I've never been a big fan of Wal Mart. Either their stores or their business practices. But I've gained a new appreciation for them after reading this story about their hurricane relief efforts. If Wal Mart had 45 truck loads of  relief supplies ready to roll before the hurricane hit, you have to wonder what the hell the State and Federal Government was doing during that time. FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security dropped the ball badly, and it really makes you wonder and worry what the hell they are spending their time and their budgets on.

It's crazy over here in Honolulu tonight. Gas prices are set to rise by 44 cents a gallon tomorrow (Hawaii Gas Cap adjustment) and gas stations are just jammed with people tonight trying to get in one last tank before the increase. Unless you have a near empty tank, I don't see how waiting in a line for gas for 45 minutes to an hour, is worth the cash savings (not to mention the time you're out). I'll post the new gas price tomorrow.

Don't I have enough ways to record and watch TV and movies? I guess not, because this Samsung dual tray DVD recorder is going to become part of my home entertainment system as soon as it comes out. What for? Well, anything that I record on my dual tuner Road Runner cable box has an option to save to video (VCR or DVD), so if I ever want to save a permanent copy of a recording, this is the way to do it. Also it will record DVD to DVD pretty rapidly too, for those DVD's that can be copied. So what other ways am I recording right now? Well, on one TV I have the RR Cable box with dual tuners (can record two stations at once), on another TV, I have my old Replay TV box and on my computer I have Windows XP Media Center (for which I also have some programs to transfer TV and DVD recordings to my PDA). I also have a couple of other gadgets: A Neuros MPEG-4 recorder, that lets me record TV or DVD to memory cards (good for PDA's and my Tablet PC, which has has no built in DVD or CD player), and an old Memory stick recorder from Sony (does the same thing as the Neuros but only to memory stick). The end result of all these recorders seems to be that I record a ton of TV, but seem to be watching less and less of it. I guess that's a good thing  ;-)