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.