The Cat Adoption Team is sponsoring a cat for the house and is allowing the public to vote for the lucky resident. Go and vote at: http://www.catadoptionteam.org/ I voted for Rockafeller because I'm partial to orange tabbies.

Phase I was completed on May 10th and of course, the finalists wouldn't be notified until May 15th. On May 10th, I anxiously awaited for the last puzzle to be activated so I could complete it. I kept refreshing screen and t my HORROR, I was getting a server busy page. THEN… the server thought I was a BOT! Oh MY! What to do.. I tried it with FF then IE… I finally got IE to work. I frantically watched the video to get the answers and completed the puzzle and registration as fast as possible.

Then I waited.. and waited (for a week!).. and let me tell you.. I don't wait well . The rules said I should be notified on May 15th if I was a finalist. So all day long today, I kept periodically checking my email… and there was no email by the time I left the office at 6pm. I swore I finished the game within minutes…. but was that enough to be a finalist. Then when I got home today.. and saw a little white box! I tore open the box.. and what did I find…..

Then my email reaffirmed what the cryptex in the snail mail had indicated.

Least to say, I was quite happy and danced around with glee when I got my prize. This is what I really wanted when I started playing the game. Wish me luck in the finals!

This morning I woke up to a chilly morning. As I was leaving to work I noticed this layer of frost on my car's windshield and back window. My wipers took care of my windshield, but I had to scrape off thse stuff my back window.

We had the option to buy Netflix for$50 million and we didn't do it. They were losing money. They came around a few times," he recalls. Instead, in 2000, Blockbuster inked a 20-year exclusive video-on-demand pact with Enron as the energy conglom launched into telecom. Blockbuster canned the pact after nine months. Netflix is now worth $1.4 billion. Blockbuster's market cap is about $850 million.

Its quite interesting to hear about what companies had the opportunity to do in the past. But I think overall it was better for the consumers that Blockbuster didn't buy Netflix. With having more than one retailer in the market to offer online DVD rentals, its made the market more competitive. As a result, the consumer has choices where to go and it gets the companies to drop their monthly subscription prices to lure customers.

Now someone has sent back the plunger with a ransom note. They want to talk to the Doctor.

After a couple years of NBC tweaking start and end show times to push their advertising dollars (and tweak PVR owners in the process), it seems they're abandoning the practice of starting early and ending late.

NBC has finally realized the problems they caused all DVR owners out there less than conventional ending/starting show times. Usually my TIVO had no problem accomdating the 1-minute deviatoin to the the normally scheduled broadcast time of on the hour or on the half-hour. I only had issues when I wanted to record something else right after, which normally would start on the hour. So I would miss the show because of a scheduling conflict.

I would hope other networks (broadcast and cable) will learn from NBC's switch back to starting shows on the hour/half-hour. Unfortunately, as one of the commenter's stated, Discovery is starting to end their shows 1-minute after the hour. I, too, am starting to miss the last minute of Mythbusters.

I just got back from my (now) yearly trip up north to the garlic festival. Last year was my first year going. However, I've been wanting to go for a few years. So when I got an invite from my brother & sister-in-law, I jumped at the chance. It was a win-win situation for me. I get to spend some time with my sister-in-law (& brother), and I get to go to the festival.

Well the festival was one of the highlights of the weekend. I got up to the San Jose area fairly early on Friday morning, so we decided we were going to go shopping (after our Starbucks fix of course). After visiting my brother at his work, we stopped for a yummy lunch at a little mexican restaurant close to my my brother's work. They make some strong margaritas, which were quite good. Then we decided to shop. I picked up a bunch of little goodies for the house and a cute pair of pants and a new top. Had a nice dinner, and just relaxed at the house for the rest of the evening (we were going to have to get up early the next morning for the festival .

We drove down early for the festival, arriving there before the doors (or the ticket booth) even opened. We were practically the first peeps in line. Once we got in, we made a bee line for the food. Among some of the things we munched on are: garlic ice cream, garlic fries, stuffed mushrooms (with garlic, parmesean cheese and parsley), garlic sausage sandwhich, shrimp scampi and a buffalo kabob. Many of the foods we split between us 3 and we were so stuffed when left. Then we shopped for all things garlic (and since I didn't write everything down I may of missed a few purchases). One of my favorite purchases this year, is my garlic bobble head (click here to view). I'm going to try and get one every year (well maybe). One of the yummier things I picked up was the garlic kettle corn. It is very good, so much so I had a couple of orders from a few co-workers. That pretty much sums up my the festival. The rest of the weekend consisted of a little pampering (mani/pedi), a little drinking (some yummy drink recipe from the Mirage in LV) and dinner with my sister-in-law's mom. All in all, it was a busy and fun weekend.

For photos of the weekend, check out Garlic Festival Photos

Ciao!

French newspaper giant Le Figaro has a piece (English Babelfish translation here) saying the iTunes-compatible phone being developed by Apple and Motorola will finally launch tomorrow, with at least one American phone carrier agreeing to support it.

I caught this article while checking my RSS feeds. This looks pretty cool. I'm an iPod owner and have bought some of my songs from iTunes. I would love a phone that I could put some of the music I've bought from iTunes. I like having options for the things I buy. I think having an option of purchasing music, ringtones or other options for your phone promotes competition and variety. Alot of times you won't find that one song you're looking for, but you'll find it at a different site.