Everybody has their sickness

The title of this post is something I use to remind myself that everyone that I have ever met has some quirk that will consume time and/or money doing objectively useless things... and to remind myself not to judge them too harshly, since my primary sickness is games. What I sometimes forget, however, is that being possessed of one sickness in no way inoculates you from other sicknesses...

Last month, I wrote about the Negima! anime series, and that I'd try out the manga source material... boy, talk about your "gateway drug" experience. Here's a brief rundown of my time with Negima! so far:

• Before July: Start watching the series on Netflix. Price: $0 (beyond what I was already spending on Netflix)
• Early July: Oh, Netflix doesn't have disc 3... but Amazon has the whole 6-disc series available for cheap! Price: about $15
• Mid-Late July: That was pretty good, but I want more. Oh hey, Amazon has used copies of the first five volumes of the manga from various vendors for under a buck (plus a few dollars shipping each... still a lot cheaper than new, though). Price: $20-$25
• Early August: Hm... consumed those volumes in one night. Most of that batch of manga matched the anime, in broad strokes, but had better story development... and it just started to deviate from the anime in ways I like. It was a real pain waiting for shipments from all those vendors, though... think I'll try getting used copies of the next five volumes from "fulfillment by Amazon" sellers. Price: about $35
• Mid August: Showed some restraint, and managed to make those volumes last all weekend long. Time for five more volumes... but it looks like the used prices aren't much off the new prices for these. I guess I'll pony up for new copies from Amazon this time. Price: about $50
• Today: I can't believe I stayed up until midnight on a work night to finish those books... and they left me with a cliffhanger ending! I may as well face it, this series has me hooked, and I'm so very weak... luckily, I converted some credit card rewards points into an Amazon gift card, so this won't hurt too much. Amazon, send me the last 12 volumes that are out in print so far... I can take it! Price: about $110

So yeah, in a week or two, I'll get my last shipment of books, likely will consume them over the course of 2-3 days tops, then likely will wait with bated breath for volume 28 when it drops in late October... oh, that will be some unpleasant withdrawal symptoms time, I'm thinking. Any of you Spokane friends care to jump on board the plague cart? I'll gladly lend you DVDs or early manga volumes... :)

A new adventure begins: Sewer Hookup

Every so often, I need a reminder that you can't quite do everything on the Internet yet. Even so, it can still come in handy in those limited cases. Today's case in point, finding somebody to hook up my house to the sewer system.

I still have the better part of a year before I must be hooked up, but I can't comfortably endure knowing there's a pricey expense in my near future without knowing how pricey, so I started the search. Googling up "Spokane sewer contractor" brings up a few hits on the map, but... few, if any, of the companies listed have a website. Also, most of the Street View shots of the business addresses tie to residential addresses (or, in one case, a vacant lot)... which says, to me, that most of these contractors are just a guy with an earth mover. It's nice to keep in mind, if I'm looking for somebody to do a passable job on the cheap, but I really want to start with knowing what it will cost to do the job "right" before I fall back on that level of work.

So, I revert to the phone book. I find a place that advertises having been around since the '50s, and find it on Google Maps (it was in my initial search results, but didn't make it onto the main list, for some odd reason). It's fairly close, and Street View shows a commercial building/lot... which is pretty much what I expected for a "real" business in this vein. One phone call later (and oh, how I do hate phones), and my request for quote is in... but, of course, they're backlogged, so they'll get back to me, in theory. We'll see how this goes...

More Sony wrongness

So yeah, I'm still in a snit about Sony's PS3 Linux disabling from back in April, but, last I heard, there's class action lawsuits being pursued there, so I'm not obsessing over that at the moment. Rather, it's another PS3-related change that has me fervently hoping that they're overestimating what their "core demographic" will tolerate.

Every two weeks, a new episode of a "show" called Pulse is made available on the PlayStation Network for free. I quoted-out "show" in the last sentence because what it is is a run-down of the various games, movies, etc. that are coming out on PSN in the coming weeks... or, to put it bluntly, it's pure advertising. I'm not aware of any games that I'm going to want to purchase for PS3 any time soon, but it's a low-effort way to keep abreast of what's coming out soon. At any rate, this week's episode was preceded by an ad for a new movie theater release, before the show itself got going... or, to put it in other words, you had to watch an ad before you could watch the ads you came there to watch.

I was going to title this entry something along the lines of "More Sony consumer cluelessness", but I fear that too many people have gotten used to watching ads before what they came to watch online, and won't even bat an eye. As for me, it's just another little piece of PS3 that I won't be using any time soon... good thing it's still a decent Blu-Ray player.