Surprisingly, I’ve never actually seen either “Toy Story” movie before. And oddly enough, I actually do have both movies on DVD. I picked up the first Toy Story movie when it was reissued as a 10th Anniversary edition, and the second one either at the same time or shortly thereafter. But I’m guessing it might have been a buy both get a better discount kind of deal. But both DVDs are still shrinkwrapped to this day. I know the first one at least had to have been good based on the fact it spawned a sequel, but it also launched Pixar into the mainstream and I have enjoyed several of their movies over the years.

I don’t know why this seems to be true for me, but I never seem to find the Pixar movie trailers interesting enough to ever want to see the movies when they happen to be playing on the big screen. I had never seen any of them on the big screen, not “Monster’s Inc.”, not “Finding Nemo”, not “Cars” not even “Wall-E” or this year’s “Up” and yet, ultimately I’ve been told how great and wonderful they are, and I’ve checked them out on DVD and ended up buying them. I will probably even get “Up” when it comes out next month. All of the ones I’ve seen ended up being extremely good, so I just don’t quite get why their trailers strike me as lame and I don’t see them in the theaters.

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Amazon has lowered the price of the Blu-Ray/DVD combination package of “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” to $19.99 and also has a $10 off promotional code that will drop the price for it down to $9.99. This is a rare opportunity to get the latest release version of Disney’s first full length animated feature for such a bargain. It’s a great set in that it comes with both a Blu-Ray disc and a DVD version of the film so even if you don’t yet have a Blu-Ray player, you’re covered for if and when you do.

Click here to visit Amazon.com and take advantage of the deal. To get the $10 off discount, be sure to enter the promo code, “SNOWHITE” in the promotional code box during check out. Keep in mind there is only one “w” in the code. Most reviews indicate the movie looks stunning in its new Blu-Ray presentation. I’m not sure how long the sale price or the discount code’s availability will last.

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On October 4th, Kylie Minogue plays the Hollywood Bowl. In her only Southern California appearance, I decided I am going to take opportunity to see the global megastar live in concert. This may be my only chance to see Kylie Minogue in concert on “my turf” so to speak.

While Kylie plays Europe and Australia every time she releases an album, the United States rarely gets more than a television appearance. Granted she doesn’t have the same popularity here in the United States as she does abroad. But I think it’s awesome that she’s coming to the United States and Canada (does it really count as including Canada when its just a single show in Toronto?). I have several of her concert DVDs from past tours and they’re always enjoyable to watch. Welcome to California to perform Kylie.

I wonder if she’ll incorporate an ABBA song or two as she was recently at the BBC2 concerts in London paying tribute to the music of ABBA.

If you’d like to join me, tickets are still available from TicketMaster. Click here to visit TicketMaster and let me know if you’re coming. I’m not getting fancy seats. I managed to get $30 tickets in section N1 which is pretty close to center albeit pretty far from the stage. I just bought my tickets this morning too. The show is not yet sold out.

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As of September 17th, 2009 until supplies run out, Raymond Aaron is offering the opportunity to get his book, “Double Your Income Doing What You Love: Raymond Aaron’s Guide To Power Mentoring” for free, directly from Raymond. In addition to the free book, he’s autographing it for you and including a special DVD about Raymond’s participation in Polar Race. Polar Race is a event where competitors compete in a foot race to the magnetic North Pole and not only did Raymond participate in the 2007 event, he was at age 62 when he did it.

Raymond’s book is an amazing book. I’ve owned a copy since it was first released and have given it as gifts, it’s a very wonderful and powerful book explaining the need for mentoring and introducing the concept of goal setting using Raymond’s MTO Technique. MTO stands for Minimum, Target, and Outrageous and together they make for the most powerful way I’ve ever encountered for goal setting. Just by applying this methodology guarantees some accomplishment on your goals whether you hit your minimum level or shoot for the stars and hit the outrageous achievement level.

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I went into seeing “Transformers 2: Revenge Of The Fallen” with fairly low expectations as it’s not been reviewed very positively by critics and a few of the people I follow on Twitter didn’t have the best of things to say about it. But I wanted to see it anyway and so I went with a couple of people from work today and I thought it was just okay.

The movie itself had a reasonably decent plot line, and the stuff involving the parents of the main character, Sam, were fantastic comedy bits. As with most Michael Bay movies, it was loaded with lots of explosions and as one friend on Twitter put it, a great recruiting video for the Armed Forces. The explosions were definitely bigger and better than the first movie. One of the nice touches I liked was the return of the same voice from the animated Transformers cartoon for the character of Soundwave. Fortunately, they didn’t make Soundwave a tape deck, but rather a satellite in space who taps into a US Military satellite and relays information to the Decepticons below. I think from the animated show the voices of Optimus Prime and Soundwave definitely are key to those of use nostalgic enough to remember the original cartoons back when they were at their peak of popularity.

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PhotoSwap by Podadaz is a cool iPhone application where the premise is simple, you have to take a photo. That photo can be of anything, and it will get swapped with another person using the application anywhere in the world. They could be a mile away or half a world a way. The selection is completely at random. You never who will get the picture you send, and you never know who you’re talking to. You get two option when you get a photo back. You can take a new picture to go to another completely random person, or you can hit reply and send another picture with the same person. The key though is that you can only send another photo. You can’t call the other person, nor can you send a text message, just another photograph. The best you can do is add a little bit of info to your profile such as a couple of lines of text, like a nickname and a little about you or what you want to see.

In order to start a conversation, it requires a picture. You don’t get to see one until you’ve taken one and released it to the randomness of the world. What do you use to start a photo conversation, well, it could be anything, maybe some trinket on your coffee table or a close up of something on the ceiling or a close up of your shoe. It’s interesting because the picture needs to be something interesting to spark a response. If you have enabled the program’s access to your location, the recipient can click on the info button and see a map of the neighborhood where you’re at (without it pinpointing exactly where) on Google Maps. I’ve seen people take photos of their pets, the time on their watch, alarm clocks, logos on products, and of course, some even just take self portraits.

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Warner Bros., normally the producer of great entertainment in everything from movies to music releases, has royally annoyed me when I elected to purchase the CHESS IN CONCERT Deluxe Edition, available exclusively from them at Chess.WarnerBrosRecords.com. Warner Bros. is also selling the sets through the stores on official webpages for both Josh Groban and Idina Menzel (both are powered by WarnerBrosRecords.com). The exclusive version of the “Chess In Concert” set in addition to packaging together the 2-CD version of the recording with the DVD version of the show in a special package and includes as bonuses sheet music for the songs “Anthem” and “I Know Him So Well” and the deluxe set is limited to 3,000 copies world wide.

As the set was not originally scheduled to be released until June 30th, well after the June 16th release date of the standard versions, Warner Bros. also is including as part of the package, the ability to download the 2 CDs digitally on the June 16th release date. However, just prior to the 16th, the release date for the deluxe package has been shifted to July 21st, with Warner Bros claiming that the materials won’t be fully ready to meet the original release date.

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Last year, Roku introduced to the market the Netflix Player, a small “box” that gets connected directly to a television and with either a wired Internet connection or using the built in Wi-Fi access capability, the box instantly enables the connected television to have access to Netflix‘s entire catalogue of Instantly Viewable movies and television shows. Initially the selection seemed mostly limited to older title movies and television shows, but a partnership with Starz, Netflix has been able to offer considerably more current material. Also Roku and Netflix have enhanced the capabilities of the player by allowing for High Definition content to be streamed through the player. And more recently Roku has additionally partnered with Amazon On-Demand to further expand the capabilities of the Netflix Box, that it truly has become the best value for enhancing a home entertainment system.

For a one-time fee, the Netflix Box costs $99.99 (and is available to purchase through Amazon.com by clicking here). The allows instant access to an already existing Netflix account. If you don’t have a Netflix account, then you’ll love hearing what an incredible bargain the system is. For as little as $8.99 a month, you get unlimited access to any program Netflix features for instant viewing. Technically, the $8.99 fee is for a one month subscription to the DVD rental service, where you’re allowed one DVD at a time, as many as want in a month, just send the disc back and as soon as they get it, they send you the next disc on your list. The instant viewing is included free with your subscription. If you want additional discs at a time, then the subscription fee increases depending on how many discs you want to be able to have out at one time. Netflix allows up to 8 discs to be out at one time.

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If you think the only musical theatre entry of Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson of ABBA is MAMMA MIA!, you’d be wrong. Shortly after the last songs of ABBA’s catalogue were completed, the members of ABBA decided to take a break from the group, and Björn & Benny decided to try their hand at writing a musical. Tim Rice, well known for his collaborations with Andrew Lloyd Webber, was in the market for new composers to work with for his idea of building a musical around the idea of a Chess championship. After having met Björn & Benny and deciding to work together, the process of bringing Chess to life was born.

Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice established a successful formula of trying out the songs from shows they wrote in a “Concept Album” format that got released to the public long before a staged version of the show got made. This methodology was an invaluable way to see if the songs were good enough to warrant the time and expense of launching a full scale musical. Instead of going to the expense of launching a full show, it’s a chance to release the album to the public and see if it generates enough interest. If the album tanks, a fortune has been saved, and if it succeeds, then it creates an audience for the show when it gets launched.

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I just took advantage of a great deal from TigerDirect.com on an Acer Aspire One Netbook. I’ve been wanting to try a netbook and TigerDirect offered a price I couldn’t refuse. $229.99 and $1.99 for shipping. Sure it’s a refurbished model, but the best deals are usually on refurbished products and I’ve always had good luck buying refurbished items. Click here if you want to check out the details on the model I purchased, and you can even pick one up for yourself if they still have any left.

Normally I would have opted for an HP netbook as most of my last few computers have all been HP products and I quite like their machines. But I picked up a great deal on an Acer desktop PC right after Christmas (also from TigerDirect) that I am willing to give one of Acer’s ultra portable PCs a chance. I like the idea of the netbooks being so portable that I’m sure I’ll be reaching for it far more than I will my other PCs. I currently have a HP laptop with a 14 inch screen and at the time I bought it, it was the best deal I could find on a laptop with as small as screen as possible. Sony’s VAIO series offered smaller ones but for outrageously higher prices, but the truth is I really wanted something with a smaller screen because the lighter it is, the more practical it becomes to take with you. At least that’s my opinion.

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