Once again Dave missed gaming, and here I had my birthday gift for him, a copy of "If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B-Movie Actor", Bruce Campbell's autobiography. I think Dave likes the Bruce and the man has some great anecdotes on his web site, so I figured this book has got to be interesting. Seeing as I'm stuck with the book until I see Dave again I started reading it and couldn't put it down until I was too tired to read, then I finished it in the morning. Not a long book, less than 300 pages, but very enlightening. It's about Bruce growing up and meeting his rat pack and the making of the Evil Dead movies. Conversational and entertaining with lots of witty remarks it's a great read and I heartily recommend it...

Chris Webber signed with the Sacramento Kings. A seven year contract, the first five guaranteed, worth a total of $123 million. Now, the man has been criticized for being a bit weak on the defense, a bit too prone to pass the ball and shoot the jumper, a bit too whiny and not a leader. And it's all true. But it's also true that he's one of the best players today and that the Kings need *some* superstar to anchor the lineup. If Webber ever decides that he's going to lead, he'll be more than worth his salary. Even if not, he's not really being overpaid much.

I am happy for the Kings though and for Sacramento. Truly, the Kings are the biggest thing in Sacramento and the one thing that puts the city on the map. I'm a bit worried about the money that the Maloofs have spent on Webber and Doug Christie. They're worth it, I just don't know if there's enough of a revenue base in the Sacramento area. Ticket prices have doubled this year, which have angered some fans. In the end it's hard to tell since you can only guess at the revenues and expenses for a private company. Still, it's going to be a good team for at least the next five years...

I'm throwing away almost all of my video tapes. It's amazing how big a pile 400+ tapes makes in the living room, although it's only 200+ tapes since I've thrown away the other half. I am keeping a very few things, 50 tapes worth. Kings playoff games, Hudson Leick appearances, and appearances by any music artist that I collect. Hard stuff to get later. And now I have a lot more room for things. Still, it's a bit sad to throw away all that work and the memories those tapes represent.

Speaking of which (a bit of a tangent really), Mac OS X 10.1, due out in September, will finally have DVD support. 10.1 is also supposed to be much faster, another nice feature. But really, it'd be nice to watch the couple of DVDs that I bought but haven't seen yet. Too bad I won't be able to do it at Gen Con; I had optimistically hoped that DVD support would be ready before then.

Microsoft announced that Office 10 upgrade will be only $150. That's quite a low price (usually it's like $250-$300). On the one hand I don't want to use Microsoft products, on the other I almost need to for work. AppleWorks and its MacLinkPlus translators are good enough to sort of read Office docs, but not to write them. I'll wait until I *have* to get it. Meantime I guess I can buy AppleWorks, though it'll be somewhat of a waste if it's not good enough and I still have to get Office like what happened last time.

Here's an interesting company: Eskape Labs. They make USB video campture devices for the Mac OS (no OS X drivers yet). Now, you'd think that capturing a video signal through USB would be impossible, and it is. Unless you're only capturing at 320x240 with no sound (their products pipe sound through the audio in port of older macs and their software synchronizes and saves the stream together in QuickTime format). They even have models with tv tuners. All for about $200.

Now, if that's not good enough you can spend twice as much money for the Formac Studio. It uses firewire so it's full motion video and sound sent to your computer as a DV stream (i.e. *lots* of disk space). It also has a tv tuner, though of course you need an antenna or a cable hookup. The perfect device for transferring VHS tapes to DV format and if I ever get the money I'll but it or something similar.