2 Bit Hacker

Not a lot going on at the moment, and I feel like typing, so it’s time for another general life update. Things are generally going pretty well, though there are a few annoyances at the moment, like the busted TV. My current plan is to get it repaired again and then sell it and buy something non-LG. There’s a Sony Bravia 40″ that’s not terribly unreasonable, but it’s a good chunk of change, so I’m not really sure what I’m going to do. I’ve got a stack of old electronics to sell off too. I should get on that and put the money toward the new set.

My birthday is coming up next week. Delia already got me my big present, a few months back, an Amazon Kindle e-reader, which I’ve been using almost continuously for my nightly reading. There’s nothing else I really want at the moment, but I’ve tagged a few things on my want list for good measure. Thinking about picking up Soul Calibur IV if I don’t get it otherwise.

I was also thinking of dragging Delia down to Easthampton, to go wandering around on Mount Tom. Haven’t been down there since I lived there with my mom when I was like 7. We’ll see how the weather goes.

Oh, and I finally got my home storage server/gateway up and running. Seems to be doing pretty well, though with 512MB it’s a little under powered in memory, but otherwise it’s doing the job nicely. Also picked up a Netflix Player, which is a pretty slick device. The movie selection on Netflix’s streaming service still isn’t that great, but they do have a pretty good selection of TV shows and documentaries, which is nice.

That’s about it for now, I guess. I’ll try and think of something interesting to write.

Okay, LG is going on my personal vendor blacklist, at least for LCD TVs. I bought this LG 37LB5D LCD television back in December to replace my Sony WEGA CRT, and initially I was very happy with it. Then it started having audio issues, which I worked around. Then it started having video issues, where the screen would blank out randomly. I called a repair place, and the guy came out and swapped in a new power supply and control board, and everything was happy once again.

And so it went till today. The audio issue just resurfaced. I’m sitting here watching History HD off my TiVo, with no audio. First it was quick cut outs, now it’s just totally silent.

I suspect it’s something with the HDMI audio decoder. My suspicion is that it overheated and did some permanent damage to itself. I should probably contact the repair guy again and find out if the replacement parts were also under warranty, as it’s probably going to take another set of replacements to make this thing work again.

At this point though, I’m tempted to chuck this one off the balcony and go buy a Sharp AQUOS. We’ve got three of those at work and they’re running great. I suppose this is what I get for trying to save a buck and going with the cheap brand.