Saturday, January 08, 2005

Nice Work If You Can Get It

This week's Dallas Observer has a feature story about a guy here in the Metroplex who made over 80 grand last year playing Halo professionally. And no, he's not a pasty-white, obese geek either; he actually lettered in swimming at Allen High. He may end up being to video games what Tony Hawk has become to skateboarding. Read the whole thing.

I broke the rules and didn't even get (block)busted for it: Starting last weekend, Blockbuster decided to eliminate late fees. Even though I don't usually rent that many movies, I managed to invoke the new policy as soon as yesterday. I didn't realize until around midnight Thursday that one of my movies was due at noon the next day, and I don't pass that Blockbuster (two other ones, yes, but not the one I rented from) on the way to my Friday schools. I was only late by about four hours, but it was still nice that the new policy was in effect.

(Incidentally, it's not like you can keep the movies forever; anything that's more than seven days late is converted to a sale, at which point your credit card is charged. Even that is not set in stone, because you can still return it within 30 days of the rental and have the sale changed back to a rental, minus a restocking fee. Wow, I think my head is spinning...)

4 comments:

James said...

mmm - I like that idea. I think it's kinda just starting to take off over here in one of our video rental chains. But I laughed at the "conditions" at the bottom :)

Eric Grubbs said...

No matter what Blockbuster does to try and keep customers, I'm sticking with Netflix.

Kev said...

Well, my video rentals tend to be more of the spur-of-the-moment variety, so that kinda knocks Netflix out of the mix for me. That and the fact that I only pass one mailbox on my entire teaching route, so returning the things would be a bit difficult.

Eric Grubbs said...

After years of wanting to see certain classics but having to settle for them on tape, I gave up on Blockbuster. Seeing a movie like The Third Man on DVD is miles away better than seeing it on tape (and the tape wouldn't get stuck in my VCR!).