Been Busy...

Jim is back. Back again. Jim is back. Tell your friends.

For those not in the know I have been on vacation, then work, then vacation again. I have been gone for the twelve continuous days and it's good to be home. I try to keep such things private since I don't want all my swag stolen from my house by the meth addicts that live across the street because they knew I was on vacay because I put it on my blog.

Slow, not stupid.

So it goes a little something like this: I left Wednesday, November 7 for Washington DC, never been there before. My girlfriend went to law school there and was at some kind of legal conference and some political activist thing she's a part of. I vaguely know what these things are but they don't involve me and she doesn't care that I don't remember which is probably for the best since my memory is filled with memorizing important things like all the James Bond films in order. I stayed in DC until Sunday, November 11 and then flew to Indianapolis IN and drove an hour to Batesville IN where my friend from high school, Jessica, with her husband and three kids live. Woke up Monday at 6:00a and drove another hour to Cincinnati OH where I was at a conference for work. Monday night I drove to Dayton OH to get some co-workers that flew in and then drove them back Wednesday evening. Back for my part of the conference which ends Friday November 16, and I drive back to Batesville IN and spend Friday night and Saturday with Jess and her family. Sunday I drove to Indianapolis and jumped an earlier flight back to Orlando and drove back home to Ocala.

Whew.

And this is why my blog isn't updated.

I'm still with you...

I got back from my travels Sunday (11/18). Tired. So tired. Thank God there are three work days this week and I have four days to decompress. I need it. I have a lot to tell and I'll probably try and get some things written at my mom's on Thanksgiving while my brother is watching football. I am going to try and get there early and commandeer the television and watch Ocean's Thirteen before football starts.

Then Friday morning I am doing the Green Friday thing. Four hours of chaos and 90% my Christmas shopping is done. Well worth it. I am something of an expert at after-Thanksgiving shopping.

Maybe I'll write a blog about that.

HDDVD Thus Far

So I raced home and hooked my HDDVD player up and popped in CHICAGO to watch. Now I know it's supposed to upconvert and make the image look better but to be honest I'm not seeing it. Granted, I haven't done the Pepsi challenge with this and my old one but it doesn't seem noticeable.

I realize I have an HD player and nothing to watch on it. So I drive down to the Marion Theatre (www.themariontheatre.org) to talk to Brian because I know he had some HD titles and he lends me THE SEARCHERS, THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD, KING KONG and some documentary called documentary BLUE PLANET. I truly love the Peter Jackson version of KING KONG and I'll commit sacrilege by saying it's better than the original. It's everything the original is and it had fully developed characters. I wanted to watch ROBIN HOOD and SEARCHERS because I want to see what HD does for a fifty year old movie.

So then I went to my friend Heidi's and dropped the one I picked up for her off. We hooked it up and kicked in KONG. Her TV is a 50" Vizio LCD. Again, it's super clear but not so much that I hate DVD now. I suppose this is a good thing since I own 1200 DVDs. I find in DVD there is sometimes a grain to objects in the background, HD doesn't do that. I don't know... it's just not as earthshaking as I would have hoped. Luckily I was in the market for a DVD player anyway and this one was $50 more.

Now, in HD's defense, I bought some generic HDMI cable from Big Lots. It was $12 instead of the standard $35. It may just be cheap cable not doing it justice.

Oh, and here's another thing: I am watching REQUIEM FOR KRYPTON, the documentary on SUPERMAN RETURNS and there is obvious grain around the names of the people on the frame. What the hell? I don't ever remember anything like that on DVD.

So I wake up Saturday morning at like 3:30a (I hate sleeping) and watch PITCH BLACK and noticed the display is goofy. It's showing the movie running time is one hour and ninety-four minutes which doesn't even make sense. So I take it back to Wally World and exchanged it and I bought it and a copy of SLEEPY HOLLOW since it was on sale and I sold my DVD copy in some kind of rush to get HD. So now I have one lonely disc.

I am on vacation soon and then away on business for the next few days. When I get back I am going to check the HDMI cable (I also noticed I wasn't getting Dolby Digital on my receiver so something is wrong somewhere).

Later.

I Got Mine!

So I was up nice and early today and went to Wally World for my HDDVD player. I actually went to two in case there were limited supply I could hit the one by my house and then the one by work. Ended up at the one by work and there was a line of about five people before I realized there was a line (then it was ten). Most of them wanted cheapo plasma TVs and laptops. I waited about twenty minutes and they started taking requests and a big pallet of HDDVD players gets wheeled out and I realize I am in the wrong line. I don't even need to be in a line. So me and about four people bolt out and get our players and when the Blue Vest handing them out turns his head I snag another one from the stack. Two for me, bitches! Actually the second one is for my friend Heidi.

So I am kind of stoked. I have to return some stuff after work and fix some PCs and rewire my home theatre. I am on vacation in Washington DC next Wednesday so I want to get as much done this weekend as possible. You know, in the event I die in a flaming plane crash, my mom doesn't come to my house and find out I live like those people on the news with four kids, sixty-seven cats and no electricity.

Check out my new link to that YouTube video. It's for movie nerds but it's awesome.

Jim out!

It's ALIVE! It's ALIVE!

Got my Xbox replaced last night. Gamestop is not selling replacement warranties anymore so I went to http://service.xbox.com/ and registered that bad boy. It takes about a minutes and you just enter your contact info and the sixteen digit serial number from that back (which is also available from the dashboard system blade. Highly recommend as this is my fourth console. From now on it's Microsoft's problem.

I also went to Wally World and bought a HDMI upconverting Philips DVD player and quite frankly I can't tell the difference. I only played with one movie (CHICAGO (2002)) and it looked great but didn't make me jump up and down.

So then this morning I get to work and Engadget.com and Gizmodo.com are reporting Wally World is going to have their $200 Toshiba HDDVD for $100. SOLD! No more calls, we have a winner! So I am going to take the Philips I bought for $50 back and kick in another $50 and get it. And you get five free movies to boot.

I'll have to be there fresh and early before the obese inbreds arrive on their scooters looking for $400 laptops and Soft Batch cookies. I'll report on how that works out for me tomorrow.