Bah, humbug
It’s the Christmas season here in Southern California. It’s time to close the windows at night; worry about it may actually rain outside and pulling out the Christmas decoration out of the garage.
For some reason this year I can’t get the song “Santa Baby” out of my head, the 1953 version by Eartha Kitt, not the new crappy version by Madonna.
Well, not being a total Scrooge this year (almost because of the economy) I am looking for free deals this year more than usual. I ran across two that have had me thinking lately.
I ran across a link for a one month free trial of blockbuster.com, with this service you can rent DVD/Blu-ray disks in the mail and send them back. I know, I know, I must be one of the last people to sign up for this type of service, but I have had to many problems with services like Cinema Now to make me want to deal with the movies, besides there is always Bit Torrent. It’s been great; they get here within two days. The only problem is, we never have time to watch them. So what I wind up doing is, when the DVD gets here I rip it to my hard drive and send it back. I go through 2 or 3 movies a week and I will eventfully watch them. The nice thing about the Blockbuster version of this business model is you can actually drop them back at the Blockbuster stores (if you can find any left) and they will credit your return immediately.
Our next endeavor will be signing up for the free Netflix download trial on our new XBOX 360. Here there is no fuss or mess; it downloads directly to your box. I will see how that service is when we sign up in the next few weeks. See ? I can be green, no carbon wasted driving around.
One quick thought, Arrowhead water introduced these light weight plastic bottles to save the environment. The only problem is they are so thin they can’t survive my kids taking them to school. They don’t want them in their backpack anymore, because most of the time they wind up leaking. I got a nice email back from some lady at Arrowhead water describing how energy friendly they are to make, blah, blah, blah. This doesn’t change the bottom line, they don’t work and they don’t do what they are supposed to do, hold water without leaking!
The second thing is a major shift for me. I signed up for Amazon Prime. This is an Amazon deal where you pay a monthly fee and you get free 2 days shipping on anything you order. Sounds lame I know, but I signed up for it for the Christmas season thinking I may use it. It turns out I have used it quite a bit. For all those knick knack gifts I would usually go to the book store for, I can just pop onto Amazon.com click and click and I get it shipped here for a great price without having to drive down the bookstore/mall and fight my way through the crowds.
Bah, it doesn’t matter anyways. I will probably cancel these services any ways. I have no time for movies and the Amazon thing makes me spend money.
It these uncertain economic times, keep your head up, things are bound to change, another government bailout is just around the corner.
sigh
