Well, I've finally entered the digital age of Television. I must say I don't see how I "put up"
analog all these years. This weekend Emily and I went out TV hunting. We started out Friday night
at some local stores in Oshkosh. Most the sales people there sort of got me up to speed on what
I would want in a TV and what I wouldn't want. I really wasn't looking to buy a TV from them
especially since they were overpriced, as compared to a larger store like Best Buy or Circuit City.
I came to the conclusion that I wanted a TV that was 1080p,
I wanted a 42 inch, and I wanted a LCD TV. I've read several things about plasma TVs, such as screen burning
and shorter life span which LCD do not have. Of course plasma have a slightly better picture but if the TV is going
to die twice as fast, what's the point?
Emily and I did some research when we got home. We narrowed it down to a few different TVs at Best Buy.
Ultimately we decided on a Philips 42 inch LCD.
The TV met all the standards that we wanted and it had one thing that no other TVs had. Abilight.
Yes the lovely back lit feature that as far as I know only Philips offers. What it does is projects the color currently displayed on the
TV set on the back wall behind the TV. It even display specific colors that are currently on the TV. It is a really cool effect when
all the lights are turned off and makes the TV look really slick.
Its definitely gives the TV an edge when your trying to choose between two exact TVs.
The picture quality on the TV is really good as well. Unfortunately we don't have digital cable so we can't enjoy HDTV quite yet but
we bought a HDMI cable for our XBOX 360 so all our games are now in HD and we can
also play DVDs right out of the box on the 360 in HD. Playing Halo 3 is really beautiful in HD. You can see things that you couldn't see
before since the picture is so clear. Also watching movies on the TV seems like a new experience because of the picture quality.
Because our living room has a new TV, our old one got moved to the bedroom and the 19 inch in the bedroom is now mine to play with in
my computer room. I hooked the TV up to my NVIDIA GeForce 8500gt and
I can use it as an extended desktop. Now I can watch movies on the secondary display while I do other things on my other monitor.
I'm currently watching the ABC presidential debates on it on YouTube. (Ugh, Hillary Clinton, who is clearly a cyborg sent from the future)
In other news I'm going to Chicago this week. Wish me luck! I'll try to remember to bring my camera so I can take some pictures and post
them on my website.
Also I've added a new feature to my site. You can now change the width of the site to a wide layout, which can be found in the right nav.
If you have a wide screen like I do at work, then it is nice to have since it seems so small. How about them Packers everyone?...View Comments (2)
Hey there, this site is pretty old now. I've decided to leave it up as I put a lot of work into it and would hate to see it disappear.
Blog
To Boldly Go Where No Christmas Has Gone Before
Dec 28
Christmas is finally over. Hope everyone survived it. Emily and I went back to New London to
her side of the family for Christmas. Tomorrow we go back for my side. I'm not going to lie,
it hasn't been a very exciting Christmas this year. It is most likely due to the fact that I am
getting older, and the older you get, the less exciting it gets. It seems like every year there
is a theme to the presents that I get. Last year it was German related stuff. This year it was
Star Trek related gifts. I got a Spock Christmas tree ornament. A Star Trek poster
and a Star Trek encyclopedia. Beyond that I can't even remember what else I got. I still have
Christmas to go with my side of the family which may yield some different results.
Christmas to me seems sort of like an inconvenience. You go and spend $50 on a gift for somebody hoping it is what they want and they spend $50 on your hoping to get what you want. Often times it isn't what either person wanted. I think it is more logical to just keep your $50 and get whatever it is what you want, wrap it up, and open it with family. Otherwise it's just a big scam to get together with your family for another holiday. Christmas isn't really about celebrating Christ anymore anyways. It's barely even about Santa Clause. It's more about fueling the economy one last time before the beginning of a new fiscal year. It's the American way.
Ok I'm done ranting. In other news I'm sorry to announce that I have a cell phone now. Emily and I went to Verizon and got two new phones. They are a LG Chocolate. My overall experience with the phone is negative so far. It seems that the cell companies go out of their way to include features on the phones but make you pay to use any of them. It's like having a computer with everything you want on it, but to use anything you have to pay a $1 each time.
Also being a fairly advanced computer user, things or methods that would normally work on a computer do not work on cell phones. One would assume, if they place an MP3 file on a SD card on the phone in the "sounds" or "music" folder, it would be available to use as a ring tone. It doesn't. One would also assume that if you have an external card, that the phone would save your contacts and all your information on that card as well as the phone for backup and to use externally. It doesn't. You would also assume that if you live withing a few miles of numerous cell towers, your reception would be crystal clear. It isn't. Yeah. As sad as it is to admit, the iPhone is probably the most suitable cell phone there is for me. You know more of a PDA, less of a phone. But Macs still suck!
Work is going good. I've been in a fierce battle with Web Trends. I think so far I am winning then battle. It seems like when I figure out how to do something, it goes ahead and ruins something else. It's been sort of fun messing with it lately, even when I'm somehow taking down various IT resources for the whole company in the process. I will say it's probably one of the least intuitive software packages out there right behind the Unreal Tournament level editor.
Well that's all for now....View Comments (0)
Christmas to me seems sort of like an inconvenience. You go and spend $50 on a gift for somebody hoping it is what they want and they spend $50 on your hoping to get what you want. Often times it isn't what either person wanted. I think it is more logical to just keep your $50 and get whatever it is what you want, wrap it up, and open it with family. Otherwise it's just a big scam to get together with your family for another holiday. Christmas isn't really about celebrating Christ anymore anyways. It's barely even about Santa Clause. It's more about fueling the economy one last time before the beginning of a new fiscal year. It's the American way.
Ok I'm done ranting. In other news I'm sorry to announce that I have a cell phone now. Emily and I went to Verizon and got two new phones. They are a LG Chocolate. My overall experience with the phone is negative so far. It seems that the cell companies go out of their way to include features on the phones but make you pay to use any of them. It's like having a computer with everything you want on it, but to use anything you have to pay a $1 each time.
Also being a fairly advanced computer user, things or methods that would normally work on a computer do not work on cell phones. One would assume, if they place an MP3 file on a SD card on the phone in the "sounds" or "music" folder, it would be available to use as a ring tone. It doesn't. One would also assume that if you have an external card, that the phone would save your contacts and all your information on that card as well as the phone for backup and to use externally. It doesn't. You would also assume that if you live withing a few miles of numerous cell towers, your reception would be crystal clear. It isn't. Yeah. As sad as it is to admit, the iPhone is probably the most suitable cell phone there is for me. You know more of a PDA, less of a phone. But Macs still suck!
Work is going good. I've been in a fierce battle with Web Trends. I think so far I am winning then battle. It seems like when I figure out how to do something, it goes ahead and ruins something else. It's been sort of fun messing with it lately, even when I'm somehow taking down various IT resources for the whole company in the process. I will say it's probably one of the least intuitive software packages out there right behind the Unreal Tournament level editor.
Well that's all for now....View Comments (0)
Dec 13
Greetings and salutations everyone! Boy was tonight a funny night. Emily and I received a rather authentic looking certificate/prize
in the mail from Ramada® Plaza Resorts (Orlando/Ft. Lauderdale Vacations) stating that we had "won" a $1,600 off a Carnival Cruise
from Florida to the Bahamas. Having peaked my curiosity I called the 800 number to see what was up. I got Jack Dillard, Senior Yada Yada
President for Ramada at 7:00 P.M Eastern Time. (The guy works late).
Jack was offering us a "Big Gay" honeymoon package for an 8 day get-a-way to the Bahamas for $399 per person. He noted that if this was too much he could lower the price to accommodate us. I kept trying to get him to tell us how much it would cost us but he didn't tell me the $399 thing until 30 minutes into the phone call. Unfortunately for him, Emily and I were researching the whole deal and found out that it was just a big let down. People stated that the service sucked and they ended up paying $2,600 even after the $1,600 taken off in the end. Visit that previous link to see the complaints about it. (I simply don't have enough time tonight to type every single one of them out).
So what happened? I inquired if we were going to get lectured on our vacation about time shares and he replied changing "time shares" into a short morning having to visit some place and waste our time. I was suspecting that there would be alot more time share crap than that. After 30 minutes of waiting he told us the price and wanted our credit card number. Oh I also forgot to mention that he told us we HAVE to buy our tickets tonight and that we can't decide later. Let me repeat, we had to pay tonight. This is the part that worried me the most because it was a pressured decision. Pressured decisions are usually how you get scammed. At that point I hung up our cell phone.
He immediately called back and told us that we were "mean for hanging up on him and that this deal was so great....He then told us that "if we don't have enough money in our poor little account, he can lower the price more." What a dick! Poor little account my ass! Truth is we could have afforded the stupid trip, it was that we didn't trust him!
I figured by posting this online, I can maybe save a few more people 30 minutes of their time on the phone with an aggressive sales person.
Right? I propose that anyone who visits my site call this number 1-954-455-3211 and ask for Jack Dillard. Then prank him and hang up.
In better travel news I'm going to Downtown Chicago January 10th and 11th! Why you ask? Because I am being sent for a Web Trends class for work. While Web Trends isn't my favorite activity, traveling somewhere to get better at it is. There is also a possibility that Emily would be able to come along as well and we could check out the city for a day or two after it all. Yay!
Fin.
...View Comments (2)
Jack was offering us a "Big Gay" honeymoon package for an 8 day get-a-way to the Bahamas for $399 per person. He noted that if this was too much he could lower the price to accommodate us. I kept trying to get him to tell us how much it would cost us but he didn't tell me the $399 thing until 30 minutes into the phone call. Unfortunately for him, Emily and I were researching the whole deal and found out that it was just a big let down. People stated that the service sucked and they ended up paying $2,600 even after the $1,600 taken off in the end. Visit that previous link to see the complaints about it. (I simply don't have enough time tonight to type every single one of them out).
So what happened? I inquired if we were going to get lectured on our vacation about time shares and he replied changing "time shares" into a short morning having to visit some place and waste our time. I was suspecting that there would be alot more time share crap than that. After 30 minutes of waiting he told us the price and wanted our credit card number. Oh I also forgot to mention that he told us we HAVE to buy our tickets tonight and that we can't decide later. Let me repeat, we had to pay tonight. This is the part that worried me the most because it was a pressured decision. Pressured decisions are usually how you get scammed. At that point I hung up our cell phone.
He immediately called back and told us that we were "mean for hanging up on him and that this deal was so great....He then told us that "if we don't have enough money in our poor little account, he can lower the price more." What a dick! Poor little account my ass! Truth is we could have afforded the stupid trip, it was that we didn't trust him!
I figured by posting this online, I can maybe save a few more people 30 minutes of their time on the phone with an aggressive sales person.
Right? I propose that anyone who visits my site call this number 1-954-455-3211 and ask for Jack Dillard. Then prank him and hang up.
In better travel news I'm going to Downtown Chicago January 10th and 11th! Why you ask? Because I am being sent for a Web Trends class for work. While Web Trends isn't my favorite activity, traveling somewhere to get better at it is. There is also a possibility that Emily would be able to come along as well and we could check out the city for a day or two after it all. Yay!
Fin.
...View Comments (2)
Dec 04
I have spent a lot of time working on my site since I last blogged. As of late I haven't been
giving my website very much attention but I have finally been thinking up some ideas to do on it. Last week I added several
new wallpapers. They are under the objects section and are of my totally awesome guitar. I
had picked up my guitar for the first time in a long time and decided tat I ought to take a few pictures of it and see if any
turn out nice. I was surprised that many of them turned out really cool.
After that I added a feature to the message board that allows you to preview a thread without having to view the entire thing at once. Just hover over the grid of threads and click the down arrow. This will show a preview which is the first post within that thread. It's something that I haven't seen done anywhere else so for once it's an original idea of my own (yeah I know there aren't many of those left anymore),
Next I updated my right side bar which you may notice looks a bit different. Although nobody but a few web geeks will care, I added a view source button so that people can view the source code to my website. If anything I'll use it the most for testing purposes but once again, this was sort of an original idea that I thought up that I haven't seen used on any other websites. (as you can tell my goal in life is to contribute at least one good idea to web design that other people will copy)
Last but not least I added a tag cloud, which is a visual listing of all the tags on my website. Out of all the things I've updated I'm most proud of this since many large sites have them and I managed to create my own. If you add any tags to my site they will show up on that page now and the more times the tag is used, the larger it will become.
In other news I am attempting to tag every Star Trek epsisode (79 in all). This will involve watching all 79 and taking notes while I watch. I figure it's a good excuse to watch them all again. I'll be looking for very specific things within each episode and things that could possibly happen in several episodes. An example might be Spock using the vulcan nerve pinch (which he probably uses in at least 30 episodes). Once I'm all done I will probably create a subdomain on my website and design a complete new template (for the hell of it) and then have a giant tag cloud and episode guide for all 79 episodes.
Did I mention I'm a nerd?
So what else is going on in life? I am finally getting settled in and getting into my groove. At our apartment our stupid dishwasher doesn't work and our landlordis isn't making it a very big priority which after two weeks is starting
to piss me off.
Work is going ok. I'm doing a bit more work than normal with Web Trends which is a overly-complicated program for statistics of websites. Apparently there is a new site coming up which is probably my favorite thing to do (is start a site from scratch)
Well that's all for now!...View Comments (0)
After that I added a feature to the message board that allows you to preview a thread without having to view the entire thing at once. Just hover over the grid of threads and click the down arrow. This will show a preview which is the first post within that thread. It's something that I haven't seen done anywhere else so for once it's an original idea of my own (yeah I know there aren't many of those left anymore),
Next I updated my right side bar which you may notice looks a bit different. Although nobody but a few web geeks will care, I added a view source button so that people can view the source code to my website. If anything I'll use it the most for testing purposes but once again, this was sort of an original idea that I thought up that I haven't seen used on any other websites. (as you can tell my goal in life is to contribute at least one good idea to web design that other people will copy)
Last but not least I added a tag cloud, which is a visual listing of all the tags on my website. Out of all the things I've updated I'm most proud of this since many large sites have them and I managed to create my own. If you add any tags to my site they will show up on that page now and the more times the tag is used, the larger it will become.
In other news I am attempting to tag every Star Trek epsisode (79 in all). This will involve watching all 79 and taking notes while I watch. I figure it's a good excuse to watch them all again. I'll be looking for very specific things within each episode and things that could possibly happen in several episodes. An example might be Spock using the vulcan nerve pinch (which he probably uses in at least 30 episodes). Once I'm all done I will probably create a subdomain on my website and design a complete new template (for the hell of it) and then have a giant tag cloud and episode guide for all 79 episodes.
Did I mention I'm a nerd?
So what else is going on in life? I am finally getting settled in and getting into my groove. At our apartment our stupid dishwasher doesn't work and our landlord
Work is going ok. I'm doing a bit more work than normal with Web Trends which is a overly-complicated program for statistics of websites. Apparently there is a new site coming up which is probably my favorite thing to do (is start a site from scratch)
Well that's all for now!...View Comments (0)
Nov 23
I should probably start out and mention that I've moved! I live in Oshkosh now and no longer in Sheboygan. I've seen my friends and family more in the past week than I have since I lived in Sheboygan for the past several months which is pretty sad. It's nice to finally be able to see people without having to drive 2 hours one way and 2 hours back. A lot of people from the Fox Cities like to rip on Oshkosh as the crappy city of the group, but personally, I think it's a major improvement
over Sheboygan. Sheboygan has Lake Michigan and that's about it. Oshkosh has Lake Winnebago AND all the same stores and stuff as Sheboygan and is only a short trip on the interstate to Appleton which has pretty much every cool store you can think of.
Unpacking has progressed pretty well and we have most the stuff we use on a daily basis unpacked already.
Today was the crazy Black Friday sale. I headed over to Best Buy last night around 11 and met up with Tyler, Mike, Nick and Nick. It was pretty damn cold last night, probably one of the colder sales I've been to. It seemed like the people at the sale this year were more annoying than normal. We had a large pack of guys ahead of us who decided to do stupid cheerleading cheers at 4:00 a.m. Also while we were grilling out the whole line decided to move up and about 20 people budged ahead of us. We did however regain our position in line.
Like every year I had my eyes set on more storage capacity. I was hoping to nab a 1 tb drive but settled for a 500 gb drive that is cheaper. 500 gb should do the trick for the time being anyways. I was also trying to be a bit more conservative with my money this year. I also bought a 100 pack of DVD-Rs which should last me quite some time. Check out a few pictures of my stuff in my photo gallery.
Like almost every year I was less than 5th in line to check out yet 50th in line when entering the store. The only people ahead of me were Tyler and a guy being stupid who sat in line the whole night only to buy a candy bar from Best Buy. This year Emily also went shopping (with the girls) to the outlet mall in Oshkosh. She bought a bunch of cloths.
Other than that stuff is going good. Emily and I start our new jobs next week and we are both excited to do that. This is Emily's first full time job in awhile so it will be more of a change for her. Until next time...see ya!...View Comments (3)
Unpacking has progressed pretty well and we have most the stuff we use on a daily basis unpacked already.
Today was the crazy Black Friday sale. I headed over to Best Buy last night around 11 and met up with Tyler, Mike, Nick and Nick. It was pretty damn cold last night, probably one of the colder sales I've been to. It seemed like the people at the sale this year were more annoying than normal. We had a large pack of guys ahead of us who decided to do stupid cheerleading cheers at 4:00 a.m. Also while we were grilling out the whole line decided to move up and about 20 people budged ahead of us. We did however regain our position in line.
Like every year I had my eyes set on more storage capacity. I was hoping to nab a 1 tb drive but settled for a 500 gb drive that is cheaper. 500 gb should do the trick for the time being anyways. I was also trying to be a bit more conservative with my money this year. I also bought a 100 pack of DVD-Rs which should last me quite some time. Check out a few pictures of my stuff in my photo gallery.
Like almost every year I was less than 5th in line to check out yet 50th in line when entering the store. The only people ahead of me were Tyler and a guy being stupid who sat in line the whole night only to buy a candy bar from Best Buy. This year Emily also went shopping (with the girls) to the outlet mall in Oshkosh. She bought a bunch of cloths.
Other than that stuff is going good. Emily and I start our new jobs next week and we are both excited to do that. This is Emily's first full time job in awhile so it will be more of a change for her. Until next time...see ya!...View Comments (3)