And I ride on the breath of the cold wind…
Wow. It is white beyond white outside. I really think I am gonna call off work tomorrow, especially if this shit turns to ice. I am NOT risking myself getting to the Blue Box because they think that “Oh, it’s not THAT bad, the highways are fine and I came from Allentown” like they gave me last time. Screw that. Have you yackoffs in manglement SEEN the side roads? Plows are doing no good here. If I left I’d slide all the way down the hill I live on.
Now, the only problem with this is one thing: Lost Odyssey launched today, and I didn’t know about it. I want this game badly enough that I’m seriously contemplating driving in the snow up to WalMart to pick up a copy before the snow itself melts and becomes an icy wasteland for cars. I really need a life or something, you think?
Anyway, I’ll post here tomorrow as well as on Twitter with my status of work or non-work, as well as what I plan to do with the day if I don’t go. Which will most likely happen.
Peace out, y’all.
I bask in its wonderful light…
The title of this post cannot be more true. I am now the proud owner of a 26 inch LG LCD television, and it is glorious. I have it connected to both my PC and my Xbox 360 (since we got some in today and I managed to get my defective one replaced with a newer model with HDMI), and once I get my tax return I’ll be able to get the receiver I’m planning on purchasing, so that I can have HDMI audio AND video coming from the xbox. The PC will probably stay connected with standard mini-stereo to RCA conversion, although the board DOES support optical audio out, so I may just end up buying a cable for that too, when I get the receiver.
The TV itself is just sweet. It’s not too big so it doesn’t seem like it fills the room up (because my current bedroom is quite tiny, me not living on my own and all), and it’s not too small (I’m upgrading from a 19 inch Gateway LCD monitor, which I’m keeping hooked up to the tower as a dual-display unit). It’s quite possibly perfect. 720p HD capable too, so if I ever decide to invest in a Blu-Ray player (because F*CK HD-DVD!) I’ll already be ready. But that will probably have to wait till next year.
The only thing stopping me from buying the receiver right now (other than the fact that the store is closed because it’s 2 AM), is that I haven’t gotten my federal tax return back yet. It should be deposited either Friday or Monday, and I’m hoping for Friday (because that means I can just pick the unit up after work and not have to wait like the impatient schmuck I am ^_^).
This also means that once this massive check hits my bank account that I can finally pay off that freaking credit card that’s been haunting me for almost 2 years now. I ALMOST had it paid off once, and then bills and stuff started piling up where I was living and I ended up not being able to pay any more towards it, so it got back up to where it was.
But now, I will be free!
Also, this means that in exactly 2 weeks (from today, Friday, the 1st), I will be 23 years of age. Celebrate, people!
Here I go again.
Wow, I just (well, not really JUST) discovered this site, and decided to put something here. Leave my little mark on yet another social distortion, y’know?
Anyway, I’m thinking this will just be my general rant site, besides my Twitter account for more small stuff, I can post big rants on my thoughts, hopes, dreams, crushed realities, visions, hell, I could put D&D game transcripts here if I really wanted to. It’s my own little world!
Let’s see, where to start…Ah! I know. Kvetching about computer/electronic equipment.
I purchased, not too long ago, the Pinnacle Systems PCTV HD PCI card (model 800i, if memory serves, which it usually does half-assed), and it kinda works. I mean it kinda works like a moped is kinda a motorcycle. First, the CD wouldn’t work in my computer, but I found out later that that was caused by my DVD burner (the only active ROM drive in the Tor) suddenly refusing to read CDs of any kind. DVDs, fine, CDs, nothing.
Second, the Vista support is relatively lacking. Yes, it has a Vista/XP MCE installer utility. Yes, the card is recognized by Media Center. Yes, video and audio both show up, and channels do appear. However, the audio lags about a half-second behind the video. Looking on Pinnacle’s support forum, I am about one in 300 people who have this problem and actually are saying something about it.
Now, this card DOES come with Pinnacle’s own TVCenter Pro application, but this application seems to have been spawned in the bowels of something I’d rather leave to my D&D side of my imagination. The program is a serious resource hog, the UI is not exactly intuitive (although it’s not extremely bad, either…), such as having the up and down arrows reversed from what common sense would define as ‘up’ and ‘down’ when scrolling through channel listings.
Many on the Pinnacle site have pinned the Media Center problem down to the software encoder that the card uses, and this has been proven by them switching encoders and the audio/video sync problem goes away. Now, they posted this information on a Pinnacle Support forum, with Pinnacle support reps watching said thread, a few months ago. Not one peep from the support lackeys since this information was uncovered, and no new updates/patches to the software have come out since October of last year, well before the problem was identified.
My second hardware gripe lies not in the realm of PC per se, but in the realm of console gaming. My Xbox 360 recently decided it had had enough of my mediocre musical ability in Rock Band and had a seizure, resulting in a rather amusing (for a few seconds) checkerboard pattern on the screen during the unit freezing up, followed by the infamous Red Ring of Death appearing upon subsequent reboots of the console.
I do have the replacement plan from Best Buy. since, y’know, I work there and all, and it IS a good idea, especially in this case. Unfortunately USING said replacement plan usually entails there being another unit in the store to replace the dead unit with. There was none. There have been no 360s besides the bastard child of the family, the 360 Arcade Edition, since Christmas time, and apparently we are not alone in this. No store in our DISTRICT has had these things since then. Microsoft, WTF?!
I think I’m done for the night ranting here, and if I can keep this up, I can make this into a regular place where people can actually find out what’s going on in my life! …not that I’m entirely sure that that’s a good thing, anyway. We’ll see.
