The Law of Diminishing Returns

I joined up with Real Player's SuperPass thingee a few years back. I honestly don't remember why. It was around fifteen bucks. It gave me access to various stuff from a variety of entertainment sources. I got Big Brother's 24 hour live telecast one year, for example. It was o.k., although I don't watch Big Brother. I got some video from NASCAR.com that let me see parts of a few races I missed. That was nice. Still, it was all coincidental and any value I got from the service had nothing to do with why I signed up. So I tried to cancel once. They asked me why. I told them I just didn't use it. They gave me two free months. At the end of the two months I tried to cancel. They offered to knock the price down to $9.95. I caved. Didn't matter that I never used it. I was getting a deal! (It's a healthy tip that I've used several times in the past few years. You'd be surprised how good a deal you can get if you tell people you want to cancel their service. And if you get no deal, you can always sign up again.)

So then I found out that I got two free music downloads ((my choice) and a free game download (their choice) every month, as part of the service. That made it more attractive, but I still found I couldn't justify paying for a service I almost never used. So I tried to cancel again. They offered to knock the price down to $6.95. I caved. And a month later, I'm just about ready to try to ditch it again, because I don't use the service, don't have room to download games I don't really want, and never seem to remember to download my two songsd a month.

That brings us to tonight. Tonight, Real networks informs me that I now get 10 music downloads a month with no additional charge. Any ten songs in the entire Real Music Store catalog. Every month.

I'm paying $6.95 a month to receive $10.00 worth of music downloads, plus whatever service I can find from the SuperPass. I'll take it. Yes sir. That's the kind of deal I can get behind.

Jedi

It's been thirteen years in the making.

It's an accomplishment I'm incredibly proud of.

It's almost entirely meaningless to anyone but me.

Tonight, I made Jedi.

Well, not quite. I've posted before about Kobra mud. It's the Star Wars based mud I've been playing for five odd years now. Same one I played for a year or so back in college before losing my internet connection for almost a decade.

You start at level one and advance through solving missions and gaining experience. you get to level 19 and when you next advance, you become a Jedi.

That's how it worked back in '93. Hell, that's how it worked in '03. But things change. When they made mission info legal back in '03 or so, they changed other things and you can only Jedi if you are approved by the current Arches. And they really, really want you to code. And I can't. Just don't know how. So I'm not even going to request approval.

So my character will continue to advance. Now I'm level 20, soon I'll be 21, and on and on.

But in my heart, I've just Jedied.

And it is good.