Blah, blah, blog!

What am I doing? I'll tell you.

• I'm catching up on The Daily Show with John Stewart, and The Colbert Report, while Allie exercises her brain and fingers.
• I am happy having heard that one of my cousins has another child on the way.
• I'm exited about the prospect of having a sizable group of family and friends over to our new digs for Thanksgiving Dinner (YUM), featuring a few other cousins.
• I am waiting for twitter to start working again. In the mean while I've stopped getting updates on my phone.
• I'm happily attempting to connect with yet another cousin and his family, whom I have discovered can be found on twitter on occasion.
• I just checked my Adsense account, and afer YEARS of making space available on this blog, I have earned all of $4.21!!! Only $96 more, and Google will have to pay me the month after!!! Woohoo!!!
  

Does "reconnecting with the fam" mean I'm getting old? I don't care. I'm just happy to have the opportunity to to do so. Growing up significantly older than most of my cousins, I've always had a soft spot for them, and they are ALL a joy to converse with. I enjoy their divergence, wisdom, and wit. I'm only sorry that I can't still give them piggy-back rides and tickle them until they are rolling on the floor. I guess it is okay that some of them now have children so I might be able to make them laugh in turn.

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Well, that didn't help much...

My attempt to use the Adsense box above did not ever pay off, but that's alright. We are going to take a step back in the quest for the perfect TV and TV stand. There are a couple of reasons for this:

1. I keep finding wonderful TV stands that either look great, but don't seem to fit things right, or can't be found for purchase anywhere.
2. The Toshiba TVs (62HM195 & 62MX195 ) which I have become a fan of seem to have been hiding a dirty little secret regarding lamp life. The replacement lamps are reported to be more robust than the original, but I think more time needs to pass before this can fairly be called true.
3. The Bonus Money got eaten up by other things.

Ah well, that's the way it goes. I'm really not too disappointed, considering what we are up against. From what I've seen the best thing you can do for a nice DLP or LCoS Television at the time of purchase (or shortly after) is to purchase an extended warranty. I am very opposed to extended warranties because I'm pretty darn good at keeping my gadgets running for a nice long time. Why should I do it for my new TV? The reason is simple: While they are exquisite marvels of technology and engineering, they aren't good enough to consistently last for a long time without failure. The biggest weakness is the "light engine". This process appears to be slowly getting solved by a few companies. The first out the gate has not been my favorite, but I'm happy that they can step up as guinea pig: Samsung. I have to give the idea credit. Elimination of the color wheel means no more Rainbow Effect, and replacing the the HID lamp with a multicolored set of LEDs has forever been waiting for the right time and application to show up. They last so much longer and require much less in the way of safety measures. Requirements for power conditioning and a UPS, not to mention the 15 minute cool down period for the lamp are now happilly missing.

I guess the 32" CRT non-HD Television will last a little longer. Hey, at least it was built to!

Ads & Minuses

I noticed that I have the option of adding an Adsense advertisement to this blog, so I did. I'm sure I'll make lots of money from it, as I get so much traffic I can't keep up with even half of the responses I get.

I'll make this a little more interesting (to some people) soon when I start discussing the televisions and stands currently competing for a prime location in our living room. More to come soon!