New TV is wider, thinner, lighter
News, Technical ·Friday May 16, 2008 @ 23:00 EDT (link)
20080512: Picked up a battery backup for the new TV (6-outlet APS unit) at OfficeMax. Wanted to get an HDMI to DVI connector, but Radio Shack wanted $55 for them; I can do much better.
Technical brief: although buying high-quality gold cables (e.g. Monster®-brand) do make a difference for various analog connections (coaxial, RCA, component, or S-Video), they make far less of a difference with digital connectors like HDMI or DVI; don't be scammed into buying expensive digital cables. While interference in analog cables can disrupt the analog wave signal, a digital signal is effectively a square wave, a succession of 1s or 0s which encode the picture data. Even if the wave is altered, as long as the decoder (TV) can distinguish between peaks and troughs, the picture will not be altered.
20080513: TV arrived shortly after 1300; set it up myself (it's about 80 lbs.; our old TV was about double and I couldn't carry it by myself). Picture does look a bit fuzzy viewing SDTV (which is all we have) but it looks better as I get used to it.
20080514: Puget Sound Energy (PSE) denies our TV claim, saying they had no voltage fluctuations when our TV died (on the 28th). Unfortunately, since I wasn't standing by with a voltmeter, I have to take their word for it. Our new TV has an also-new APC battery backup/surge protector (the old one had only a bar-type surge protector).
20080515: Cost of living map and state rank table (some interesting numbers; lower is better: TN, 1; WV, 21; WA, 36; CA, 50; HI, 51).
20080516: Watched House of Wax (MythTV). (I'm thinking of allowing non-owned videos to be added and put on the watched list; the DVD table already has an owned flag.)
Books finished: The Indispensable Calvin and Hobbes, C# 3.0 in a Nutshell, Inside Microsoft SQL Server 2005, Programming C# 3.0.DVDs finished: Underworld: Evolution.
