Received some decent news last night. I’m pleased, but cautiously optimistic, though I’d be more pleased had I sold off all of my stock prior to the current plummet. 😉
In Other News
I wrote a treatise against beer growlers last night.
No Raw Deal, Hoping For No Dry Deal At Lunch
When I arrived home last night I was pleased to see the pork in the crockpot cooking nicely, with two hours remaining until its completion. As the timer neared expiration I stopped the cooking and pulled the pork from the crockpot using my salad “fingers” and then pulled it apart into a food container. The pork’s destination is a small group lunch here at work, I only hope that it maintains the juiciness that it had last night. Normally I store the pork in its “juices” but I stored it plain this time since one of the lunch participants doesn’t enjoy spicy food, and the North Carolina style sauce I make with the “juices” can be quite spicy.
ITP Flickr Pic
Salvaged this from my iPhone last night.
This was the scene at the Wedge Brewery last Saturday shortly before Dave and Katherine (aka “Public Enema” and “Saddle Sores”) arrived out of nowhere.
Booking It
One of the things I’ve not discussed from last weekend’s journey was the book learnin’ I undertook. On the drive around I listened to Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto which I found to be an interesting “read” and has questioned some of my habits. While in Waynesville, and subsequently, read Bob Mould’s autobiography See a Little Light: The Trail of Rage and Melody.
Speaking of Mould, he’s coming back to Eddie’s Attic in October. Normally a ticket purchase would be a snap-judgement purchase, but this time I’m contemplating reserving a table if I can find others willing to pay the extra fee for doing so.
I’m currently listening to a reading of Jack Kerouac’s “On The Road” for my entertainment.
Dear Netflix: Improve Your Service
I’ve been a Netflix customer for years. During that time I’ve been pleased with their service, though the announcement of a sizable price increase coming in September has tempered my enthusiasm. I believe I may have mentioned that I plan to switch my account to a “streaming only” option, but the problem is that it seems everything I want to watch is only available on DVDs. Bugger!
Case and point, I’ve decided that I want to watch all ten seasons of “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” I wouldn’t expect the latest seasons to be available to stream, but I certainly expected that the earliest seasons would be. I was wrong.
I suppose I could change my account to a “DVD only” but that seems so archaic… Netflix, I know you want to stop mailing DVDs to people, so you need to step up your streaming offerings — and do so quickly.
Stats & Goals
Daily
Current Mood – cautiously optimistic and hoping that something good comes into my life soon (healthwise)
Current Music – listening to the latest “Mac Geek Gab” podcast, though this might be the last one I listen to as I vehemently disagree with their opinion that “using ad blockers is stealing content” because I’m tired of being bombarded with advertisements everywhere I go, there must be a viable alternative business model. [Update: I just removed “Mac Geek Gab” from my podcast download list in an effort to take actions for my beliefs.]
Website Of The Day – An internet buddy of mine has a great website called Captain’s Dead on which he hosts live-recorded music. If you are into “alternative” rock, I encourage you to check out his website.
Mode Of Transportation To Work – my car
Exercise (b)Log – stair climbing, 6 flights
Morning Weigh-In – didn’t check, too busy packing laundry
Monthly
Foot Mileage – 0.0 miles
Wheel Mileage – 0.0 miles
Pushups – 0
Situps – 0
Stairs – 36 flights
Consecutive Days Of Bed-Making (Longest Streak) – 0 (0)
Vegetarian Days – 0
Carnivorous Days – 10
Marta Rides To Work – 0
Bike Rides To Work – 0
August Goals
– “Completely” recover from the bike crash
– Ride my bike no fewer than 150 miles
– Not to get sick for the entire month
– Not get fired from my job
– Run at least once
– Eat vegetarian no fewer than five days
– Lose two pounds
2011 Goals [will be a little more fluid than in past years]
– Reduce my weight by 25 pounds based on the my weight as measured on February 1st
– Completely read the book Daily Negations which I received as a Christmas gift.
– Run Sharpened Stone as a real business — one which does not get penalized.
– Save $500 for the sole purpose of donating to charitable organizations of my choice
– Attend at least one professional photography workshop
– Enter no fewer than three photographic competitions / gallery showings
– Ride in no fewer than five 50 mile or 50K bike rides
– Run in no fewer than two one half-marathon
– Submit at least one application under the name “Sharpened Stone” to Apple’s iOS store
The Unmeasurable
– Continue backing up all data, including the off-site storage
– Become a proficient programmer in Objective-C
– Do not create a solution for something which is not a problem
– Eat smaller portions
Cheers,
Paulie [eatl/ga]
Netflix- we get 2 DVDs & streaming – Allan watched plenty streaming at the firehouse, plus he likes to watch some stuff that comes on DVD only. Then, we have 1 movie laying around. I dont’ see it as that big of a deal – it is only around $20 a month, I waste more money than that on many other things.
But – I did see a story that Netflix has lost a lot of customers with the rate hike.
I think Netflix’s problem is muti-fold:
1. I am a content snob, and for me it’s worse because of my employment.
2. The price increase or change in service options wouldn’t be as bad if they actually had a decent amount of things to stream.
3. It was the way Netflix went about the price increase. “Oh you want the same service? What costs you $9/mo today will now cost you $16/mo. Tough luck!”
FYI, Bob did an interview on The Sound of Young America a few days back. Not sure if you caught that or not.
I did Andrew, thanks for the head’s up. Seems he’s doing a book tour preceding, or in conjunction with, his music tour. Bob was also interviewed on Sound Opinions a couple of weeks ago.
There was a piece on NPR just this morning on Netflix, apparently with DVDs the content property is easy because they just buy a DVD and then rent it out, but with streaming they have to negotiate every single piece of intellectual property individually, and/or deal with content caps. For instance, Netflix has a deal with Starz which has a deal with Sony content, but once Netflix reached, oh, say, 20 million downloads, that hit Sony’s content cap and thus it has to be re-negotiated. If I were Netflix and I still needed to negotiate for streaming 90% of movies and TV shows out there, I would NOT have picked this particular moment to switch the pricing scheme. They must’ve been betting that most people would choose the more expensive dual option.
http://www.npr.org/2011/08/11/139383282/in-shift-to-streaming-netflix-customers-find-holes
Netflix is not new to the industry, they’ve certainly dealt with all of the content providers, and therefore should not have made this misstep. Perhaps they were riding high with their meteoric stock price increase…
Thanks for the NPR link, I’ll give it a listen today.
Oh yeah, I absolutely agree with you! They’ve had PLENTY time to get their ducks in order.