Tuesday, June 24, 2008

The Wyoming Circle


The Wyoming Circle: Starting from centrally located Riverton, going west to Dubois, to Jackson Hole and the Grand Tetons, up thru Yellowstone National Park, to Cooke City (in Montana), back down through the mountains to Cody, to Thermopolis, and right back to little Riverton.... the Wyoming Circle. This is a trip I first went on in 1988 when I was 11 years old, when Yellowstone burned and burned... I remember the smoke from all the fires just starting to fill the sky as we left.

I returned to Yellowstone National Park twice more in my life before this year, but I was never lucky enough to travel "the Circle" again. This time I was able to share this wonderful trip with Jessica. This time it was snow, rather than smoke, that filled the skies of Yellowstone. This time... I saw grizzly bears.

Many thanks to Wesley James Bell, who carefully organized and narrated this trip for Jessica and I, and for good measure, even drove us the entire length of the trip. His knowledge of biology, geology, history, and local lore proved invaluable and indispensable. It would have been little more than a long car ride through pretty scenery without his presence and presentation. Thank you Porkchop, we couldn't have done it without you!


Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Those Heartless Bastards


Netflix just sent the following email to my girlfriend, who is the primary account holder in our apartment, and who has been kind enough to share her account control with me by giving me my own profile and queue:

"We wanted to let you know we will be eliminating Profiles, the feature
that allowed you to set up separate DVD Queues under one account,
effective September 1, 2008.

Each additional Profile Queue will be unavailable after September 1,
2008. Before then, we recommend you consolidate any of your Profile
Queues to your main account Queue or print them out.

While it may be disappointing to see Profiles go away, this change
will help us continue to improve the Netflix website for all our
customers.

If you have any questions, please go to
http://www.netflix.com/Help?p_faqid=3962 or call us anytime at 1 (888)
638-3549. We apologize for any inconvenience.

- The Netflix Team"


How the FUCK will taking away the already established and successful practice of separate Profiles help improve their website? Where will all my ratings and all my reviews and all my Netflix friends go to now? What did I do to deserve this suffering, this humiliation? Must my queue and my ratings now be mixed with those of another? No offense to my girlfriend's taste... but by my taste I will be recognized, and without purity of profile how can my taste be determined... those thousand plus films that I have rated on a five star scale system help create a vital part of the truth of my identity, of who I am to me and to others!!!

This aggression will not stand! Rise up fellow Netflixerians, and call them
                                                                 1 (888) 638-3549
and make your voices heard! Don't let them do this to us! Identities will be blurred and obscured, marriages will crumble under the stress of decisions, children will weep and gnash their teeth when dad's Film Noir shows up instead of their "Finding Nemo"... stop them before they ruin our lives (real and electronic)... you can make a difference... call now!