My Home Entertainment Setup

Anyone who knows me knows that I am a huge technology nut. Seeing me at Best Buy is the equivalent to seeing a kid in a toy store. I know that I may not walk out of there with anything at all, but I still want to walk in and out of every aisle and look at everything.

I also like looking at entertainment setups that people on the web have at home. Sometimes It gives me ideas for things I want to do, but mainly I just enjoying viewing that sort of thing.

I figured why not post pictures of what I am currently gaming with. What follows is the current setup that I have in my house right now.



Projector


First and foremost is the projector that brings everything together. I bought it at a really good deal at Best Buy. They gave me three years without interest on which was awesome. It supports up to 720p/1080i and is 2000 lumens bright.

Speakers



When my awesome neighbor downstairs decided it was time to upgrade his TV speakers, he gave me these, free of charge. That's right, I didn't pay a dime for these. I do however need to purchase a center speaker to connect to them. It just so happens that the bass on these speakers thumps so loud that sometimes it can be hard to hear dialogue when watching a movie.

Movie Screen



Another freebie. This projector screen was donated to my work and was just sitting in the storage area for months without being used. I asked my boss if I could have it, and here it is on my wall. The screen size is approximately 70 inches. When I have my own place I'll probably purchase a bigger screen.

Game Systems


My Wii and PS3.

Loafing Area


How I usually set up my pillows when I watch a movie or play a video game.

What I Usually See Before I go to Bed


Yes, those are Dr. Mario pajama pants.

Swine Flu, or something like it....

I have been hit with the terrible monstrosity that is Swine Flu. I think. Kelila was without a doubt diagnosed with Swine Flu since she went to the hospital and was told so by an actual doctor. Given the fact that it was a day after she was diagnosed that I started getting hit with the symptoms I can only assume that I got it from her. If anything I at least have the regular flu. One thing is certain though, for the last two days I have felt like crap.

The only good news out of this whole ordeal is that I can now enjoy staying home and playing video games for hours at a time and not feel guilty about it.

Even with a terrible headache and a really bad sore throat, Metroid still manages to be awesome.

Backpacking up Hatcher Pass

I'm going backpacking for the first time ever this weekend and I'm doing so in Hatcher Pass. I'm pretty excited about it, but at the same time a little nervous since I've never done anything like this before.

I'm sure that everything will turn out to be awesome and fun, and this will be a good preparatory trip so that next year I will have full confidence in my soon to be acquired camping/backpacking skills, and so that I can take Kelila next summer after we're husband and wife.

The War Has Been Won...

After losing many battles with the idiocy that exists in Sony customer support, today at 9:02am on August 17, 2009 the Sony War was won in my favor.

After many calls and much frustration Sony has agreed to exchange my projector for another refurbished one. Although I am getting a refurbished one instead of a new one, I think I have already wasted too much of my breath and energy to complain any more about it.

I am going to go home from work today, lay in my bed, look at the wall, and imagine the glorious HD projection that I will be able to see in 8 business days since Sony is unable to ship my exchange unit with a next business day label.

Caught on Camera

I played Frisbee Golf this Monday with Kelila and some friends. It was my first time playing, and it is something that I definitely want to do again given how much fun it was.

However, nobody had as much fun as Chubbs. He followed us to all the holes, chased after frisbee's, and made other dog friends. Here you can see him on the right side by Kelila's leg during one of the last Frolf holes.



And here he is happy and thirsty sitting in my car after it was all over.



Chubbs also had a good time chasing after Frisbees and peeing all over the woods and school walls. Seeing him do this inspired me to do the same.



Had I known Kelila was going to take a picture of this, I would've chosen a more discreet spot.

Here are some more pictures from the event.

Sony Sucks

My brand new High Definition Projector broke about a month and a half ago. Screen Tearing started appear suddenly anytime the picture on screen was in motion. If you're not sure what screen tearing is click here.

This picture actually represents what was going on.



Anyway, the tearing popped up in the middle of a blu-ray movie, and after tweaking with the settings I noticed this issue only occurred whenever I was running the resolution at 1080 but not 720p or 480p.

I called Sony support. They wanted ME to pay for the shipping label for a projector that isn't even six months old and is still under it's two year warranty. Maybe I've been spoiled by Apple and Dell, but this to me seemed ludicrous. Only after calling their PR department was I able to get a free shipping label. Might I add they gave me the cheapest shipping label available. It took six business days from the day I sent it for them to receive my projector.

I get a call from a Sony "technician" name Manuel six days later telling me that they don't see anything wrong with the unit. I explained to him the details of the problem. He tells me that he will call me back. He calls me back and tells me that he still sees no problem and that maybe it is the PS3 causing the issue. I informed him that I tried the PS3 with the same resolution and same cables on another HD set and the issue didn't appear. It therefore had to be the projector. He told me again that he would have to call me back. He called back and said that he saw the tearing, and that he fixed it by changing a setting. He will send the unit back to me fixed.

I get the projector back. Excited that I finally have it, I set it up on the ceiling mount, connect the ps3 and power it on. THE TEARING IS STILL THERE! Even worse, it now appears at 720p as well!

Never before have I sent an item to a company for repair and got the item back still broken. I suspect that Manuel never saw the line tearing, assumed that the line tearing I saw was a figment of my imagination, and sent back the item to me aware of the fact that nothing was done to fix it.

I call back pissed off, and Manuel tells me that what I would have to do is send the item back to the company. I politely told him that there was no chance In hell I was going to send him the projector again, that I wanted a new one, how preposterous it was to receive a broken item from a repair center that didn't do a thing to fix it in the first place, and that I wanted to speak to the manager.

Manuel tries to calm me down, tells me that he will give me a special number to call so that I can have a loaner projector through "Sony's Loaner Program". Feeling a little better after having been given this option, I send the projector in and call the "Special direct number" for the "Loaner Program".

Turns out that number wasn't so special. It was the regular Sony support number, and when I finally got through to a Sony Rep they told me that they had never heard of a Loaner Program for customers, and after checking with her boss she confirmed that such a program didn't exist.

Is there any scrap of good news out of this whole mess? Sort of. Another technician (not Manuel) called me last Friday and said that they were able to replicate the tearing on their end. Turns out they had to mount the projector upside down for the tearing to appear. My good ol' buddy Manuel had only tried setting the projector on a table and never mounted that damn thing.

I can't really blame him right? After all, people don't mount projectors. Who has ever heard of a projector being mounted on the ceiling? It wasn't his fault... =|

If they don't send it back to me this week, it will back been close to two months since I first shipped it out. I will never again purchase another Sony product. The only exception I might make is for the next Playstation.

Sony, your customer support sucks.

Other details about this whole ordeal that I didn't implement into my story.
- Sony requires you to have your receipt sent in with the item to prove that it is under warranty. I can understand this... After all, this centuries limited computer technology makes it impossible for them to track your information over the computer through the projector's serial number. Apple, Dell, and countless other companies can only do this because they possess magical powers that Sony does not have.

Luckily I keep all my receipts. If I didn't I would've had to pay for everything even though the projector is registered and still under a 2 year warranty.

- When they shipped the item back to me the first time, they didn't ship me back the receipt I sent them from Best Buy proving it was under warranty. Well guess what the second technician needed the second time around? The Receipt! Luckily I had made a copy.

- In the past I have had two ipods fritz out on me. Both times Apple was able to take the Serial Number, see on their computer who I was and that the device was still under warranty, provide me a shipping label for the next business day, and ship me back a brand new iPod within 3 days. Now that's customer support.

The Greatest Comic Book Film Ever

When I first saw The Dark Knight, like many others I was blown away. Everything about it was amazing and I was quick to join the crowd that thought it was the best Comic Book movie every made. I bought The Dark Knight the day it came out, and after multiple viewings I still think that it is a great movie and definitely one of the best movies of last year. However, I think I was jumping the gun a little too quickly by dethroning Spider-man 2 as the best of that genre.




I saw Spider-man 2 again about a month ago, and although The Dark Knight is so good that it doesn’t get old after multiple viewings, Spider-man 2 is the kind of movie that gets better every time you see it and one of the only comic book movies that you don't have to be into comic books to enjoy.

Where most comic book films have characters that are about as believable and likable as a piece of plastic (Fantastic 4 anyone?), the Peter Parker that Sam Raimi and Toby Maguire have created is a character you can't help but get emotionally attached to. When Peter tells his uncle that he can "be Spider-man no more", you genuinely feel for what the character is going through. You've been there through his troubles, and you want the character to succeed not because it'll make the movie better, but because you have come to care for the individual.

Did I mention that the action is also awesome? Spider-man 2 was made in 2004 yet has some of the best action in film ever. The final fight with Spidey and Doc Oc is the best fight scene in cinema period.

I have hope that Spider-man 4 will be as awesome. Spider-man 3 was a huge disaster for many reasons, but ultimately I think it's because Sam Raimi didn't want Venom to be thrown into the movie. Raimi grew up around the classic Spider-man villains like Doc Oc and Sandman and he wanted to keep the films that way. Since his comic book memories originate from that era, he knew how to accurately portray the villains from that era.

Pressure from the studios had him use Venom, and the end result was terrible. I hope the studio executives learned their lesson given the fact that Spider-man 3 was the worst rated of the bunch. (63% on rotten tomatoes compared to 92% for Spider-man 2.)

Anyway, Spider-man 2 rocks! One of the best films ever made.

Spiritual Thought of the Day

Like most people, every once in a while random spiritual thoughts just pop in my head. Sometimes these thoughts confuse me and that causes me to phone others to see if they can clear things up for me, but other times these spiritual thoughts are very clear things that I had simply never thought about before. Most of the time I have to communicate these thoughts to others immediately or I will forget them. However,the only person near me right now is taking an exam which not only cancels them out but it also means that it would be rude of me to call someone else since it would be distracting to them. So I figured, why not blog it? I know I should be focused on my work, but I figured for Biblical things I can make an exception. Here it is:


Imperfection


What Adam and Eve did in the Garden of Eden was not imperfection taking place; it was instead a deliberate choice that they decided to make. It is because of that choice that all humans today are imperfect. However, it is not acceptable to use our imperfections as a crutch. When one commits adultery for example, it isn’t just imperfection that is taking place. It could be that imperfection lead to poor choices that caused one to fall into the situation, but there comes a point where a person is making a deliberate choice and knows what they are doing. When one makes these deliberate choices, then they are doing the same thing that Adam and Eve did. Of course Jehovah loves us and forgives those who truly repent, but we cannot abuse of this love and put Jehovah God to the test.

Slumdog Millionare

I finally saw Slumdog Millionaire. If you haven't seen it; stop reading this, get in your car, drive over to the closest store and BUY it. Don't bother renting it.

Academy Awards 2009

I've never really been big on sports. The closest I get to being excited over a league is the NBA. That's the only league that I actually have a team I cheer for, but even with that I don't really keep up with the games the way that I used to. I'm not even sure I'm going to really pay attention to the finals this year unless the Sixers miraculously make it, which I highly doubt. Football I watch even less. I don't watch it at all during the year, and although I do watch the Superbowl, it's more for the glamor of it all, and I could usually care less which teams wins.

What I am big on and what I do follow and love is cinema. I love it so much that I used to aspire to be a film director. My following of cinema has died down a little this last year and I haven't watched the amount of films this year that I normally do, but I still love cinema just as much. That said, the Academy Awards is my "Superbowl", so sure enough last week I made sure I tuned in. Being the film nut that I am I did watch the entire thing from beginning to end and what follows are my thoughts on what happened:

The Dark Knight should've been nominated for best picture. Before I saw The Dark Knight, I had placed Spiderman 2 as the best superhero film of all time. After seeing The Dark Knight, Spiderman 2 was quickly dethroned, and The Dark Knight took it's place as not only the best comic book movie ever, but one of the best films of the year. Comic book movies never get recognition in these types of shows, but I really thought that Batman would be the exception to that rule. I could probably post a whole blog on how awesome The Dark Knight was, but I won't. What I will say is this; it not being nominated was a crime.

Penelope Cruz Winning an Oscar. Penelope Cruz is a great actress, and I was glad to see her win her first Oscar.

Hugh Jackman didn't suck. When I heard that Hugh Jackman was hosting the show, like many people I thought to myself; why? I was sure that he would do terrible, but not because he's a terrible actor, but because it was such an odd choice. The ratings for the Oscars have gone down a little over the years, and I thought that this choice was the Academy's attempt at making an outlandish choice just for the sake of ratings.

Turns out I was wrong. Not only did Jackman deliver, but he had one of the best Oscar intros I've seen in very a long time.

Ben Stiller as Joaquin Phoenix. This was by far the funniest thing that happened the entire night. For those that saw this bit, but had no idea what he was parodying. Click here to see Joaquin in an interview with David Letterman, then click here to see the Stiller parody.

Dustin Lance Black's Winning Speech. After Black won his award for writing the film Milk, which is about the first gay politician to run for office, he said the following:

"gay and lesbian kids out there tonight who have been told that they are less than by their churches, or by the government, or by their families, that you are beautiful, wonderful creatures of value, and that no matter what anyone tells you, God does love you"

I hate it when a recipient tries to incorporate their political ideas into their speeches. Nobody is tuning in for that, and in spite of what these actors/writers think, nobody cares about what they have to say. We all have our own opinions, and nobody's mind is swayed or turned when a writer or director go up to the stage and talk about Bush, homosexuality, or whatever.

What exactly is Lance trying to say anyway? "God loves me so it's okay for me to do what I am doing?" If so, it is weak reasoning. Of course God loves homosexual people because God loves everyone. God loves me too, that doesn't make every lifestyle decision that I make right.

Summary:
There is a lot more that I could say about the Oscars this year, but I'll stop there. All I have to do now is watch Slumdog millionare. It won a crazy amount of awards and I've heard nothing but good things about it from those who've seen it.

Crappy Day

On days like today, I envy Ben and his hot tub.

First!

I don't have much to say on my first blog entry. I am currently bored and sitting in my little cubicle at work trying not to stare at the time. I've found that not looking at the time makes work go by a lot faster. For those who have ever been at my desk, I don't have a clock there, nor is my desk in view of any other clocks. I've also made my taskbar automatically hide on my work computer, for the simple fact that my taskbar shows what the time is.

Despite these efforts to not view the time, I pride myself on my punctuality and I am never late to any of my classes. I schedule everything on my iPod which alerts me 15 minutes before a class so that I am not late. It also alerts me to when lunch is. Therefore I only really know what time it is before a class, after a class, and during lunch.

For those who are reading this, you may be wondering why I am not doing actual work. Not to worry, this is the last time that I will post a blog while working. You see what sucks is that as soon as I post this, blogspot will tell me the date and the exact time that this blog entry was posted, so that little detail will be my motivation to never again post a blog while I am supposed to be working.