Hello, my name is GermanShepherd... and I'm addicted to the internet.
What? Yes! That's my real name! Be quiet!

Could you be addicted to the internet?

Okay, what's with the sudden influx of so-called "addictions"? It's just... crazy. I guess you COULD be addicted to the internet, just like you COULD be addicted to, well... anything! People just have no self-control, geez, and then the money-pinching "doctors" like to rush in and classify it as some sort of disease that you need to pay to get help for.

According to the dumb article, the "symptoms" of "Internet Addiction Disorder" are:

• A need for an ever increasing amount of time on the internet to achieve satisfaction or a dissatisfaction with the continued use of the same amount of time on the internet.
• Two or more withdrawal symptoms developing within days, weeks, or up to a month after a reduction or cessation of internet use. These include distress or impairment of social, personal, or occupational functioning such that there is psychological or psychomotor agitation such as anxiety, restlessness, irritability, trembling, tremors, voluntary or involuntary typing movements of the fingers, obsessive thinking, fantasies, or dreams about the internet.
• Internet engagement to relieve or avoid withdrawal symptoms.
• Internet often accessed more often or for longer periods of time than was intended.
• A significant amount of time is spent in activities related to internet use (for example, internet surfing).
• Important social, occupational, or recreational activities eliminated or reduced due to internet use.
• Risk of loss of a significant relationship, job, educational, or career opportunity due to excessive internet use.
• Internet engagement used as a way of escaping problems or relieving feelings of guilt, helplessness, anxiety, or depression.
• Concealing from or lying to family members about the extent of internet use.
• Internet user driven to financial difficulty due to incurring unaffordable internet fees.

Hahaha, I'm laughing right now. A need for ever increasing time on the 'net? Dreams about the internet? Come oooon. This is insane. It's like this is some serious problem. Speaking honestly, I use the internet all day long, but I wouldn't fall under any of these "symptoms". If I had a choice, I could easily stop using the internet right now and go do something else that I had to do. Now, if it was TAKEN from me, that's another story. I don't know about you, but there's only so many things on the internet that I can do before I just get bored.

I'm going to level with you. If you're "addicted" to the internet, and simply can't pull yourself away from it... then you need to get a life. This is just as bad as people who just "can't stop playing" World of Warcraft or something. It's all some stupid mind game propogated by the doctors who profess to care about everyone's well-being. (They scare because they care? ...and then they charge you a mortgage for their help.)

Using this list, it seems I am, however, addicted to:

• Music
• Food
• Nintendo
• Gaming News
• Stargate
• Reading
• Animorphs
• Wolves
• Peace and Quiet
• Making Money
• Sleep
• Showers
• Movies
• Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
• World of Warcraft! Hahaha...
• ...and anything else I like?!

Wow. I'm addicted to lots of things. Someone please help me!

...because I got my PS2 today.

This is really odd. For as long as I can remember, I've always gone "ew! playstation!" My obsession of wolves has forced me to turn my back on everything I ever stood for, and now there's an abomination sandwiched between my NES and Xbox, looking quite smug.

It was dirty, and looked like it was dropped out of the back of a moving vehicle. The controllers were indeed "new", but they don't appear to have any rumble feature and they're some sort of weird off-brand that look like Dual Shocks... without the big ol' SONY on the top of them. I guess they'll do, but I was under the impression they were official. Oh well. I can live without rumble, I think. I've always turned it down on my Xbox, anyway.

The drive seems to work, too. It played a PS1 game I've had for ages, it played audio CDs, and it played a movie DVD without any trouble, so that's... REALLY good. So it looks like a big black piece of junk, but it was cheap and it works! So I can't complain. Sound and video sounded and looked normal. Controllers were responsive, though somewhat stiff. (Might be because they're new.)

I opted out of having it modified to play pirated discs. I just don't dig physically and irreversably changing something on my consoles. I even checked to make sure it didn't play a PS1 game I'd copied a long time ago. It didn't play it! So yeah, can't complain. For $38.50, this thing cost less than most GAMES do.

What I CAN complain about, though, is the PS1 memory card I bought from someone on Amazon. Not through the auctions, but... that weird marketplace thing. The item was SONY Playstation Memory Card. Note the "SONY" there. (While I don't like Sony being stamped everywhere, I do prefer my gaming tools to be all official.) The picture had Sony stamped all over a gray brick. It was supposed to be an official card. Turns out it's also some sort of weird off-brand memory card with absolutely no brand on it. It almost looks like a Lego sticking out from the console, it looks that cheap. But... it seems to work, and it was cheap, so...

So, hey, Amazon... where's my Okami? It's been preparing to ship for too long now! Lucky for you I can't cancel the order now, or I'd run to Walmart and pick it up there. Urrrgh. At least I have the latest Wheel of Time book to keep me busy. 800 pages of text barely larger than what you're reading here. ...and, of course, I've got Animorphs and a bunch of movies and a room to clean and generally enough stuff to do. I've been sick the last few days, so I've been lounging around. Yay.

...oh, and does anyone know why PS2s have a random firewire port? It's like... just... right there, out in the open, and I can't think of any possible purpose it can serve except for Sony to say "hey, look! ours has firewire! we rock!"

(Oh, and Amazon just sent me a shipping notification for Okami! Yay! It'll be here on the 28th, boo... maybe it'll get here earlier than they estimate, though, yay! But probably not, boo...)

In a shocking turn of events, Sony has confirmed a price drop for the PlayStation 3 from $515 to $410... and only in Japan! So, you hear that, folks? The United States is still cursed with the dreaded "five-hundred-and-ninety-nine US dollars" and Europe... well... they still don't even get to buy one.

The price drop is ONLY for the low-end version. No WiFi, no memory card slots, and less harddrive space. On the bright side, they DID add HDMI ports to the low-end version, now. So you can actually benefit from everything Sony's been ranting and raving about when you buy a low-end.

Considering that there will only be 100,000 total units in Japan (400,000 in Americas), and that I think it was 80% of that number is going to be the HIGH END versions (without the price cut), it will be simply impossible to find one. It was already going to be impossible to find one.

This is incredibly un-Sony-like. The fact that they dropped the price BEFORE release, after being such a moron about the entire thing since E3, show one of a few possibilities:

1) They've wisened up to the fact that nobody wants to spend that much on something that has no noticable difference from what they've sold last generation, and are trying to be a little nicer about it. (Unlikely!)

2) There's something wrong with the PlayStation 3 that they're not telling us. (Possible.)

3) They're terrified of the Nintendo Wii having such an incredible foothold in Japan. (Bingo!)

I don't see this as any threat to anyone else. May Nintendo and Microsoft reign supreme over the videogame industry with their proclamations of fun and affordability! Long live the Wii60!