Life has been pretty awesome lately.

Work has been quiet, for once. Feature freeze was fairly uneventful (with the exception of one issue last weekend).

Today was online games with my college group, and it was really nice.

As far as TV shows go, I finished Roswell and have started on Smallville. I’m halfway through the first season now, and have discovered that watching episodes at 1.4x with subtitles on is far more interesting (the dialog is still quite understandable, but the subtitles are good if I miss something, and I still often read faster than the lines are spoken). I suppose I’m missing out on a lot of subtlety with the actors’ speech and expressions, but it sure does advance the plot a lot quicker.

I guess it goes back to how I speed-read through books for the plot and not details. A good example of this is the last Harry Potter book. We bought it in the early afternoon and I had finished reading it by that evening. I could give a fairly good summary of the plot afterward. However, I missed a ton of details in the process… for example, I didn’t know that Ron and Hermione kissed until I started seeing Facebook groups that included a passage I couldn’t recall reading. Despite it being a fairly significant portion of a page, it was not relevant to the larger happenings at the time (with everyone about to die and all), so my brain (and eyes) skipped right over it.

I suppose as long as they bring me enjoyment it’s fine, but I sometimes wonder if it means I’m often going through life without appreciation for the little things that make it special.

Also, Smallville? Great show.

With the recent sales on many older TV series, I’ve taken the opportunity to catch up on a couple series I’ve been interested in but never really followed.

First was the short-lived comedy series Grosse Pointe. The show as a whole was pretty awesome with such hilarious juxtapositions as cast members fighting between takes of a scene where they are clutching each other in fear and saying how they love each other. If you’re looking for a good couple days’ entertainment, the entire series can be had for under $10 (shipping included) through Amazon marketplace. I highly recommend it.

Next was Roswell… all three seasons on Amazon for $42. I just finished the first season today and I have to say that I am very impressed. The season finale was really, really good.
So two seasons of that left to watch, which I will be doing in the coming days/weeks.

In addition, Amazon had a special sale on Smallville last week and was offering it at $10/season. Naturally, I had to get all 8 seasons. Those arrived tonight, so I now have 48 discs of Smallville goodness to watch. Whee.

My parents also bought the third season of Psych ($12 at Target on Black Friday), and I’m glad it’s not accessible to me right now because I’m already overloaded.

I still have the complete Firefly series from a while back when Best Buy had it on sale for $12. I keep meaning to watch it, but haven’t found time.

I also have the second season of the OC that I ordered a while back ($6 shipped from Amazon marketplace) that I should watch sometime. The first season was kind of a train wreck but I couldn’t look away, so we’ll see what the second season is like.

Oh yeah, and I still have season 3 of Supernatural to watch.

At least I have stuff to do now when I’m home alone and bored. :P

(Of course, if anyone is interested in watching any of these with me, I’m always up for “movie” nights)

Yesterday was a bunch of dim sum in Chinatown with Sharon, Charles, and people they know. It was a lot of fun and I got to try a lot of different, tasty dim sum from four different places.

However, one of the places must’ve disagreed with me, because I spent a lot of last night in the bathroom. After one such trip, I decided to check my email and saw that Amazon had sent me a promotional email touting Adam Lambert’s new album for $3.99 (as well as a long list of other albums for $5).
Given that I had been mildly interested in the album anyway, the price was right, so I decided to go ahead and get the album. However, given that it was 3 AM, I assumed that the “Buy MP3 Album with 1-Click” button would give me an opportunity to input payment information (which, you know, kind of goes against the entire point of 1-Click). I also had not paid for music from them for a while, since I tend to download their free tracks or usually have credit to cover what I want.
It so happened that the credit card I had tied to 1-Click was no longer valid.
I clicked to buy, confirmed, and the album immediately began downloading. At this point I was worried because I hadn’t been able to pay. Indeed, when I woke up in the morning, there was an email telling me my order had been cancelled due to invalid payment method. However, the downloaded album still sat in my music directory.

Ended up calling their customer service (or, rather, having them call me with their awesome “Call Me” feature), which was actually a pleasant experience. There was essentially no wait to speak to reps and they were fairly knowledgable. In the end, the rep ended up telling me to keep the album as a gift from Amazon, and that he hoped I would shop with them again. It was rather unexpected, and awesome.

So yeah. All of you should buy your music from them. Their customer service is great (even though the issue was my fault here) and it’s pretty darn cheap anyway. Plus they’re running a promotion right now so you can get . And they have a bunch of good albums on sale for $5 each (including Kelly Clarkson’s “All I Ever Wanted”, which I highly recommend). Win.

And the Adam Lambert album? Not really that great. Some nice tracks on it (Fever, Whataya Want From Me, Music Again), but the album as a whole is generally rather uninteresting. Possibly worth the $3.99 (there are at least 4 tracks that I like), but certainly not worth full price.

Unrelatedly, oh god work is going to be insane this week and next week. At least Thursday is Thanksgiving… otherwise I might go crazy by the time feature freeze rolls around December 4.