A long time ago I put my name on a list of individuals who believed they paid too much for music CDs. Lo and behold, today I received a check for $14. Here is the letter that came with it:

Dear Arizona Music Purchaser:

As Attorny General for the State of Arizona, I am pleased to enclose payment for your claim in the settlement of the Compact Disc Minimum Advertised Price Antitrust Litigation. This lawsuit was brought by the Attorneys General of 43 states and three territories and by counsel for Private Class Plaintiffs on behalf of purchasers of music CDs. In accordance with the terms of the court-approved settlement, payment is being made to music purchasers who filed a valid and timely claim.

Whether you filed your claim online at the settlement web site, www.MusicCDSettlement.com, or by mail, the attached payment represents full payment of your portion of the Settlement. Please note that the attached payment instrument must be cashed by May 20, 2004.

It is a pleasure to bring this matter to a satisfactory conclusion and to return value to consumers who purchased CDs while the challenged pricing policies were in effect.

Terry Goddard
Attorney General of Arizona

Hey, I put my new computer together the other day. It's pretty cool. I installed windows XP and didn't have any problems with authentication. I had heard that Microsoft put some stuff in XP that makes it hard to pirate. Probably the reason I had no issues was because I used the copy that came with my laptop, and I installed windows 2000 on my laptop before I registered XP. Sure saved me $100.

Who says the British can't be funny? This is children's theatre gone awry.

Check out the official tribute to Meatball Sandler, who died recently.

Bye Beth. Have fun in the land of the canyons.

The world's largest living thing is a ... fungus?!?

Well, I had a great Valentine's Day. Kelly and I spent the whole day together. Like the geology nerds that we are, we went to the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show. I spent almost $100 on minerals. I got some cool celery tourmaline, a wand of selenite, some lepidolite, a twinned staurolite, some weird-looking galena, a piece of brookite, a piece of amazonite, and a nice aquamarine beryl. Just so you don't think I was being selfish, I bought Kelly a pink tourmaline that grew in the shape of a heart. Boo Ya!

You know, I try my best to comply with the rules of Kelly's parents' nazi-ass homeowners association. Even though I think it's stupid, I still park my car by the pool when I'm staying overnight, so as not to break the no-parking-on-the-street-between-2AM-and-4AM rule. So you can imagine how pissed I was (and still am) when I see a "TOW" sign on my car this morning. That means somebody had to put a sign on my car between 10:30 PM last night (when I parked it by the pool) and 8:30 AM this morning. What the fuck?!? The car next to me was marked for towing as well.

There is no fucking reason for towing my car! I park by the pool overnight like they want me to. The only thing I can think of is if they are doing construction there. But if that is the case, there should be signs posted and a memo should be sent to all the homes, so nobody gets accidentally towed like I almost did. Fuck you HOA!

This is my new wallpaper. How can you refuse that face?

Go to adamsandler.com to see independent short films and home movies of his English bulldogs. For Cute!!!

Apparently, my brother was offered a job managing the european tour of Alicia Keys, Beyonce, and Missy Elliot this summer. This was after my brother turned down an offer of managing the first leg of Brittany Spears' tour. How does he meet these people?

I talked to Matt Fouch a bit today. He said Kelly is really smart, but she doesn't realize it. Actually, that's what I said to him, and he said he thinks the exact same thing. He also said she asks good questions. It's great to have a super intelligent girlfriend!

My NASA GSRP proposal is finally submitted, and the website said all of my mail-in documents have been received. Now I can finally relax and hope for that $24,000 payoff.