We went and saw WALL•E this weekend. It was a great movie. I would suggest that everyone go and see it. It was entertaining, moving, and it had a few really good messages that were not hit over your head with a sledgehammer.

However, in seeing it we pretty much re-affirmed everything I have thought about seeing movies for the last few years. Since slowly starting to build a home theatre type setup (which is quite humble compared to most) back in 2000 I've had a belief that seeing movies in your own home is a much better experience than going to the movie theater. At first many people thought I was nuts, but slowly and surely some have come to my side.

This weekend, even Jessie agreed that the Movie Theater experience could not even come close to our home experience. Here in Natchitoches it is very easy to come to this conclusion as the theater in town makes absolutely no attempts at customer satisfaction.

You see, when we saw the movie, it was out of focus. The entire time. Normally I would go and complain, however the last movie I saw at this theater (Cloverfield for those who are curious) had a similar issue. With Cloverfield the focus would come and go at a rate of once every second. For those who like to complain about the cinematography of that specific movie, it occurred during all the trailers as well.

Update: The pricing info was a bit confusing, look at the full post for what I think is the correct pricing.

Today AT&T announced their plan pricing for the new 3G version of the iPhone.

Turns out it is good to have the old model. We currently have a 700 minute family plan, with one iPhone and one non-iPhone. It costs just under $100 per month. The pricing was:

• $60 for the base plan with 700 minutes and the ability to add another line
• $20 for the iPhone data plan +200 text messages
• $9.99 for the second line
• Nearly $10 in taxes and fees

It was announced some time ago that AT&T was going to raise the price for the data plan to $30 on the new iPhone, and subtly shown that text was no longer included as well. Our plan on the new pricing scheme would be either $145 or $155 per month based on what we have seen thus far:

• $129.99 for the base plan, which includes the $30 iPhone data plan
• $9.99 for the second line
• $5 to add back the 200 text messages
• $10 in taxes and fees

I just wrote up an article on Airport Extreme Base Station disk and connection issues. If you are thinking of getting an Airport Base station you might want to check it out.

Today I, and others, received this email:

IMPORTANT CHANGES TO NETBANK MONEY MARKET, NET VALUE INTEREST CHECKING, and SUPER VALUE INTEREST CHECKING ACCOUNTS

Effective 11/23/2007 ("Effective Date") we will no longer process ATM transfers (including withdrawals) and point of sale transactions (including online and cash-back transactions) that you initiate using an ATM or debit card that accesses a NetBank Money Market, Net Value Interest Checking, or Super Value Interest Checking Account that was acquired by ING DIRECT on September 28, 2007. This means that on or after the Effective Date your NetBank ATM and/or NetBank VISA® Check card(s) won't work.

If you have any questions, please give us a call at 1-866-327-4599. For your convenience, we're available from 8 AM - 8 PM, 7 days a week.

Well, some of my fears regarding this whole Netbank shutdown are starting to come through. I now have confirmation from ING that they will be removing features from accounts when they have fully taken them over.

Some of the most convenient features of a Netbank account were:

• Free Online Bill Pay
• Free OFX Direct Connect
• Free OFX Direct Connect for online bill pay

So yesterday I noticed a couple of things. First off the new software upgrade finally arrived. Since doing the reformat on my DVR it has only had one crash, hopefully now it will be stable for a while (until DirecTV decides to mess with us again).

The other thing I noticed is that the DVR decided to be mean. I have a few series links, which is a function that records all of a show, either just the first time they air or the repeats as well. I have one for Good Eats that is supposed to record all shows, and keep them until the hard drive gets full. I also have a series link for Mythbusters that is only supposed to keep 5 episodes.

As of last September we have been customers of DirecTV. We went with them as the quality was decent, and the cost for the amount of channels we wanted with a DVR (Digital Video Recorder) was significantly less than any quote I was able to pry from Cox cable (now Suddenlink in this area). Since our Cox cable looked worse then some antenna setups I've seen in marginal locations it made it a no-brainer.

Turns out it wasn't all paradise.

Our service was perfect for 3 months. We had one drop-out, and the DVR worked perfectly. Unfortunately in mid-December that all started going wrong. We still do not have drop outs, but between December 14th and January 13th we had to reboot our DVR six times a day to keep it working.

Well, the weather report for the day was a bit of sleet and rain for the rest of the day. What does that mean when you live in Louisiana?

No school!

Even the university is officially closed today. Nothing like the town shutting down for a bit of cold rain.

While living in Indiana I often had to go to work with a layer of ice and several inches of snow on the ground. You would see bundled up students walking against a white wall of ice flying in the wind. I wonder what the people from Louisiana would think if they saw that? They would probably think the world was ending.

For Christmas I received a copy of the game Lego Star Wars which, while being Macintosh compatible, is not yet Intel Mac friendly, and there is no news about when that will happen. So I reluctantly went to CompUSA, where the game was originally purchased to look into my options. Ideally a replacement game would have been perfect, but in lieu of that another item would work.

What I found though, was corporate shenanigans.

Upon returning the game, unopened of course, they informed me that without the original credit card I could only get a gift certificate. I said that would be fine and asked if their full catalog was online. They informed me that while the catalog was online, their gift cards were not able to be used on the online store. That basically meant that I had to deal with the whole situation immediately as there are no CompUSA's near me, unless I really feel like driving about 4 hours.

Yesterday Robert and I went to see the movie Happy Feet. Wow, was I not only unimpressed, I'm a bit upset that I took Robert.

First off let me say that I don't tend to be an uptight individual. I don't like it when people censor things, especially language used and music. I firmly believe that it is my job to decide what Robert sees and hears and as such I have to do some research into things before I let him partake of them.