New Things This Winter

We had a fine snow fall downtown today, hours of blowing ice granules, but there was no trace of it in the suburbs. Must have been authentic urban snow.

Netflix seems to work as advertised. When writing about the video industry recently, I was intrigued enough by the service to sign up for it. Interesting how something born and bred on the Internet uses the USPS so effectively. You order the disks, and they show up in distinctive black and red packs.

The Twilight Samurai is a fine movie, by the way. The Twilight Zone Samurai is a concept someone needs to develop.

DSL’s attitude toward providing double-time Internet access to my house: mañana, señor. I remember reading about some of the connection issues associated with DSL, but those were abstractions. Now I’m living them. It works when it feels like it.

I won’t bother describing my adventures in Earthlink tech support limbo. The briar-patch of tech support is too common an experience to need describing, but I will say I learned to recognize the ominous hold-time pops and clicks that meant I was going to be cut off soon, accidentally-we’re-sorry, and have to start the whole automated answer treadmill again.

GE Triton XL Dishwasher. The first major appliance that came with the house to give up the ghost was the dishwasher (see August 17, 2003). So we bought another one recently at a certain big box retailer. You have to like that name, Triton, which it shares with a moon of Neptune and, before that, a minor sea god “cast in the shape of a merman… His commonest representation was as a creature with a human head and torso, but the tail of a fish.” (From the incomparable Gods and Mortals in Classical Mythology: A Dictionary by Michael Grant and John Hazel.)

It’s sleek and white. It cleans dishes. But it would be better if there were a small picture on it somewhere of a merman washing dishes.

T Mobile. So far so good. A plan with two phones, and no extra charge for calling the between them. Got the first bill the other day. No surprises. Yet.

Margaritaville Calypso Coconut Shrimp. “Margaritaville is always just as close as your freezer.” Acquired a large box half-price at a certain warehouse store not long ago. Not bad for frozen shrimp. But not worth full price.