When it came time to decide on a Christmas present I knew my parents would really like, all I had to do is remember life back in Denver when I was growing up. Being a hunting family and all, we pretty much tried anything wild that walked on all fours (within legal limits, of course), so the obvious choice — with my parents now living in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan — was to order a nice package from ExoticMeats.com to arrive around the 22nd of December via 2-Day Air through UPS. Just in time for Christmas…or so I thought.

Out of the blue on the 22nd, it was rescheduled to arrive a shade late — the 26th. The package would be spoiled, unfortunately, so I gave EM a call to report the issue at-hand. After a dual-pronged push to find out the issue with UPS, UPS said their hands were more or less tied given the holiday rush and the snowstorm out west. Though the package even arrived within 4mi. of my parents on the 23rd, a last-ditch attempt by my parents to see if they could pick up the package to avoid the spoilage proved fruitless. Things didn’t look so good at this point.

Another call to EM, and they offered to resend the package after the holidays at no extra cost due to the problems. (And this package, it wasn’t cheap.) They did everything possible to put the order back on track, even going so far as to call Michigan to verify everything with my parents for the next order. Needless to say, I heartily recommend EM now and in the future for not only their great selection, but also their excellent personal customer service.

The first ten tracks on CD1 of the Katsuhiro Otomo Presents: Memories soundtrack are among the best ten I’ve ever heard out of an anime OST; perhaps among the best in their unique genre, period.

I’d forgotten how beautiful it was. The careful arrangement of classical chorale with a tactfully-placed imposition by a bluesy saxophone, such as that found in track 2, Chorale, are what set the entire stage for the first third of the three-part movie, and what makes this soundtrack such a treat to listen to.

Most of my concentration as of late has been on the Gaming section of the site, adding reviews for Trauma Center: Under the Knife and Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, both of which are wonderful and original additions to the Nintendo DS lineup. I’ll be getting back to the meat of operation 9 here again soon after I complete the upgrade to TXP 4.0.1.

In the meantime, have a little play with this interesting demo from 1991 I found in some old DOS disks I pored through the other night. This is the Superscape Virtual Reality Demo, and using a DOS emulator such as DOSBox, you can blast back to the day when true 3D graphics as we know them today were still in their infancy. To be honest, I haven’t found this demo anywhere else on the Internet, so this is a rare one indeed.

The second download is a package of old screen savers from the mid-to-late 80s. These were true predecessors to modern-day graphics and visualizations everyone takes for granted in everything from iTunes and Winamp, to the venerable-and-late After Dark. Most of them are small productions and won’t be found anywhere else on the ‘net, but are well worth the time to take a look at.

Download: SSDemo.zip [106kb, ZIP]

Download: OldScreenSavers.zip [334kb, ZIP]

The Discovery Channel Weathertech STX7000 (a.k.a. the La Crosse Technology WS-8015) arrived today, much faster than I’d expected having used USPS Parcel Post. It’s actually much larger than I assumed it would be, and I’m impressed by the readability of the LCD at fairly long distances, even if lacking a built-in backlight. Setup was easy, and after calibrating the barometer and a couple of other settings, it was ready to go. Comparing early results to that of other local weather stations, the readings so far seem to correlate nicely and aren’t far off at all, if any.

Looks like the station arrived not a moment too soon, though, with Hurricane Dennis slowly trudging up through Alabama in the next couple of days. Inevitably, Atlanta will get its fair share of storms (rising in intensity daily) starting today and running through Monday or Tuesday.

I started with Dreamhost back in September, 2003, after long battles with Webhost2 and Nexpoint, among others. They were offering a sale where you could essentially purchase a business-class account for the price of their lowest plan (then $9.95), and although I approached the offer with some level of caution given what I’d already been through, I’m glad I plunked down the cash in the end.

Ever since then, Dreamhost has offered many sales, given away enormous amounts of bandwidth and webspace to their current customers, and in general have gone far, far beyond the call of duty when it comes to service levels. So when I heard about this, it astounded me:

2. Watch your disk and bandwidth quotas GROW!
...

That’s right! Every week, your plan limits will grow as follows, at
absolutely no charge:

L1: 20MB disk and 1GB bandwidth each week!
L2: 40MB disk and 1.5GB bandwidth each week!
L3: 60MB disk and 2GB bandwidth each week!
L4: 80MB disk and 2.5GB bandwidth each week!

So, the longer you host with us, the more you’ve got! AND, we’re so nice we’ve even retroactively grown your limits based on how long you’ve been hosting with us already (up to a one year max)! If that’s not something to blog about, I don’t know what is! I haven’t been able to get on Oprah and zap her with lightning from my finger tips… this will have to do!

In a way, it’s sort of like all our plans now come with INFINITE disk
and bandwidth! Of course, that doesn’t mean they’re NECESSARILY a good deal, because in that same way, all our plans also cost INFINITE money!

Amazing. I’m up to 15.4GB of storage space and 474GB of bandwidth allowance per month, which I know I’ll never personally use all of unless I happen to come up with the “mother of all memes” (a la “All Your Base”).

If you’re interested in joining in the joy and insanity that is Dreamhost, find out more by clicking here. Not only will you enjoy the ever-expanding features, you’ll also be treated monthly to some of the most comedic newsletters to come out of a company.