Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas.

That's all.

And now, another reason for me to feel old...but a good one...

Ah yes, here I go, I'm like the last man standing around here without a wife, children, a serious girlfriend, a semi-serious girlfriend, or, say, even a really high-priced hooker.

However, there is good news, from the Old Friend front. L.S. has had a baby, the baby pictures are available over here. My best to her and the happy father, Vincent.

It actually scares me because this is the first time I've seen a child who looks like the mother at birth.

Now, in other Old Friends news, I am glad to report that Mr. K-Rhyme is alive and kicking, I just had lunch with him yesterday, he still looks like he styles his hair in a laundry machine, and he's definitely still silly, despite his professorial aspirations at USC and his decision that all Westerns (except every one I mention to him) are "homo-social".

Shane is not homo-social. That's one of the ones I mentioned. Just for the record.

That's all for now...

One book no college student should be without...

When I graduated from high school, one of the most significant and important gifts I received was a tiny little book, published in 1954, called How to Lie with Statistics.

The book was simply indispensable in college, and is engrained in my mind. I don't know where my copy currently is -- I'm betting it's in one of the stacks of books I have stored carefully in bins -- but I've virtually memorized the thing.

How to Lie with Statistics should be required reading for any college-bound student. Today's universities and colleges do nothing but bombard a student with frankly, blatantly false statistics that the students eat right up because they have no idea how easy it is to screw with statistics and make them do exactly what you want them to do.

But everyone should have a copy of it. Like I said, How to Lie with Statistics (the link goes straight to Amazon.com -- I want you buying this thing if you don't have it) is a slim little red book that will quickly and efficiently teach you how little faith you should place in a given statistic tossed out by anyone.

And, just for a dose of evil -- it teaches you how to bend and warp statistics towards your own ends.

In today's warped reality, this book is like a survival kit for the mind. Buy it. Buy it now.

Borat wasn't as funny as I had hoped...

Yep, it's true. I finally got around to seeing Borat, and I have to admit, it just wasn't as funny as I was hoping it would be.

I mean, it's damn funny, there are certainly a few laugh-out-loud scenes and a good deal of chuckling, but it lacks...something.

After watching so much of Borat on Da Ali G Show, I guess I was hoping for a little more from the movie. It loses something in the translation from the small screen to the big. Borat is still a lovable, scruffy character, but the situations he puts himself into feel a little contrived, a little too over the top. The beauty of Borat -- believe it or not -- is that his was a sort of understated comedy (yep, I said it, understated). Some of that is lost in the scramble to make a cohesive movie out of Cohen's skits.

All that being said, though, Borat is the funniest movie I've seen in a long while. It's certainly refreshing to watch after having so many lame-ass people tell me that Wedding Crashers is "the best comedy ever" (my opinion? it sucks hairy ass, and not in the good way Borat does).

It's just...I left wanting more of the "old" Borat. It's hard to explain to someone who hasn't seen the plethora of bits Cohen's alter ego did on Da Ali G Show. But it's true.

Cleaning a Plasma TV

Yet more tips on plasma HDTVs.

Most plasma sets have a very thin anti-glare coating on top of their protective glass. You don't want to scratch this coating or dissolve it. So, right off the bat -- Windex and paper towels are RIGHT OUT.

The proper way to clean a plasma set is to get yourself an ultra-soft cloth, as soft as possible. Now wet the cloth, then wring it out until it's just damp. Use this to very carefully clean the TV screen.

If you have a very dirty screen, then find the MILDEST detergent around. Me, I use antibacterial hand-soap from the bathroom. Repeat the soaking and wringing steps with the cloth, but this time add a very small amount of detergent when you first wet the cloth.

This may be overkill -- I know plenty of people with plasmas who do, in fact, use Windex and paper towels. I'm just givng you the most paranoid, safest method of cleaning that screen. The result from, say, a year or so using Windex and paper towels might be a slight cloudiness on the screen. You don't want that on a set you dropped $2k or more on.

Bottom line: if you want the TV to last as long as possible, use the methods I described. Better yet, if you can get away with just dusting the TV with a dry (and still extremely soft) cloth, do that.

I'm paranoid enough to have ordered some optical-quality cleaning cloths from a camera shop (thy're made spcifically for optical devices, for cleaning camera lenses and other such delicate tasks).

Best of luck!

Component Cables and HDTV

I'm here to quickly dispel a myth -- that you have to use a digital cable of some sort to hook up HDTV. It's complete and utter crap. If you have a good component cable (you'll need three video jacks, the inputs/outputs are usually colored green, blue, and red, and their names are...oh lord, I forget, one is "Pbr+" and so on...and I believe you need two audio jacks, so a grand total of five jacks, I think, so five cables...each video cable sends a different number of primary colors to the screen, three combined give you a perfect picture).

In fact, many people claim that using component cables to hook up their HDTVs not only gives them a great HD picture (it does, I tried it with mine, and stuck with the digital cable for simplicity's sake), but it also displays regular TV channels more crisply (I cannot verify this statement; both seemed to deliver relatively the same quality of SDTV -- Standard Definition TV).

Comcast actually uses component cables when they come to hook up an HD box to an HDTV. At least, they've done it to another TV here, and three others in the same vicinity I know about. So if you'd rather stick to component cables, don't be afraid to do so, the HD picture is, honestly, as perfectly sharp and clear as with a digital cable, and, as I said, some people maintain that rigging your set this way gives you better standard TV channels.

Bouncing Babies

Ahh, I have good news to relate. A friend of mine, an old friend and fellow Berkeley alum, whom I shall refer to only by her initials, L.S., is due to deliver a baby girl this Tuesday (although she herself "feels like it'll be more like Thurdsay").

She's living on the Cape; more information is really not needed, if you know who I'm talking about and wish to express tidings of good luck and such, you can contact me and I'll screen out any people who shouldn't be bothering her.

Except for me, of course, I shouldn't be bothering her either, but she's a great girl.

So let's all wish her some good luck this coming week (or maybe a bit longer, who knows) and remind her to "BREATHE!" and, I guess, "PUSH!"

This is the extend of my knowledge of the birth process (breathe and push). Beyond that it just gets icky and I don't want to think about it.

But may the lovely Ms. S. (soon to be Mrs. something) enjoy many happy days with her lovely baby girl.

A quick tip for plasma TV owners

If you ever run your plasma HDTV in 4:3 mode, you should be very aware of this. Most plasmas will display 4:3 mode with two light bars to the left and right of the picture. This can cause burn-in, just like with any other TV. In other words, eventually, if you leave it on 4:3 mode long enough, you will see a "ghost" image of those two light bars on the left and right side(s) when you switch it back to fullscreen mode.

There is an easy way to fix this. I can't tell you exactly what to do, obviously, since every brand of TV handles menus slightly differently. But it's rather simple. Set those two "light" bars to dark -- in other words, turn them off. And you'll never have to worry about that ghost image ever showing up.

Oh, how the mighty eBayers have fallen...

If you want to see what the Playstation 3s on eBay are selling for, check this link:

http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll?cgiurl=http%3A%2F%2Fcgi.ebay.com%2Fws%2F&fkr=1&from=R8&satitle=playstation+3&category0=

Indeed. The mighty eBayers who waited in line in the rain, got beaten up by PS3-hungry thugs, who peed against alley walls all night waiting to grab those PS3s to sell to us poor fools for $2000 a pop -- oops, they've dropped at least a grand. The most expensive one as I speak is priced at $1000, contains two free games (a $120 value), and the seller is so desperate to get rid of it so fast that he is willing to ship it for free or to HAND DELIVER it to you for free.

Most of the other PS3s (I'm talking about the top-of-the-line 60GB units) are selling for around $670-$800. That means that the poor fools camped out all that time for a grand profit of, on the low end...just about $70.

How terribly sad. And yet, at the same time, how terribly satisfying for those of us desperately waiting to pick up a Playstation 3, who were thwarted from buying the original units by these annoying eBayers who don't even want the system and who were convinced they could sell it on eBay for more than triple the retail price.

They better hurry, too, if they want to make ANY money, because Sony is adamantly sticking by its plan to have one million units ready to go by March.

Serves 'em right, they screwed legit gamers out of the console they had been waitng years to buy and delivered them into the hands of spoiled children whose mommy and daddy are willing to shell out two grand (idiotically, with no service contract on a new and surely buggy system) just to make sure their trust-fund-wielding child would be able to play Resistance: Fall of Man on their personal HDTV (probably gifts from last Christmas) on Christmas morning.

Bah to all of them, I say, and power to the PS3-loving middle class!

I can offer no excuse for the Patriots

Perhaps Maroney being hurt affected the team super-adversely. But 78 total yard passing by Brady? What a terrible game.

Miami deserved the win. I hate to say it, but they deserved it, they even deserved the shut-out that they pitched.

What a horrible way to break in my new TV, with a stunningly clear HD loss. Bleh.

This Patriot team will not be gong anywhere in the playoffs unless they turn things around and right the ship -- and fast.

And, as I said in the title of this post, I can offer no excuse for their horrible play. If you're a Miami fan, consider this a humble admission from me that the Dolphins simply (and dramatically) spanked the Patriots. Bigtime.

Ah, well, there's always next week.

Tips for installing an HDTV with a Comcast Motorola Box

Figured I might just add some few helpful tips here about hooking up an HDTV with a Comcast HD-ready box. First of all, you need the Comcast HD-ready box, as I mentioned. It's a silver Motorola (not the black ones, those are just digital boxes). Now for the part that's a bit confusing. Comcast has not yet, to my knowledge, released a box that has an HDMI (standard HD cable format) output. The only digital output on the box is a DVI-D plug. If you're unfamiliar with it, it looks like the only thing on the back of the box that resembles a plug for a computer monitor.

Now, whatever Comcast tells you, you're going to need to use that DVI-D port to get yourself a digital picture. This means you're going to need one of two things, either a cable that is male HDMI on one end and male DVI-D on the other -- they sell around $100 -- or, alternatvely, you can buy a stanadard HDMI cable (male on both ends) and a DVI-D adapter. The adapter costs around $20 or so. It should be female on the HDMI end and male on the DVI-D end, the part which connects to the female jack on the HD-capable box.

Still with me? Good. You'll need one other thing, one other cable. It''ll be a simple two-jack (on both ends) component cable. One connects audio left, the other connects audio right (welcome to stereo). They're usually red (for right) and white (for left).

Turn the TV on, switch it around, test the HD channels, you should be all set.

Also, one caveat: if you plan on getting a Playsation 3 anytime soon, like me, make sure you pick up an extra HDMI cable. You need one to play the PS3 in high-def (that's actually the big point, all the PS3s's games are in HD, and right now there's not much of a jump in graphics if not played in HD).

I hope this helps someone else along the way to hooking up their HDTV (and you can always mail me with a question if you want) , here. Remember, Comcast, no matter WHAT they say, does not yet make a box wth an HDMI output.

Happy vidding, me droogs!

Plasma -- oh *yes*!

The 42-inch flat-panel plasma arrived today. It's a Panasonic, and, my God, it is beautiful

HD on it is crisper than I thought it would have been, the contrast is great, the colors are vivid -- FINALLY, I have one of the things I have pined away all my life for: the Big TV.

Now, if I can just get a Playstation 3 and a flying car, my life will be complete (I believe it's easier to get the flying car than the PS3 right now).

Plasma. Oh yes. Oh yes.

Wherefore the hell art thou, Plasma TV?

So, here I am, having ordered a 42-inch plasma HDTV from Circuit City...and the idiots can't seem to figure out when to deliver it. First they said it was coming Friday, now they tell me I have to get a new receipt and it'll come on Saturday. Well, it damn well better come, because I plan on watching this week's games in HD. I can always try the TV downstairs but bah, that's a rear-projection HDTV, who wants that?

Took an hour on the phone with Circuit City to clear things up, too.

This damn TV better arrive on Saturday. My whole life, I've wanted the Big TV. I finally go shell out the money for it, and what happens? They tease me with delivery dates. Not fair. If I wanted to feel this frustrated, I'd start dating again.

And nobody else can watch the Big TV when it comes. Thppthh!

Burn, USC, BURN, BURN IN HELL!

Muhahahahahah! Hahah! HAH!

USC bites it in a contest with UCLA. Oh, thank you God. If it couldn't be Cal, at least another UC-system school...

May your throwing arm break in two, Booty.