Where, oh where, have my newest releases gone?

I really like Netflix, don’t get me wrong. But for some reason, they’ve removed a feature that I used almost exclusively to select my movies for what I wanted to watch. It used to be that you could browse New Releases by a section called Released (releasing?) This Week. Every monday the list would be updated of the movies that were just coming out on DVD, and every monday I would go through the list of movies and pick which ones I wanted to watch and add them to my 100+ movie queue.

I’m happy, life is good, and I get the movies I want to watch.

The only problem I had was when my wife would go and buy the DVD for a popular movie from Wal-Mart the second it came out, and the very same movie is already being trucked around by the Post Office because it was at the top of my Netflix queue. Such a waste.

But for some reason unbeknownst to me, THEY TOOK THE RELEASED THIS WEEK FEATURE AWAY. The new releases aren’t really the newest releases…just movies that have been released in the past month(?) on DVD. The New Releases section is broken down into Popular New Releases (yawn), New Releases by category (again, how long are they new releases?), Critic’s Picks (vomit), and Popular From One Year Ago  ’new releases.’ 

Wait…the New Releases are now consisting of movies that were released a year ago?!? Someone, please spare me. This whole New Releases section is a waste for me. Completely annoying, even. If I have to look at Julia Roberts Anne Hathaway for another week, I may have to commit seppuku.

She’s been the first thing I see when I open up this page for weeks now. I have nothing against Julia Roberts Anne Hathaway, but she just ain’t in any movies I want to watch. If I want to see Julia Roberts Anne Hathaway, I’ll get my wife’s kids’ copy of Pretty Woman Princess Diaries (and that just ain’t gonna happen).

It should also be noted that none of the 4 movies you see above are in my queue, and I dislike having my time wasted by having to view them every single time I’m looking for something else. 3 of the 4 I wouldn’t even be interested in, and 3:10 to Yuma got some bad word of mouth (that reached my ears), so I haven’t added it yet.

I think this problem has been exacerbated by a dearth of good movies on DVD, but that’s no excuse. I thought Netflix was a web 2.0 style company - Get movies delivered right to your door! - not web 1.0-style you-can-choose-from-what-I-want-to-offer-you. I suspect they removed that section to decrease demand for those truly new releases, but come on, people, FIX it, don’t diss it.

(winding down the rant…)

Ok, so am I the only one that is peeved about this? I know it’s not a huge deal (there’s global warming and gas prices to worry about), but it really was just about the ONLY way I used Netflix. If I can no longer do what I was paying to be able to do, why should I continue?

Can someone from Netflix please fix this?

Wow. Oil hit $100 a barrel for the first time today (not sure if it will close at that price).

I wonder how much a tank of gas is going to cost me now???

Happy frickin’ New Year!

Yeah, I was hacked. After I wrote my gas guzzling post, some hacker came by and ruined my day. I actually uninstalled wordpress and reinstalled it. Ugh.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays.

Yeah, that’s a receipt for $110. For a tank of gas. One tank of gas.

Earlier in the year we bought a used Ford Excursion to fit the needs of my growing family, and it’s a beast. Yes, we needed something that big. It’s bigger than the short bus. That’s 7190 pounds of twisted steel and sex appeal (or 3 1/2 tons, if that sounds more impressive), with 10 power pumping pistons generating 310 hp and about 12 mpg, being fed from a 44 gallon fuel tank. It’s a Beast.

And when the Beast’s 44 gallon belly gets hungry, you have to feed it. Unfortunately, I’m not able to feed it Ramen noodles.

A lot of gas stations put limits on the amount you can charge to a card when filling up at the pump.

I’ve hit a $50 limit; that’s no big whup for someone who owns 3 SUV’s.

I’ve hit the $75 dollar limit once, and that’s not chump change.

But I actually hit the $100 limit twice, even before I hit the smaller dollar value limits. The first time, the attendant looked a little confused, then a little scared, when he came back to finish pumping (full service gas stations are the law in New Jersey, where I usually fill up). I think he was afraid that I might fly off the handle if he came back to me with a $100 tab. This is New Jersey, and there’s certainly some attitude/road rage stereotypes for this area of the country. I’ve probably even contributed to those stereotypes at some point. But even though it was the first time I was paying that much to fill up a vehicle, and one of the first times for me filling up this vehicle, I didn’t give him a hard time about it. It certainly was not his fault. We shared a chuckle about it and then I gas-guzzled my way home.

But the big bill came yesterday on my way home. I stopped at a gas station that I hadn’t stopped at in awhile, and certainly one that I hadn’t filled up the Beast before. I pulled in with a lit gas light and a credit card handy. I expected that I would hit the $100 dollar limit again, or one of the other dollar amounts. I didn’t care, I just wanted to top off with as much as I could and get on home. I told the attendant to “fill it up.”

I sat in the Beast for awhile, reading a newspaper clipping about giant prehistoric devil-scorpions, even though I had read it a few days before on the internet (ain’t it great how fast old media moves?). I knew I needed to kill some time because it was going to take awhile to fill this sucker up, and I think giant prehistoric devil-scorpions are pretty cool. Not that I’d want to run across one, mind you. Once I was done reading, I turned around to look at the pump, and I was only at about $60. I had a ways to go. I figured the $50 and $100 limits to card purchases were the most common, for whatever reason. So if I’ve passed $50, I’ll most likely have to wait for the $100 limit.
I waited, and I waited. I kept turning around to see how high this was going. I think the pump was pumping slowly. Other cars came, filled up, and left. A long line was forming behind me. When the pump passed the $100 dollar mark, I was like, “whoah…”

The pump stopped on it’s own just shy of a flat $110. The attendant, who kept coming back to check to see if I was done, topped me off at an even $110. Just a little less than 40 gallons. How nice. He came to the window for my card, and said, “one-ten” ($110). I handed him my card, thinking, yeah, great.

The bad part of all this is that I actually got a cheap price for the gas at $2.85 a gallon (which is really $2.86 a gallon, since they sneak that $.009 in there on the price to make you think gas is just a tad cheaper that it really is). That’s some of the cheapest gas in the country right now. I passed several gas stations at $2.90+ a gallon, and gas in Pennsylvania is well over $3 a gallon. If I’d paid the national average of aout $3.08 a gallon, the bill would have been a whopping $123! In some of the most expensive parts of the country for gas, like around $3.20 a gallon, the price would have been $128.

I think I’ll walk to work tomorrow if I have to.