that’s what i really meant to say.

miyazaki is the best there is.

now, however, i might have to get cable. so i can get showtime. so i can be a part of the first season of the this american life tv show.

isn’t that logo awesome?

those folks push my buttons on so many levels it’s kind of embarassing.

anyway, i think if i get cable i might get the dish network because it’s cheaper and would have the perk of allowing me to avoid comcast. to tempt me to order before my brain kicks in to think about it, they are throwing in something like a free mansion (complete with butler!) with new subscriptions, but i’m not tricked.

there’s also a 3 month trial of showtime, though, which would help with that whole killing birds with small numbers of stones thing.

any warnings or advice?

on a similar note, i’m probably going to buy a monitor that can double as a tv. so if you have thoughts on that matter, i would also be interested.

now back to your regularly scheduled blogging.

http://store.muledesign.com/detail/hybrid_w.html

looks like it could be a fun place to work, too

so after a good long while of hemming and hawing, i bought these headphones (the white in-ear ones) a few weeks ago because i’m tired of my cable always getting tangled, and i figured it was worth a shot. there were several things about the retractability that annoyed me, but i had been forewarned by some reviews, and so the main nuisance was that they just didn’t fit my ears all that well.
i have never found a pair of earbuds that fit my ears, but i was hoping to be pleasantly surprised by the “in-ear” concept (which is different than straight-up earbuds… yeah, i don’t know why they bother either). in some ways i actually was impressed – they were far more comfortable than many i have worn in the past, and they sounded really good. they just fell out after a while, especially if i was sweating, and that was annoying.
overall i wasn’t too upset because the core feature – the fact that they retracted neatly when i wanted to put them away and didn’t become a gnarled blob in my bag – worked as desired, and that was really all i had banked on. they worked well enough that i could use them, and i enjoyed several things about the experience, and i could keep my eyes out for a potential upgrade. ok.
but yesterday they broke.
the casing on the right ear just totally separated in two, and i can kind of hack it together to still work but it’s a major hassle, and it pisses me off.
david says i should complain, and maybe i will, but in the short term my major question is what will i replace them with. do i try again for retractables? do i pay more for higher quality in hopes that it won’t break in a month? i don’t like having to deal with this again, but i DO like carrying music around, so what to do?
due to the alignment of the planets, which caused this to happen so soon after the release of the ipod nano, i find myself tempted to make the leap… i can’t totally justify the expense – i’ve been using faith (my pda) to play music and it works well enough – but there are definitely arguments to support it:

• I have filled up my 1G flash card really quickly and would definitely enjoy being able to both carry more music around and have room for the other things that make the portable memory useful – like schoolwork or pictures
• The mp3 software that came with faith is crap, and the software i could get by paying for something new isn’t much better. regardless, i have to buy Something no matter what if i ever want to play ogg files, which is annoying. i just checked, and there are freeware plugins for iTunes that enable ogg support, so that would be another bird with the nano stone (or perhaps the nano ultra-thin pebble)
• it wouldn’t really add anything to what i carry in my pockets because it’s so freakin small, and it has the screen that the shuffle was missing
• i can get $20 bucks off because of apple’s educational discount

And, to tie it back to the original topic of this entry:

• i have to buy new headphones anyway

:)
so we’ll see
i’m just saying the temptation is making itself known…