I'm chatting with my friend Amanda, describing my sudden Haiku kick. She makes me laugh. You probably had to be there, and since you weren't you probably won't laugh. Here's a transcript anyway:

I should be studying for an upcoming EE128 midterm. Instead I'm working on office code.

Code streams from fingers

As iTunes plays The Police

My grades slowly drop

I need lots of practice...

I saw Serenity last night. What a great movie. I won't say more, for those of you who haven't yet seen it, other than to say, Go fucking see the movie!
Great quote from the Serenity Official Visual Companion, out of a couple paragraphs from Nathan Fillion:

I remember when Joss called me, back when he'd just written the movie. He said, "I'm done, I'm done, I finished." I said, "Read me the first line and the last line." He goes, "Okay, the first line is, 'Earth-That-Was.' And the last line is, 'Wow, sure was weird the way Mal died in the first act.'"

They're generally pretty silly, and often presume something about the test-taker (religious beliefs chief among them). Nevertheless, when the alternative is studying Fundamentals of Applied Electromagnetics, they can be a welcome diversion. Here are the results from one I just took (link to the test below results):

I wrote before about the problems with my new Sony TV. The same problems persist, but what started off as a very pleasant experience with Sony support has grown into a frustrating fight against a corporate behemoth.
The TV arrived on August 30, 2005. It broke on Monday, Sep 5. Crutchfield was now out of stock on the TV, so rather than have them replace it, I decided to arrange for repair from Sony. Tuesday the 6^th an Elite Electronics tech came out, tinkered a bit, and decided I needed a new part. Because parts are apparently scarce for the new TV, he arranged with Sony to have an exchange sent to me. He called and informed me of this on Wednesday or Thursday (the 8^th). I called Sony on Friday the 9^th to verify that he had, in fact, done this, and they seemed to show a record of it. The second-tier CSR to whom I was transferred told me I would receive a call within three days (I confirmed this with her several times) to arrange delivery of the new TV.
Well, today is that third day, and I had not received a call from Sony, so I called them. After again speaking with two tiers of support, the CSR told me that it would be two weeks from the 9^th before I could expect a call from the freight company to arrange local delivery. I tried to explain to the CSR that if they had been this informative on the very first call, I would simply have asked Crutchfield to take care of it. I only went with Sony because their various representatives implied it would be quicker. However, no expression of dissatisfaction was enough to get Sony to take any additional steps to help me out. The only good thing I can say about Sony is that they were initially very gracious on the phone (I mean you, Lola), and they were willing to send me an advance replacement (which, frankly, so is Crutchfield, and so should every company).
Checking today, Crutchfield has them in stock, and with a 10 minute phone call I was able to arrange to have a new TV shipped to me. Unfortunately , it will take seven to eight days, as before, but that's still quicker than Sony. I've already received email confirmation of my exchange from Crutchfield, with very nice wording, but a couple of key words gave me pause:

On behalf of everyone here at Crutchfield, please accept our apologies for the problem you had with your order. Even with the best intentions, sometimes things don't go as planned and we hope this shipment takes care of it.

As promised, we are preparing the shipment listed below. We'll contact you again when it has been accepted and processed.

The "accepted and processed" part has me waiting to cancel the exchange with Sony until I get ship confirmation from Crutchfield.
The only thing that would make my experience with Crutchfield better would be if they expedited the new TV to me, and if they arranged with Sony financing to re-time the 18 months of interest-free financing I used to buy it in the first place.