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I’ve been taking MARTA to and from work forever. And for maybe all of that time MARTA has run two-car trains that go from Bankhead Station on a short spur northwest of downtown to King Memorial just east of my destination station, Georgia State. Sometimes the trains run two stations further, going to Candler Park station. I would never take those short trains though since I would just have to get off later and wait.

But a month or so ago, there was an electrical fire or something that caused MARTA to shut down at the Inman Park station. A woman at work was on her way home in her car and called us to say she had seen hundreds of people outside the Georgia State MARTA station and be aware there were problems. We have a window that looks out towards the MARTA tracks and it didn’t appear there were any trains running. Eventually I was able to snag a ride with someone so that I didn’t have to get stuck at MARTA or wait forever for a bus bridge like last year. On the way we saw all of these people walking home. It was like something out of a movie (or a New York blackout). It would probably take me over an hour, but I could walk home if I really had to. By the time we left work, our car was full of other stranded MARTA riders.

Anyway, after that I started thinking that even if the train only went a few stations towards home, that if there was a problem, at least I would be that much closer to home and have to walk less. So if the train goes to Candler Park, now I go ahead and get on it. This has turned out to be pretty good. The short trains seem more likely to be refurbished and have fewer people on them. And one nice advantage is the Candler Park station is right next to the Edwards Pie Company bakery. So if the wind is blowing right and the factory is operating, the whole station smells like pie.

Today I cancelled my Netflix membership after 4 months. In that time I saw 45 movies, so the average was 11 movies per month under the 2 movie at a time plan. That’s a lot of movies to watch and I also wrote reviews of the recent ones on my website. This is about the same as I was able to watch the first time around when I could get three movies at a time.

Movies that I really enjoyed included Wedding Crashers, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, Curse of the Were-Rabbit, Munich, Proof, The Last Samurai, Koyaanisqatsi, Garden State, Creature Comforts, Mystic River, Spellbound, United 93, Suicide Kings, and Riding Giants. So that’s 14 really good movies.

Disappointments included Fog of War, Kill Bill Vols 1 and 2, Hotel Rwanda, Better Off Dead, Beyond the Sea, 24 Season 1, History of the World – Part 1, Secondhand Lions, Indiscreet, and Tombstone. Even so, I am glad I saw most of those.

Continue reading “Netflix Recap”

I didn’t do as well as last quarter with Amazon, but still was able to earn $168.41 on sales of 148 items worth $3,825.51. August was a particularly bad month for sales and, for the first time, my Google AdSense revenue exceeded the Amazon commissions (AdSense has been doing really well lately with revenue of $40-$50 a month). So traffic was strong, there just weren’t that many people buying stuff. August probably isn’t a big sales month anyway, plus Apple hadn’t released anything new in a long time. But they did introduce some new iPods in September and sales started doing better.

Continue reading “Amazon Q3 Results”

Two years ago when Dad, Jeb, Grant, and I visited Tybee we were stuck inside due to a hurricane and re-invented Bocce (botchee) where we would roll a small ball (which we called a “pith,” though I have no idea why since it isn’t called that; there is a pith ball that is used to measure static electricity in physics) and then see who could roll a larger ball closest to the pith. When it finally stopped raining, we moved this game out to the beach. That was more interesting than indoors since you had more room, terrain, and different textures of sand (hard wet sand, soft dry sand). We would go all up and down the beach throwing the pith and then trying to land balls closest to it (sometimes the pith gets knocked around, which changes everything). This year the sea gulls seemed very interested in the egg-sized white pith ball.

Continue reading “Beach Bocce”

I think that I will do Netflix for one more month before I stop. One of the neat things about Netflix is they let users review movies, like Amazon does with products it sells. Reading several reviews by normal people you can get a pretty good idea of whether you will like the movie or not. Based on those reviews, I checked out Secondhand Lions, which I thought was actually pretty dismal. So it doesn’t always work out. Because it had gotten such amazingly positive reviews, I thought I needed to write a review and warn people like me away from it. When I went to post a review, I found a link to see or edit reviews I had written previously, including the ones from three years ago. While I have a ton of reviews on my website, I have only written 3 reviews on Netflix and I had to laugh when I read another review of discontent from three years ago for Farewell My Concubine which I gave 2 stars out of 5 (I like the simple Netflix system: 1 star if you hated it, 2 if you didn’t like it, 3 if you did like it, 4 if you really liked it, and 5 if you loved it):

“This might be a well-made movie. I wouldn’t know since I didn’t make it all the way through. It appeared to be a movie about beating and otherwise mistreating orphans before the Gang of 4 comes in and does worse. I didn’t realize that it was primarily about orphan boys learning Chinese opera, in particular an opera called “Farewell My Concubine”. From the title and the description you might be looking for some seductive movie about a love triangle. I was expecting something on the order of The Last Emperor. This isn’t like that and I didn’t care for it, but I could see how the patient or those interested in Chinese opera before Mao with a high tolerance for violence against children could really enjoy it.”

It tells me that 14 people found my review useful. Fortunately it doesn’t say how many did not.