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December 30 wishful thinkingBy the way, did I mention I'm just completely and utterly depressed at the thought of 3 more months of wet, dark, cold winter to go without even a single day off work for the next 5 months to brighten my mood? We'll be packing up the Christmas decorations in the next couple of days and that will be the end of that. Hopefully V-Day and Paew's birthday will brighten the gloom, even momentarily, in February. I just can't help but wish I was in Maui again... if I close my eyes and tap my heels together 3 times, will I wake up in Wailea, Dorothy-style?
Maybe I need to get myself a pair of sparkly-red shoes... or win the Lottery. Oh well.
I made good use of my Christmas vacation by completing the COD4 (Call of Duty 4) campaign mode in 5 days. Not that I played all day, but at least a couple of hours every day. Remarkably, I haven't gotten remotely close to finishing the Halo 3 campaign yet, because I'm so drawn to the multiplayer options that I just dove straight into that, practically ignoring campaign mode. But for COD4, I stuck with the campaign and I haven't even touched Halo 3 since Christmas Eve. Maybe the recent issues with XBL connectivity had something to do with it, or maybe it was the compelling storyline of COD4, but either way I was happy to play COD4. I think it's the quickest I've ever finished a game, ever.
Now the real question is, from this point on, will I get hooked by COD4 multiplayer or run back to Halo 3 multiplayer? Time will tell. Thank God for the joy of electronics to keep me occupied indoors, or I'd never survive the winter season! December 28 Sleep Country, USAHas anyone else noticed that Sleep Country USA changed the woman in their TV commercials? The new woman looks kind of like the old one, but it's just not the same. I had grown weirdly fond of the previous woman, and there's something about the new one that I'm having trouble accepting. I can't help wondering if Sleep Country USA's sales are suffering due to the change.
Now, to be honest, I've never bought a matress there despite Sleep Country USA spending obscene amounts of money on TV advertising. It often seems as if you can't escape their ads for more than 30 minutes no matter what channel you're watching. And having seen so many of their damn commercials over the past several years, I liked the wholesome and perky personality of the actress. I trusted her, somehow, as a fitting Nortwest suburban soccer mom type. She seemed like a real person. When you're being bombarded by annoying ads, she was nice enough that I couldn't bring myself to be too annoyed. The new actress, however... well, there's something I don't trust about her. She's too... sexy, maybe? Less wholesome, more wine-bar femme fatale. Too slick and professional. More capable of making a man insecure. I don't know, maybe it's just me.
Decide for yourself. Here's the old actress, Mary Kae Irvin, on the left and the new actress, "Jessica", on the right:
  Who would you rather buy a matress from?
Anyway, as always, the internet provides the answers on the actress change. Here's a link discussing why the change happened. Normal service will resume shortlyI'm not blogging as much these days as I'm on my Xmas vacation. Normal service should resume next week when I'll be back to my normal routine.
Ugh, after Monday, that's 5 long months without so much as a 3-day weekend to break the monotony of the normal routine. USA sucks for few public holidays in general, but in particular the long 5 months between New Years Day and Memorial Day on May 31st is almost unbearable. December 25 Merry Christmas!Merry Christmas to everyone! I hope you have a day full of fun presents. Were you naughty or nice? みなさん、メリークリスマス！ December 21 If the world was a village of 100 peopleA colleague shared a compelling video with me on Facebook today - the video very effectively highlights the state of the world, and the huge gap between the "haves" and the "have nots". Especially at Christmas time, perhaps, when we tend to think more about peace, love and understanding, and goodwill to all men, the video might make you stop and think for a moment, so I decided to post it here.
When I watched this video, it did make me realize how filthy rich I am compared with most of the world's population. I really should appreciate how fortunate I am. I stress over which 60" plasma TV to buy rather than where my next meal is coming from. Anyway, here's the vid. Do read on below it though, for some fact-checking on the statistics presented in the video.
Of course, blind acceptance of statistics is dangerous. Snopes.com, an urban legend website, decided to do some fact-checking and present some corrections.
The creators of the video have a larger, clearer version of the video, with different music available on their website, in 4 languages - English, Spanish, French and Portuguese. December 16 Muckleshoot CasinoWe went to Muckleshoot Casino tonight. It's my first time to be in a Casino outside Las Vegas. Surprisingly, there didn't seem to be much difference between a Las Vegas casino and an Indian-reservation casino - same sounds from same slot machines, same bad air from smoking people, same waiting in a long line for restaurants inside the casino. If you closed your eyes, maybe you couldn't tell where you were.
I don't gamble at all, and the reason for going there was to try the fish buffet restaurant (called Pisces Buffet) which a friend had recommended. King County has a no-smoking policy for all public places, and I'm very used to not being bothered by the smokey environment. I was very surprised - shocked, really - to find people smoking in the casino. The only explanation I could find was that the no-smoking law does not apply within Indian reservations - and a search on the internet reveals this to be true - Indian casinos are exempt from the law.
The fish buffet was surprisingly good. We missed the King crab which is only available Mon-Thurs, but we ate plenty of Dungeness to make up for it. Again though, while the casino had a non-smoking area within it, the fish buffet was located within the smoking area and people could smoke at the tables in the restaurant. YUCK. The last time I had to endure smoking in a restaurant was in Japan a few years ago. Fortunately, nobody smoked right next to us and it seemed most people did not smoke while in the restaurant area (I only saw one person doing so).
I know Indian territory is exempt from state law in general, but I really do think that for issues like public health they should follow the rest of the county. If nothing else, it could only be good business for them. Smoking statistics for King County show that somewhere between 80% to 85% of King County residents don't smoke. So, by allowing smoking, they seem to be actively discouraging 80% of the population from visiting their gambling establishment. I, for one, might consider visiting one again (maybe) if it was a smoke-free environment.
And while I'm on a roll, hey Las Vegas, what's the story, ban smoking already, willya? LV casinos stink so much I can barely tolerate being indoors there. December 11 It's Christmas Insanity Time!So you put up your Christmas lights already, didn't you? Well, no matter how much time, effort and expense you put into your decorations, take a look at these two videos and you will feel your efforts were completely inferior to what these insane people created for their homes.
Both light displays are set to the same music - which one do you like best? Let everyone know in the comments! :-)
By the way, did anyone see the Budweiser commercial ripping off these videos? They even use the same music in the commercial. But the funny thing is, Budweiser's efforts are not even close to being as good as what you can see in these videos. December 10 1080p/24 Transformers?Enabling 24fps output on my Toshiba HD-A35 requires going into the settings menu to select the output (i.e. 1080i, 1080p, 1080p/24). When watching a movie on HD-DVD, setting it to 24fps should produce a smoother picture, assuming (a) the movie was shot using film, not video, and (b) that my TV is capable of handling it correctly.
Sometimes this seems to work just fine, and it did with '300' and 'The Matrix', but last night I watched 'Transformers' and the image displayed was not good at all. Setting the Toshiba player to output 'up to 1080p' worked fine, but that should mean that it was sending 1080p/60, or 60 frames per second. Either the Transformers movie was shot on video rather than film, or something was wrong somewhere in my electronics.
In the end, it didn't matter too much. I hadn't seen the movie in the theater, so this was the first time for me. I cranked up the volume pretty loud and it was a fun movie. I was surprised how much I liked it, to be honest. Great sound and a good picture. I'd still like to get to the bottom of the 24fps issue, though. One of these days I think I might have to investigate what was the reason for the bad picture. December 03 My HD-DVD experienceI had my first experience with hd-dvd this weekend, and it was both interesting and kind of scary. I bought the Toshiba HD-A35 from Amazon (choosing this model for its ability to output 1080p/24). The OOB experience was shockingly bad, with the first 3 discs that I tried to play all failing with an “unable to read disc” error on the TV screen and the cryptic Hex error code “408bc504” on the player display. Digging around in AVS Forums I found there was a firmware patch available from Toshiba (1.3), so I downloaded, burned the ISO to CD-R, and upgraded my player. The firmware update description on the Toshiba website was completely vague as to what was being fixed by the patch, but nevertheless it does seem to have fixed the unplayable discs errors, at least for me – I got through all of yesterday without a problem. All in all it left me with the opinion that it’s probably fine for people like “me” – i.e. technically-minded people – to buy into the HD formats at this point, but the players seem to be in so fragile a state that for mom and pop, I’d have to recommend they stick to SD DVDs for the time being. I remember paying $1000 for my first DVD player back in the day – i.e. an early adopter – but that thing was rock solid. From my experience Tosh’s HD-DVD players are anything but. |
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