The Thrill of the Hunt.

(Keep in mind this is part three of a series. Part two will get posted next time and part one will the time after. Also, there is nudity in Girls Bravo.)

In part one: A Hardheaded Holdout for Hard Copies, I discussed going from store to store looking for whatever movie or book I'm obsessing over. I am a firm believer in supporting my local businesses. What if none of these big boxes or mom and pops doesn't have what I am seeking? Or worse yet the copy I got is screwed up?

Remember the fecal storm of cursing I had over the anti-virus AVG? The hard copy I bought in the store turned out to be no-good. AVG made it good two months after I installed the competitor. Here's the thing, the version of the program I wanted wasn't on the shelf, it was in the online store. On top of that the boxed version I got was out of date. The company has honored the key code so far. There may come a time.

Other than supporting local people there is a technical reason for buying boxed software. When I installed Windows 7, my downloaded copy of Bejeweled wouldn't activate. You see Pop Cap lost my registration information. If I had the disk it would have worked no-prob. A lot of companies put excessive registration forms on downloaded software. It is even made it way onto CD/DVDs. I understand why: in this age of high speed internet and massive hard drive space it is easier than ever to upload Photo Shop CS6 to some torrent site. Cracked and ready to to go. If only these companies would realize that by dropping the price to a reasonable rate and stop with the DRM rootkit schemes that more people would buy their products. All that stuff really does is turn honest persons into pirates. People will support you if you give them a reason.

Oops. Seems as if I drifted off onto another soapbox. Where's the soapbox labeled for digital downloading? There it is.

I've gone to every store in town and nothing. My first choice of online retailers is Amazon. That way I can get a hard copy. I typically reserve iTunes for music. What if disk three of Puella Magi Madoka Magica I bought from Amazon is unwatchable. Due to technical reasons and not the content per say? (Buy the way, I always have to look at the DVD cover when spelling that out.) I could always order another disk, but the anticipation of waiting for it to arrive in my mail box has long since turned to gripping. That new disk may be screwed up as well. Also it wasn't cheap. Looking at iTunes, all there is a couple of Kill QB apps and some podcasts. No episodes.

The thrill, and frustration, of the hunt now goes into the dork underbelly of the net. There are plenty of sites to be had that post anime, OSTs, and manga. I use them when all else has failed me. You can find just about everything, almost. It's these sites where I found all those images for Rosario Vampire I used in my reviews. (Another great thing is that sometimes they are far in advanced of what we get here. Rosavam 19 on the Viz Media app finally appeared two months later. Online you can get volumes 20 or 21.) Also I found Samuri Pizza Cats and that one series I promise not to talk about ever again. You know, the one about the fox girl trying to be a “dog-god” and falls in love with a human. Plus my newest guilty pleasure: Azu Manga Daio. It's free, I am not losing any money on it, except now, I just ordered it. It wasn't available anywhere locally. (I am NOT posting a video of the opening credits. It is one of the most obnoxious anime themes of all time. Even I'm not that cruel.)

What about that messed up copy of Madoka disk three? That was a hard one to find. Most sites didn't have it. One said it had the dubbed version, but alas no. It supposedly had the entire series subtitled. It had episode one complete. Which was great, but only had half of episodes 11 and 12! No kidding. Wait a half an hour for each one and only get half. (I spent that time writing part one of this series.) Checked several others to no avail. What makes it more frustrating is that it could be under Puella or Madoka, or Mahou. I finally found it on a site that had a very slow server (which allowed me the time to write out part two of this whole rambling ramble of a ramble.)

I guess hunting for anything on the net is just as frustrating as driving around. It could take awhile to find what you are looking for, it may be a bad upload to begin with, or even laden with malware. But uses less gas.

I watched the last two episodes of Madoka, and I'll save the review for some other time. Next up: the greatest advantage to those bootleg sites. Of course that will have already been posted before this article making that line seem kinda of sillier than normal. If you scroll down it will make some sense.

Won't it?