Went to Costco today not to buy something, but to eat up on all the samples! Trail mix, baked potato chips, BBQ roast beef sandwich, Butterball turkey, ice cream sundae SAMPLES! Who needs dinner? Hey, if you're going to pay fifty bucks a year to be a member you might as well get your money's worth.

Netflix is a great service to have. I have the two DVD plan where I have two DVD at any time during the month. There are no late fees and I can hold the DVDs as long as I want. In addition they have instant movies that you can stream. Of course you need a broadband connection (I have TimeWarner cable) and it's nice if you have a large monitor (I have a 22" flat panel) and wireless for your laptop if you want to lay in bed and watch a movie. I've had The Brave One starring Jodie Foster for a couple days and another DVD is arriving tomorrow. Should watch a movie tonight but I've got a backup of online games to play. I've got to watch that. A few years ago I had 519 games going on GT! Too much. Found myself just making moves with little or no thought. Lost a lot of games that way.

Hey! Watching the LA Galaxy play on ESPN2 right now, Beckham scored at the ninth minute. Let's hope he has a great season and the Galaxy play for the championship.

Probably should write that movie review of the last movie I saw for the Movie Review club. Gotta go, see ya!

Today I finally decided to reinstall WinXP on my desktop computer. The reason? I had installed way too many programs on it in the last year and a half. In addition, I had also installed PC Linux, then botched an attempt to partition the HD, accidentally hiding the D drive (which I could not unhide). Every day when I turned on my computer I got a menu that I had to cursor down four times to get to Windows. If I didn't do this within 5 seconds it would boot to Linux. Problem with that was that Linux did not recognize my new monitor. Moreover, it took 5 minutes for my computer to completely boot and load all programs. By comparison, it takes only 58 seconds for my laptop to boot Vista Premium.

So, I backed up all my documents on a DVD and the did the reinstallation. I ran the updates (including IE, and Media Player), downloaded OpenOffice, CCleaner and Firefox, installed the drivers for my All-in-One printer and now every thing runs fast and clean.

I recommend everyone do this at least once every two years. Clean out that computer and see the the difference. Just make sure you back everything up first!

So today my plan was to return my Netflix DVD to the post office (faster that way, they get it the next day and I get another DVD the day after that), then pick up that elusive library book that my local library wants to give me, but doesn't want to open if there's a chance of a holiday within 50 feet! As usual, change of plans. Decided to finally get my right front brake fixed on my second car. Went down to PepBoys who, of course after checking the brake, wanted to sell me everything in the store except battery cables. I managed to whittle them down to what I originally came in for, new brakes--no I don't want new tires, no I don't want that extended warranty, no I don't want a new 427 hemi engine!! Had them fix the car while I walked over to the Fox Hills Mall and sampled about 3-4 foods from the food court. I almost bought some food from one guy who gave me a sample, but he looked so disparate that he was almost creepy. Decided against him, got some Italian food. Walked back to PepBoys, picked up my car, came home. Rode my bike to the post office and dropped off the Netflix DVD, picked up that hard to get library book, came home, made dinner, saved Ireland, watched some news on the TV while eating dinner, made my moves on the online gaming site...ok, I didn't save Ireland. So what?

Now, what to do tonight?

I think this is a great addition to GT. I'd like to take this moment to wave a big hello to luctruc, numptieheid, chrismiles, Grim, Catmane, Trist, dawn1968 and all my friends here on GT.

What did I do today? Well, I went down to the library to pick up a book I had put on hold, "A Death in the Family" by James Agee...however, the library was CLOSED because here in California it's Caesar Salad Day. Wait, I mean Caesar Chavez Day. Anyway, then I rode my bike to the new Staples that opened on Jefferson Blvd. in Culver City to look at the laptops. I don't need one, I have two laptops and a desktop computer (see my profile pic), but I always like to see what's new. After that I came home, made several moves on my online games sites, ate half a cheesecake, drank several glasses of grape juice and watched a sports documentary "Two Days in April" on Netflix. As you might have surmised, I'm off today. Tonight I plan on watching a DVD movie, reviewing it on the Movie Review Club here on GT, then reading a book, "A History of Reading" by Antonio Manguel. I'm a big reader. I always have a book going. In fact, I keep a list of all the books I've read since 1997. OK, you think I'm a little crazy. Well, maybe I am. You see, I'm Irish!