I go on vacation and return to find all the Blockbuster stores in Charlottesville are gone. First thing I go and do is check if Blockbuster exists at all or have they filed for bankruptcy and shut down operations. Luckily they still exist, but no more stores here = no Total Access for me.
Blockbuster, could you not have kept at least one of the three stores? I really liked Total Access. Anyway, I switched from Total Access to mail only, saving a grand total of $3/month but reducing the number of movies watched by about 4-5/month thanks to a combination of not exchanging and the additional 2 day delay introduced by having to mail the discs back. Now I have to remember to drop DVDs in the mail quicker after watching them.
A while back when we switched to Dish Network from Comcast, I saw Dish had a set of packages called TurboHD which were HD only. Now we have a new HDTV, a baby and not that much time to watch TV and I saw the awesome quality of NBC HD over the air, I went looking for the TurboHD packages and I see they are gone. HD is now available only as an add on to their SD packages. Well Dish, I’m not paying extra for TV so I’m not switching.
Turbo HD was exactly what I was looking for. Less expensive, only a few channels that we watch and totally HD. Why did it have to go away? I wonder how life would be if we just got rid of the TV, upgraded our DSL connection to 3Mbps and connected a computer to our TV.
Charlottesville is home to many local chain eateries all of which offer excellent food IMHO and this is a list of all that I know of. Comment if I missed any. Criteria for inclusion – started in Cville and has 2 or more locations here. I was going to call this post only in Cville but it turns out some of our chains are branching out of cville too!
- Arch’s Frozen Yogurt – The best frozen yogurt anywhere, seriously. They also offer soups and sandwiches. At the corner and on 29.
- Baja Bean – Mexican (Americanized?), I’m not personally a fan but everyone else seems to love it. At the corner and on 29 (also in Staunton and Richmond).
- Bodo’s Bagels – Really great bagels and delicious cream cheese (my favorite – Honey Pecan). At the corner, on 29 and on Preston Ave.
- Christian’s Pizza – Yummy Pizzas with unique toppings. Downtown, Corner and Pantops
- Revolutionary Soup – Great place for vegetarians. Nice sandwiches and excellent soups. At the corner and downtown.
- Sticks Kebob Shop – Healthy and delecious Mediterranean food, the best hummus anywhere, often has great soups and don’t forget to try the mango limeade. On Pantops and Preston.
- Thai 99 – The best authentic Thai food in Cville. On JPA and on 29 near Carmike (also in Lynchburg).
We also have Guadlajara and Amigos but I’m not sure if they are local chains so if you have definite info that they are let me know and I’ll update this post.
This weekened we bought a Samsung HT-BD1250 Blu Ray Home Theater in a box system. The system as a whole is fantastic with great picture and great sound. But the cable included in the box is a regular composite video cable that can only do 480i!! (not even 480p). That is just ridiculous. A non-tech savvy person who gets this system will expect that their fancy-shmancy new Home Theater will provide them great HD experience out of the box. Little do they know that their Blu-Rays discs are no better than regular DVDs with the supplied cable. In fact a regular DVD player will probably be better because at least they will be 480p.
Luckily for me I have plenty of component cables sitting around. But even with the component cables the max the system will output is 1080i. I just don’t get it. A 10ft HDMi cable costs about $10 shipped ($5 for cable $5 for shipping) from Monoprice (I ordered 2 for about $16). Why can’t they just include the damn HDMi cable in? Is this because retailers want to sell you their $40 HDMI cables and don’t want manufacturers to include them? What could possibly be the reason for making a great blu-ray player and then providing a mostly useless cable?
I have been a fan of Blockbuster online as compared to Netflix but recently Blockbuster has been getting worse everyday. I returned my last batch of DVDs to the store almost a week ago. There are lots of available titles in my Queue and the top two titles in the queue are marked as available. But Blockbuster still hasn’t shipped anything.
I think the Blockbuster online folks are only working one or two days a week. So this message:
To have movies shipped, just make sure you have added movies to your queue that are Available Now.
There’s nothing else to do. We will ship your next available DVDs within 1 business day.
is just a damned lie.
I’m not the only one who has this problem. Maybe it really is time to switch to Netflix?
My Blog got completely wiped out while upgrading it from fantastico. It didn’t even take a proper backup. I’m restoring from my own backups while Ahan is sleeping and it should be up shortly!
My host – Webhostingbuzz also had to lose their backup drive just last night so they coudn’t restore for me.
Update 03/11 After waiting on the phone half an hour yesterday, I got through to customer service and today got this email
Thank you for contacting the Stork Craft Recall Team.
You request is being processed and the replacement brackets will be shipped on the first come first served basis. Please allow several business days for your shipment to be prepared and released from our warehouse.
Your shipment will arrive via FEDEX carrier service.
We have a Storkcraft crib which was recalled and have nothing from Storkcraft after filling out their online form. No confirmation, no parts. Also calling the company is useless because it is just an endless wait.
It seems that I’m not the only one facing this issue as you can see from the following blog posts:
Frustrated over Stork Craft crib recall
Storkcraft Recall – Part II
Maybe I should just return the crib to Walmart?
I have 7179 comments awaiting moderation so if you did post a comment on this blog, it’s probably lost in the spam. I’m finally going to get Akismet to see if that helps because the captcha is broken 
September 12th, 2008
Sidd
My original iBookDB business cards were printed by PrintingForLess and they did such a great job then that I didn’t even bother to look elsewhere this time. I made my file yesterday and I just got a proof from them today. I have never come across a company so friendly with such great customer service. They helped me correct the colors on my card so that they look exactly like I want them after the RGB-CMYK conversion (and they did this the last time too). Their card stock is excellent and their prices are so good you won’t even feel like looking anywhere else.
After I approved my proof, I got the option to add aqueous coating to my 1000 business cards for only $5, so I gave them a call and asked about the benefits and I was told that all the coating does is make the cards more durable – it makes no difference to the way the card looks and while on the phone I also got some good tips on making my card design fonts better. There was no hard sell to get the coating and the decision was left to me. It was only 5$ and I was told it does not add any significant thickness to the cards so I did end up getting it.
More later when I actually get the cards.
Use coupon code – NC20PB – to get 20% off your first order or code – MC2508 – to get 25% off printing marketing materials or – RP1N9GMS7 – to get $25.00 off your first order
I just installed Chrome and really like it! It is simple maximizes, screen real estate – no title bar, no status bar, no menus. Just tabs at the top, followed by an address/search bar followed by the webpage. The other thing I noticed was the speed. Chrome is just blindingly fast. It’s even faster than Opera! (don’t talk to me about Safari on Windows because that is just crap with ugly blurry fonts and mismatched macy interface – nope I refuse to use that piece of junk)
However there are some things left to be desired. Mouse gestures would be nice. I have strokeit installed and basic gestures like back and forward work but new tab etc. would be nice. Also, the search/address bar needs to be more intuitive like Opera, which tries to go to www.addressbartext.com/net/org/edu if you enter a single word and searches if you enter multiple words. Also some sort of progress bar would be nice. Multi monitor support would be nice too (the missing title bar confuses the nvidia driver and the multi-monitor options do not show up).
Next thing that would be nice is a linux version, Opera on linux is very buggy and chrome would be welcome. I’m going to try it later in wine and see how that turns out.
