Randomness: It’s a Post Without a Point!™ Or, when you’ve got very little to say about a whole bunch of things.

A couple days ago I received a weird call from [a computerized voice] at J.D. Power & Associates, reminding me that if I received a survey from them about my new Pontiac, to please fill it out. Well, I hadn’t. But the next day I did. They even dangled a crisp dollar bill in front of me as a reward. Hell, I don’t need a buck — I like to do my part to help prove to the largely ignorant public that GM products are not crap, so I filled it out, giving the goat an honestly glowing review. The survey took nearly an hour, but that was fine because I was waiting for a tire rotation on the Mazda at the time.

Last night I played Oblivion for a couple more hours. Good stuff, that. I explored what appeared to be an abandoned Ayleid temple or church of some kind. It was full of evil, evil bandits, all of whom I very much enjoyed killing and looting. I also found several blue, glowing Welkynd stones (I believe they restore your Magicka when used), and a priceless Varla stone — which can recharge all of the enchanted weapons, armor and other items that you are carrying. Further along in the main quest plot, I entered Oblivion (Hell, essentially) for the first time and, much to my dismay, found I was really quite outclassed in there. Everything in Oblivion is fire-based, and most of my enchanted weaponry does fire damage — which many of the enemies are invulnerable to. Greeaaat. Why did I throw away that Warhammer of Jolts? (Because it was too heavy to carry, you dummy.) This is the first time I’ve actually had real trouble progressing in the game. I wonder what will come of it.

Anybody considering flying on a bankrupt airline (Northwest, Delta, or that ilk) should check out this site; it’s quite informative.

It just occurred to me that this week I had four side jobs going on at once, in addition to my full-time duties. As many as three of them are still open cases requiring further attention. The only good part about this is that I am planning a computer upgrade that this will help pay for. I’ve decided that I really want to get a dual-core processor. Specifically, the AMD X2 4400. Eventually I may also update my video hardware: Go with one powerful video card and one little wimpy one with passive cooling. I won’t be able to do SLI anymore (not like it’s made that much difference, honestly) but I will still have support for more than two monitors. Should reduce the ambient heat and noise even further.

Season four of Knight Rider is out on DVD, and I already hear that it has the same “missing sound effects” problem first evident on the season three discs. In a way, though, this could be a good thing. What if there’s some really good musical driving sequence that they forgot to dub the sound effects over? Free and clear music rip! I need to pick this up. Speaking of music, while Universal obviously owns the rights to Don Peake’s score, there are some “popular ’80s hits” they apparently couldn’t get a license to reissue on the DVDs. During a club scene in “Knight of the Drones,” we hear nothing but bar walla and the sound of the dancers’ feet stomping on the stage. There is no music overdub. Whoops. Couldn’t they have thrown in some canned electronic crap at least? The funny bit is, NBC/Universal re-recorded every pop song they used in Knight Rider, using soundalike singers, to avoid licensing issues in the first place! It’s pretty sad when even your soundalikes won’t give you permission to use their stuff…

And now that David Hasselhoff’s ex-wife was granted a restraining order against him due to alleged domestic violence, do you suppose Michael Knight’s character in the [supposedly] upcoming Knight Rider feature film will be a burnt-out, drunk John McClane type?