Cable HDTV Suxxors
Posted on August 26th, 2008
I hate cable.
I’m in the process of researching my next big purchase, a giant flatscreen TV and a home theater PC for my living room, and I’ve run into a wall. A big, stupid, content protection scheme wall and it’s harshing my buzz. All I want to be able to do is connect my HD cable box to the HTPC so the HTPC can control/record anything I want AND let me surf the web or play video games on the big screen TV.
But the cable company doesn’t like that.
Apparently, I’m allowed to connect NON-digital cable to a PC without a problem, but trying to connect cable’s digital signal or HD content to a PC is evil! There are only two methods I’ve been able to discover for getting HD content on a PC, and they both suck donkey tail.
- Use a consumer-level OTA HD video card which will give me any local HD channels that are available over the air but I won’t get any of the channels I actually care about getting, like Discovery HD or HBO HD.
- Spend an extra $1,000 or so and get an HTPC with a cablecard connection, which would allow me to do everything I want to do, but only after paying heavily for the privilege! To make it even more infuriating, so far I’ve only found three PC makers who make HTPCs with cablecards; CannonPC, S1 Digital & Velocity Micro.
Sometimes life is so very, very cruel.
Filed under Announcements | 7 Comments »
Chevy Travesty
Posted on August 20th, 2008
Inconceivable!
Have you seen the latest commercial for the Chevy Traverse that is being shown during the Olympics? If you haven’t here’s a somewhat clipped version of it. For those too lazy to click the link and watch the video, let me describe it to you via my inner monologue the first time I saw it.
“Commercial time! That means I can go to the bathroom before they get back to showing the women’s beach volleyball quarter finals…”
“What the hell…?”
“Why is there a guy with no shirt on my TV?”
“And why is he ironing something with a PINK iron?”
“What?! Six month anniversary?! Looooserrrr!”
“…”
“That’s a kids dress! For a little girl! Like a child!”
“Holy crap, this guy’s a pedophile!”
“What’s this commercial for?”
“A CAR?!?!?!?!”
“What the HELL does a p-whipped guy ironing little girl clothes have to do with a car?!”
“By the unholy alliance of mayo and pickles, what schmuck in marketing at Chevy thought it was a good idea to greenlight this commercial? How exactly does making Chevy the official pedophiles automobile of choice make any kind of sense?”
“And OMG, now he’s on his knees cleaning the toilet.”
“I think I’m going to need to douse my eyes with bleach to remove this from my head.”
“Chevy, you are sick, sick people. Seek professional help before someone gets hurt. Please.”
It’s haunting my dreams. I’m scared to sleep because if I close my eyes the scary pedophile in the bright red Chevy Traverse is going to drive into my head and steal my soul. I’ll never, ever be able to see a black toilet again without thinking of some shirtless pervert cleaning it. And don’t even get me started on how scary pink irons were BEFORE I saw this commercial.
Somebody hold me.
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You Know Who You Are
Posted on August 12th, 2008
If you think it tastes just like chicken, why not just eat chicken?
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Bus Of Doom
Posted on August 11th, 2008
Well, maybe not THAT bad, but still depressing.
Traveling by bus may be the least expensive option a lot of times, but it sure isn’t the most comfortable. I had a large lady squeeze (and I do mean SQUEEZE) into the seat next to me on the ride to Maryland on Friday. Now, sitting next to a large person isn’t so bad in and of itself, they’re still people. But when that large person insists on trying to squeeze past me to go to the bathroom every 20 minutes without allowing me to get up and let them pass I might become annoyed. In this case, I got angry after the third time her gigantic butt came into contact with my face because she believed she was skinny enough to fit her two foot wide butt through the six inch opening between my face and the seat in front of me.
Talk about bad moon rising.
Anywaste, Baltimore was a load of fun. I bought some anime stuff I probably shouldn’t have, spent more than I should have and had way more fun that I thought I would. The costumes looked very cool and the people were really nice. The only truly down side was that my camera had a technical problem so I don’t have any pictures of all the cool costumes everyone was wearing, but you can find a whole buch on Flickr if you’re interested in seeing crazy people dressed up as their imaginary friends. And before you ask, NO. I was not so pathetic as to wear a costume.
I… ahem. I didn’t have time to make one.
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Ball-T-More
Posted on August 8th, 2008
As in Maryland.
Why? Because that’s where Otakon is taking place and I needs me an anime fix! Oh happy day! I’ll be there with about 25,000 of my closest friends so if you’re going to be anywhere in the vicinity feel free to say hello. You’ll be able to tell it’s me because I’ll be one of three people who look clean, don’t stink, isn’t dressed up as an anime character and doesn’t have a horrible case of acne.
Plus, I wear cologne.
Another tip for finding the GeekMan, I am OLD. Just look around for the people who seem too old to be at an anime convention without children to chaperon and I’ll probably be in the middle of that group… crying. Not because I’m sad that I’m old, no. I’ll be crying because all the hot high school and college aged girls who love anime today didn’t exist when I was their age. I mean, when the hell did anime become socially acceptable for sexy cheerleaders to like?!
Dammit. Sometimes life is so unfair.
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