Matthew's Weblog

Family DVDs

• White Christmas Collector’s Edition
• Indiana Jones trilogy
• Amadeus (original release preferred; director’s cut O.K.)
• Toy Story
• Toy Story 2

Kids DVDs

• Beauty & the Beast
• Little Mermaid
• Alice in Wonderland
• Herbie the Love Bug DVD set (4-film set)
• Mulan
• Star Wars Episode 1

Allyndreth

• toy horse(s)
• touch-and-feel books
• Spot the Dog series of books (she already has “Where’s Spot,” “Spot’s Birthday Party” and “Spot Goes to the Beach”)
• mittens
• gardening gloves
• bike helmet
• backpack

Tyrian

• a red motorcycle and a blue motorcycle (his phrasing, so I guess the colors are important)
• anything Spiderman
• age-appropriate board games (whatever looks cool to you. He’s really into game playing, like his Daddy. Please, no Candyland)
• remote control boat (to drive on the pool)
• “Star Wars Episode 1 -The Phantom Menace” DVD
• Star Wars figures (original characters? Don’t know if they make them anymore)
• bicycle
• rollerblades and protective gear

Christina

• Theater tickets
• Black metal frames from American Frame
• Plexiglass for framing posters
• Pioneer 12X12 Scrapbook and extra pages (from Michael’s)
• Cuisinart Food Processor

Matthew

1. Theater tickets
2. RF universal Remote Control with IR repeaters
3. 4-channel TV Modulator (optimal , or just fine )
4. Stereo with 5.1 channel input/output and 2+ zones if possible (home theater and porch), ideally with radio built in… kind of like this but not necessarily with the dvd player. Please realize I haven’t done any serious research and don’t know about whether home theater stuff ever comes with a second speaker output…
5. Black metal frames from American Frame
6. Books (titles still TBD, sorry… I’m thinking…)
   1. Perfectly Reasonable Deviations from the Beaten Track: The Letters of Richard P. Feynman
7. DirecTivo (after we get the DirecTV installed)

Matt’s links are for product reference, probably more expensive than elsewhere so don’t just grab the default…

Green power from Green Mountain got a great writeup from the Houston Chronicle about how it was now about the same price as the non-green (gas and coal plant) electricity. The change is – literally – in the wind.

Unfortunately, Green Mountain has had to stop providing power to individual California consumer households because of the whole deregulation mess and political fallout from the power issues. So I can’t buy it. Grrrr.

Guess I’ll have to be a bit more independent, then.

People still sound surprised when they find out users write down passwords, and yet they neglect to mention specific possible solutions in the discussions. It bothers me that corporations are being bullied into useless solutions such as changing passwords every N days that could be addressed with a bit more thought.

Nothing new, just a rant…