James Chamberlin

I saw that Buy.com was having a sale on a few hundred DVDs (about $6 each), and I picked up a few. I had seen a few of the movies before and liked them, but there are a few that I hadn’t seen before.

• Syriana
• The Recruit
• Phenomenon
• The Village
• Con Air
• Unbreakable
• The Rock

One thing I hate about the shipping is that half of them came in one box and the others came shipped in separate bubble mailers. It’s ridiculous. I ordered them all at once… ship them all at once!

The weather in the midwest was pretty bad yesterday. Rain and wind pounded the entire area. Every few minutes some sort of warning would pop up on the television. They ranged from thunderstorms and floods to tornado watches. I’m not sure how much rain I received, but when it was raining, it was coming down very hard. A few miles north of me, a county was warned about possible hail of over 1.5 inches in diameter. I’d hate to get hit in the head by hail that size.

Fortunately, there’s a bit of a break in the weather today. We’re supposed to get some light rain and strong wind gusts, but the threats of tornadoes have passed.

I had to replace a failing DVD player and I ended up buying a small RCA DVD player from Best Buy’s website. So far, I’ve been very happy with it. The only problem I have is it’s a standard DVD player and cannot play Divx files. This week, I decided to buy a new DVD player from Amazon and UPS delivered it this morning. It’s the Philips DVP5140.

I put in a DVD and it played the first file just fine, so I’m pretty happy with it. It’s one of the newest Divx certified DVD players on the market.

Prior to today, I had only been to the gym once and that didn’t go as well as I had hoped. Although I took it easy that day, my back still hurt. Since I hadn’t had any serious back pain since Thursday, I decided to go to the gym. I figured a few days of rest was a sign that things were better.

On weights, I did the usual workout, but I couldn’t walk on the treadmill for very long. Instead of my usual 30 minutes, I only did 10. I was disappointed, but my left leg was bothering me. I’m hopeful that I’ll feel up to going again tomorrow, but it’s too early to know for sure.

In other news, I’m hoping to get back to the CSI fansite that Ross and I have been working on. My projects with IGN have sucked up a lot of my free time recently, and I haven’t edited a page for the site in about three full weeks. I’m itching to get back into the swing of things. Ross has sent me several pages for me to edit and prep for the site. I’m sure he’ll have some more for me by the time I get those finished.

I woke up this morning with a painful back, just like every day this week. Grrrr. I turned on my PC and the modem. I downloaded a file and noticed the speed was faster than usual… by about 200kbps. I did a speed test and it seems I got an upgrade that I didn’t sign up for. I checked Broadbandreports.com and didn’t see much from other users in my area. I saw a few posts from Michigan where a few users reported an upgrade like mine, so it could be a temporary promotional upgrade.

Here is yesterday’s speedtest:

And here is this morning’s test:

As long as I don’t have to pay for the upgrade, I’m all for it. Going from 3mb/256k to 5mb/512k is nice. I wish Charter’s prices were a little cheaper and I would actually buy the upgrade.

You may have noticed the theme is different again. I had to change it because the old one wasn’t rendering properly in Internet Explorer 6.0. I don’t use IE, but I know many others do. Oh well.

I recently mentioned my back problems, and unfortunately, I’m still in pain. Yesterday, things got a little better, but I’m still in pain. I can finally sit down and stand up straight, but my movement is still restricted. A few years ago, I threw out my back and I was back to normal by now. I’m hoping my back heals up soon; back pain is terrible.

After finishing some work for IGN Guides on Sunday, I took a little nap. I woke up with a sore back. That night, I went to sleep hoping things would be better in the morning. Unfortunately, it was worse. I then proceeded to make a bad decision: go ahead with my daily exercise session at the local gym. Oh, damn, was that stupid. I can’t say it made things much worse, but it really didn’t improve things. I did my normal weights, none of which include things like squats. My session on the treadmill, however, only lasted about four excruciating minutes. So much for my usual half-hour. I came home and I’ve been in and out of bed all day.

I’m writing this blog entry at 2 am on Tuesday morning after taking another nap. I can’t seem to get rid of the pain. I’ve tried every type of aspirin in the house and nothing works. While in bed, I tried to do everything I could think of to see if I could get something in my back to pop in/out… whatever would get this fixed. So far, nothing has worked.

I cannot stand up or sit down straight. I’m leaning towards my right, as trying to do anything straight up or to the left hurts like hell. The only semi-comfortable position I can find is lying down on my side in bed. I’m not sure about you, but I’m not very productive during a day being confined to a bed.

VGCharts has an article up which points out the fact that despite Sony shipping four million PlayStation 3’s, only 1.8 million have been sold. This doesn’t surprise me one bit. For several weeks, multiple reports of retailers such as EBGames and GameStop have been practically begging customers to buy PS3s. Many customers have found a half-dozen units sitting on the shelf.

This has yet to be a problem with the Nintendo Wii. A big difference in the two systems is the price. Nintendo caught a little flack by the fanboys who wanted more graphical horsepower, but it hasn’t stopped people from buying them. I haven’t been able to find any sitting on any shelves. You can’t buy one online without having to also buy a half-dozen games to go along with it.

I don’t see the PlayStation 3 selling out anytime soon. A recent report I read quoted a Sony spokesperson who said they don’t plan on making a price cut in the U.S. market for another two years. Yikes! I have to say that even if I had the space cash for a PS3, I’d rather buy a PC. Let’s face it; that’s basically what the PS3 is. The fact that Sony hasn’t been able to get very many big exclusive games for the system also doesn’t make the PS3 look anymore impressive. A powerful system doesn’t mean programmers will make games for it.

Well, it seems James Cameron, who is famous for projects like Titanic and The Terminator, is now claiming that he’s found the burial grounds of Jesus Christ and his family. This will all be in a new documentary coming out soon. He and his researchers supposedly used DNA testing to help identify the remains.

It was just a few years ago that someone brought forth a coffin claiming to belong to James, brother of Jesus, but it turned out to be an elaborate hoax.

Whatever evidence is brought forth will be heavily scrutinized and I can just imagine how this thing will be talked to death on cable news.