Well, I had my MRI; results are due in two days (but I’m not going to hold my breath — last time, it took over a week). It was slightly less fun than last time; I guess the novelty wore off quickly. The only really bad part was needing to scratch and not being able to do so except between scans — as far as room went, I think I’ve been in tighter middle seats on airplanes — and the MRI place wasn’t trying to serve me lousy food.

I continue to build up my “new” laptop from work; it’s so much fun re-installing Microsoft Office and the service packs on yet another machine. I’ve gotten better at it; this time, I wrote down my serial number so that I didn’t have to fire up Word to get it before installing service pack 2a. I should have downloaded more of the software I need yesterday while at work instead of doing it from home — downloading 430MB takes a while.

And Hebrew School started today. Jeffrey is as thrilled about going as I was when I was his age. And he gets just as much choice in the matter as I did. I think his class (and teacher) is far better than what I had, but I just don’t think it’s ever going to be on the top of his list of things to do. Not unless they start reading Hebrew comic books instead of the Siddur, anyway.

And we continued to watch Casablanca at home. By the time we’ve had dinner, gone out for a walk, and Jeffrey’s done his homework, we don’t have much time before his bedtime, so we’re watching it in half-hour bursts. I’m sure that that does not do justice to the film, but it’s still awfully good — I find it hard to believe that I’ve never seen the whole thing before now.

Once we finish with the disk, I think we’re going to cancel our NetFlix subscription. The idea of being able to hold onto films as long as necessary is a good one; so is the concept of being able to turn over discs as quickly as we like. But in practice, I find that we watch an average of one to two discs a month; that makes the effective price somewhere between $10 and $20 per disc — and we can’t always get the movie we want when we want it. For us, I think it’s going to be more cost-effective and perhaps less hassle to buy the discs we want to keep and rent from a local merchant when we know we’ll have time to watch the disc, instead of pre-ordering by mail. I’m sure there are people whose viewing patterns are a perfect fit for NetFlix, but it doesn’t seem to match ours.

Web and Society, anyone?

I’m now co-chair of the Web and Society track for WWW10, next May in Hong Kong. My opposite number and I are working on the official Call for Participation on our track, but I thought I’d put out an unoffical notice here. Contact me if you’re interested.