I have some new additions in my Xbox Live collection. Check them out here.

If you want to know what an idiot I sound like when put on the spot and asked to say something into one of these, you can find out by listening to the first episode of Monday’s at the 1:08:12 point of the broadcast.

I just realized how jammed packed this Saturday is going to be. Can you top this?

9:00AM – 9:45AM: First Supersport class with my daughter, Chloe. (Apparently this class attempts to introduce toddlers to hockey, basketball and baseball. Should be a hoot!)

update: 10:30AM: My wife just informed me that our pediatrician just called and we can get our daughter in for a flu shot. She’s not going to be a happy camper but that should all change come 11-11:30AM.

11:00AM – 12:30AM: Friend of the family’s 3-year old birthday party at the Odyssey Fun World in Naperville. The Odyssey is one these mega-plexes of over stimulated kids, hopped up on pizza and pop, running around terrorizing the place. And no, I don’t plan on fetching Chloe in the rat tunnels. I’ll leave that to one of the older kids.

5:00PM:Flight leaves for Vegas and DevConnections! (note to self -try to nap on the plane (yeah, right) after a day of fun filled activities; don’t forget aspirinfor splitting migrane you are sure to be endure after Odyssey Fun World.)

7:15PM: Flight lands in Vegas.

8:00PM: Meet up with the .NET Rocks! Vegas Bash.

????AM: Sleep

As any self professing geek can admit, I spend a lot of time at my computer (much to my wife’s chagrin). Whether it’s of the 9 to 5 variety or the late night hours feeding my brain with the latest and greatest in .NET Land. I’m one of those types of people who just can’t stand sitting in silence. I’ve always needed some background noise to keep my sanity. 95% of the time, my noise of choice is listening to music streaming off of Rhapsody. I really enjoy my Rhapsody subscription in that it allows me to stream as much music as I want, for as long as I want, for a mere $24.95 every 3 months (or $9.95/mo). Sometimes I bounce around to all sorts of musical genre’s ranging from Bluegrass to Folk to Alternative to Punk to New Age to Classical. My musical tastes are all over the board. I’ve never been that up on Heavy Metal or Rap but I can appreciate a few songs here and there.

Rhapsody gives me the ability to find artists that I normally wouldn’t have run across. I’m really hooked on a band that I came across a couple of weeks ago called ‘The Secret Machines‘. I think I’ve listened to there latest album “Now Here Is Nowhere” about 30 times. As you can tell, I really dig it and it’s nice background noise to work to. As it turns out, The Secret Machines recently had an appearance on MTV2′s $2 Bill with The Killers – another group that I happened across on Rhapsody and what can I say, they’re Killer. Anyhow, there’s a few video clips of these2 bands from their $2 Bill concert up on MTV2, check them out.

When I get tired of listening to music and I want something a little different, I might pop in a DVD now and than. This is all fine and dandy as long as I have a DVD on hand. I recently came across the new venture the Starz! movie channel is offering up, Starz! Ticket. Starz! Ticketis a subscription-based service that allows you to download movies to your computer and view them as much as you want, for as long as you want. For as long as they’re offered on Starz! Ticket that is. From what I can tell, they offer up a number of movies that seem to coincide with what’s on the Starz! movie channels. Each week they remove some titles while replacing them with new offerings. All of this for only $12.95/mo. Doable! They’re currently offering a 14-day Free Trial which doesn’t seem to have any limits on their service. I’ve tried it out and I’m impressed. I’ll be more impressed when they start offering more movies, specifically newer titles. The best part about the service is you can start watching the movie while it is still downloading. I haven’t noticed any degradation in movie play or machine performance – very nice.

There are other options for online movies, but these services don’t appeal to me as much because they cost more than my local Blockbuster. Why would I want to pay more money to wait for a movie to download that is less quality than my DVD rental. I’mwaiting for the day when these movie sites offer up something like an affordable subscription model or a $.99 pay per view. Shouldn’t this be possible? Wouldn’t this drive more customers to your service? Maybe there’s too many hands in the cookie jar to get the price levels these low.

Ido subscribeto Netflix which is a nice service as well. But sometimes I want that instant satisfaction. There is usually a 3-4 day turn around for my Netflix movies. It will be interesting to see what Netflix is cooking up with Tivo.

It’s nice to see that some of these services are finally catching on. Both Rhapsody and Starz! have a subscription model that works for my tastes. There’s room for improvement, but it’s a step in the right direction. Bravo Rhapsody! Bravo Starz!

Now this is funny…

When Oprah Winfrey gave away 276 cars last week to the audience of her show, images of people laughing, jumping, crying — some hysterically — filled the airwaves and the give-away became stuff of legend…But now some of those eager prize-winners have a choice: Fork over $7,000 or give up the car.

http://money.cnn.com/2004/09/22/news/newsmakers/oprah_car_tax/index.htm?cnn=yes