Netflix: How to lose friends & infuriate people

In case you haven’t noticed I spend an awful lot of time watching streaming movies and TV shows on Netflix. Most of these I watch on my Xbox, though my wife did just buy a Roku off of woot.com for the bedroom. Between Netflix and our DVR I simply don’t watch commercials anymore and Netflix is a great way to find new-to-me quality television that has slipped through the cracks. My latest favorite is the BBC4 show Black Books. The show stars Simon Pegg‘s friend Bill Bailey and features a number of players from Pegg and Edgar Wright’s SPACED and is simply hilarious. But I’ve been noticing a trend with Netflix in general and with the Xbox interface in particular. Mainly this: it’s turning into a complicated mess.

Technology: Okay, cool, but when can we have sex with it?

What do you mean this sign isn't Y2K compatible?!

Did anyone else feel a few pangs on disappointment on New Year’s Eve eleven years ago? As a child of the 1980s and 1990s, I grew up thinking, ardently believing that I had been born at exactly the right time.  You see, the year 2000 was right around the corner.  I was going to be on the ground floor for the mystical years of the future.  Because everyone back then knew the future was going to start at precisely 12:01 on Jan 1, 2000.

I can remember my heart skipping a beat when the ball started to descend in New York, my father having briefly woken up from his snoring on the couch to start shouting “ITS THE END OF THE WORLD GET IN THE BASEMENT” as I silently watched the seconds tick down until life became exactly like a sci-fi film.  The suspense was horrible.

Then suddenly, it was all over.  The ball stopped its descent, the people in Times Square went absolutely nuts, and Dick Clark sighed in relief for having cheated death for another year. Nothing else happened, same as it ever was.  I remember looking out the window accusingly at the family car, silently demanding to know why is hadn’t immediately morphed into a hover car, and even felt a little cheated that Y2K hadn’t brought an end to civilization.  At least the sudden and complete annihilation of society would have made the future interesting, even if I really didn’t find Mad Max to be that good of a movie.

E3 2010: Hardware! Zomg!

E3 has come and gone. What was awesome? What sucked? Did anybody care about Nintendo? It is the grandest time of year to be a nerd.