A recently discovered problem with our VCR has enabled me to explore a new technology that I had limited exposure to before hand. We missed several of our favorite Thursday shows due to an old malfunctioning VCR. Because of that, I decided to begin looking at torrents to grab all the episodes of the shows we missed. If you're not familiar with torrents, the idea is that a lot of people share downloading of a large file. Once someone has completed downloading (even while they are downloading), you start uploading what you've downloaded to other people who are trying to download what you just got. The end result is that one person downloads from many sources (something like 10 to 15 sources) and those sources are diverse and spread across several links. The nice thing about my high speed internet connection is I get 10Mbps up and down, so I not only can download huge files extremely quickly, I can help other people download those same large files just as quickly.
So, what have I been doing. In the past 3 days, I downloaded 5 episodes of ER, 8 episodes of Friends, 3 episodes of Greg the Bunny (a short lived Fox sitcom starring Seth Green). Why did I download that last show? Because downloading torrents is addicting! I started looking for things to download just for fun! I better stop this madness or my ISP may want to have some words with me.