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.

It’s that time again, when I get bored waiting for Delia to get out of work and I don’t feel like doing anything productive, when I decide it’s time to update ye olde weblog. As usual, I don’t think much is really going on in my life, I continue to work, my left leg is still weird from my last back problem, my car is still running well, though the mileage is hurting in the cold.

One somewhat interesting thing is that I finally broke down and ordered a shiny new HDTV last week. It’s an LG 37LB5D, which is a 37″ widescreen LCD at full 1080p resolution. To go with it, I also ordered a TiVo HD so I’ll have some HD content to watch. They should both arrive tomorrow, at which point I’ll get to have fun getting CableCARDs from Comcast. Oh yeah, and if anyone out there is interested in a used 27″ Sony WEGA tube, let me know. It’s too big to really go anywhere else in my apartment.

The new TV has also got me thinking about picking up an Xbox 360. I haven’t really been doing a lot of console gaming lately, but it looks like there are some decent new games out there, and the whole online thing looks interesting. I think Delia wants one too, though I’m not sure why. Maybe I’ll just get the PS2 hooked up again, and if we actually use it, I’ll get the newer thing.

Other than that, not a lot going on. Some people have asked what I want for the upcoming holiday, so I’ve started tagging some things as “want” on my del.icio.us. Nothing terribly fancy. I’m trying to get the apartment cleaned up and presentable so that people can actually come over. If that project gets complete soon, maybe we’ll have some people over for a holiday party of some sort.

Another weekend past and time for an update on my wondrous life. It was an interesting weekend, with Delia dragging me to Manray on Friday night. She even managed to get me to put blue junk in my hair, as can be seen in the pictures. I was somewhat hesitant to go, but I ended up having a good time. The rest of the weekend was rather relaxing. Delia got me to pick up a card game called Apples to Apples from the Tower. We ended up playing it most of Saturday night, and for a good amount of time on Monday as well. Worth picking up.

Sunday I sat in on another session of darkenna’s D&D game. I’m going to be joining it with the next session. It seems a lot more thought out than most of the campaigns I’ve been in, so it should be a fun change of pace. I had been looking for a group to get into for a while now, and this seems like a good group of people.

In case you’re wondering about the subject of the post, I’ve decided to cancel my cable TV and TiVo subscription. I find that I’m not at home nearly enough to actually watch anything, and when I am home I have better things I should be doing. I figure the few shows that I do watch I can probably pick up online, or just wait till they’re available on DVD and get them via NetFlix. This does, however, make my TiVo somewhat useless, so if anyone is interested in buying a used AT&T-branded Series 2 (kindof) TiVo that’s been upgraded to 200 hours, let me know.

You are cautious in showing your true self to others.