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.