Wednesday, June 24, 2009
New Television
I got my new TV in. It’s a Panasonic TC-P54V10. I’m pretty stoked about it. The guy showed up to deliver it and I asked if he would mind hanging around long enough for me to inspect it. Some places are real picky about this. If you sign for it without inspecting it, it’s yours. If you have problems they refer you to the manufacturer for warranty repair work. The guy not only hung around, but helped me take it out of the box, put it on its stand, and get it plugged in long enough to make sure it turned on.
After that, I left the entire mess of packing materials and the TV sitting on the floor while I got back to work and wrapped up a few things. Later in the day, I moved the old TV out of the way and cleaned up a bit to make room for the new one.
Since I had the old TV out of the way I checked out the jacks behind the TV. I remembered dropping a CAT5 cable, but couldn’t remember if we had put an RJ-45 (network) or RJ-45 (phone only) jack in. Turns out it was the latter so I was going to have to put a new jack in. No problem as this is right up my alley even though I hadn’t done cabling work in a while.
While I was there I decided to replace the face-plate on the wall which had also cracked. I went to go check out my jacks and supply box in the attic. This is where things went terribly wrong. My attic access is a one of those nifty pull-down thingies with a ladder attached to it. Well, when I was pulling it down one entire side of the ladder hinge decided it had enough abuse of the years and let go popping out of it’s pivot cup and breaking loose from the spring and a few other things.
Fortunately, I wasn’t hurt and nothing else was severely damaged such as the trim and what-not. Unfortunately, the ladder piece is severely jacked and I don’t think it’s fixable…which means a complete replacement. My neighbor, Budda, thinks he can fix it but he hasn’t seen it, yet. I’ll certainly give him the opportunity as the project is a little more in-depth than I personally care to deal with.
No worries, let me run down to the hardware store and see what my options are. I picked up a new face plate while I was there and a couple of spare jacks “just in case.” I didn’t want to have to come back.
I get home and re-wire the phone jack to make it a network jack. No luck, it doesn’t work. Shit. Now I have to go up into the attic to see why. Did I mention it’s over 100 now in the great state of Texas, which makes the attic temperature somewhere around 120~130 degrees Fahrenheit? And now, I have to go up in the garage which is nowhere near where I need to be.
*sigh* tools in the bag, up I go. I have to work my way along and through some rafters to get to where the other part of the attic is decked in. It’s hotter than hell up there and I am already sweating like a pig. Great, I’ve been up here two minutes and already lost half of my body fluids.
I make my way over to where the cable comes up into the attic and discover some fuck-tard had decided to cut my cable and do it “their” way. My guess is that it was the DirecTV guy that installed the satellite years and years ago. In my attic, I have all of my CAT5 runs coming to a patch panel for quick and easy cross-connect. I also have a 110 block sitting there with the phone wires. This is REAL common stuff in the IT world, but not real common for a house. So, this guy cut my cable, put a biscuit on the 2x4 and wired it in that way, and then wired that to a line that was already wired into the 110 block for phones. Moron. I was going to have to fix it and run a new cable.
Back to the hardware store. I picked up a few more jacks “just in case” and about 100ft of CAT5 cable. Back home, I pray to the gods and use electrical tape to bond the old wire (already in the wall) to the new one which is now uncoiled to make it easier to pull.
Back in the attic. I think it’s actually hotter, now. I get up there and begin pulling the old one out. Fortunately, the tape held and there wasn’t any extra stuff to hang the new wire up so I pulled out all the old wire until the new one came through. Then I ripped out all of the DirecTV fuck-tard’s crap and re-ran the cable through my wire-loops and everything the way it was supposed to be in the first place.
Now I am completely soaked in sweat, but my cable is now ran and just needs to be wired up. I’m sitting in the attic and I was too hot and tired to bother with hooking up an extra light. I can see, but not that great and I grab a spare jack to wire into my patch panel. My hands are slick with sweat and it’s dripping into my eyes and all over the place. How the hell do the A.C. guys work like this? I eventually get the wire stripped and punched down and everything all wrapped up and make my way across the attic, again, to climb down. You know it’s hot when you step into the 101-degree air and think that it feels cool.
I just polished off my second 32oz. container of Gatorade and head back inside to finish wiring the cable. I grab another jack and begin wiring it up when my punch-down tool decimates the jack. So much for cheap shit from Home Depot. Grab another jack and start over. No biggie, at least I am inside the AC, now. Get it all wired up, grab my laptop, plug it in…and….nothing. It doesn’t freaking work.
So I double-check everything I can down where it’s cool and no luck. It all looks correct. I must have made a mistake up in the attic. So now, for the third time I climb back into the attic, across the rafters, and sweat my balls off trying to figure out what is wrong. I grabbed a small flashlight this time and upon removal of the jack from the patch panel I realize I had put in a jack that was some jacked up IOS standard – not the AT&T 568A / 568B standard that you need in data networks.
Grab another jack, this time the right one, and re-wire the damned thing again with sweat dripping all over the place. It’s amazing I didn’t short something out. Climb back across the attic and outside into the “cool” air. This time, it worked.
Why do all that? Because the new TV has an Ethernet connection and can communicate over the Internet to do things like download firmware updates (which I did), sync the clock to an NTP service, watch on-demand movies from Amazon, get weather reports, watch YouTube, and check out other things.
I finally got everything cleaned up and moved an old coffee table in place to hold the TV. Hopper helped me set it up on the stand and I spend about 2 hours dicking with cables and stuff to get everything setup right. The good thing is that by now utilizing HDMI cables I was able to pull out a bunch of RGB cables and clean things up a bit.
I also tweaked the screen to some specs that were setup by CNET after conducting all of their tests (thanks CNET). Then it was on to re-programming my Harmony One remote to do everything I wanted it to with the new TV.
At the end of the day everything works beautifully. I’m not a hard-core videophile. I like it to look great, not perfect (I don’t have that kind of cash) and this TV fulfills my expectations and then some. The picture is far superior to anything I’ve seen before and I am not even using a blue-ray player, yet. I lost about 2-inches on the top and side by downsizing from a 55” to a 54”, but the form factor is the same as my old TV so it still fits nicely.
Now I just have to get a new stand and figure out how to hide some of the cabling.
After that, I left the entire mess of packing materials and the TV sitting on the floor while I got back to work and wrapped up a few things. Later in the day, I moved the old TV out of the way and cleaned up a bit to make room for the new one.
Since I had the old TV out of the way I checked out the jacks behind the TV. I remembered dropping a CAT5 cable, but couldn’t remember if we had put an RJ-45 (network) or RJ-45 (phone only) jack in. Turns out it was the latter so I was going to have to put a new jack in. No problem as this is right up my alley even though I hadn’t done cabling work in a while.
While I was there I decided to replace the face-plate on the wall which had also cracked. I went to go check out my jacks and supply box in the attic. This is where things went terribly wrong. My attic access is a one of those nifty pull-down thingies with a ladder attached to it. Well, when I was pulling it down one entire side of the ladder hinge decided it had enough abuse of the years and let go popping out of it’s pivot cup and breaking loose from the spring and a few other things.
Fortunately, I wasn’t hurt and nothing else was severely damaged such as the trim and what-not. Unfortunately, the ladder piece is severely jacked and I don’t think it’s fixable…which means a complete replacement. My neighbor, Budda, thinks he can fix it but he hasn’t seen it, yet. I’ll certainly give him the opportunity as the project is a little more in-depth than I personally care to deal with.
No worries, let me run down to the hardware store and see what my options are. I picked up a new face plate while I was there and a couple of spare jacks “just in case.” I didn’t want to have to come back.
I get home and re-wire the phone jack to make it a network jack. No luck, it doesn’t work. Shit. Now I have to go up into the attic to see why. Did I mention it’s over 100 now in the great state of Texas, which makes the attic temperature somewhere around 120~130 degrees Fahrenheit? And now, I have to go up in the garage which is nowhere near where I need to be.
*sigh* tools in the bag, up I go. I have to work my way along and through some rafters to get to where the other part of the attic is decked in. It’s hotter than hell up there and I am already sweating like a pig. Great, I’ve been up here two minutes and already lost half of my body fluids.
I make my way over to where the cable comes up into the attic and discover some fuck-tard had decided to cut my cable and do it “their” way. My guess is that it was the DirecTV guy that installed the satellite years and years ago. In my attic, I have all of my CAT5 runs coming to a patch panel for quick and easy cross-connect. I also have a 110 block sitting there with the phone wires. This is REAL common stuff in the IT world, but not real common for a house. So, this guy cut my cable, put a biscuit on the 2x4 and wired it in that way, and then wired that to a line that was already wired into the 110 block for phones. Moron. I was going to have to fix it and run a new cable.
Back to the hardware store. I picked up a few more jacks “just in case” and about 100ft of CAT5 cable. Back home, I pray to the gods and use electrical tape to bond the old wire (already in the wall) to the new one which is now uncoiled to make it easier to pull.
Back in the attic. I think it’s actually hotter, now. I get up there and begin pulling the old one out. Fortunately, the tape held and there wasn’t any extra stuff to hang the new wire up so I pulled out all the old wire until the new one came through. Then I ripped out all of the DirecTV fuck-tard’s crap and re-ran the cable through my wire-loops and everything the way it was supposed to be in the first place.
Now I am completely soaked in sweat, but my cable is now ran and just needs to be wired up. I’m sitting in the attic and I was too hot and tired to bother with hooking up an extra light. I can see, but not that great and I grab a spare jack to wire into my patch panel. My hands are slick with sweat and it’s dripping into my eyes and all over the place. How the hell do the A.C. guys work like this? I eventually get the wire stripped and punched down and everything all wrapped up and make my way across the attic, again, to climb down. You know it’s hot when you step into the 101-degree air and think that it feels cool.
I just polished off my second 32oz. container of Gatorade and head back inside to finish wiring the cable. I grab another jack and begin wiring it up when my punch-down tool decimates the jack. So much for cheap shit from Home Depot. Grab another jack and start over. No biggie, at least I am inside the AC, now. Get it all wired up, grab my laptop, plug it in…and….nothing. It doesn’t freaking work.
So I double-check everything I can down where it’s cool and no luck. It all looks correct. I must have made a mistake up in the attic. So now, for the third time I climb back into the attic, across the rafters, and sweat my balls off trying to figure out what is wrong. I grabbed a small flashlight this time and upon removal of the jack from the patch panel I realize I had put in a jack that was some jacked up IOS standard – not the AT&T 568A / 568B standard that you need in data networks.
Grab another jack, this time the right one, and re-wire the damned thing again with sweat dripping all over the place. It’s amazing I didn’t short something out. Climb back across the attic and outside into the “cool” air. This time, it worked.
Why do all that? Because the new TV has an Ethernet connection and can communicate over the Internet to do things like download firmware updates (which I did), sync the clock to an NTP service, watch on-demand movies from Amazon, get weather reports, watch YouTube, and check out other things.
I finally got everything cleaned up and moved an old coffee table in place to hold the TV. Hopper helped me set it up on the stand and I spend about 2 hours dicking with cables and stuff to get everything setup right. The good thing is that by now utilizing HDMI cables I was able to pull out a bunch of RGB cables and clean things up a bit.
I also tweaked the screen to some specs that were setup by CNET after conducting all of their tests (thanks CNET). Then it was on to re-programming my Harmony One remote to do everything I wanted it to with the new TV.
At the end of the day everything works beautifully. I’m not a hard-core videophile. I like it to look great, not perfect (I don’t have that kind of cash) and this TV fulfills my expectations and then some. The picture is far superior to anything I’ve seen before and I am not even using a blue-ray player, yet. I lost about 2-inches on the top and side by downsizing from a 55” to a 54”, but the form factor is the same as my old TV so it still fits nicely.
Now I just have to get a new stand and figure out how to hide some of the cabling.
Off The Hook Bar
A couple of weeks back GrassHopper invited me to go check out a bar in Fort Worth that is supposed to be one of the best live music bars in the area. It’s called The Keys Lounge and is a blues bar.
We got over there a tad early and since we weren’t quite sure what to expect we grabbed a table towards the back. Hopper had heard it was open mike night and was hoping to get a chance to play with the band a little bit.
We talked to the waitress some and found out that it was, in fact, open mike night and she’d see what she could do to get him on stage at some point. We also learned that the owners of the bar have successful business ventures and opened the joint so that they would have a place to jam on a regular basis.
The bar itself wasn’t that much to talk about. The stage was off to the side, with a dance floor in the middle and seating areas on three sides with the bar on the fourth side. Kind of your typical blues bar that was almost, but not quite, a dive.
But that’s about where anything resembling “normal” came to a screeching halt. We started realizing it wasn’t going to be a typical night when the waitress couldn’t seem to remember our drink orders. As Hopper pointed out, she was a great waitress provided that you didn’t care what you were drinking. No matter what beers he or his date ordered she kind of brought whatever she wanted. I think they drank about six kinds of beer between them even though they ordered the same thing every time. I had Jack and Cokes that always seem to come out right.
Since we had gotten there a tad early there weren’t that many people, but we kind of noticed that most of the crowd was older. How much older? Umm….late 50’s, 60’s and probably even a few 70’s in there. We were the youngest folks, but didn’t think much of it because it was so early.
As the band started setting up more and more people started showing up. Mind you, this was a Thursday night and we could tell it was about to get busy….but not with a bunch of young, rowdy college kids. Nope, the age bracket wasn’t changing…there were just more of them. Before too long the place was packed, and I mean PACKED with old people. Some even had their walkers and canes ‘n shit. We were guessing if more men, or more women, had their hair dyed. It was really bizarre.
But these folks weren’t just “sitting around!!” they were getting out there on the dance floor and letting lose. At one point, I couldn’t see the band through the throng of people dancing. We figured there might have been about three other people in the place that were even close to our age. It was really strange.
One guy had on a somewhat traditional Western shirt. It had the god-awful brown patches on the back and sleeves, with pearl buttons. But the fabric wasn’t white or black, no my friends, it was leopard spotted. I kid you not. And this guy had to be at least 65. Not only was he a strange individual with his dyed hair, pressed Levis, and leopard western shirt he was dancing with chick after chick on the floor. He was having a great time and the ladies were eating it up.
I think we also saw the inventor of the mullet, and one of the guys from Whitesnake, though about 30 years and 30lbs heavier. There was also this one dood there that had a huge mullet. He got on stage and sang a few song. Hopper and I kept expecting the guy to turn around so a little Quasimodo guy could part the back of his hair and bust out on the mike.
The band was pretty damned good – mostly older traditional R&B. Though it was open-mike the guest list was pretty short and the band and the guests clearly knew each other and all of the material. It was simply too tight for them to be playing any other way. One old black guy looked like he came straight out of the Chicago blues bars from 1940. He had on his cream colored suit, a white shirt, black tie, and a small fedora, with tortoise shell sunglasses on. He sang about three or four songs and the guy was pretty good.
The more the evening wore on, the more we were amazed at the crowd, the band, and the bar in general. Hopper finally got his chance to jam towards the end of the night and he was pretty loose as he’d had a few beers in ‘em. After he was done we went to tab out and though we’d been there for about four hours drinking steady our tab was only $35. Not bad for a night out.
I’m going to have to go back, but next time I am taking my camera…..
We got over there a tad early and since we weren’t quite sure what to expect we grabbed a table towards the back. Hopper had heard it was open mike night and was hoping to get a chance to play with the band a little bit.
We talked to the waitress some and found out that it was, in fact, open mike night and she’d see what she could do to get him on stage at some point. We also learned that the owners of the bar have successful business ventures and opened the joint so that they would have a place to jam on a regular basis.
The bar itself wasn’t that much to talk about. The stage was off to the side, with a dance floor in the middle and seating areas on three sides with the bar on the fourth side. Kind of your typical blues bar that was almost, but not quite, a dive.
But that’s about where anything resembling “normal” came to a screeching halt. We started realizing it wasn’t going to be a typical night when the waitress couldn’t seem to remember our drink orders. As Hopper pointed out, she was a great waitress provided that you didn’t care what you were drinking. No matter what beers he or his date ordered she kind of brought whatever she wanted. I think they drank about six kinds of beer between them even though they ordered the same thing every time. I had Jack and Cokes that always seem to come out right.
Since we had gotten there a tad early there weren’t that many people, but we kind of noticed that most of the crowd was older. How much older? Umm….late 50’s, 60’s and probably even a few 70’s in there. We were the youngest folks, but didn’t think much of it because it was so early.
As the band started setting up more and more people started showing up. Mind you, this was a Thursday night and we could tell it was about to get busy….but not with a bunch of young, rowdy college kids. Nope, the age bracket wasn’t changing…there were just more of them. Before too long the place was packed, and I mean PACKED with old people. Some even had their walkers and canes ‘n shit. We were guessing if more men, or more women, had their hair dyed. It was really bizarre.
But these folks weren’t just “sitting around!!” they were getting out there on the dance floor and letting lose. At one point, I couldn’t see the band through the throng of people dancing. We figured there might have been about three other people in the place that were even close to our age. It was really strange.
One guy had on a somewhat traditional Western shirt. It had the god-awful brown patches on the back and sleeves, with pearl buttons. But the fabric wasn’t white or black, no my friends, it was leopard spotted. I kid you not. And this guy had to be at least 65. Not only was he a strange individual with his dyed hair, pressed Levis, and leopard western shirt he was dancing with chick after chick on the floor. He was having a great time and the ladies were eating it up.
I think we also saw the inventor of the mullet, and one of the guys from Whitesnake, though about 30 years and 30lbs heavier. There was also this one dood there that had a huge mullet. He got on stage and sang a few song. Hopper and I kept expecting the guy to turn around so a little Quasimodo guy could part the back of his hair and bust out on the mike.
The band was pretty damned good – mostly older traditional R&B. Though it was open-mike the guest list was pretty short and the band and the guests clearly knew each other and all of the material. It was simply too tight for them to be playing any other way. One old black guy looked like he came straight out of the Chicago blues bars from 1940. He had on his cream colored suit, a white shirt, black tie, and a small fedora, with tortoise shell sunglasses on. He sang about three or four songs and the guy was pretty good.
The more the evening wore on, the more we were amazed at the crowd, the band, and the bar in general. Hopper finally got his chance to jam towards the end of the night and he was pretty loose as he’d had a few beers in ‘em. After he was done we went to tab out and though we’d been there for about four hours drinking steady our tab was only $35. Not bad for a night out.
I’m going to have to go back, but next time I am taking my camera…..
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Really Busy Lately
Nothing more than the usual I guess. I get busy and I’m so wrapped up in writing other things that I tend to neglect the blog.
Quickies:
Working a Lot
The main thing is that I’ve been working my balls off on an RFP for that power company. They need someone to step in and replace their entire infrastructure. Problem? Well, they dicked around for a few months to release the RFP and now they are giving everyone until the end of August to get the work done. This is a LOT of work and it’s very tedious so that isn’t much time. To me? I’d normally give this a 6mos time-frame or more. Not 8 weeks. So we had to figure out how to do it and how to get a response in. We got our response in for the first RFP, but now we also have to get one in for the second RFP. I’ll try to update more, when I actually feel like writing.
Friend’s Doing OK
Had a big cook-out party about two weekends ago. Surprisingly, not nearly as many people showed up as we anticipated. My neighbor and I cooked all day. Around lunchtime we pulled of sausages, and he did home-made hot wings in his fryer. We nibbled a bit all-day long, but around dinner time we pulled off:
A salmon
Three racks of ribs
A brisket
A Jack ‘n Dr. Pepper chicken
Of course, there were sides and stuff and everyone scarfed down some good groceries. But we weren’t done, because we also pulled off:
10 more racks of ribs
Three more briskets
8 chicken ½’s.
We had way too much food and not enough people. Our new neighbors were there and I think they had a good time. I also got to see a lot of my friends I don’t see on a daily basis. One, in particular, I hadn’t seen in over ten years. He told us he had fought cancer, and was currently in remission. He’s doing good, with a successful career, a wife and a couple of kids. Living the life, so to speak. It was really good to see him and find out that he was doing well. I like to see my friends doing well.
Great Aunt Turns 90
Yup!! Not much to say there other than she made it to 90 and seems to be doing just fine. Still feisty, too!
Hopper to Be Deployed
My friend and current room-mate is being deployed. I am still not sure if he knows where he is going, but it will probably be Iraq or Afghanistan. It could also be N. Korea as I understand we (the U.S.) is very uneasy about their latest shenanigans. In any event he seems eager to go, though a bit nervous – which is understandable.
Turns out they are deploying him without a flak vest. I had heard that the guys (and women) being deployed to Afghanistan were being shorted things such as flak vests and guns. But do you hear about this in the mainstream press and public? Nope, typical left-wing partisan Bush hating crap. People went ape-shit, and I STILL hear about how horrible Bush was sending guys into battle without the proper gear and now Obama is doing the same crap, but you don’t hear about it.
Obama
Man, I don’t even have anything to say. Go read my dad’s web site http://politicalangstinamerica.blogspot.com/
New TV
I hope you didn’t get caught in the digital transition. If you did, though, you might not have anyone to blame but yourself. You would think after a few years you could figure it out, but I realize most people wait until the last minute for everything so why not this?
In any event, I got a new TV. Not that I had to have one, I have Satellite (when it’s not suspended) and my friend had an older HDTV tuner that he had been letting me borrow for off-air stuff.
My old TV is a good TV, but it doesn’t have an HDTV tuner. It is, however, and HDTV. The old rear-projection type. It still works great, but I wanted a something a little more modern. That, and since I put my wood floors in the sub keeps knocking the mirrors out of alignment driving me nuts.
I was going to pick up a Panasonic TH-50PZ800U, but I never saw the prices get to quite where I wanted them to get to (about $1600 ~ $1700). Then, Panasonic started announcing their new line of TV’s so I waited. They then introduced the TC-P54G10, and it got excellent reviews so I was stoked, but wait – there is more. While waiting for that one to come out I started hearing bout the TC-P54V10. It has a few more features and tweaks than the G10 did so I kept waiting to see how the reviews were.
Well, it just became openly available and the reviews are excellent. Most notably were the ones that said “best HDTV set tested in the last year” etc….. So that synched it, only it was way more than I wanted to pay. List price is $3550, with most of ‘em going for about $2600 across the board.
Then I was surfing last night and for kicks did a Google for it. Found it on sale for $1999.99 – no tax and free shipping! Really? So I checked out the web site, got an above average consumer rating and placed the order. Now I just have to wait for it to come in, but I’m very excited about it.
Quickies:
Working a Lot
The main thing is that I’ve been working my balls off on an RFP for that power company. They need someone to step in and replace their entire infrastructure. Problem? Well, they dicked around for a few months to release the RFP and now they are giving everyone until the end of August to get the work done. This is a LOT of work and it’s very tedious so that isn’t much time. To me? I’d normally give this a 6mos time-frame or more. Not 8 weeks. So we had to figure out how to do it and how to get a response in. We got our response in for the first RFP, but now we also have to get one in for the second RFP. I’ll try to update more, when I actually feel like writing.
Friend’s Doing OK
Had a big cook-out party about two weekends ago. Surprisingly, not nearly as many people showed up as we anticipated. My neighbor and I cooked all day. Around lunchtime we pulled of sausages, and he did home-made hot wings in his fryer. We nibbled a bit all-day long, but around dinner time we pulled off:
A salmon
Three racks of ribs
A brisket
A Jack ‘n Dr. Pepper chicken
Of course, there were sides and stuff and everyone scarfed down some good groceries. But we weren’t done, because we also pulled off:
10 more racks of ribs
Three more briskets
8 chicken ½’s.
We had way too much food and not enough people. Our new neighbors were there and I think they had a good time. I also got to see a lot of my friends I don’t see on a daily basis. One, in particular, I hadn’t seen in over ten years. He told us he had fought cancer, and was currently in remission. He’s doing good, with a successful career, a wife and a couple of kids. Living the life, so to speak. It was really good to see him and find out that he was doing well. I like to see my friends doing well.
Great Aunt Turns 90
Yup!! Not much to say there other than she made it to 90 and seems to be doing just fine. Still feisty, too!
Hopper to Be Deployed
My friend and current room-mate is being deployed. I am still not sure if he knows where he is going, but it will probably be Iraq or Afghanistan. It could also be N. Korea as I understand we (the U.S.) is very uneasy about their latest shenanigans. In any event he seems eager to go, though a bit nervous – which is understandable.
Turns out they are deploying him without a flak vest. I had heard that the guys (and women) being deployed to Afghanistan were being shorted things such as flak vests and guns. But do you hear about this in the mainstream press and public? Nope, typical left-wing partisan Bush hating crap. People went ape-shit, and I STILL hear about how horrible Bush was sending guys into battle without the proper gear and now Obama is doing the same crap, but you don’t hear about it.
Obama
Man, I don’t even have anything to say. Go read my dad’s web site http://politicalangstinamerica.blogspot.com/
New TV
I hope you didn’t get caught in the digital transition. If you did, though, you might not have anyone to blame but yourself. You would think after a few years you could figure it out, but I realize most people wait until the last minute for everything so why not this?
In any event, I got a new TV. Not that I had to have one, I have Satellite (when it’s not suspended) and my friend had an older HDTV tuner that he had been letting me borrow for off-air stuff.
My old TV is a good TV, but it doesn’t have an HDTV tuner. It is, however, and HDTV. The old rear-projection type. It still works great, but I wanted a something a little more modern. That, and since I put my wood floors in the sub keeps knocking the mirrors out of alignment driving me nuts.
I was going to pick up a Panasonic TH-50PZ800U, but I never saw the prices get to quite where I wanted them to get to (about $1600 ~ $1700). Then, Panasonic started announcing their new line of TV’s so I waited. They then introduced the TC-P54G10, and it got excellent reviews so I was stoked, but wait – there is more. While waiting for that one to come out I started hearing bout the TC-P54V10. It has a few more features and tweaks than the G10 did so I kept waiting to see how the reviews were.
Well, it just became openly available and the reviews are excellent. Most notably were the ones that said “best HDTV set tested in the last year” etc….. So that synched it, only it was way more than I wanted to pay. List price is $3550, with most of ‘em going for about $2600 across the board.
Then I was surfing last night and for kicks did a Google for it. Found it on sale for $1999.99 – no tax and free shipping! Really? So I checked out the web site, got an above average consumer rating and placed the order. Now I just have to wait for it to come in, but I’m very excited about it.
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