I’ve been out of touch with my family for too long. Christmas was amazing, I saw a lot of people I love; and it was fantastic. The best holiday in atleast 5 years.
Tonight Grandma told me Gramps has a growth under his arm that might be cancerous. They’re waiting to hear back about the biopsy. He can’t do much that requires his arm right now due some pain.
He’s the strongest man I know, with the biggest heart and I keep crying because it’s just so shitty if cancer is going to kill him. He should go out like some kind of hero, not withered and weak like my Dad did.
I offered to help as much as possible. I’ll drive him to and from chemo, and do whatever else I can to make this period easy on the two of em. I love em more than anyone in the world; and I feel so helpless.
Realistically, this will probably be nothing. It should be nothing. It’s hitting me hard ’cause well, when you lose a parent to cancer… it’s just not something you want anyone else you love to experience.
I really want this lens. I’d have to switch professions for it be remotely reasonable to purchase, but I could have so much fun with it. Sigh.
Tomorrow I’m driving around 6 hours to see Jen. Heart. Going to spend the weekend at her place, miss the super bowl and drive back on Sunday. It’s going to kick so much ass.
I think i just experienced the standard Bluray pitch.
I dropped my center speaker off at the “audiophile” store I got my speakers, etc from and the old guy that works there asked what my dvd player was. I said my 360. He then goes into this Bluray pitch without asking if I was interested, saying how it was superior, etc.
I stood there thinking ‘wtf’; pointed out the codecs, laser and authoring is the same on both formats. The difference is the physical spacing of data. HD-DVD was cheaper to adopt from a production pov and in my opinion made more sense. He then went on about the “japs” being assholes for not getting on board; so I pointed out Sony and most of the companies on the BDA is jap based as well.
So he started some Toshiba hate, and they must “pay!”. After he said that a few times, I asked what he meant but he couldn’t explain why they must “pay!”. I pointed out they (Toshiba) failed at marketing horribly, but that I won’t buy a Bluray player for quiet awhile because they’re just coming up to the HD-DVD spec; which he didn’t understand.
He had no clue there was 1.0/1.1/2.0 Bluray specs. Then another other sales guy tried to tell me people don’t care about extras like pip, net access (online content/games), etc. I laughed and asked about the price to replace my tweeter and then left.
Epic sales fail.
I bet this why the Bluray adoption based on marketing happened. If the people selling the hardware in the ‘high end’ stores have no idea about either format; they’ll just push what they carry. I feel sorry for anyone with a 1.0/1.1 spec player, they’ll have to buy another player to enjoy the stuff “no one is interested in”.
It’s a little counter productive, but fuck does it taste good.
Saturday I tried watching a movie through my 360 on my projector. It’s what I’ve been using the console for lately. It was sitting in the dashboard for maybe 5 minutes, and when I came back to it the colors had dropped to what looked like a 16 color palette. I turned off the console, and when I turned it back on there was no video.
I figured the projector was just being a bitch.
I tried to use the console again today; no video still. I switched to the component cables and my projector started flashing a bunch of random colors; and then it froze with the error light on. I unplugged it, and it’s working fine again.
The 360 appears to have, baked the scaler chip, or something after it in the circuit because the dashboard and audio are still functional. I called support and they want $110 plus I provide a box for shipping. I told them to forget that. I’ll just buy a newer system if I want one after I move (2 months).
I don’t know what I’m going to do to pass the time now. Guitar Hero isn’t going to get played.
The hill got 10-15cm of fresh snow; according to a sign we read as we arrived. The snow was generally great. A few spots at the peaks were blown down to the man made snow; and those sucked. I caught my heel edge at one of these areas and ended up on my back sliding down the hill a little. I lost my goggles and tuque, so I had to unstrap and go get them. Apparently my absenteeism worried Chris a little; he’s never stood waiting for me at the bottom.
Throughout the afternoon I adjusted my boots because they were too loose, then too tight; which caused my feet to tingle, and my left leg (i ride normal) to throb. It kinda sucked, but it just took a little trial and error to work out. We eventually left around 3:30pm. We were tired of dodging slow people.
I just finished waxing Chris’ snowboard. It took slightly more than 2 hours to complete. I’ve never worked with such shitty wax before. I laid it down thick (second application) and ended up having to scrape 99% percent off because it doesn’t adhere to the base at all; it just leaves an extremely thin coat.
Chris should be nice and fast tomorrow.
Now I just need to fix the slightly loose binding issue I have. I’m positive I removed the paper stickers from the bottom of my left binding, because I’m dumb like that. Now there’s a very subtle bit of movement that won’t disappear regardless of how much I tightened down the plate. Sigh.
The body shell is basically the same, with a slightly larger lcd. The internals have changed quite a bit, but I don’t think it’s enough to get me to upgrade from my K10D. The new features are good additions. I’m curious about the output from the new Samsung CMOS sensor.
-A newly developed CMOS sensor featuring 14.6 megapixels along with improved noise-reduction
-Custom Image functions and an Expanded Dynamic Range function
-A “Live View” system which provides an accurate image preview
-An improved dust removal system with features technology that also pinpoints the location of dust on the sensor if manual removal is needed
-A new shake reduction system
-A PC sync socket
-A bright pentaprism viewfinder
-Optional battery grip
