This website is a special collection of news article links, coupled with my personal commentary.

I am Charles Clement Cotton.  I am a computer consultant working out of Woodbury, New Jersey, where I've lived most of my life.  I have no expectations that this website be used outside of my use as a personal yet public journal.

This website is a work in progress. 

SOMETIMES, yes, SOMETIMES, the internets, all the tubes, don't give you the best information!

Last Sunday, Target featured the Nintendo Wii in their newspaper supplement. I had already been hot on the trail for one, and that Saturday night, I caught wind of them coming to Target on Sunday. I called up my local Target store on Saturday and asked if he had any in stock. He said not for sale right now, but they have a supply which they're holding for Sunday morning.

I must ask myself what the deal is with all of this. The prices they have in the paper for the Wii are RETAIL, but it seems to be a game (pun!) retailers play not just with the Wii but with other 'hot' merchandise as well.

Amazon.com as well as eBay.com both are perfectly willing to sell you one for like $100 above RETAIL...

Well, fortunately, I still have SOMEWHAT of a life, and as such I didn't get up early Sunday morning to stand at the front door for a chance to get a Wii. Getting around to it that morning, I called about 10:30 to find out if there were any more. The man said, "No".

Well, I've gone full blast with the frustration that others have felt about getting one of these Wii's. The real frustration is that Nintendo is no stranger to making video games, and I just don't accept any excuse why it hasn't been able to ramp up production to meet the demand.

Yesterday, however, (3/5/07), after I picked up my sons from daycare I decided to swing around Target and ask the guy what the story was, you know, OUTSIDE of the crew at Digg.com. I should point out that at that time, I was ALL SET to try out the XBox 360, and if I liked what I saw, buy THAT instead. It's only $50 more, and after a few games I won't be missing that much, especially for what everyone has reported to be a more graphically advanced system.

So, there I am at Target. They had a corner display for the Wii, a flat panel monitor showing a video demonstration of the Wii. A far cry from the 'live' demonstrations they have for the other systems. (of course, the other systems' controllers can be tightly tethered)

On that corner display there's the TV, one Wii, not hooked up to anything, some accessories (extra controllers) and.... NOTHING ELSE.

About 3 years ago I bought a TiVo with a lifetime subscription (possibly one of the best moves in my life!)

You may or may not know that such a subscription is NOT transferable to any other TiVo, so it makes my box somewhat precious.

OK, 2 years ago I checked out this addon kit from http://www.weaknees.com which added 160gb to my 40gb for a total of 200gb.

I will say that the 2nd hard drive kit that I bought from them was everything they said it was and it worked. I didn't appreciate that fact that they charged me like twice as much for the hard drive as I can get it elsewhere ($160 for a 160gb hard drive?). It was still way cheaper than if I had bought a TiVo with that much capacity. It worked and I was happy.

Funny how things change! Not too long ago the question was IF they should have a website! NOW, the question is how will they run it!

Great website guys!

That's not being sarcastic, either!  Tonight, while having dinner with my pregnant wife, we were discussing the various things we would need for our twins.

One thing on the list were baby seats for the car.  I have enough problems shopping for a new hard drive.  Getting a TiVo (expected tomorrow!)  has been a major move around here.

So now we need this thing(s) that 1) we will entrust the lives of our children with and 2) will stop using in less than a year. 

Carol suggested that we should look at Consumers Reports for what they recommend.

Then it dawned on me - ANY baby car seat that Toys 'R Us would sell should be OK!

LINK TO STORY

It is as I feared, but the kinda-famous monologist Spalding Gray was found dead after weeks of not being found.  The story of his missing and now of his death are easily found, but at this time, I wish to share my personal experience with his work.

While Gray appeared in many movies, including a couple which set to capture his live monologues, these films did not succeed, in my opinion, to capture the energy and talent that he projected in a live forum.

So gays want to get married?  God Bless Them!  Isn't promiscuity the problem that many people have with homosexual behavior?  I think marriage for gay couples would be the best thing to happen for them!

I hoping that gays, however, don't want to be legally married thinking that they will gain greater acceptance among certain parties, however.  That's NOT the reason one should get married!

But marriage isn't just a party.  It isn't just a quaint ceremony with flowers and doves.

The institution of marriage is measured not by how determined one is to get legally married; it's measured by the degree of inconvenience it is to get divorced!