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St. Paddy's Day, Dallas, 2008

Wed, 19 Mar 2008 01:13:00 GMT

One of the greatest holidays

March Madness!

Wed, 19 Mar 2008 00:20:00 GMT

The Tourney is upon us! Fill out your bracket before Thursday for the full effect. I like Texas and UNC to go all the way, and George Mason is my tournament darling. Get after it!

Inspiration

Mon, 10 Mar 2008 00:34:00 GMT

When you are feeling down.

The Bench-mark

Mon, 10 Mar 2008 00:10:00 GMT

My first attempt at bench-building.

The New Unit

Wed, 07 Nov 2007 23:12:23 GMT

Finally! We were able to procure a new entertainment center from some family friends. No, I did not loot their home while they were out of town. It was a gift, honestly...While it is a 'little' big for our tiny living room, it looks great, the components fit better, and best of all, I was able to sneak my floor speakers up front without my wife noticing. NOT! Fortunately, she doesn't mind that much, at least not on the surface. Inside, she is a boiling kettle of rage, but I won't go there. Check it out!

Poor Decisions

Sat, 04 Aug 2007 17:34:45 GMT

I went out with some friends recently on a 'man drinking' excursion, as Dan likes to call it. Sounds gay, but basically amounts to me and my college friends getting shit-faced and making asses of ourselves. Occasionally a fight will ensue, but usually we only hurt our livers. Last weekend was no exception. We decided to play a new drinking game (to us) called 'Beer Die', and got pretty drunk in the process. That lead to some popping and locking at 'The Walrus' near downtown Dallas. On the way home at 3am, Dan and I convinced the cabby to make a pit stop at McDonald's. I will say no more. Know only that I felt like a big pile of shit the entire next day, and I don't think it was just from the Monster-vodkas...

Jimmy's Bachelor Party

Sat, 12 May 2007 09:35:00 GMT

My friend Jimmy finally decided to take the plunge. We all felt sorry for the dumb bastard, so we all got together and decided that something needed to be done to ease his passing. Our brainchild: a bachelor party. I'm not sure if this was an original idea, or perhaps something one of us heard about on the web, but the end result was genius.

Originally, I was going to write a two-part story chronicling our weekend, but it turns out that I am way too lazy for that, so instead here is a slide show. A picture is worth a thousand words anyways, right? Briefly, the weekend was a road trip (with a stop for Big-Os and a keg at Wal-Mart), partying at our hotel in Austin, and hitting the bars on 6th Street. The second night we had a riveting 'bar golf' tournament, which culminated with a fat girl getting motor boated. There were many beers, lots of hitting on chicks, the occasional viking hat, and I think seven or eight vomits.

I have to give a shout out real fast to the guy driving the rickshaw that Jimmy wrecked (sorry for taking away your livelihood dude), and to our bum friend Francis, may you finally get that dollar for bus fare!

[slideshow 106]

Find your center

Sat, 07 Apr 2007 15:09:06 GMT

Let me tell you guys something: EBay is your friend. That being said, there are some guidelines, boundaries if you will, that must be set before venturing into the world of online auctions. I can't tell you how many hours I have spent sifting through thousands of items looking for a great deal, all the while tempted to just 'go ahead and do it' and break the bank on some awesome plasma or something. Restraint is an absolute, because the second you bid on an item, there is the distinct possibility that you will have to buy it.

Another dangerous facet of EBay is the bidding war. Words don't do justice to the excitement of being on <5sec remaining for the auction, refreshing your browser like crazy and hoping the asshole on the other end hesitates for a split second or has a bad connection. Victory never tasted so sweet! And defeat, so bitter. It shames me to admit how close to tears I have come over a freaking receiver. And therein lies the danger; you want to win so bad, you sometimes don't stop to see how much you are actually bidding. At the end, raising your fist victoriously, you realize you just spent $50 plus shipping on a shitty fleece vest. Dumbass.

So it was with hopeful trepidation that I began my search for some new speakers. I knew that at some point I would need a center channel and two front speakers to build a good home theater. What is life without 5.1 surround sound? After doing some research, I found a few brands that looked promising. There are so many freaking manufacturers out there it is almost impossible to say which is the best. But it is VERY easy to figure out which ones are out of your price range, and in my case it helped narrow the field considerably. I eventually found a good deal on a set of Cerwin-Vegas; a center and two fronts. The fronts are actually bookshelf speakers, and in an ideal world would serve as the surround channels. In my world, however, they have to go up front, because they 'aren't as ugly'. I will tell you what is ugly: having two kickass speakers that would blow you eyebrows off, but having to use them as surrounds. It borders on hilarious, if you ask me.

So after a week or two of waiting, I had all five speakers assembled and ready to go. There was only problem. My receiver did not support surround sound, and only had the old-school A/B channels, so when I plugged both the surrounds and the center channel in, nothing happened!! Holy crap! I can feel the anger rising just thinking about that day. Well, you know what this meant. I just HAD to go out and get a better receiver now to take advantage of all those speakers...

Home Office

Mon, 02 Apr 2007 19:17:26 GMT

My wife went out of town last weekend on business, and I took the opportunity to embark on a minor project I have been brainstorming for a few weeks. No, it is not the cat tower. Courtnye and I have been trying to update our home office for a while now, especially because she works from home.

More specifically, we wanted to have a home network for file sharing, a fax/printer/scanner, a shredder for those secret files she is always working on, a monthly calendar that we can erase and add notes to (and I can use to mark my on-call days), and a dream or goal board.

'What is a dream board?' you ask. A dream board, also known as a goal board, is where you put pictures or phrases that you are aspiring to achieve or own, so that they are constantly in your mind. It is one way that the people who actually get rich and successful reach their goals, as opposed to whining about not having what they want. For example, when you see someone driving a shiny new Porsche Cayenne, instead of saying, "Why can't I have that?" you say, "I will get one someday" and put a picture of it on the board. Just an example.

I also did something we have been meaning to do for a long time to help get our bills in order. I wrote down all our monthly bills, how much each payment is, and when it is due, and put it up next to the dry erase board. Each bill gets a box, and when the bill is paid, we check the box. Just a way of communicating about money, so we both know how much we owe (or in Courtnye's case, how much we can't spend shopping. J/K!). I call it a Bill Summary Sheet. Or BS sheet for short...

I also got a filing cabinet, finally, to put away all those documents that we know we can't throw away, but don't really need to have handy. Birth certificates, insurance, that kind of stuff. I don't know why, but just having a filing cabinet in my place immediately makes me feel old.

The best part of the project, my wife had no idea what I was up to. I told her I 'fixed' some things in the office and she got worried. I think she was pleased with the results though.

Whisky Good!

Thu, 29 Mar 2007 20:52:23 GMT

I recently came into possession of a nearly full bottle of Maker's Mark, thanks to a girl's night my wife had at our apartment. I know what you are thinking, "No girl would bring bourbon to girl's night!" Hey, what are you trying to say?!? Well, she did bring it, and had the grace and courtesy to leave it behind for a real man to drink. And drink I have. I find that a simple tumbler of whisky on the rocks makes for a fine drink at the end of a hard day. Low on carbs too! I think that Maker's is a great bourbon, and not too hard on the pocketbook either. Compare it to Crown Royal or Canadian Mist. It's worth a try if you haven't already.

The First (mis)Step...

Wed, 28 Mar 2007 21:24:16 GMT

So, after acquiring my old audio equipment from my mom's garage, I set about installing a very basic home stereo setup. My plan was to run the audio from the DVD, VCR, and Cable through the Pioneer, and run separate cables to the TV for video. This might have worked decently, if not for my wife's insistence that there be NO big speakers up front. I think her quote was something like, "If I have to have those hideous things in my house, they are going to be hidden (from my friends)!" I added that last part, but I am sure thats what she meant. What about my friends?

In any event, I worked diligently to install said speakers, but when it came time to run the speaker wire, I faced a dilemma. How can I run these wires without either a) duct taping them to the floor (like in college), or b) leaving them out for people to trip on? The answer is c) run them under the carpet. I am sure this is highly illegal in the apartment world, but after a few hard-learned lessons, I figured it out.

Huzzah! The speakers were in place, sounded great, and looked, umm, great too. The only problem is that the sounds you expected to be coming from the front (like voices) were in fact coming from the sides, which proved to be a little too disconcerting.

The Room

Tue, 20 Mar 2007 23:38:48 GMT

Before I start on the steps I am taking to acquire my system, I would like to explain my housing situation. I live in an apartment, which means no drilling of walls, running of cables through the attic, and (supposedly) no tearing up of carpet. This limits how awesome a surround sound system can be, as cables will be all over everywhere, and no speakers can be mounted. At least, these things shouldn't happen if I want my deposit back. More on that in the future...

The main living area is roughly ten by fifteen feet, rectangular, with a fireplace along the south wall (long wall). The east wall is actually a window looking out onto the patio, and it causes a significant glare on the tv. The couch is along the north wall, and the tv is in the southwest corner. Here is a picture:

The Old Setup

Sun, 18 Mar 2007 23:39:04 GMT

This is the first entry for my AV blog thread, so I thought I would give some history of my home theater setup. I started out, way back when, with a Pioneer SX-1300 receiver, and two Bose bookshelf speakers (can't remember the model. they kicked ass though!). My older brother Aaron promptly stole my speakers, but I got his gigantic Pioneer three-way speakers with 12 inch sub woofers. Pretty awesome, especially when we hooked them up to the computer to play MP3s in college. I also had a basic single-disc CD player, and a tape deck I think...Does anyone remember tapes? After college, I stored most of my stuff in my mom's garage, and there it sat for years, collecting dust and mouse droppings.

My t.v. is currently a Toshiba CRT flat screen (NOT flat panel). It is nice for a CRT, and the flat screen increases the viewing angle significantly, but it isn't HD, and that hurts me. I bought in Medical school, close to 5 years ago, from Best Buy with money from a Dean's scholarship. It has been very educational... I have a Magnavox "progressive-scan" DVD player, which works OK. It is not region-free, and I'm pretty sure it is the least progressive of all the progressive scanning DVD-players on the market.

Well, I got married about a year ago, and my wife was able to snap my rampant video game addiction (WOW for the lose) on pain of death. Since that time, I have found myself with alot more time on my hands, and watching more T.V. and movies. Not necessarily good, as evidenced by the millions of obese Americans out there. With all this spare time, I have decided to do a few things, one of which is to improve my AV conditions. With a little research (and by little I mean a crapload), a little luck, and EBay, I have been able to put together a decent system and not break my bank. And my wife is only mildly ticked off with it all! Huzzah!!