Had a good time this last weekend with Randall and Shelley in town. I'm dragging today because of how late we were up each night both during and after they were here, but that's okay... day is half over already.
Also picked up an Xbox 360 Elite yesterday. I had a pre-order at Circuit City since early April, but found out they wouldn't begin processing orders until 5/1 apparently. Launch day for the new Xbox was Sunday, so that's pretty bad. So, I went to Target on Sunday and got one and called and cancelled my pre-order with Circuit City. The only way you can teach a company a lesson is with your wallet, so next time hopefully they'll start filling pre-orders a little sooner.
Anyway, the new system is much better... the games are sharper, better colors, and it's a great upconverting DVD and HD DVD player.
Here's the gross computer story of the day by the way... we had a laser printer that completely stopped working here. Scott tore the whole thing apart and when he lifted up the bottom circuit board there was a huge, dead, fried roach underneath it. Laser printers actually have a lot of voltage going on inside them and apparently he contacted the wrong two peices of metal when someone went to go print.
Played softball again tonight for the first time in a couple years. Our friend Brian who ran the team when I played has been on teams each season since then. They needed a sub tonight because some folks were out of town.
Despite my ankle still being a bit sprained from basketball two weeks ago, everything went pretty well. We ended up winning 5-1 tonight. Got to play shortstop which was great... no errors, got to make a few plays. Only went 1 for 3 at the plate because two were flyballs to centerfield. Still, it was a lot of fun to play again even if my ankle is pissed off at me right now for doing so.
Best part about the game? It's not a coed league... makes everything so much better instead of having to deal with a ton of errors by the girls who can't play very well. That was the worst part about the teams I played on before... very frustrating.
Despite it being Monday, it still feels like it's going to be a quick week. Probably has something to do with taking Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday off this week.
Randall and Shelley are driving South from Michigan and they are going to spend some time down here visiting Shelley's sister in Augusta. Randall is headed to Columbia either Wednesday or Thursday and Shelley is going to come over on Friday I think. So, I'm going to take a few days off which is going to be quite nice.
Not sure what we'll do while they're here... maybe go out on the lake. We'll also have to bring them by Flying Saucer, always a good night out.
Not really a whole lot else going on... still fighting with the TV somewhat. Exchanged the 46" set again on Saturday night and while the new set has some minor clouding, it doesn't have as much of the worse 'flashlight' type areas and the ones it does have aren't too bad I guess. So, it may be the one I end up sticking with... but I have until May 21st to figure that out. They probably already hate me in Circuit City considering I've gone through 4 total TVs to get to this one. I probably should have just given up on Sony instead of going through all the exchanges.
The good news is they had a crazy low price on it in store last week and I bought a $0.99 printable coupon on Ebay for 10% off at Circuit City that worked on this model TV, so it ended up being even less than the original 40" set we bought back in early March. And only $50 more than the rock bottom lowest price for this model from any online vendor... hard to beat that kind of deal in a brick and mortar store nowadays.
Glad now I was in town Saturday to get that deal on the TV. Not because of the deal though, but because if we hadn't been in town the plan was to go to the airshow down in Beaufort to see the Blue Angels. As you all probably already know one of the jets crashed during the show. I'm glad we weren't down there to see that. It didn't go into the crowd or anything, but that still would have been terrible to see. So it seems sometimes being lazy and sleeping in too long can be good, eh?
Just had other things going on, haven't found the time to post any new stuff here.
We've spent time going to Flying Saucer (up to #156 now!), Christina had some friends over for a Mary Kay thing one night, been trying to sell our old TV, been fighting even more with the new TV, done a good bit of spring cleaning, started on yard work already, and we went to the Spring Game this last Saturday.
Probably the biggest news though lately is that my brother and his wife found out they're going to have a baby! Congrats... and I wish you guys luck!
As for that new TV that has been far more frustrating than I thought it would be. Every LCD TV right now between 40-47" has one or more problems. Sony's problem is cloudy, uneven backlighting, so that's the one I've been fighting. Returned the 46" Sony I had a picture of back in March on my blog to Circuit City last Friday and exchanged it for the exact same model. And then that one has the same cloudy background. It's hard to describe in words, so here's a picture:
That's a shot of a blank input to show the clouding effect. The "flashlight" as they call it online in the upper left is the worst part. The bright box in the lower left is the backlight adjustment menu, it's on Backlight Level 4. When there's a full picture like a show on DiscoveryHD or ESPNHD you don't see them. But when you watch movies or shows with dark scenes they can be seen easily. In fact, when we were watching Superman Returns and he flies out into space I learned that apparently there are clouds in space... who knew.
Anyway, I'm a little pickier than the average person, but even despite that I think they're unacceptable, so I returned the set. And the replacement was even a little worse than that image above.
But... hands down Sony has the best picture quality of the LCD TVs out there right now, so I'd like to stick to them instead of settling for another brand. Samsung is close, but they have shiny bezels and that's a whole other story. It seems all manufacturers (including Sony in their upcoming 2007 TVs) are going to a shiny piano black finish for their bezels surrounding the screen. So, people buy LCD TVs instead of Plasma TVs because the screens on LCDs aren't reflective like Plasma... then, the manufacturers all go and put shiny plastic all the way around the screens? Doesn't make much sense to me, however, I may end up having to go that route with how the current 2006 models of Sony TVs have the clouding problem.
I think I either need to live with the current clouds, which isn't really an option... or exchange it again since not all of the Sonys are affected - only about 2/3rds it seems... or just return it completely and wait it out until the 2007 Sonys come out. Needless to say, it's frustrating. But, I have a new 30 days with the exchanged set as of last Friday to figure out what to do next.
Anyway, that's more than enough about TVs since they're driving me crazy lately already... Here's a few pictures from our tailgate for the Spring Game... I didn't bring a camera with me (odd, eh?) so there are no photos from in the stadium:
