Confessions of a Casual Perfectionist: Day 22

It’s NaBloPoMo Day 22!

Today’s confession: I have created an effective Queue Management system that creates less stress while providing more drama, and when we’re talking about movies, more drama and less stress is always a good thing.

My husband and I love watching movies. Even before we had a child, we’d rather watch movies at home on our entertainment system than go to a crowded theater and be forced to watch a movie straight-through without pausing to use the bathroom. Of course, we enjoy a night out to the movies every once in a while, and some movies are best seen on the big screen, but we love watching movies at home.

In my opinion, the only way to truly enjoy the process of watching movies at home is with Netflix, an online video rental service. Our lives have been so much easier after having ditched the local rental store and joining Netflix over six years ago (April 2003…can you believe it!?). Things are peaceful here. Life is good. We have no rush to return movies we may or may not have had time to see. We no longer have to search through rows and rows of movie titles only to find the last copy in the hand of the person standing in front of us in the long check-out line.

With Netflix, we choose the movies we want to see from their online database. Those movies go into our list, or Queue. They have varying plans available, and we happen to be on the 3-at-a-time plan, meaning, we have three movies at our house at any given time, all for one low monthly rate. (Disclaimer: Although I sound like a commercial, Netflix is not a sponsor here, and any ads you see on the sidebar for Netflix are purely coincidental.)

When we’re done watching a movie, it goes back in the pre-paid envelope and in the mail. (I’ll give you three guesses as to who is in charge of that…and the first two guesses don’t count.) We live super-close to a major distribution center, so we get the next movie on our list within the span of two days. No late-fees. No lines. No stress. The only drama comes in the mail in the form of a DVD.

Sometimes we rock out and watch all three in a weekend, and sometimes one gets stalled while the others get watched and replaced, and sometimes we go on vacation and they sit there. No harm, no foul. We’ve rented more than enough movies per month to more than beat the cost of the typical video rental place by a landslide.

They recently added an “Instant Queue” that we can access through our Xbox 360, and we love it! Television shows, classic movies, and even new releases are all there, and they don’t count against the number you have at home! At times, though, it’s not very “instant” when we realize we’ve spent longer looking at the movies than it would take to actually watch one.

We can also rate movies that we’ve seen, and then Netflix uses magical spells and mathematical algorithms to suggest movies we may enjoy watching as well. We’ve rated over 1,500 movies (1,543 at last count), so they have a lot of good data to crunch. Sometimes, it suggests some really good movies, and other times we wonder just what kind of people they think we are.

There is also a Friends Section, where you can invite your friends to see your movie choices and ratings. We have a lot of friends on our list, and this can work in a couple of different ways. We have some friends who really like the kinds of movies we like (for the most part), and we always trade movie suggestions back and forth, usually with good success. We also have some friends who really have the opposite taste in movies. The suggestions we get from them usually say, “We hated this movie. You’d love it! You have to put it in your Queue!” Whatever works; that’s what I say.

My husband teases me, but here is the key to getting newly released movies to arrive at your door within hours of their release to DVD: Effective Queue Management. I have it down to a science, and he can make fun of me all he wants, but it’s because of my system that we always have the newest movies in a timely fashion.

Here’s how it works:

• When we see a trailer for a movie that looks interesting (and, actually, with trailers these days, all movies look interesting…so this is getting tougher and tougher to judge), I log on to our account and save the movie in the Saved section of the Queue. That way, I can forget about it for the time being and go on with my life.

• I can casually keep an eye on the Saved part of the Queue, and when the movie gets closer to actually being released, a date will pop up, and it will automatically be moved to the bottom of the Queue.

• I can then move those movies up to the top, or wherever I want, if I so choose, and just wait for the date to arrive.

• The final key to getting this to work is making sure we have an opening for the new movie. We can watch a movie or two and turn them in, just in time to fill that opening with the New Release we’ve been wanting to see.

• And, voila! Odds are, the next movie in your mailbox will be a newly released DVD!

Luckily, my husband and I have the same taste in movies…for the most part. There is a large portion of the movies that we both really like, and then each of us has our own kind of movies we enjoy. As the one in charge of Queue Management, I try to be fair in the movie selection that arrives at home, and keep these things in mind. I try to make sure we have a varied selection of movies from which to choose throughout the week.

He may not always believe me, but I really do put all of his specific requests at the top of the list. See? Aren’t I nice? His problem is he needs to make his requests out loud, and not in his head. I may be an expert at Queue Management, but my mind-reading abilities, though getting much better, are still a little lacking.