In With The New, Out With The Nothing

As teased yesterday in my Twitter post, here's a picture.

Yep, it's that time of life again. Time for a new car! And it's actually new this time. My first new car is a 2013 Ford Focus Titanium hatchback. It's got some bells and some whistles. I can start the car with the key in my pocket with a push of a button.

I'm keeping the Jeep around for at least one more year... see how that goes. All I have to do is juggle the cars around in the driveway. Good thing the City recently allowed overnight parking onstreet.

It's blue.

I Bought A House. No, Seriously This Time.

Some of you may have heard, some maybe not as I haven't made an official online announcement yet (until now), but I finally bought a house. For real this time. I wanted to avoid the situation from last time and waited until I had the keys in my hands before getting all announcy on everyone.

I got the keys on Monday.

It's in the Forest Hills area of Kitchener, near Fisher-Hallman & Hwy 7/8. I'll be avoiding a privacy faux-pas by not giving the exact address on le blog here, but I'll be sending out a mass email announcing the new address and phone number situation. Moving day looks to be May 28th as I have the apartment until the end of the month, so I'm just going to take my time with it. Oh, and I have moving favours that I can totally call in now... for real this time. Thou art truly forewarned now.

What A Deal!

I'm approaching the end of my cell phone contract and I was informed by my provider that I have an upgrade credit available to me to upgrade my phone. So I go into the store to see what that credit involves as applied to a Blackberry Torch, and the answer I got was that I get the privilege of purchasing the phone for exactly the advertised price for anyone else. The guy at the store even still called it a "credit".

Tell me, service provider... where is the credit in that?

New TV Ordered

Thanks for all your suggestions in response to my last post. It seems the overwhelming opinion was in line with my original thought... go with LCD over plasma. I ended up ordering the Philips LCD set.

I'm glad I didn't rush into a sale in the store on Wednesday, because both of the sets I was looking at went on sale a few hours later in the Shop of the Future's online-only Canada Day Sale. I'm guessing the salesman knew about this, and while I can't blame him for trying to make his commission as opposed to telling me to buy it online, it really reinforces the fact that you have to really know exactly what you want when buying there, because you can't ever fully trust them.

Anyway, after the problem I had with my plasma and the other tiny day-to-day issues I had with it, it seemed silly to go with a plasma again. I would have really been kicking myself for that decision. I don't know why I even let that guy throw me off track.

Delivery is Wednesday afternoon. Exactly one day too late to watch Holland's semi-final victory over Uruguay. So, now my dilemma is do I watch it online, or just deal with the crappy picture on my current TV?

Help Me Replace My TV: LCD, LED or Plasma?

So, I've started on my quest to replace my broken Dell plasma. My thinking going into this is that I don't need to go super-top-of-the-line, since just about everything is better in quality than a TV bought 4 years ago, but at the same time I might as well use this as an opportunity to upgrade the size. My initial leaning were towards the 55" LCD range. I know 2 of the issues about my old plasma is that it gave off a tonne of heat and (while I didn't have any permanent burn-in problems) there were temporary ghost images of static images left of the screen for a few minutes... that's why I was thinking LCD.

So, I went out to a local TV shop (not a chain, but just an independent) to see what they had. I couldn't get a feel for what they really offered, but the salesman there was seeming to guide me to Sharp's new line of LED TVs (with the fourth "yellow" pixel). While the image looked great on the showroom floor, I'm not convinced that the extra yellow pixel is anything more than a marketing ploy and that the brilliant picture was just achieved with playing around with the colour settings.

Tonight I went to look at the local Shop of the Future to see what they had. After talking to the salesman about my leanings towards an LCD and what I'll primarily use it for (let's be honest... gaming), he steered me back towards the 50" plasmas. He recommended the plasma due to its superior refresh rate over LCDs, among other things.

So as it stands right now, I'm stuck between a 55" Philips LCD and a 50" Panasonic Plasma. They're about the same price. Pros for the LCD: Larger screen, cooler operation, no annoying ghost images. Pros for the Plasma: Better refresh rate, better contrast ratio.

Help a guy out here. Anyone got opinions/experience with TVs recently?

Things Should Last Longer Than This, Right?

Yesterday, right after the Dutch soccer game, my TV decides it's had enough of being a useful piece of electronics and the picture went all funky on me. Now everything I watch is along with a bunch of horizontal lines throughout the screen, no matter what source the video is coming from.



I'm sure there are TVs out there that have been working for about 40 years, but mine lasted barely more than 4. What is it with these high-end electronics that make them little more than disposable products?

Well, silver lining... bigger and better TV coming soon.

Seriously

Why is it that every time you just want to browse in Futureshop you can't not be harassed by sales people, but if you're actually there to buy something there's not a salesperson in sight?

Is This Out Of The Blu?

So, I think I've decided it's time to get a Blu Ray player. Does anyone out there have one yet? Anything from your experience that you can pass along to me? I'm not sure of the actual player to get at the moment. Do I get the PS3 or a stand alone player? The thing with the PS3 is that apparently it's one of the better BD players out there, but I'm not sure if I would actually use it for gaming since my gaming needs are being met by my XBox 360 and Wii. I could go for a stand alone player, but I'm not sure which are better. After a bit of research I'm leaning towards the Sony BDP-S350, which is $269 compared to the PS3 at $399. Any thoughts out there?

I Bought A House

Well, it's all but official, but good enough that I can announce it... I bought a house tonight.

It's a nice 3 bedroom detached house in Kitchener near Victoria and Belmont. I'll miss living in Waterloo and I'll have to get used to slumming it in Kitchener, but I think I'll get over it.

The move will happen in December, and I got a lot of moving favours to call in. Don't say you weren't warned.

Insanity Begins To Creep In

Do you know what I like the smell of? Hot Chocolate. I'm not saying it's my favourite smell in the world, but I like it a lot. And I thought to myself that Chocolate would make a good scented candle smell... I'm pretty sure someone has made it.

So, today I found myself in the mall and I decided to stop into the store there that sells all kinds of crazy decorative crap (you know the one). Sure enough, there was a Hot Chocolate scented candle. So I picked it up, looked it over (it was in a nice jar, like it was a fancy fruit jar), and decided that I would purchase it. Then it struck me...

What the **** am I doing spending 22 dollars on a candle?!?!

If I'm going to spend that much money on something that I'm going to burn, it's going to be a cigar... or multiple cigars, for that matter.

I think I'm losing it.

PS - Congrats to Matt and Jen for introducing Katherine to the world this morning.

It's Like Free Money!

As you may recall, I bought an HD-DVD attachment for my XBox 360. My rationale for buying the losing format in the High Definition media war were basically around what I got for my $129... namely 6 free movies and the hopes of a firesale. Well, since HD-DVD was beaten so badly, the price of the attachment drive just dropped to $49! Seeing how I was still well within my 30 day price guarantee windows at Best Buy, I went down there and got my $90 back! And (in theory) I'll still get all those free movies. I'm still waiting for that firesale on actual movies to start though.

Deliberatly Losing

There's nothing like intentionally buying a technology that will not be around for long.

Yesterday I bought myself an HD-DVD player.

Yes, I was fully aware that Blu-Ray is the winner of the format war and that I'm ending up with this generation's version of a Betamax player. But bear with my reasons. Firstly, it's not going to take up extra inputs on my TV. I bought the HD-DVD attachment for my XBox 360, and I'm not going to be disconnecting that any time soon. Secondly, it recently came down in price... $70 down. Throw in the fact that I get 6 free movies with the purchase and an XBox 360 Universal Remote (which I really wanted to make watching movies easier), I think I'm not coming out behind with this. That, and I hope that there'll soon be an HD-DVD disc firesale. I already got my favourite movie from last year, Hot Fuzz, and I'm hoping to pick up the HD-DVD version of Serenity.

Sure, one day I'll get a Blu-Ray player, whether is be a PS3 or a standalone player (or, if I'm lucky, an Blu-Ray attachment for my 360). But for now, this is good. I rented "The Kingdom" in HD-DVD last night. So, I'm already getting use out of it.

I Hate Best Buy

Excuse me, Best Buy, but what part of "Pre-Order" didn't you understand? I'm thinking it was the "pre" part. Because when I pre-ordered Guitar Hero 3 on your website, I expected it to be shipped to me when it was released, and in a day or two, have it arrive at my door for some long awaited gaming goodness. What I didn't expect is to see the status of my item being listed as "in stock" but not being shipped to me. What I further didn't expect is for that listed to change to "out of stock" a few days later. I didn't believe you when I called on Tuesday evening that you had released the item to Canada Post and they just hadn't scanned it in their system yet, so it was impossible for you to cancel my order. For 3 more days, the game wasn't shipped, and as much as we all like to rag on Canada Post, even they aren't capable of the kind of incompetence that would be required to let an item sit for 3 (possibly 5) days without "putting it in their system". Bottom line is, you didn't order enough games to fulfill your pre-orders and you wouldn't admit to it.

Yes, I know that today it finally shipped... But you know what? Today is Friday, and therefore I won't be seeing any package until at least Monday, so I won't be rocking out to "Knights of Cydonia" and "Cherub Rock" among others this weekend. I went around to other stores yesterday to try and find a copy (with intentions of returning the one you would eventually mail me), but the stores I went to were either sold out or only sold the game with the old, wired controller (stupid Walmart). I hate running around to store to find items which are selling well... I probably should have pre-ordered or something.

It's Tech Toys Tuesday!

A couple of exciting things I found out about today. 1) The new Mac OS has been officially announced. The release date is October 26. That was all I was waiting for, so in a couple weeks I'll have a shiny new iMac. 2) The 5 free HD-DVD deal for buying the HD-DVD drive for the XBox 360 has finally come to Canada. Granted the movies they offer mostly suck, but I just might get one anyway.

In other gaming news, Guitar Hero 3 is due out on October 28, which I totally plan to get. Also, I'm still having a bunch of fun with Halo 3, even though my only online buddy that I've played with went and joined the Navy. Damn you Joe!

The Yellow Tape

Last week, I finally bought myself of the Barenaked Ladies' pre-"Gordon" indie tape, known as the Yellow Tape. I got it for $16 on eBay, which, thanks to the flying-high Canadian Dollar, only cost me $16. It includes pre-"Gordon" versions of "Be My Yoko Ono", "Brian Wilson", "Blame It On Me", and "If I Had $1000000". Also, there's a cover of Public Enemy's "Fight The Power" for some reason.

The only drawback is that I had to get out and hook up my old stereo to be able to listen to it, since it's the only tape-deck I have. Now I just have to find some way of getting it on my computer. It seems my current computer only has mono sound input (ie. a microphone jack) and no stereo input (line-in). Anyway, those problems are small potatoes compared to the sheer awesomeness of this tape.

Going Medieval

At the last minute, I was offered a ticket to go to Medieval Times tonight by Jessica to be a substitute for a bachelorette party (just don't ask). Not being a fool, I accepted, as Medieval Times is something I always wanted to check out. It was a really good time too... a good mix of cheesy theatre, choreographed battles, horses, and eating with your hands. Yeah, it was good.

But it also gave me a chance to really put my new GPS unit to work. After dropping my passengers off after the dinner/show somewhere near U of T, I told my GPS to direct me home. Along this route, I encountered not one, but two road closures in the city. As soon as it realized I wasn't taking the route it suggested, the GPS recalculted a new route... just like that. What a time saver not having to pull over and get out my map (hoping, of course, that my City of Toronto map is even in the car at that particular moment). Yep, I'm happy with that purchase.

Oh, So THAT'S Where I Am

New toy! After seeing one in action in my coworker's car, last night I decided to pick myself up a GPS unit. It's great, because it can tell me how to get to the grocery store without getting lost... finally!

It's Game Time!

So, long story short... I bought myself an XBox 360 last night. I won't go into the details of incompatibility issues I was having with the HDMI connection to my Dell TV, so let's just say this... It's game time!

Less Is Less

Let this be a lesson to you... if you need 40 feet of ethernet cable and decide on buying a 50 foot cable, don't go and buy a 25 foot cable thinking it's going to be enough. Trust me, it isn't.

New Toy!

After almost a year of reading reviews, researching features, and deciding if I actually want to spend money, I finally bought myself a new video camera... A Canon HV20. This particular model is a high-definition camcorder. It took me a while to realize I should go with the HD instead of the SD... and I'm not disappointed. I got to test it out this afternoon at a BBQ at Dan and Faith's. It's about 2 minutes of recording meat on the grill and a baby being humourously fed. But the image is spectacular. Unfortunately, I don't have the firewire cord to get the clips onto my computer or the necessary harddrive space... yet. So, there's no sample to show you and you'll just have to take my word for it. Now all I need are some good ideas to use it for.