The Diary of A Simple Man

We're going to Pennsylvania tomorrow, and won't be back until Sunday. I'll be reading The Hobbit to Sebastian in the car, thus the title of this post.

Tomorrow morning will be busy, though; before we go, we're going to sign up with a new heating-oil provider. Petro screwed us over, and now I'm dumping them. I think we'll save money in the process, too! I researched things rather carefully.

Well, I picked up the World of Warcraft Battle Chest (including both WoW and WoW: The Burning Crusade, along with a couple of strategy guides that I didn't particularly want). By combining some gift certificates, a 10% off coupon, and a $5 off coupon I was able to get the whole thing for five bucks cash.

(I've also downloaded the Guild Wars trial; I'll install it and give it a try before too long.)

So now it's time for me to ask, though: Who here plays WoW? I'd like to add you to my friends list. And if you know of a good (and "good") group for the Horde, specifically the Tauren, please ket me know!

I can see that it's definitely a good idea to adventure with a party if you possibly can - some quests are just hell to do solo. What's a good way to get a party together quickly on WoW? Just look for PCs that are the same level as you, maybe?

Our AT&T cell phone contract expired a while ago, so we can upgrade our phones and make some changes. I recently discovered that as a Blue Cross employee I get a 19% discount on AT&T cell service; we'll have to put our service in my name instead of Teri's, but that's no problem.

Here's the question: Should I get an iPhone? I'd get a Google Android phone if I could, but AT&T doesn't have a Google phone. I got a demo of sorts from a co-worker of the iPhone, and it looked pretty cool (even though I hate Macs). Anyone out there have an iPhone? Or can you recommend a better alternative?

Let's see...Teri and Sebastian picked me up on Friday, and we stopped at L.L. Bean. We spent more than I'd planned. We got a reasonably-priced backpack for him, and got it monogrammed with his initials for an additional $6; Teri hated the style Sebastian picked, and I have to admit that it's fairly awful. But he needs to be able to make his own choices and his own mistakes at least some of the time.

We also bought sneakers for him. And when I saw that I could get a good pair of sneakers for myself for $54...well, that's about as good a price as you'll find outside of Wal-Mart or Payless. And those ultra-cheap sneakers fall apart incredibly quickly. These sneakers have the L.L. Bean guarantee.
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Lastly, we stopped at a DVD store. I wanted to see - just to see - how much season 2 of Saturday Night Live cost. I assume it would be $60-$70, the same as season 1. And that was the original marked price. But it was on sale, marked down to $24.95. So were season 3 and season 4. I went a little crazy, so I bought season 2 and season 3. I'm looking forward to seeing some of those classic Franken and Davis sketches, among other things.

And now I should get some sleep. Whew! It's late!

Best Buy is selling a 14-day trial edition DVD of WoW for $1.99. Should I try it? Would it be a mistake? The price seems right.

I need to find us a new heating oil company. As I've mentioned before, Petro screwed us royally a few months ago. Now it's time for a new contract, and I won't go with them again. Petro sucks.

We bought our furnace through them, and it has a lifetime warranty. I'm guessing that we'll need to arrange maintainance through our new oil company, but repairs should be covered by Petro. That complicates things.

Anyway, I've started Googling for heating oil, and I've talked to one company. The problem is that the terms are kind of confusing. Has anyone else had to deal with this sort of thing? Anyone know a good oil company that delivers in northern Rhode Island?

Damn. Kate's Mystery Bookstore in Cambridge (MA) is closing at the end of the month. Another wonderful old bookstore lost. I didn't go there as often as to some other used bookstores - it was more out of the way for me - but I never failed to find some great books whenever I went there. And its ambiance was simply outstanding.

My mother-in-law is going to buy a computer, and she asked for my help. She mentioned Wal-Mart; Best Buy and BJs also came up. She wants to spend $600-800 and for the system to include a decent-sized monitor and a DVD burner. Other than that she's not going to be a power user at all. Desktop, Windows (I recommended XP, but she may not have the option), and definite not Dell - we know too many people who've gone through Dell hell.

I did some research and printed out systems from the three stores I mentioned, plus a system from PCs for Everyone. Two of the systems are HPs, as I recall. The superstore prices range from $540 - %590, and PCs for Everyone is $691 (I customized it online). My gut feeling is that the PCs for Everyone system is worth the extra money because A) they use good component, B) they don't sell anything else BUT computers, C) they've been around for a long time now - around 25 years, and D) their service center is in Norwood (MA). From what I've heard, with computers from the three big stores you're more likely to have a problem, and when you do it's more likely that they'll have to ship the system to the manufacturer across the country somewhere.

Thoughts, anyone?

My computer has been getting slower and slower and s l o w e r over the past three or four months. Boot-up took forever, and response time for anything kept increasing.

No wonder. It turns out I had only 1.6 GB free on the hard drive! So yesterday I went to Best Buy and grabbed a 1.5 TB external USB drive. I've already freed up over 60 GB on the system by moving over music and videos that aren't critical to me, and the system is doing much better.

I've backed up all of the family photos and videos that I've actually taken, but I'm not going to take those off the C drive; it would be a disaster if we lost those. But there's a fair amount of other video and music - probably another 60 GB at least, maybe more - that I can move onto the external drive instead. I should have done this a while ago. While I'm at it, I'm going to rip more of my CDs, too.

I used $10 worth of Best Buy coupons that I'd received to buy the drive (which was on sale), and was amused that I got a $10 from Best Buy instantly for buying the drive. It was still more than I should have spent, but it was necessary.

I gave in and bought Motorola Phone Tools today. Had to spend an hour or so on the phone with Motorola support, trying to figure out why it didn't work. Finally I got it fixed up, and was able to download a year or two worth of pictures and videos from my phone.

The videos are of surprisingly poor quality, but the photos are decent. And now I can take as many photos as I want with my cell without worrying about filling it up or paying $$$ to send them to myself via the net.

Now I can sleep.