And I’m sure the service is going to just keep getting better, especially once Blockbuster releases their own TV box later this year and they have to keep up with the competition.

I’m surprised stuff like this isn’t bringing the cable TV rates down. I haven’t had anything more than the basic network cable for the past year, which I never watch. I only keep it because of the promotional thing I’m on with Comcast makes it cheaper to have cable with my phone and internet than to not have cable at all. Last week the promotional thing ran out, so I called them once again to cancel my cable TV and they set me up with another promotional thing so it’s cheaper to keep my cable. They desperately want me to have cable TV. Speaking of cable TV, look at these girls. I want to punch them both.

My Netflix queue is down to 15 movies now. It’s been consistently over 100 movies ever since I had it, as I’ve been copying just about everything that’s come in. But I’m almost finished with building my collection. After that I’ll be moving to the $8.99 plan on Netflix, which will make my Roku box even more awesome because it’ll be crazy-cheap. Wonder how many months until my personal digital movie collection is rendered completely useless because the Roku box will stream everything Netflix has.

A few years ago I was standing in a long line at the Alton Lowes, probably buying some home renovation junk. The guy being checked out at the front of the line had a cart full of drainage PVC pipes. Expensive pipes and lots of them. The teenage cashier can’t get one of them to scan, so she picks up her phone and says, “Plumbing, call 203!” or whatever the extension for her register was. I pulled out my cell phone and called Lowes and asked for extension 203 and her phone rings. I was at the back of the line, so I turned around and hoped that the man in front of me wouldn’t hear me talking. She explains her problem and reads the barcode to me. I tell her, “Oh, that particular pipe is free as long as he’s purchasing at least $20 of other pipes of the same diameter. That’s why it won’t scan.” So the guy gets 2 of these pipes free of charge. Too bad I couldn’t do that with my own purchases.

I wonder what would happen if I told that cashier of my hilarious prank on her when it was my turn in line. “Yeah, that was me on my cell phone. His pipes weren’t really free. I sure tricked you a good one!” Would she be shocked or amused? Would I get slapped? Would she call security? Thrown out of the store for life? I guess I’ll never know.

Reminds me of when I was at the same Lowes buying the 4′ molds for my concrete footings for the deck. Or whatever those big cardboard cylinder things are called. I had 3 of them, costing about $8 each. And they were all inside of each other so it looked as if there was just 1 of them in the cart. The cashier scans it (just 1) and the rest of my merchandise and I begin to pay. I wasn’t trying to scam her, that’s just how they were stacked on the shelf and that’s how I put them in my cart. Just then her phone rings and she picks it up. I can hear the voice on the phone telling her that I have more mold tubes inside of the one tube she scanned. She hangs up, explains her mistake to me, and scans another $16 for me to pay. I’m guessing it was security who zoomed in on my tubes. How sneaky!

Makes me wonder what kind of crazy things I could get a cashier to believe if I called her on her register phone.

“This is Steven from security. The man in line has a bucket of joint compound hidden inside his coat. Ask him to open his coat for you!”

“Hey Cindy, your credit card machine isn’t authorizing that card properly for some reason. You need to write down the full card number, the expiration date and the 3 digit code from the back. And just stick the paper you write it on in your pocket and we’ll just get it from you later.”

“It’s employee discount day. You’re supposed to be ringing up ALL purchases at the employee discounted rate.”

Or I guess I could do something like this.

Today the kids and I biked to some railroad tracks and put coins on the tracks. Even though I’ve lived most of my life near railroad tracks, and played around them often as a kid, I never bothered to try this. Back then I was more into putting logs and giant pieces of metal on the tracks, hoping to derail the trains. We hung around the tracks for about 30 minutes, hoping for a train to stop by, but no luck. We left our coins there and ended up going back home.

Tonight I went jogging and noticed a train passing as I was out, so I stopped by the tracks and picked up the coins. I only got about half of them since I was searching for them by cell phone light and they were hard to spot. But here they are:

I love how the edges still exist perfectly on some of them, but other are cracked and sharp. I honestly didn’t know they would really flatten this well. Or I thought the vibrations would knock them off the track before the train actually hit them. The kids want to go retrieve the rest of them tomorrow. I told them they should try and spend them at 7-Eleven.

A couple days ago, I was reading this entry from Renae’s blog and she mentioned that she always walked with her Garmin GPS to track her distance and speed. I can’t believe I never thought of that! My phone, which I always take with me to play music on, has built-in GPS on it. I use it all the time in the car with Google Maps to keep me from getting lost. So I searched crackberry.com for some software that would track time/speed/distance and found GPSed which is perfect. And best of all it’s a free program. It’s making me love my Blackberry even more.

The program works like a social networking site where you can automatically upload your jogs/hikes/whatever to your profile. It lays out your route on top of Google Maps and displays your average speed, distance and all that. It rules. I could post links to my routes, but they begin and end at my front door and I don’t want any PLA weirdos doing evil things to me. Thanks for the inspiration, Renae! Here’s what the program looks like on my phone…

Looking at my route from tonight makes me realize I underestimated my distance from the other day. I went for about 8 miles, not 6. It’ll be nice to know my exact distance now. Also, I kicked ass with the running tonight. I ran for the first 1.5 miles without slowing for a break. My average speed was around 5.3 MPH. And I ran nonstop for almost another full mile on the way home. I’m getting better at this.

Someone asked what’s with all the fitness stuff lately. I’ve been doing this for almost 2 years now and I’ve lost close to 35 lbs. I plan to lose another 30 or so lbs, which brings me to a healthy weight according to some fitness website. I had a gym membership for about a year, which I kept mostly in private posts. Again, because I didn’t want PLA weirdos trying to figure out which gym I was at. Now that I’m running on my own I guess it doesn’t matter so much.

I also cut down drastically on my horrible eating habits. I still have horrible eating habits and don’t have plans to change that too much, but at least I’m doing a lot less of it. Like, I rarely eat a dozen donuts for breakfast anymore. Or a whole box of those powdered ones. Or 2 orders of Crazy Bread from Little Caesars for supper. Or an entire box of EL Fudge for lunch. A few years back I found out that once you get old that stuff actually makes you fat.

And I’ve given up Pepsi. For as long as I can remember I’ve had at least a Pepsi per day, usually several. Stopping by Quiktrip for a 44oz cup of it was a daily thing for me in Illinois. I always tried to not buy Pepsi in bulk or in 2 liter bottles, because I knew that would make it too easy for me to access. But even then, I still went to the store at least a couple times a day to buy some. But now I’ve quit. At the very most, I only have maybe a 20oz bottle every 2 or 3 months. And strangely enough, the annoying insomnia that I’ve suffered from my entire life has nearly vanished. It’s crazy how well I sleep these days. Speaking of that, I need to quit writing and go to sleep.

Just got back from a SIX mile jog. Ouch. When I say 6 miles, it’s more like 3, because I usually jog for one song, walk for the next, etc. Still, more that I’m used to doing. This one took about an hour and 20 minutes. And wow, the new Weezer album is great! It’s comparable to their Blue album. Really good stuff. Anyone who hasn’t seen it needs to go watch their new video.

Speaking of new albums, Nerf Herder finally put a new one out. It’s not amazing, but it’s got a couple of really good tracks on it. I actually purchased it. With money! Was my first experience with Amazon’s mp3 download service.

On Saturday I went on a 2.5 hour hike, then drove to Portland for a few hours. Saturday I took my longest jog ever - about 4.5 miles. Normally I only do about 2. Sunday I hung out with Sheila all day, hiking, geocaching, dinner and a movie. For the first time in my life, I paid more than $40 to fill up my gas tank. It’s now at least $4.00 everywhere. It’s about $20 just to drive to Portland, which is the same price to take an Amtrak there.

As much as I hate that Rick Astley song, I finished up a pretty decent parody of it this weekend, complete with a video. It’s going to be the introduction song for the PLA Panel at HOPE this year. I’m going to wait until HOPE starts to post it on YouTube.

I bought rollerblades yesterday so I can skate with Emily. We skated around on the street for awhile last night. It kills my ankles. We’ll probably end up going all the way to the park on them this weekend.