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I watched a movie on Netflix yesterday. I wanted to test it out when the first launched the service, but of course my account didn’t have the option right away. It worked and looked good. It had to pause and buffer a few times, but it wasn’t too bad. I watched Word Wars. It was a pretty good documentary about a few champion scrabble players. I don’t play scrabble, but watching those guys play was incredible. I am a sucker for a good Documentary. That’s probably all I would ever watch streaming from Netflix. For a real movie, I would much better watch it in the living room, on the bigger screen, with surround sound. I would see myself using it a lot more If I traveled a lot and got stuck in hotels every night.

The Columbine shooting, The Waco Siege, The Oklahoma City Bombing, and now the Virginia Tech shooting. Did I miss anything? All of those things happened this week.

SimpleWeather – I usually just use the dashboard widget to quickly check the weather, but this is a nice clean site that gives you the weather without all the clutter that other sites have.

Columbine, VT Survivor – I couldn’t imagine being involved in one school shooting let alone two.

Worst Name – Ever.

Horrible Trampoline Accident – Ouch.

Google Web History – Helpful, or privacy concern?

Mario Frustration – It’s long, but it’s funny as hell. Some guy added commentary over the top of someone playing a super hard level of Super Mario.

You Oughta Know – You gotta love Jonathan Coulton. This is is cover of the Alanis Morissette song. Here is the blog link of him explaining why he did it.

Top 10 Bird Moments in Sports – Number 1 is funny as hell.

Lookout Store – I loved Lookout Records in the past. I don’t listen to their bands as much as I use too, but now you can by songs DRM free. Maybe it’s time to complete my Mr. T Experience discography.

Thunderbird Goes 2.0 – My favorite windows email app Thunderbird 2.0 was just released. Good Stuff.

These school shootings are getting out of hand, but I am getting sick of everybody trying to blame something else as the cause. Violent movies, video games, Marilyn Manson have all been blamed for these shootings. Am I the only one that can think like the shooter? Why can’t people put themselves in the shooters shoes. Growing up as a kid is hard these days. When kids are in school the smallest things seem huge. As a kid there were many times that I felt suicidal and wanted to end it all. I wasn’t a loner and I didn’t suffer from depression, but I had those thoughts. I imagine that if I was a loner and suffered from depression my thoughts would be stronger. So if I was going to kill myself, why not go big and make it the thing everybody will talk about for months? Why not try to create the largest school massacre? Hell, it doesn’t even have to be the largest and they will still call it the largest. The largest school massacre was the Bath School disaster back on May 18, 1927. Weird, they didn’t have violent movies, video games, or Marilyn Manson back then? Do I know a solution to this? No. We live in a violent society and violent things will happen. Just look and the news every night. I do know that blaming movies, video games, and Marilyn Manson isn’t a solution. Sure all these killings are bad, but you have to take everything into perspective. The flu kills more people in a year than terrorism and school killing combined.

I finally got my glasses on Friday. I wasn’t sure how much I was going to wear them. I really only need them to see far away things. After wearing them everything looks so much crisper though, so I think I will probably be wearing them all the time. I wore them all weekend at work, and man my nose was getting sore. I think my nose is starting to get use to holding them up. It doesn’t hurt anymore. Now I just have to get use to looking at the world through a layer of glass.

Well, my taxes have been done for a couple of months now, but today is the day I have to send the check off. I am not a person that complains much about taxes. Our country needs money to run. Most people in this country are better off than 80% of other countries. When I look around at all our stuff and think that we could be much worse off, I don’t mind sending in my taxes. Sure we are going to have to watch our spending the next couple of weeks, but that’s the least I can do for living in such a great country. I only wish the government used our money wiser.

Kurt Vonnegut died last night. His books have been on my “want to read” list for a long time. The only one that I have read so far is Slaughterhouse-Five, and I really enjoyed it. I don’t know much about Kurt Vonnegut, but eventually I will get to read more of his books.

Yesterday there was a letter to the editor in our local paper that really got me fuming. The writer was trying to say all our laws and constitution are based on religion, which is totally false. He was all for posting the Ten Commandments everywhere. I am not offended by the Ten Commandments, and if you want to live by those rules go for it. I just don’t agree with the Ten Commandments being on city property. They have nothing to do with our laws, and encourage a certain religion. Actually enforcing most of the commandments would be illegal and unconstitutional. Only three of the commandments are actually laws. I was going to get more into it, but it isn’t worth my time. Dave Slusher, who is a much smarter guy than me, and has a great podcast, recently blogged about the 10 Commandments. It’s a good read and explains everything much better than I can.