Snow Patrol - Chasing Cars (Blake Jarrel & Topher Jones Remix)

I really like this remix.. even more than the original track. It was on Armin's A State of Trance ep 262 & 264 as well as Gabriel & Dresden's recent set @ Flex Music in Reykjavik Iceland.

Family Tahoe trip

What better family game than Texas hold em?

Home cooked dinner at the cabin in which I skipped cause I was still very full from the IHOP brunch we had earlier.

Buffet at the Harrah's...stuffed!

Emerald Bay

I think this is the first time my mom has been near water in a long time.

Kayaking at the South side.

Ellie, the Chess Grandmaster...wait, I thought that was me?

A pier down the road by our cabin.

We took a joint family trip to Tahoe over the weekend...stayed at a cabin in the Tahoma area. Viks and I are fortunate in that our families get along pretty well. Not too much family drama..the way I like it!

Hilda and Rahul's wedding

We drove up Sat to the Bay Area for Hilda and Rahul's wedding.

Vicky's

Jevin is not impressed with my parenting skills.



For Viks' birthday, Gess & Eric took us out to Vicky's diner. Viks likes to play with the twins a lot...I think at least once a week to get her "baby fix."

Toshiba MT700 R.I.P

Sigh..The Toshiba MT-700 HDMI input has failed on me three times. The picture would go in-n-out. It has also been sent to Toshiba three times and each time they have replaced the main board. Long story short, I am getting a refund. It will take about a month or so til I get my original purchase amount. I have nothing but praise for Toshiba for the way they have handled my projector issues. Fast repair service (with Toshiba paid overnight shipping and as little as three business days total turnaround time), almost 100% no hassle, and standing behind their products.

I have already replaced the MT700 with the Sharp XV-Z2000 from Costco.com (great price + no hassle return policy). With 1080p front projectors coming, there is a good selection of high quality 720p front projectors out there at very reasonable prices. The Sharp was actually the original DLP front projector I had wanted back in Jan 2005 but it's street price at the time was ~$1000 more than the Toshiba. Today the Sharp can be had for 66% off it's Jan 2005 street price. It's really an amazing value. The Sharp is the closest fit for me in terms of resolution, brightness, contrast, offset , throw distance, etc. However, one caveat is that the throw distance is in fact a bit shorter so that at the same distance back, a larger image is projected. The larger image size does not fit my current 92" screen. Ideally a 100" screen is a good fit but they seem to be only available on fixed frame whereas I am looking for a manual pull-down. I'll be swapping out for a 106" Da-Lite Model C High Contrast Matted White screen. I'll also need to adjust the shelf height. Viks is gonna love the fact that I'll be drilling more holes ;-)

Feeling greedy..at the right time.

You ever see that VW commercial where the guy has that VW heavily on his mind no matter what he is doing? After a bit of puppy-eyes, I was able to get approval from Viks to get a new TV set for our loft.

I narrowed the choices to the Panasonic consumer models vs the Panasonic professional model TH-50PH9UK. In the end, I picked the consumer version TH-50PX600U. While I really liked the "tweakability" options as well as the understated appearance of the TH-50PH9UK, the TH-50PH9UK is just a bare bones monitor. All the things I consider"essential" are a la carte with the 9uk. If you add a component card module, HDMI and/or DVI module, stand or mount, and ATSC tuner the cost well exceeds TH-50PX600U. TH-50PX600U swayed me over for the built in NTSC & ATSC tuner, higher number of standard inputs ( 2 component, 2 HDMI, etc), the cable card feature, and the in-home service (with 9uk you have to bring in to service yourself). Like the 9uk, I also think the TH-50PX600U has an understated look. There was also a recent AVS promo via a forum sponsor which made the 600u the best deal for me. Incidentally, the 600u price went up 10% several days after I pulled the trigger.

I use to ridicule Plasma technology years back for having subpar PQ and being exorbitantly priced. But as typical, price to performance improves over time as economies of scale kicks in. Many of the anecdotal criticisms (lifespan, burn in, etc,) no longer apply.

From antennaweb.org we are ~50 miles from the major towers. However with rabbit ears, we can actually receive HD OTA but it can go in-n-out. We agreed to get cable HD since I watch of a lot of Discovery (although TW just aquired Adelphia and Discovery is not online yet). It turns out cable HD is not as expensive as I thought. The cable card is much cheaper to lease than a set top box but as of today, you do sacrifice the two way features like on demand, PPV, etc. We are leasing a HD DVR for downstairs.

So the commitment I have made to Viks is that I have to be working out 75%+ of the time if the TV is on. The first week I did not honor the commitment due to set up time and other things going on but starting this week, the deal has been in effect.