Diet: Well, I've decided it's time to lose some weight. Been dieting for about a week actually. Basically I'm following the diet a person is forced to follow after weight loss surgery. I don't plan on keeping it up for a long time (maybe a month or two at most) but I'm hoping it'll help me shed those unwanted pounds quick

DVDs: Well, I'm continuing to backup our movie collection...only now I'm backing up our VHS collection to DVD...or rather "acquiring" a DVD shrink version of everything we have on VHS ;)

DVD Burners: If I'd realized how damn good my BenQ burner was I'd have picked up another. It's read HUNDREDS of DVD's...some kinda scratchy...and never had any problems. On burning...with the exception of a batch of Dupsonic disks (which may have been bad *shrug*) it has burned HUNDREDS of DVD's flawlessly. It burns every disk I've used in it at higher than rated speeds.
Now the Samsung drive. It hates the AVB disks that have been burning just great at 16x (rated at 8x) flawlessly in the BenQ. The other disks I've tried in it burn...at rated speed. It also has problems reading DVD's sometimes. From the experience of my friends...this is not uncommon. *sigh*.

Tip for better DVD burning: If you'd like to improve your CD/DVD burning experience...get a second hard drive! If you're reading at almost half the maximum speed of your main hard drive and start doing some other task, the heads end up spending more time seeking (as the computer goes back and forth between the two tasks) than actually reading/writing data. A second hard drive fixes that problem. Just make sure to use the SECOND had drive (instead of the boot/OS drive) for the data you're copying to DVD. Also, it would still be better to put both your hard drives on the same cable...burners sometimes have problems if they operate on the same cable as the hard drive.

WATERROCKETS.NET I noticed this domain was expiring...so I tried to "reserve" it...cost a bit more (about $20) but I know some people in the waterrocket community and I'm sure at least one of them would like to have the domain (or waterrockets.org) so I figured either I would have to do it...or some internet lowlife would turn it into a paid for placement, ad infested "search engine", a porn site, or an online pharmacy. Anyway, the domain is safe and I'll find it a good home soon...and try to impress upon the guy that gets it...how important it is to keep it within the community. I'd also like to once again say how VERY BAD it is to publish a list of recently expired domain names...the list is little more than a tool to help the afore mentioned internet lowlifes make the net a shittier place.

Well, that's obviously enough for now...until later.