Check it out

This Web site was established to provide information about a proposed Settlement of lawsuits brought by Attorneys General of 43 states, Commonwealths and Territories, and by counsel for the Plaintiff Settlement Class entitled In re: Compact Disc Minimum Advertised Price Antitrust Litigation.

Folks, as far as I can tell, this is entirely and completely valid; the Urban Legends Reference Pages verify it, and that's usually good enough for me, but I've checked a few other resources and everything seems to bear out.

Apparently what's going on is this: everybody's been complaining for years that CDs are so expensive compared to vinyl records, especially since to all indications CDs are cheaper to produce. Allegations of price fixing have been thrown around, and finally 41 states took up the cause and filed suit against several distributors and retailers, charging a conspiracy to fix minimum prices for CDs. This settlement is the result of that lawsuit. As the suit was filed in the United States, it appears that only United States citizens can claim a part of the settlement; also, claims must be filed before March 3, 2003.

I'm sort of committing a faux pas by posting this; see, the nature of these settlements is such that the fewer people file a claim, the more each person gets from the settlement. (The maximum payment is $20; the minimum is $5. If more than 8.8 million people sign up (only 30,000 had at the end of December '02), and the per-person claim drops below $5, the money will instead be donated to public entities and non-profit organizations.

(Partially paraphrased from http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/nothing/cdrefund.asp.)

Who am I

This is going to be One Of Those Days. I can tell.

Everything was going perfectly smoothly until we got to Hampton House, at which point it became clear that Dave had left his wallet at home and therefore had no ID whatsoever. So he's here, with me, doing no work until either

a) my boss gets here and gives me permission to go work over there, or

b) his boss gets in at 9 AM.

O_o

Might as well be walking on the sun

Using a new technique that will be used to search for Earthlike planets, astronomers have found a distant extrasolar planet, a bizarre place of torrid heat, with clouds and raindrops made of iron.

Salma Hayek vs. The Wild Hunt

The In Nomine Ethereal Player's Guide cover is online.

Just thought I'd let you know. :)

You lose 230 gil

We found a GameCube. We opened it with faith. Inside were Metroid Prime and Rogue Leader. I guess this job was a success!