So I realized that I forgot to pay my car insurance bill on time. I called up "Triple A" (my insurance company) to pay the bill with them over the phone.

After waiting on hold for 10 minutes I reach an account agent that makes me verify every little thing about myself. I dont understand why that needs to be done if im trying to pay the bill. You dont need any identification at a bank to deposit money into an account.

After I give the lady on the phone everything but a DNA sample to identify myself, she tells me my balance, and I tell her that I would like to play it. She then informs me that the only way to pay the bill is via check!

First off its 2006 who uses checks? I think that checks are basically antiques. I do almost all of my banking electronically. I pay my bills online, I have direct deposit from my work into my bank, I buy stuff using paypal via my cell phone! I rarely carry cash, I use my debit card, for large purchases I use my credit card. Overall I rarely handle cash. I write one check a month, to my home owners association, because they are a bunch of old people who dont have any sort of electronic system set up for me to pay the monthly dues, and I hate it.

So yeah, Im talking to this lady on the phone and she is telling me that I can only pay by check. I dont carry my check book on me. Im at work, my check book is at home, locked up. How dumb and outdated is the payment system that AAA uses? I am trying to GIVE them my money. You think that they would have all sorts of channels available to for people who want to hand over their hard earned cash.

Maybe Im a minority in this situation, my parents and older people I know dont do any electronic banking. Im 26, fairly young. True I am a computer professional but I think that in the short future, as the "myspace" generation starts to get some more responsibilities and cash, out dated systems like this is have to change, or people will move to competitors.

Im going to say it right now, publicly and openly. I love the television show LOST. I cant get enough of it.

About a month ago a buddy of mine at work told me that I need to watch it, and how great it was. I had heard a lot of buzz about it, but never checked it out.

I figured what the hell and downloaded the first episode via bit torrent and watched it on my windows media center (i would have bought them from itunes if my media center supported mov files!). The show was instantly like crack for us, my wife and I wanted more right away. I immediately got the entire first season.

I showed my buddy Jason and his girlfriend the next day, they became addicts as well.

Like heroin into the vein, night after night we stared at the TV and argued about what was in the hatch, what the numbers mean, the polar bears, the others, etc. It was Gilligans Island meets Twilight Zone.

Season one flew by in a matter of days; On to season 2. Thank goodness for bit torrent, and other people in my situation. I was able to download all of the episodes for season 2 with ease.

Things only get more interesting and confusing once the hatch is opened. We were sucked deeper and deeper into the story lines and twists of the island. Having all of the episodes at my fingertips was instantly gratifying and immensely satisfying.

In the last month and a half, Amy and I have crammed a year and a half of Lost into 6 weeks. 42 hours of Lost. We are caught up with the series. Now we are facing the reality of not being able to get our fix of Lost when ever we want. Its only been a day but Im already freaking out about the map on the blast door and who Henry Gale actually is!

To satisfy my craving, I have turned to lostpedia.com its an open source online encyclopedia of everything lost from obscure theories to character backgrounds.

I have also started listening to the official Lost podcast. The directors shed some light the past a future episodes.

Damn Im a nerd.

It has been a year since I coined the term "MOSHZILLA", and then unleashed moshzilla.com onto the world. In the spirit of moshzilla, I have decided to start a new internet project. PaperReality.com.

I draw a picture of something that I want (this case, its a 50"+ HDTV). I will trade the drawing for something, then trade that item for an object of greater value until I reach the object that I drew in the begining off the chain of events. Instead of trading, I will sell the object I am currently holding if the dollar amount is high enough for me to purchase the item that I originally drew (50"+ HDTV)

Will it work? I hope so, either way, I think it will be a good social experiment!

WOW! I didnt think that I would get such a big response from posting my tutorial on how to replace an ipod hard drive on digg.com. I was really blow away by it. At the time of this post I had close to 700 diggs in 15 hours. amazing. My blog has never had this much activity. It really inspires me to write more articles and document more things. Thanks to everyone who has left comments and suggestions.

Here is a link to the story on Digg.

http://www.digg.com/apple/Replacing_a_hard_drive_in_a_4th_gen_iPod_:_Step_by_Step

I wonder if this will make the diggnation podcast? I think I would crap myself if that happened.