So I am alive, and in Oregon, and I still think birds are suicidal. So I will have more to say later. All of those who knew this was coming should be happy. . .or else.

My friend Mike had a ton of discounts at Best Buy so we went shopping yesterday for the latest tech gadget we could find. Mike has always been on the cutting edge of things. He was the first person I knew that had a CD burner, a DVD player, DSS, Tivo, and tons of other stuff. He's had a huge Mitsubishi widescreen HDTV set sitting in his living room for quite some time. Now that DirecTV has announced that they will be offering local channels in L.A. in HD by the end of the year Mike decided it was time to get an HD receiver. He went with the HD DVR box. It's got a 250 GB Tivo in it which can record 30 hours of HD programming and 200 hours of standard programming. Yeah, holy crap. Right now we only get 5 HD channels on DirecTV, but they are the sweetest looking things I've ever seen. Everything is in true widescreen and it looks crystal clear. It makes watching golf a beautiful experience. I'm excited for football season now because Mike will be getting Sunday Ticket HD. Speaking of sports, ESPN HD is pretty darn sweet. Right now my favorite though is Discover HD Theater. Those nature shows look absolutely gorgeous. I'm definitely looking forward to when every channel is in HD and the equipment gets cheaper so I will be able to enjoy this stuff in the comfort of my own home. Until then, I'll just be bumming it a lot at Mike's.

The Huffington Post | ARE YOU FREE, WOMAN? TAKE THIS FUN, EASY QUIZ!

I am on the whole a non-anal guy. However, there are certain things that I am very anal about.

For instance, I am very anal about pens. I cannot stand writing with a crappy pen. I think it is because my penmanship quality decreases directly proportional to the quality of the pen I am using. I have to use a uniball .5 pen, or I go out and buy one to use.

Another small thing that drives me up the wall is eating corn on the cob. The eating has to be done systematically in order to ensure that I get the absolute most corn I can off the cob. This stems from loving corn on the cob as a child and having a large family all trying to eat the corn on the cob, which was in limited supply. It befuddles me to watch someone eat a bit here, a bit there... I must eat mine like a typewriter.

Any of you guys have weird little anal behaviors.

Using Firefox as an alarm clock

Being part of the cult of Fire(fox), I thought some of you might enjoy this.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/5/25/193144/999

Contains some graphic images.

The Cobblebot Caper

This is a really cool Batman platform game that looks like the new cartoon. Be sure to collect a lot of Batarangs and go for multi-hit combos to maximize your score.