Did you miss me? Sorry I didn’t get a blog post put out last night. I was without my computer for the whole day, due to the fact that I am working on fixing my mother-in-law’s computer. She basically inherited her son’s old Pavilion desktop, and it is chock full of all sorts of performance-degrading software.

Of course, before I wipe the whole thing, she wanted me to back up all of his old stuff, in case he ever needs it. I had no idea what I was getting into when I agreed to work on it.

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Multiple sources (Yahoo! News, NewsFactor, San Jose Mercury News) are reporting that Reggie Fils-Aime, CEO and president of Nintendo of America (NOA) is claiming that the Nintendo Wii will still not be readily available this holiday season.

In the interview in the San Jose Mercury News, Fils-Aime reports that, no matter how many consoles NOA produces and releases, they still cannot keep them on the shelves. He claims that NOA has, as of yet, been unable to find the threshold of the world’s demand for these innovative consoles.

Thankfully, I am one of the lucky (or stupid, depending on your outlook) ones that waited for hours overnight to pick up one of these beautiful machines.

Unfortunately, my beloved Toshiba Gigabeat expired a month or so ago, so I have been doing some pretty extensive research into either repairing or replacing it. To repair the thing would cost me anywhere between $100-150 USD, and would require me to once again take the thing apart. On top of that, I wouldn’t have any guarantee as to whether or not the repair would be successful, or for how long. Basically, the hard drive inside is dead (it sounds like ping pong balls bouncing when I turn it on) and needs to be replaced.

Just when I thought I was going to have to break down and finally buy an iPod, Microsoft has come to my rescue. Many of you know that I am not a huge fan of Microsoft, but, as stated in a previous blog entry, I am even less of a fan of Apple’s foray into the digital media world.

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On one hand, it seems like only yesterday that CenterNetworks began covering everything that happens across the Web. On the other hand, it seems kind of like CN has been around forever.

Regardless of how it feels, it’s only been one year since Allen and his team started up CenterNetworks. The site has come a long way over the last year, and always seems to be moving in the right direction.

Congratulations to Allen and the rest of the CenterNetworks crew on reaching this milestone.

This will be a very quick post, as I don’t have a whole lot to say. However, something I’ve noticed recently is that there are so many new developments in technology every day but they’re not always necessarily a good thing.

Two things that come to mind right away are digital cameras and digital media players.

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A few months ago, I received a newsletter in my e-mail inbox. How I got on their list, I really couldn’t tell you. I don’t know if they sent out a massive spam campaign, or if I signed up with an affiliate, unknowingly opening myself up to these types of messages, etc.

However, the newsletter was not typical of the spam I normally receive. It was actually full of pretty decent, interesting information.

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A little over a month ago, I had satellite Internet service installed at my house. In this entry, you will find my review of the service so far.

Introduction
The service is pretty good overall. At it’s best, it’s not quite as fast as DSL or cable, but it is better than than the Internet service you get from wireless companies, such as AT&T Wireless, Verizon Wireless, Sprint, etc. The service is very reliable. I have only lost my connection a handful of times since I’ve had it, and it usually comes back within an hour. Most of the time, if I lose my connection, it’s storming badly enough outside that I shouldn’t have my computer turned on anyway.

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To take things slightly off-topic, and to get a blog entry in for this week, I decided to post reviews of two albums I picked up recently. One of them is brand new, the other’s about a year old at this point.

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I have moved into a new house. We are working on selling our 1,100 square foot mobile home (which is on rented land), and have purchased a 1,500 square foot double-wide, built on a permanent foundation, on 1.57 acres of land.

We moved in to the new house two weeks ago.

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I have an update on my experience with Hewlett Packard and their customer support. I did not want to post anything more about my situation until I had spoken with their “Quality Customer Care”, as I was not sure whether things were going to turn out badly, or if they would make things right for me.

Well, it appears as though they are going to make things right, and I must say I am extremely impressed. All the same, it would have been nice to have them simply throw in an extra hard drive, or some sort of nice peripheral, but I am still overwhelmed by their response to my situation.

Within this blog entry, you will find the correspondence I sent to HP, along with their e-mail responses. I will then tell you about the phone call I received yesterday afternoon.

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