Meet me in Montauk...

District 9

2009-08-15T22:47:00.001-07:00

Loved this film. Good sci-fi films are few and far between.

Fried!

2009-08-10T18:32:00.003-07:00

My faithful Sunfire amp is fried! Sending it to WA to get repaired.

Now you must wear the cone of shame

2009-06-08T16:13:00.000-07:00

I almost take Pixar for granted nowadays. Before I even see a Pixar feature, it's almost a foregone conclusion in my mind that the movie is going to be excellent. But I have to admit, the trailer for Up didn't really lure me in. Let' see - you have a grumpy old man, house flown by balloons, boy scout stowaway, a silly bird, and a talking dog. Uh huh. But the unanimous praise piqued my curiosity. To cut to the chase, Up was surprisingly brilliant. And I now understand why Pixar did not reveal too much in the trailer. It all comes to together beautifully at the end. I left the theater with the same level of satisfaction as Wall-E, Ratatouille, and The Incredibles.

What amazes me is how Pixar can keep cranking them out year after year - taking all too familiar themes that would no doubt = EPIC fail with live action. But somehow the combo of CG animation, interesting characters, and brilliant screenplay/storytelling, Pixar is able to consistently produce works that become instant classics. In a way, I feel bad for Dreamworks. Other than Shrek and Kung Fu Panda, I can't really remember many of their animated works.

My only criticism of Up was on the technical presentation of the film and not on the film itself. I had a $8.50 off movie cash voucher and paid $4 extra for the 3D version. If you ask me, 3D is a gimmick. Yah, you can see the 3D effect and it's cool at times but it really did not enhance the viewing experience for me and picture is also less bright with the glasses. Maybe I'm old school but I think 2D offers a more satisfying viewing experience.

Property Management experience so far

2009-06-05T11:59:00.000-07:00

We are currently using a property management company to help rent out and manage our house when we move. The PM company also happens to be our HOA so my thinking was the property management piece and the HOA piece would work out better for myself and the tenant since both are under the same roof. I also chose this company since they are an AMO member per irem.org. But as of right now I think the certification has given me a false sense of reassurance. Annoyances thus far,

1) First tenant prospect wanted to move in end of May but our ad clearly stated "available end of June." The property manager did not bother to ask the prospective tenant his desired move in date so when he came to visit, we both looked at each other and said "Oh..."

2) Second tenant prospect who came to see the house did not see to be aware that our house is a 3bd+loft/2.5bath and she was looking for a 4 bedroom. Doh! When I asked the second tenant prospect if she was briefed by our PM on the home specs, she sounded very uncertain.

3) There was at least 1 -2 day lapse on the craigslist and backpage.com ads.

4) Today I receive an email from the PM asking me who our HOA is when I already informed her that her company was our HOA several weeks back!

Coming from a customer support environment years ago, I think I am a fairly tolerant and patient person but I have to admit that I feel a little bit of frustration that our PM is not on top of things.

I want to see it again

2009-05-08T09:53:00.000-07:00

(one of my favorite scenes with Bones. Karl Urban nails it.).

Yes, it was that good. Now, I don't know if I'd go as far to say that non Trekkies will flock to see this film (like the way Peter Jackson made it "cool" to be a LOTR fan or Sam Raimi with his Spiderman trilogy) but I think if there is ever going to be a Trek film to hook mainstream audiences in, this is it. When I was in line I was pleasantly surprised to see a diverse group of people anxiously waiting and during the movie, there was plenty of applause during key character introductions, key scenes as well as the ending. It was great "opening day" experience.

On the film itself - the writing was snappy, the chemistry among the new Enterprise crew was great, and the visual effects were very impressive (especially on the Imax screen!). Generally, the character performances were very good but I got huge laughs from Bones (Karl Urban), Chekov (Anton Yelchin) and Scottie (Simon Pegg). I felt these guys really captured the essence of the original characters and thankfully without the SNL parody.

Some misses - At times I felt the pace was a bit frenetic. After the emotionally charged, EPIC prologue, the ending was not quite on the same caliber. Sulu (John Cho) was kind of treated as an afterthought. Nero (Eric Bana) didn't make much of an impression on me. I don't think it was Eric Bana's fault. I think the script made him too one-dimensional. He simply didn't have the cool lines like Khan had in Star Trek II or the Shakespeare quotes that General Chang had in Star Trek VI. My nerd nitpick - I had mixed feelings on the appearance of the Enterprise, specifically the Nacelles. I won't spoil it by going into detail however. And lastly, some of the memorable quotes Trekkies all know and love felt shoehorned at times.

So does this film replace Khan as the all time best Star Trek film? My own view is probably not. But I'd say it is hands down better than ANY of the TNG films (yes, even First Contact) and maybe 2nd to the "Genesis" films and Undiscovered Country. JJ Abrams has definitely brought the Trek universe back to life. Day one purchase on Blu Ray for sure.

Update: I recently read that the movie was shot on 35mm film and did not use IMAX or digital HD cameras. For the IMAX presentation, apparently upconversion or "IMAX DMR"was used. I think that would explain the softer picture I experienced at my local IMAX theater compared to when I saw The Dark Knight which had used an IMAX camera for specific shots. These days I much prefer digital DLP over film theaters for the sharpness, detail and overall image pop. I never thought I'd ever say that film projectors are just too soft for me now. I might go to the local Krikorian theater which has a Christie 2K DLP projector for a 2nd viewing.

Bachelor life..sort of

2009-05-04T15:13:00.000-07:00

Since the Mrs has been out of town, I've had no motivation to cook for myself. I've been eating pizza for the past two days and oddly enough I am not tired of it yet. Good thing the NBA playoffs are on to help me burn off the calories. Maybe I'll try El Pollo Loco on Wed, have Nick's Burger on Thurs, and order Thai food on Friday. Of course it could all change depending on my mood that day but man, I just don't feel like cooking anything!

I picked up the X-men Blu Rays for at Best Buy and each movie comes with a movie cash ticket. I plan to see Wolverine anyway when Viks comes back so it brings the effective price of each Blu Ray to ~$8 each. I think $9.99 is my new target price for catalog Blu Rays. The picture quality on the X-men movies are great! But what impressed me even more is the DTS HD MA tracks. Having watched the SD versions two weekends ago (I was trying to convince myself the Blu Ray upgrade was unnecessary), I can honestly say the upgrade in sound quality is substantial and has made the purchase all the more sweeter. Ok, so this is going to sound NERDY but at the end of X2, I kind of wonder if the film's ending was inspired by Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. If you're a fan of both you'll know what I mean. The ending of Khan is one of my all time favorite movie endings.

I have a whole list of "to do's" for the house before we move. I've applied touch up paint to the walls and have changed few energy saving bulbs (so expensive). Our backyard gate needs some work. But since the house is still relatively new, I guess there isn't that much work to do. But you'd be surprised by just how much time is required to complete little things here and there. Packing is a pain but I've been slowly putting non essential things in boxes to get ready for the move. Apparently when you move long distances, the rate is by weight and not hours. So I've been using our bathroom weight scale and documenting the weight of each box to kind of help guess what our bill is going to be like.

San Diego Zoo

2009-04-26T00:36:00.001-07:00

I posted more videos on my Facebook page. Blogspot seems slower to upload and process.

My April fools

2009-04-02T12:22:00.000-07:00

So I thought we had a good prospective tenant yesterday. He came with his friend, checked out the house and seemed to be pleased. And there were good vibes. But then toward the end he asked if the house would be available in early May. Doh! What was disappointing was that in our ad, it explicitly stated "available end of June" ! And furthermore, I am not sure why our Property Manager did not check with the prospective tenant during the initial phone screening. What irks me even more is that Viks and I spent a lot of time cleaning the house only to get a false alarm. But ok. I suppose not -all- is bad. We still have time and I'd actually prefer a married couple to increase the chances of a continuous multi year lease.

Rediscovering Sugar Tax

2009-03-31T16:23:00.000-07:00

For some odd reason today, I just felt like dusting off OMD's Sugar Tax and giving it a spin. I remember having a Facebook conversation about the CD with an old friend not too long ago. I then remembered why this is my favorite OMD album. Yes, their singles album with Paul Humphreys is their most popular but I would argue that Andy McCluskey's solo effort with Sugar Tax is the most beautiful. Sugar Tax is one of early electronica CDs that convinced me that electronic music does not always equate to cold and sterile.

I think I just have a weakness for melancholy music. From the jilted lover in "Was It Something I Said?" to love not returned in "Then You Turn Away" to the heartbreaking, closing track, "All that Glitters" - I just love how the unusual title of this album makes perfect sense after you listen to the CD - that for the "sugar" of love, one pays dearly. Now, not every song requires a box of kleenex. Part of what has made Sugar Tax age so well for me is the variety. There are upbeat songs like like "Pandora's box" to the cover of Kraftkwerk's "Neon Lights." Such a wonderful album from start to finish.

Seagate redeems themselves

2009-03-20T09:22:00.000-07:00

Back in Jan, my Seagate 7200.11 500gb bricked . Seagate had really fumbled in their initial handling of the issue and so I intentionally waited until the dust had settled before deciding on my options. So after sorting through all the noise, the rants, etc. I came across this great thread on the "data recovery" process.

Long story short, I received my drive yesterday from i365 and it works great! All my data appears to be there too. The turnaround was pretty fast. Sent it in Monday evening, i365 performed the recovery Tue, and I received the drive back yesterday.

I had already moved on to a WD 1TB Black Caviar so I guess I will relegate the Seagate as a backup drive.

The brighter side

2009-03-11T13:42:00.000-07:00

I was thinking today that as long as I have a job, I kind of like this deep recession. More shopping deals. Longer time to accumulate on oversold equities. And more downward pressure on home pricing leading to more affordable housing. (Edit: yes I know the above comment is a bit short sighted..but humor me)

Speaking of housing, we've been looking, looking, looking(!) at bay area home prices. Right now, I am thinking 2010 could possibly be an OK time to purchase a home. The investment club at my work thinks 2011 is the ideal year to start looking. With all the "it's the end of the world!!!" headlines and overall uncertainty, I don't think there is a need to rush this year. For a long time I've asked myself and others what made bay area housing so high even after the dot come bubble burst. I am now in the camp that thinks bay area home prices did not dramatically fall after the dot com bubble due to all the "easy money" from the relaxed lending practices (sub prime, Alt-A <--> CDSs) coupled with stock options. But now lending practices are much tighter and stock options are largely a thing of the past for many people. I guess the wild cards are the unemployment #s from this housing bubble burst and how much cash is actually on the sidelines.

I just had a property manager come look at our house this morning and will be advertising soon. Hopefully we will find a good tenant to move in as soon as we leave.

A chimp can do no worse

2009-03-02T22:29:00.000-08:00

That was the conclusion a friend and I had reached today in predicting what the economy and the stock market will be like in the coming years ahead.

So far I have not found strong consensus from the "experts" on a bottom..

Harry S Dent on Fox News who predicted the Japan crash in the 1990s thinks a Great Depression is coming. I thought the link to demographics is an interesting perspective.
Itulip recommends gold and short term T-bills until things stabilize (although the price of gold today vs last month seems to point that it is not a good hedge against the stock market). We are already worse than dot com and could be half way to Great Depression losses.
Not all doom and gloom. Niall Fergusson believes that this isn’t the end of the US but more likely an opportunity for the US.

I'm really tempted to break from discipline and reallocate majority of of our 401K holdings to bonds now. It's not an easy thing to decide since I know that missing key "up days" hurts long term performance and at the same timem long term charts of the indexes reveal plenty of head fakes. Today's drop is really testing my belief in buying and holding for the long term. I think what scares me right now is that the US indexes will follow the behavior of the Nikkei 225. 19 years after the crash of 1990, and it has not recovered from it's peak. I am still trying to understand the similarities and differences (if any) between the Japanese government response and it's effects back in the 90s vs US government response today.

Edit 3/3/09: Today, I was looking at the historic S&P 500 P/E . I think the historic PE for S&P 500 is around 10? And from the chart , the average P/E during a recession is around 5-8. Right now S&P500 PE is around 12. So to get to 8, S&P500 would need to go to 450-500 level. So it would not surprise me if the indexes fell even further before coming back up. As to when, is anyone's guess (including a chimp).

On my mind

2009-02-17T16:38:00.000-08:00

Job is secure - for now *gulp*.
Current home - Should we hire a property manager or ask a friend who has experience to help us? Mixing friendship and business is always tricky but I (naively?) think it can be done.
Future BA home - Less expensive bay area home + private schooling vs More expensive bay area home + better public schooling? Strictly from a $ point of view, I know the number of kids greatly influences the ROI. If I draw from my own public schooling experiences, I would have never thought that I would even consider private schooling but with the looming budget cuts I am wondering if even schools that are historically above average to excellent will still be that way 5 to 10 years from now. I really don't want us to have to move every 5 years.
Just about done with 2008 taxes. Thank you Turbo Tax!
Not looking forward to all the cleaning and packing in the upcoming months.
401K & investing - from all accounts, this year looks to be just as scary as last quarter. Should we reallocate more to cash? Or go long on oversold blue chips? Tough call.
Street Figher IV is out tomorrow. Hadouken!! The X-arcade stick has a few quirks with the PS3 but for single player action, I am good to go.

Blockbuster movie marathon

2009-02-12T17:35:00.000-08:00

Well, I can safely say that I've caught up on a lot of movies. I signed up for the Blockbuster "3 at a time + unlimited in store exchange" plan. Jan was a good month to cram in the movie watching since it's gonna be busy for us in the coming months in terms of finding a tenant, preparing for the move, and Viks needs more quiet time before her last set of OKAPs. I had to get it out of my system! With a few exceptions I was able to see most of the desired Blu Ray movies on my list. If you follow the boards, there are complaints for both Blockbuster and Netflix with regards to wait times on certain popular releases but Blockbuster had a lot of the Blu Ray movies I wanted to see in their brick & mortar stores when the online service had a short to long wait and vice versa. It worked out pretty well for me. That being said, I think HD movies on demand can't come soon enough. Given that we live in an age of "ITunes / instant gratification" I felt silly that I needed to constantly drive back and forth to exchange movies or use the snail mail option to receive the next set of movies in my queue. I think for movies I just want to rent, I would be willing to watch a more compressed HD lite version if I had unlimited on demand and the price was less than say, $20-$30 per month. Here's what I watched,

Bank Job - Nothing groundbreaking here but a good Jason Statham / bank heist movie.
Under Siege 2: Dark Territory - This is my favorite Steven Seagal movie. I hadn't watched it in years so I wanted to revisit it. I forgot that Kathryn Heigl was in this movie before her rise to fame. PQ is surprising good for a movie this old but it breaks my heart that this movie does not have a lossless audio track.
Street Kings - If you enjoyed Training Day, you might like this one although Training Day is easily the better of the two IMO
Pineapple Express - When you need your stoner comedy fix, give this one a rental. I usually don't like James Franco's characters but he is pretty damn funny in this film. A very different type of role for James Franco and he pulled it off very well.
Eagle Eye - I can't help but think that Shia Labeouf plays the same character in all his movies. A decent rental.
There Will Be Blood - Daniel Day Lewis was really, really good in this film. I enjoyed watching the similarities as well as the differences of how he and the minister treated the people around them. This is one of those films where I appreciated the story and the acting but it's not a film I would want to revisit over and over.
Babylon AD - I knew this was a bad movie but I had to satisfy my curiosity. But yes, the movie is craptastic!
Death Race - The trailer for this film is ridiculous but the action is actually entertaining and I liked that the film didnt take itself too seriously. A very good rental with great PQ and the audio is excellent demo material.
Event Horizon - Meh..mediocre sci-fi horror. Another movie where I needed to satisfy my curiousity.
Gone Baby Gone - A good crime thriller that really seems to immerse you into the heart of Boston. I say "seems" because I've never been to Boston. This was a good movie that I enjoyed watching for the acting and the story pacing (nice direction from Ben Affleck) but I don't think I'll revisit it again.
Doomsday - I think one of the best dystopic / viral outbreak movie that I have seen is 28 Days Later. After seeing Doomsday I still feel that way. Still, I thought Doomsday was an OK rental.
Forgetting Sarah Marshall - Not as funny as I was led to believe but it had it's moments and overall it's an endearing film. The chemistry between Jason Segel and Kristen Bell or Mila Kunis just wasn't there for me. The Blu ray has mediocre PQ which is disappointing considering how recent the film is.
The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor - I miss Rachel Weisz. For me, the Mummy movies are not the same without her. And there was not enough Jet Li! I liked this movie more than the critics but it's mostly forgettable. Picture and sound are excellent.
Shinobi - this film is sort of like the anime Ninja Scroll crossed with Romeo and Juliet. Some of the visual effects were a bit on the cheese /amateur side but I did enjoy the choreography of the fight scenes. Good rental!
Righteous Kill - Maybe for diehard DeNiro and Pacino fans only. The twist was way too predictable. Rent this if you have nothing better to queue up.
Clear and Present Danger - I love Harrison Ford as Jack Ryan. EE and DNR are an annoyance but I would not mind picking this one up in the < $ 10 Blu Ray bargain bin on the strength of the movie itself.
Chungking Express - I have the DVD but I wanted to see if the Blu Ray produced a substantial upgrade in picture and sound quality. I would say there is a noticeable upgrade in PQ but I think the film itself was never razor sharp to begin with. So this Blu Ray is not the best HT demo material in my view but if you are a big fan of the movie then it's well worth checking out.
The Forbidden Kingdom - Entertaining and some good choreographed fight sequences between Jackie Chan and Jet Li. A good rental!
Star Wars: The Clone Wars - This should have been a straight to video release. Nice try George. Picture is good. Sound is average - I expected more given the Star Wars universe. While the feature film was ok, I am actually interested in the TV series now.
10,000 BC - Based on the reviews, I came in with really low expectations. And it helped. This movie is not great by any means but I've seen worst.
The Condemned - Kind of a rip off of Running Man. I the film itself was confused of it's intent. It preaches against violence but it has a ton of violence to appeal to it's target audience. Nonetheless, it's a decent rental if you're in the mood for some gratuitious violence.
The Doors - I am a big fan of Oliver Stone but I couldn't really get into this movie. Maybe because I am not a big fan of The Doors. Still, it was interesting just to see Val Kilmer in this role.
Smart People - It's not a fair direct comparison to films like Garden State or Juno but I think the reactions are the same. You either think it's off the beaten path or pretentious drivel. I was a bit worried in the first 20 minutes that it was trying too hard to be "off the beaten path" but I ended up enjoying this movie in the end. It's not really a purchase for me though. I couldn't quite swallow Dennis Quaid making out with Sarah Jessica Parker . Like Juno, Ellen Page is a bit too precocious in this film to be believable.
Burn After Reading - After the dark "No Country for Old Men" this is a nice black comedy from the Coen Brothers. Brad Pitt is hilarious in this movie! "Osbourne Cox? I thought you might be worried... about the security... of your sh*t. "
Max Payne - I know the critics hated this movie but I actually enjoyed it. No heavy thinking required. Some nice "bullet time" action sequences. The picture and sound is amazing on this disc. Good rental.
Dead Space - I really enjoyed the PC game. So watching this Blu Ray rounded out the experience for me. A good rental if you're a fan of the game.
Anger Management - Average comedy that kind of requires you to suspend disbelief at the end in terms of how things are wrapped up. A cheap ending if you ask me. An OK rental.
Enchanted - A little too girly for me but still an OK twist to the Cinderella/Sleeping Beauty formula. Very Disney I must say.
Bangkok Dangerous - Based on reviews, I came in with really low expectations. And this might have helped my reaction a little bit. Some of the action sequences are done well but the overall direction is awkward with some really silly moments in the second half. The film tries to portray the lonely assassin but it doesn't quite hit it's target (no pun intended). The character arc just felt forced and not very convincing at all. An OK rental.
21 - Based on the true story but follows the usual Hollywood formula - Decent rental. Has a nice documentary that explains how to count cards. Now everyone who watches this will think they can beat the house. Nice!
Vantage Point - The different "vantage points" didn't gel all that well together. Meh. An OK rental.
Rocknrolla - Be sure to pause if you get up to go pee or grab a soda or you might miss an important name that is key to understanding just exactly what the hell is going on. The film almost seems too slick for it's own good. I think Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels is still Guy Ritchie's all time best but I enjoyed this film.
Gone in 60 Seconds - I'll stick to The Fast & the Furious when I need my car fix.
The Sum of All Fears - I don't understand all the Ben Affleck haters. I thought he was actually pretty good as Daredevil and in this movie, he does a respectable job in portraying a younger, "green" Jack Ryan. Oversharpening and overzealous scrubbing hurt the video presentation but if this disc goes < $10 Blu Ray bargain bin, I'll consider a purchase.
Deception - Terrible script = terrible movie. But if you want a Hollywood depiction of sex clubs..
3:10 to Yuma - I normally don't watch too much from the western genre but I did enjoy Unforgiven and I fgured 3:10 to Yuma would be good too and it was a good watch.
Earth The Biography - I learned a lot in this documentary about Earth's history and how the Earth "works.". PQ is not as good as the Planet Earth Series so it's not a disc to demo your home theater but it's a good rental if you like documentaries like Planet Earth.
Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World. Good movie. Mediocre picture quality but the soundtrack on the other hand = WOW. This Blu Ray has one of the most immersive 5.1 DTS HD MA surround tracks I have ever listened to. The audio is demo material! I wish the same could have been said of the picture quality.
Serenity - I never saw Firefly but I really enjoyed this movie. The picture is sharp and pristine. The DTS HD MA 5.1 is sure to make the neighbors angry - very demo worthy. If Frys still has the HD DVD version (which "only" has a DD+ 5.1) I might pick it as a stop gap until the Blu Ray becomes cheaper.
The Assasination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford - Great performances here, especially from Brad Pitt. This is a more character driven film so don't expect a re-spin of 3:10 to Yuma.
A Scanner Darkly: I fell asleep 30 min into the movie and woke up at about 50 min into the movie. The movie is not bad by any means but I think the rotoscope animation is just not for me but I can understand the effect on the viewer that the filmmakers were after.
Baraka - I read a lot of buzz about this film so I decided to check it out. I can see why people appreciate this film as much as they do. It's sort of a meditation on life and challenges the preconceptions that one might have about the world. Yes, I live in a bubble! Sometimes it does borderline on the preachy side. Part of the buzz was the stunning transfer from the original 70mm (65mm for image, 5 mm for sound) print. Very rich contrast, color, and the image is razor sharp - the level of detail is astonishing. The lossless sound is excellent too. For the videophiles, there is a nice documentary about the painstaking 8K (!!!) ultra high resolution scanning and restoration process. So for the Blu Ray, the image had to be down rez'd to a pitiful 2K resolution (1920x1080) :P

Superbowl Sunday

2009-02-01T23:00:00.000-08:00

Several of Viki's fellow residents came over today for Superbowl Sunday. Although it was a heart breaking loss for the Cardinals, I think many people would agree that it was a great game. A lot of memorable plays. I had my fair share of unhealthy food (but I'll work it off to the Lakers vs Knicks tomorrow night). I was able to adjust the projector to "Sports" mode + high bulb setting and with the blinds down, the image was very watchable even at 3:30pm. Given the age of my bulb, I was pleasantly surprised. The image contrast was much better when it got dark at around 5:30pm. I haven't watched a big game on the big screen for a long time and I forgot how much fun it is. The wires hanging down from the projector are indeed an eye sore. I can't wait until we move into our next house where I can hopefully hide the wires.

Edit: I forgot to say that we also tried out the Intel 3D glass right at the end of 1st half. I did see the balls coming out at the beginning of the Monsters vs. Aliens trailer but for the most part the trailer did not seem very 3D like to my eyes.

Switched our home insurance

2009-01-21T13:34:00.000-08:00

You know how you get tons of junk mail and before you even bother opening it, you instinctively just toss it into the recycling bin? It's that time of year for us to renew our home insurance policy and much to my dismay, our rates have steadily increased over the years. This week I got an offer mail from Western Mutual home insurance and I almost tossed it out. Glad I didn't. They seem to have have decent ratings (and a few bad ones) and good feedback from A. M. Best Company and the Better Business Bureau . At the worst case, Western Mutual has much better ratings than our old insurance company. Long story short, I felt comfortable and made the switch to Western Mutual today. With even more coverage, our home insurance dropped by more than 50% from our old insurance company. I had no idea we were overpaying that much.

The one caveat is that they don't cover "rentals only." They require coverage of a primary residence as a pre-requisite to covering rental properties. So I am working out a solution for that right now.

But man, once in a blue moon, you actually can get some useful junk mail!

Curse you Seagate!

2009-01-15T10:27:00.000-08:00

After two WD drives failed on me several years ago, I poo poo'd WD drives and switched over to Seagate. I then had a 320GB Seagate die on me but received an RMA (the 5 year warranty came in handy) and wrote it off as bad luck.

Last night I couldn't boot up my PC all the way. I checked my BIOS several times and my Seagate 7200.11 500GB drive would just not be detected. I then placed the drive in my SATA USB drive and it was also not detected in my laptop. I know my SATA USB drive works and is a good validation that my Seagate 7200.11 500GB drive is a bum drive because I have my back up Seagate 7200.10 500GB drive in it and it tested fine as of last night *knock on wood*.

So then I did some research on the forums and it turns out there is supposedly a known FW issue on the 7200.11 generation of Seagate drives. My symptoms mirror the OP's spot on. The issue seems to be the most pervasive on 1TB drives but 500GB drives are affected as well . In fact, if you go to the general Seagate internal HDD forum, there are a staggering number of complaints and still no clear resolution despite the issue being known for at least several months now. So if you're reading this and in the market for 1TB drives, beware of the Seagate 7200.11 drives!

So what are the options now?
1) I could RMA but I think there is a real risk I could get a drive with the same issue again. It doesn't seem like Seagate has formally acknowledged the problem yet. Besides that, I don't think I can be without my computer working for the time to process the RMA.
2) Try 7200.12 generation - Too new. Not enough user feedback yet. And I'm not exactly Seagate's biggest supporter at the moment.
3) Hitachi Deaths..I mean Deskstar? No confidence.
4) Make peace with WD ? I might actually go for the 300GB VelociRaptors now. But as a stop gap, maybe use a WD10000LSRTL 1TB drive. There aren't many reviews yet. Still too new I suppose.
5) Samsung? Newegg reviews on HD103UJ 1TB are OK but not great.

So it looks like I'll have to pick my poison here. If only SSDs were more price competitive at this point!

Gonna be a landlord

2009-01-14T14:08:00.000-08:00

Starting this summer, we'll be looking to rent out our home. Off and on and I have been reading "Propery Management for Dummies." I finally got through it and I was surprised by the number of good tips and gotchas. It was a good read and eye-opening. It would appear that if you really want to cross your T's and dot your I's there are a lot of forms to be signed,

- Lease agreement
- Addendum to Lease agreement
- Rental Application
- Holding deposit agreement and receipt
- Statement of rental policy (given at the time of rental application)
- Rental application verification form
- Guarantee of Lease or Rental agreement
- Notice of applicant denial
- Policies & Rules aka House Rules
- Smoke detector agreement
- Pets agreement
- Notice of Tenant intent to vacate

Some feedback I've received from the real estate investing gurus at my work is that out of the above, the forms you mainly need are

- Application
- Lease
- Move in report

and the rest are not as critical. I think because it's my first time going through this that I may choose to use a bit more.

Blind buys

2009-01-02T13:26:00.000-08:00

I try not to blind buy anything anymore because I use to do it for DVD and I ended up selling a fair number at a fraction of my purchase price. Blu Ray is even more expensive today so it's even riskier. But even today there are temptations. Those darn sales!

First the good news. I normally don't buy anything that can be seen on TV but my co-worker is a big fan of BoB and we have similar tastes in films. All reviews seem to be consistent in that "if you liked Saving Private Ryan, you'll LOVE Band of Brothers.." so it seemed like a safe bet. Amazon and BB have a great price on it now so it was an impulse purchase for me. I was skeptical that because this was a HBO television series, the production values would be low. Not true. There is a high level of authenticity and it does not feel low budget at all. The battle sequences are pretty intense and there is always a feeling of tension. With 10 episodes, you really do get to know the characters. I was also skeptical that because this was a HBO television series, the picture and sound would be lacking. Again, not true. The 1.78:1 widescreen VC-1 encode looks great. Nice & gritty with flatter looking colors that is appropriate for this type of genre. This guy posted some great screenshots (possible spiloers). It's getting harder and harder to resist a nice 1080p front projector! What surprised me more is the DTS-HD MA 5.1 mix. Dude, it rocks. The battle sequences have deep LFE and make good use of your surrounds. At the same time, you can hear dialogue very clearly and the quieter scenes with outdoor sounds/distant gunshots/etc. sound great.

The not-as-good-but-not-super-horrible-but-still-kind-of-embarrassed -> I did in fact blind buy Hitman because it was on sale and I wanted Amazon free shipping. I knew the movie was not highly rated but there was enough good feedback on the action sequences that I decided to take a chance on it. For me the film has uneven pacing and the action sequences are good but not as stellar as I was led to believe. PQ is good but the saving grace is that the DTS-HD MA track is impressive as you would expect from this type of action film.

The Usual Dec 2008

2008-12-29T23:45:00.000-08:00

Yogurtworks

I don't know when I'll be flying back up next. So it was good to squeeze in one more Usual!

Dinner with Kuo-Nan's family

2008-12-28T23:22:00.000-08:00

We had dinner with a family friend who is also my old former boss at the first company I worked at. We were playing Charge! on the Wii and later some Texas Hold Em.

In-Laws 30th

2008-12-27T22:35:00.000-08:00

Our families celebrated In-Laws 30th wedding anniversary at Koi Garden in Pleasanton. 30 years - quite a feat.

Mike's LAN Party

2008-12-26T23:59:00.000-08:00

I lugged up my gaming rig just for this and it was worth the lugging. We had a group of six (Mike T, Mike C, Paul, John, Josh, myself) and we played modded UT2004 , C&C Red Alert 3, and some Kane's Wrath from 1pm to almost midnight. Dardy hung out with us as well. I think we scared Christi out of the house. Yah, playing virtually online is fun and more convenient but the experience is just not the same as in-person.

Jason, Jim + SMC's visit

2008-12-22T10:38:00.000-08:00

Jim + SMC's had a short trip to LA this weekend and Jason also happened to be not too far so we all hung out on Sat. BBQ at Lucille's was tempting but when we got there around 7:30pm, the wait was 1.5 hours. Doh. And I thought we were in a recession. The economy seemed pretty healthy at Victoria Gardens. Lesson learned - next time I'll be sure to call ahead to see if I can put my name down and if I can't, I'd at least assess the wait time to decide if the drive out is even worth it. We drove all the out to Victoria Gardens only to drive back and eat at the local Claimjumpers. At least Jim got his beef ribs fix.

Dabbling in home theater PC lite

2008-12-17T15:14:00.001-08:00

With my latest set up, I've had some time now to fiddle around with the LG Blu Ray/HD DVD combo drive. Like most current GPU cards, the GTX260 has dual DVI out so I am using a DVI-HDMI adapter to video feed Blu Ray & HD DVD from the LG to the Panasonic plasma. For sound I am using the onboard motherboard solution feeding into a really old Technics Dolby surround receiver and old Sony tower speakers. Far from audiophile quality but it works and it is still better than TV speakers alone. Because the primary application for my PC is gaming, I did not install Windows Media Center or install a TV tuner card / PVR software or do I have any kind of remote control solution. So yah, fairly bare bones and crude. But my intent all along was just to be able to watch Blu Ray & HD DVD on the plasma at the lowest cost.

For the most part the LG with Cyberlinks works as advertised but with a few quirks. Sometimes I get HDCP compliance issues even though both my Panasonic and my GPU are HDCP compliant. But I've figured out a workaround but it adds an extra manual step.

When there is a new Blu Ray released, sometimes I'll have to update Cyberlinks or else the disc won't play (but to be fair, standalone Blu Ray players + PS3 can also have playback issues that require FW updates).

I had thought my GPU card could allow simultaneous output to two displays at different resolutions but it turns out that in my case when I want to watch HD media content on the Panasonic, I have to manually switch video output from the Dell to the Panasonic via the Nvidia control panel.

Ok, enough of the rants. A positive and very important one to me - without having performed any calibration or adjustments on either the Panasonic or on my PC, the picture quality is actually very good. Deep blacks, color is vivid and overall picture is very sharp.

After experimenting with the LG, I don't know if I'd ever want to build a "real" HTPC. Maybe the Media Center OS would streamline operations but I think the boot up time alone would be a deal breaker for me. I think I am just more of a fan of standalone components when it comes to home theater. But of course if you gave me something like a Niveus media server with capability to distribute A/V to the entire household I could easily change my tune ;-)

Edge enhancement on The Dark Knight blu ray

2008-12-10T10:35:00.000-08:00

Like many other fans, I have been waiting for TDK release on Blu Ray for a long time. I watched it last night and I had mixed feelings on the PQ. The upgrade in resolution over the Standard DVD is pretty obvious but wow, I have to agree with the edge enhancement criticisms. Check out the screen capture and notice the ringing and the overprocessed look. This was the look for a majority of the film. It's pretty disappointing for such a high profile, highly anticipated release. Once you get acclimated to superior quality transfers like "Live Free or Die Hard," "Kill Bill, " and "I Robot" issues like DNR & EE can be distracting.

However, I did enjoy the PQ of the seamlessly integrated IMAX footage where the aspect ratio changes from the 2.40:1 of 35mm film to 1.78:1 of IMAX. While 1.78:1 is not the true IMAX aspect ratio, the clarity is pretty impressive.

The Dolby True HD track also did not disappoint. The action sequence where the Tumbler "evolves" into the motorcycle Batpod is impressive demo material. I don't know if it's just me but I sometimes feel that Warner Dolby True HD tracks have the highs rolled off while Fox DTS-HD MA tracks sound more crisp. But I could be imagining things here.

This was my third viewing of The Dark Knight and I was still very much engrossed by the film that I did not really fixate on the PQ issues.

Calibrating the Dell 2408WFP

2008-12-07T16:23:00.000-08:00

I finally got around to calibrating the Dell this weekend. Out of the box, colors were way oversaturated to the point of having a neon glow. The different preset settings are pretty horrible to say the least. It wasn't distracting while playing games but doing everyday tasks like web browsing would torch my eyes. I used my Eye One and the Eye One Match Ver 3.6.2 and after going through the calibration against 6500K & gamma: 2.2 the settings I arrived at,

Contrast: 62
Brightness: 81*
Red: 72
Green: 66
Blue: 72

* There seems to be no way to measure Brightness with the Eye One Match Ver 3.6.2 even though the walkthough video shows this adjustment. I wonder if they got rid of this in 3.6.2? So my brightness setting was set to my own personal preference.

After going through this exercise, the colors are more natural looking. In fact I am blogging this post on my Lenovo laptop and the "white" background on the Lenovo is definitely not so white compared to the Dell now - more like blue!

Tony and Yuki's wedding

2008-11-22T23:59:00.000-08:00

The in-laws and my mom came down to visit this weekend for Tony and Yuki's wedding. It was a great wedding and trilingual! The best man, Frank, gave his speech in 3 languages -> english, mandarin, and japanese. I thought that was pretty cool. I wish I could speak all three of those languages.

Hooked on Far Cry 2

2008-11-22T02:39:00.000-08:00

The good:

A true next-gen gaming experience. The Dunia game engine = very nice eye candy. I really like the LOD, lighting effects, water effects and reflections, destruction of vegetation/environments, and the non scripted movement of african wildlifel.
FC2 is more forgiving on your hardware than Crysis. I am running the game at 1920x1200 with "very high" settings and getting 30-40fps.
Nonlinear, open world, sandbox ...but you always have a GPS so you're never aimlessly running around.
Non scripted enemy AI but...(see bad below)
Weapons have a solid feel and recoil as you would expect. I -love- sniping!
Weapons jam - especially the ones you pick up left over from the enemy AI. it can be an annoyance but it's a plus to me since it makes the game more challenging. You never know when you're gonna be in a really tough spot!

The bad:

AI can be outright dumb.
After you clear out an enemy guard post and leave for like 10 min and come back, the same post respawns baddies again. wtf?
Enemy can take massive hits in the chest and still be limping - they must be superhuman.
Buddy missions don't offer that much incentive for completion.
A LOT of driving and/or boating. Going from mission to mission can be repetitive and tedious.
The requirement for regularly getting meds to treat your malaria is lame and adds nothing to further your character or the game IMO.
Night and day cycle is cool but night time graphics aren't as rich. Enemy AI does not seem to react less at night either.

I know I have more bads than goods but overall the strength of the good outweighs the bad for me. I'm hooked!

Company year end shutdown and travel restriction

2008-11-20T09:53:00.000-08:00

My company just recently mandated a week long shutdown between X-mas and new years.

It's obvious that these are cost-cutting moves but this is the first time in my 8 years here that we've had a mandatory shutdown and what is also interesting to me is the relatively short notice. So this tells me,

1) Our executives are trying really hard to cut costs in order to save jobs.

or

2) Our executives are really unsure of how deep this recession is or how long this recession will last and we are really in a desperate situation before a broad-based layoff.

Company travel has also been heavily restricted. Because of the travel restriction, I won't be flying up to the bay area for a (long?) while. The ban on travel is not all bad. In fact, in many ways it's a good thing. More green and it forces us to "eat our own dog food." Not that we don't already as it is but it forces us to accelerate adoption of our "virtual" and "collaborative" technology even more so that we can later brag about the cost savings to our customers -> they then "oooo" and "aahhh" and in turn buy more of our gear resulting in our stock price soaring to unprecedented levels -> I can then retire early and the Mrs. and I ride off into the sunset. Umm...yah.

Star Trek 11 ("Star Trek 0") trailer

2008-11-15T02:23:00.000-08:00

We also got to check out the exclusive Star Trek 11 trailer shown right before Quantum of Solace (and it was in crisp DLP!) I guess some guy bootlegged this one as it is not on the movie sites just yet. There are a number of familiar faces that are going to be in this movie!

- Syler - I mean, Zachary Quinto, is going to be playing a good guy now .. Spock!
- Simon Pegg as Scotty !
- John Cho as Sulu !
- Karl Urban as 'Bones' McCoy !
- Wynona Ryder as Amanda Grayson.
- Jennifer Morrison as Kirk's mom.
- Eric Bana as 'Nero' (bad guy)
- Leonard Nimoy as Old Spock.

This new Star Trek reboot looks wicked cool. I love the sense of urgency in the trailer's music. This one might get a midnight showing from me next May. I really enjoyed J.J. Abrams work on Cloverfield and MI: 3 so here's hoping the Star Trek franchise get some redemption from the mediocre 'Next Generation' films.

update 11/17/08: New trailer in HD is released here Ahhh ... it is much better in HD.

Quantum of Solace

2008-11-15T02:01:00.000-08:00

Just came back from it. I think a person's reaction to Quantum of Solace will have a lot to do with how he/she felt about Paul Greengrass' Bourne movies. I personally loved Supremacy and Ultimatum. Quantum is not as emotionally resonant however. I think Rotten Tomatoes is spot on for this one.

We saw it at our local Krikorian in Redlands. I even called the theater yesterday to find out which showings had were on the big screen. "Theater #11." Cool. It turns out their theater #11 also has the Christie 2K DLP projector. So we were able to watch 007 in the biggest theater room in the house as well as in digital. It was nice. As I've mentioned in a previous post, I love DLP in commercial theaters. It makes going to the movies fun again.

Fallout 3

2008-11-11T21:56:00.001-08:00

Lately I have been pretty immersed in Fallout 3. I have never been a fan of RPG type games but there are a number of standout elements of this game that sucked me in and have managed to keep me playing. First, the graphics are just flat out amazing. I love the bleak visuals and the attention to detail. The world is huge and because the visuals are so gorgeous, it makes exploration actually fun. There are some moments that are truly epic and you just want to stand there and soak in the landscape. I've always had a prejudice against RPG type games because I've always felt the exploration part required way too much time and going through the menu systems seemed like such a chore. While the exploration does take longer than a linear first person shooter, there is a good compass "GPS" device that works well and the menu system is actually fairly straightforward. The storyline is interesting and has that "choose your own adventure" piece in which the choices you make affect the future outcome of your character. What has been kind of overwhelming for me is when you gain experience points and you have the options to enhance specific skills of your character. I have a hard time knowing what I should choose so I often just guess. There probably is no right or wrong though. What really made me give this game a try is the fact that you can play Fallout 3 like a first person shooter. You can toggle between first person or third person view.

I would not be surprised if Fallout 3 reaches that "2008 Game of the Year" status. It really is one of those special games to experience if you're a PC gaming fan (or console fan). I wouldn't go as far to say that am I now an RPG convert but I am very glad I got into this game and that my perceptions around RPGs are now very different.

"Star Wars" - an a capella tribute to John Williams

2008-11-06T17:23:00.001-08:00

This is awesome. I was grinning ear to ear.

John Williams is indeed the man but so is this guy.

Obama

2008-11-05T11:00:00.000-08:00

While watching Obama's victory speech last night, I thought to myself "Will Obama Girl be invited to the inaugural address?"

But seriously, I also thought about JFK's 1961 inauguration speech, the turbulent times back then, and the current tough times today. And although I was not even born yet, I wondered what it must have felt like for Americans at the time. And last night, you could see all that renewed hope in the faces of so many Obama supporters. Myself included. Yes, you can agree or disagree with Obama, JFK parallels - real or media hype? but if the "inspirational rhetoric"works as intended, then I don't see that as necessarily a bad thing. It was refreshing to hear Obama come out straight in level setting expectations, "There will be setbacks and false starts .. government can't solve every problem but I will always be honest with you about the challenges we face.." Just thinking of Obama himself reminded of one of my favorite scenes from Oliver Stone's film "Nixon,"

Nixon: Do you miss Cuba, Manolo?
Manolo Sanchez: Yes, Mr. President.
Nixon: We let you down, didn't we? Your people.
Manolo Sanchez: That was Mr. Kennedy, sir.
Nixon: You don't think he was a hero?
Manolo Sanchez: [shrugs] He was a politician.
Nixon: Did you cry when he died?
Manolo Sanchez: Yes.
Nixon: Why?
Manolo Sanchez: I don't know. He made me... see the stars.
Nixon: [deep in thought] How did he do that?

Dell UltraSharp 2408WFP in da house!

2008-11-03T21:08:00.000-08:00

I've been in the market for a Dell 24" Ultrasharp widescreen and I've been tracking pricing on the Dell for quite a long time now. They've been stubbornly in the upper $600 range for what seems like an eternity and that was just way too costly. When the price finally dropped to the lower $500 range, I started to get on the fence.

Me: "Hmmm. The NEC (my 8+ year old 20" CRT) takes up so much desk space. I am not maximizing my new PC! But man, it's $500 ! "

So I decided to seek counsel from some friends. Let's call Friend #1 the Angel-on-the left-shoulder and Friend #2 the Devil-on-the-right shoulder :-)

Friend #1: "your stocks are down, and you guys want a new house......"

-and-

Friend #2: "you just upgraded your computer, right?
Friend #2: you're in need for a monitor upgrade."
.
.
Friend #2: "i do think that you are doing yourself a disservice by upgrading your box and not a display.
Friend #2: you aren't realizing your full potential!"

Could not argue with either. At the end of the day, the Devil prevailed. Darn you Friend #2 ! :-)

What I like about the 2408WFP
- Desktop space recovery. My arms can now rest on the desk. My wrists are saved.
- Matted screen. If the Ultrasharp had a glossy, reflective screen it would have been a deal breaker. It does not bother me that plasma can have some glare but reflective LCDs bother the heck out of me.
- Bright. Much brighter than my CRT and uniform.
- Colors are vivid from the S-PVA panel. But right out of the box, the colors are way oversaturated. I'll use my colorimeter later on to see if I can correct the colors without killing the brightness too much. I never owned an IPS panel so I'm not sure if they are that much better but I think the added premium of a S-PVA over a TN panel is worth it for me.
- 1920x1200 native resolution with gaming is absolutely stunning. Fallout 3 (above) on the PC is simply breathtaking.
- Sharpness. Much sharper than my CRT. Makes a huge difference on games.
- Viewing angle much better than I expected.
- Build quality. I am anal about this. For whatever reason, I think the triangular base is darn cool.
- Built in USB and flash card reader.
- No input lag detected so far. I have the A01 version which supposedly fixed this known issue.

Placed the order

2008-10-28T16:54:00.000-07:00

Yes, yes... the economy, recession, housing has been discussed ad nauseum. After a lot of thought I decided to pull the trigger. Part of me figured I should do my small part to boost the economy!

Tech layoffs and BA home pricing

2008-10-22T13:17:00.000-07:00

At the investment club at my work, I've noticed more and more consensus that Bay Area housing pricing will continue to experience further downward pressure in line with the rest of the country due to the domino effect of all the macroeconomic events leading up to corporate layoffs. I've also been anticipating some degree of BA layoffs since April and I came across this site that is tracking layoffs. Nifty site! Now, I am not sure how many of the companies listed here today are actually in the Bay Area but it will be interesting to see if the big Bay Area tech companies are gonna break sooner or later and the effects (if any) to the housing market. Bay Area housing pricing is something I've had a lot of passion around given our circumstances and I would imagine for many other people as well. Or maybe I am just too much of a Burbed addict ;)

Edit 10/23/08: I tend to agree with Joe's comments.

Assassin's Creed

2008-10-13T17:17:00.000-07:00

With all the doom and gloom lately, I really needed some good escapism. I recently started playing Assassin's Creed for the PC and wow, it is one of the most beautifully made games I have ever played. Check out the video review above and you'll see what I mean. This is one the games that really showcases next generation graphics. The open world feels huge and real. The animation is impressive. I like the fact that the game takes place in the Third Crusade and that you rely on stealth vs kill everything and everyone in sight. It's a nice break from the first person shooter genre. As much as I like PC gaming, I have to admit that I have a very short attention span and get bored of games fairly quickly. But Assassin's Creed has managed to get me to want to keep on playing.

Credit default swaps in plain english

2008-10-11T00:59:00.000-07:00

This is the best "straight talk" segment I've watched on how we went from subprime/CDOs to credit default swaps (CDSs) to the current financial crisis. It does a great job in demystifying what credit default swaps are. After watching this you can't help but feel angry about how this kind of greed and deregulation can exist today. Talk about the biggest Ponzi scheme ever. It's incredible.

Oh how it hurts

2008-10-08T15:22:00.000-07:00

Have you looked at your 401K lately? I am down -30% YTD. It's mainly attributed to the fact that I am in all stock funds and no bonds. However, despite the staggering paper loss, I would not make a major change to my asset allocation since I feel I am reasonably diversified (within stock funds) and I am taking the long view on all this (err.. make that super long). I know a few people who switched out of their stock funds before the big crash and reallocated a good chunk to bonds & MM funds. Good for them. I didn't market time my 401K as I did with our taxable accounts. In hindsight, maybe I could have reallocated the 401K at the same time as the taxable accounts when the obvious red flags came about and got back into the game when fundamentals looked more promising. Well, no sense in beating myself up over this now. It's water under the bridge. Just have to ride this one out and hopefully make the right call next time. It just hurts cause you realize this potentially sets you back a few years in terms of retirement.

I am still trying to better understand how deregulation (or lack of regulation) in the CDS derivatives market led to this mess. I thnk it's something to strongly consider as we head to the voting polls in Nov.

Edit 10-9-08: After sleeping on it, I've now changed my mind about trying to market time 401K. I think it's true that it's virtually impossible to time the market bottom and if you miss the good "up" days (which you never know when they will occur), then you really take a hit on your long term returns. Also you can't "day trade" 401K like you can with non-retirement equities. 401K transactions take much longer. I remembered again why I withdrew the taxable accounts in March - shorter term goals. I convinced myself again to know our goals, risk tolerance level, and just stick to the plan. While it's not much of a consolation right now, I do think it's good to see the market returning to more sound fundamentals.

Decision 08

2008-10-08T12:58:00.000-07:00

After the two presidential candidate debates and one VP candidate debate, you can feel the momentum is swinging in favor of the Blue team. The Red team have got their work cut out for them. I can't wait to watch the next new SNL .

The Godfather Trilogy (Blu Ray) - Coppola Restoration

2008-10-08T11:55:00.000-07:00

I take back what I said a long ago about technology just merely being a means to an end. Yes, the film itself is the most important component in the overall experience. But I have to admit that the technology piece is having more weight than before. For me, this new restoration coupled with the HD format takes the Godfather experience to the next level. Thankfully, there is no butchering of these films via DNR. The grain is there but it's not distracting. Viewers expecting a razor sharp image or rich color saturation will be disappointed. But from all sources I've come across, the subdued look has been the intent by Coppola. And that's fine by me. While I certainly love the razor sharp and highly saturated look of the newer big budget films, I've come to the realization that not all films are going to have those characteristics and that higher resolution does not necessarily equate to higher levels of sharpness. But that doesn't mean the picture can't/doesn't look amazing. On this set, there is a nice documentary disc that is in HD (and razor sharp btw) and gives a nice history of the restoration process. And you get a good perspective on how the picture and sound were before (VHS -> DVD) and just how challenging and painstaking it was to get to the current restored version.

New PC build - It's alive!

2008-09-29T01:30:00.000-07:00

Here are the specs for my recent PC build:

- Antec P182 Gun Metal Black PC case
- Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 3GHz, 6MB L2 cache, 1333MHz FSB
- PATRIOT 2GB kit (1gb x 2) PC2-6400 800mhz, 4-4-4-12, 240-pin DDR2 DIMM w/heat spreader x 2 = 4GB total
- EVGA LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 780i SLI ATX Mobo
- EVGA Nvidia GeForce GTX 260 896MB 448-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready
- PC Power & Cooling Silencer 750W, single 12V rail 60A, 80 PLUS Certified
- SEAGATE 500gb Serial ATA-300 HDD, 32MB buffer
- LG Blu-Ray & HD DVD Serial ATA Internal Reader / DVD Burner
- LITE-ON DVD Burner

With the exception of the PC case, I purchased all my components from Mwave.com. They are very comparable to Newegg in terms of pricing but they are more local to me and feature a will call pick up which I like and in-store support. The in-store support actually came in very handy as you will read about below.

Now, if you made it this far, I assume you have at least some interest in PCs. If you don't care about why I chose the components that I chose, just skip on down to the last paragraph but I personally find it very interesting in understanding what led a person to purchase what he or she decided to purchase. So hence, a somewhat long write up from here on out.

My PC from 2004 was as loud as a vacuum cleaner during a full load and fairly noisy during idle. So this time I really wanted to build a "quiet PC". The Antec P182 comes with three layer "sound deadening" panels for the sides and front door and three 120mm fans with three adjustable speeds (mine actually came with a few extra spare fans due to known fan issue on early production models) so I installed 2 fans at the top rear to draw heat from the CPU and Northbridge, one in front middle to draw heat away from the GPU, and one in front of the PSU to draw heat away from the HDD. The fans are very quiet at the low setting and even though I have four fans running, the overall system is much much more quiet compared to my old PC. What is also a nice design feature is how you can stash cables behind the motherboard panel which really improves the air flow as well as making a much cleaner looking layout inside the chassis. And another unique feature of this case is that the PSU is mounted at the bottom of the chassis and not the top.

I had debated whether to go quad core or dual core since they are both currently similar in price but the quad core runs at a lower clock frequency. I ultimately chose to go dual core since my primary application is gaming and dual core is arguably better for this type of application. The "Wolfdale" (45 nm) E8400 hit my price-to-performance target so I went with it. The fact that the Wolfdale's are based on the 45nm process and thus draw less power and less heat and therefore the cooling fans produce less noise is a nice plus. A few months back, I thought I was going to wait for Intel's next gen Nahalem architecture, but in looking at the 2009 roadmap and given what I wanted to do today, I didn't feel the wait was worth it.

I read a lot of praise as well as some rants about EVGA's 780i based motherboard but I felt the good outweighed the bad. I suppose I could have saved a few bucks with the 750i chipset instead of the 780i but I figured it was not too much more and just went with the 780i. There really isn't a whole lot of performance difference between the two. So yes, I admit it was not a real data driven decision in this instance.

The time I didn't spend in scrutinizing the motherboard I made up for in selecting the GPU. My short list was 1) dual Nvidia 8800 GTs in SLI 2) AMD/ATI HD 4870 3) Nvidia GTX 260. Long story short, the power draw of the 4870 vs the GTX 260 made me rule it out. A pair of 8800 GTs can in fact beat a single next gen Nvidia GTX 260 and the 8800 GT SLI pair is in fact cheaper but I really wanted a single GPU card that was fast enough to run the game Crysis at high res and high setttings but also have the option to go SLI later on if I wanted to. A $40 MIR on the GTX 260 made the price gap small enough vs the 8800GT SLI set up to push me over the edge. If you look at GTX 260 card, you will notice how big it is. That's because it is freakin' big! So big in fact that I could not mount my hard drive in the middle chamber near the front of the chassis. I guess with these latest gen cards, you no longer see the PCB anymore. Just all solid plastic housing which is kind of cool as it gives it a nice, rugged feel.

For the RAM, I played it safe and only went with what was approved on EVGA's site. So while I originally wanted 2 x 2 GB sticks, I ultimately went with 4 x 1GBs from Patriot with 4-4-4-12 timings which are pretty fast. I am still using Win XP Pro so the OS is only seeing 2.7 GB. I am just not ready to go to Vista yet.

This is the first build where I budgeted for the PSU as a seperate unit. I've seen a number of cheap PSUs go bad that I now know not to skimp on this component. I like PC Power & Cooling's single 12V rail design and the beefy 60A rating. And it's 80 Plus certified and the PSU does live up to it's "Silencer" marketing. Despite what Nvidia's official SLI certification site says, I should be able to add another GTX 260 GPU in the future if I want to.

Hard drives are always relatively inexpensive. I tend to stick with Seagate for their overall performance, low noise levels, and 5 year warranty. For a fleeting moment, I thought about going Raid 0 but it wasn't a priority for me and it would have broken my budget. However, I am considering a future upgrade to a pair of WD 300GB VelociRaptor 10,000 RPM SATA drives if the price is right.

I've come this far - Hey, I want to be able to watch Blu Ray and HD DVD too! The LG dual format reader does in fact play back both Blu Ray and HD DVD. The GTX 260 came with a DVI male-to-HDMI female adapter. I can see my Windows desktop on the plasma TV upstairs but when I tried playing back an HD DVD this morning, I received an HDCP error which I am not sure why at the moment since both the GTX 260 and my TV are HDCP compliant. I need to research this issue.

It wasn't easy to get my set up up and running. I seem to have bad luck when it comes to getting things to work right the first time. A week ago I spent all of Saturday physically putting the PC together. Upon power on I had hard time passing POST - sometimes I could get to the BIOS but most times I was stuck in POST. As you can imagine this was extremely frustrating since I checked and re-checked every component and made sure it was properly installed. A nice feature on the motherboard is a two digit LED display of the POST code. It allowed me to better isolate the possible issue, reference the manual for a description and go on the forums to kind of narrow down the issue. But long story short, I ultimately had to take my PC back to back Mwave. According to the tech (Hector), I had bad DRAM. I found it hard to believe that all four of my DRAM sticks were bad at the same time. But even I tried to boot with one stick of RAM at a time and couldn't pass POST. Hector also replaced the motherboard and PSU. They may or may not have contributed to the problem but Hector got my PC up and running and saved me a LOT of time with the trial and error and RMA hassles so I obviously was not going to question whatever he did. In fact I have nothing but praise for Mwave's service overall. Hector gave me regular status updates and updated my Windows XP to SP3 and updated my BIOS and drivers to the latest versions. He went beyond just getting my system to work. As another footnote - there is a good reason why Antec provided those extra fans. It turns out the chassis fans that were pre-installed were flaky (known issue) and if they were plugged in to the PSU, I would often not be able to see my monitor display upon boot up. When I replaced the "bad fans" with the spares, my system would boot up fine every time. I am still appalled by how many issues I ran into with this build! It really is amazing.

So here is the final box with everything installed without any sign or indication of the time and effort that went into it.

I actually didn't know Mwave offered custom build and troubleshooting services until -after- I had ordered everything, picked up the parts, assembled at home and ran into my issues and then went on the forums where some guy had posted a link of Mwave's support services. Maybe I am oblivious but to me, these services were not advertised well on their website. If I had to do it all over again, I'd definitely pay to have Mwave build it for me. Don't get me wrong, PC building can be fun and challenging but it can be very very time consuming when things don't work as they should as in my case - if you ask me, it's well worth the cost to have the same vendor do the entire system build who can easily isolate any issue and easily replace any part as needed.

Resurrecting my old PC

2008-09-28T01:46:00.000-07:00

Ha, I'm feeling pretty idiotic but happy at the same time.

I made a PC components "wish list" back in Nov 2005 since the PC I had built in March of 2004 could not run a game I had wanted to play at the time, Battlefield 2 .

$125 - AMD 3000+ (Socket 939)
$127 - Asus SLI motherboard
$85 - Corsair Value 1GB
$99 - Antec Sonata II w/ 450W PSU
$175 - WD Raptor 74GB
$333 - eVGA 7800GT 256MB
$333 - eVGA 7800GT 256MB
$46 - NEC ND-3540A 16X Dual Layer DVD+/-RW
$1323 - Total cost as of Nov 2005

However, frugality prevailed. At that time, I couldn't justify the cost of building a new PC given that my PC from spring 2004 was less than 2 years old and it would just be for one game. Historically, $1300 has been my target budget. For that amount I could indeed get much better GPUs (I wanted SLI) but I could only afford the same CPU (my 2004 AMD 3000+ CPU is a socket 754 version) and the same amount of RAM. I thought to myself, "not a big enough upgrade for $1300." So in March of 2006, I ended up getting a 7800GS AGP GPU card as a stop gap which has served me very well.

Fast forward to Sept 2008. This year has shown some amazing price-to-performance on all PC components and I've amassed a backlog of more recent PC games as my old PC simply did not have enough horsepower to run them.

So I thought to myself that I would take my time and snap up on deals for components if the price was right. I picked up the Antec P182 case that went on sale and wanted to try out the case by moving the motherboard over from my older 2004 PC. In the process of doing this, I thought I had fried my old PC motherboard. I was working on the carpet in our loft and me being stupidly lazy, I did not properly ground myself. Yes, *smack my hand*. Before I moved anything from the old chassis to the new one I unplugged a few cables from the mother board such as the chassis power switch cable and the reset switch cable. Not too long afterwards, I changed my mind on moving over my old components to the new chassis and plugged the old cables back in to the old chassis. I then re-tried powering on the old chassis. The PC would not boot up at all. *Doh!* The light on the motherboard would show power but when you pressed the power switch, the chassis fan and CPU fan would move a little but that's it. I unplugged all the motherboard cables and reseated the hard drive IDE and power cables, the GPU card, and the power supply from the motherboard. This went on for a while until I was convinced that I had fried my motherboard.

I said to myself, "Great. Looks like I'll need to cough up for a new rig soon." I was frustrated and disappointed in myself since 1) I thought I had destroyed a good working PC and 2) I was now going to spend money much sooner than I had anticipated.

It didn't take me long to create a parts list for the new PC. You can read my follow up post above for the specifics.

To the reader who is familiar with PC building, you might have noticed that I did not mention whether or not I re-seated the DRAM. That's because I didn't and it turns out that a week later I had thought about doing it since it was the one of the two things I didn't try - the other being re-seating my CPU . I thought re-seating the DRAM would unlikely have any affect since I did not touch my DRAM at all during the previous week. But sure enough, I re-seated the DRAM and voila, my PC was able to boot up fine and it worked again! I am still unclear as to why this worked. By this time I had already ordered all the new PC components from mwave.com and there were no refunds on the retailed box CPU. I decided to just keep my order as it was and not return anything. Part of me felt like such a dunce! But to be perfectly honest, I got over it pretty quick. Having waited almost 3 years to build a new PC, I was actually more excited knowing a new PC was going to be made.

Praying Mantis on our porch

2008-09-28T01:16:00.001-07:00

Stood right in front of our door. I wonder what was going on in it's mind.

Bank Safety Rating

2008-09-17T18:53:00.000-07:00

If you don't feel like stuffing your mattress or if you have a tiny backyard, check this out and make sure your hard earned money is safe!

No place to hide

2008-09-15T14:41:00.000-07:00

Bear Stearns, Indymac, Freddie/Fannie, Lehman, Merrill Lynch (I'm sure I'm missing quite a few more here) - Today's 500 pt Dow drop is the biggest in recent memory. Since March of this year, I've felt that the stock market has been an extremely dangerous game of catching falling knives. I had thought the smart money has been in FDIC insured savings accounts. But with the scale and speed of recent events, I'm not even sure about that anymore. Nervous times.

Nixon (Blu Ray)

2008-09-15T01:43:00.000-07:00

Out of all the Oliver Stone's films that I've seen (JFK, Born on the 4th of July, Platoon, Natural Born Killers, Alexander, World Trade Center), Nixon is my personal favorite. I disagree with the critics who accuse Oliver Stone of being a history revisionist or a conspiracy theorist. I think those critics forget that Stone had set out to make a film (not a documentary) exploring the man, Richard Nixon. As you watch the film you can tell that extensive research was performed to make the events as accurate as possible but again, a film of this nature requires dramatic license - Stone even discloses this in the opening frames.

I've always loved Nixon as a character study as well as a Shakespearean-like tragedy. In the hands of another director, Nixon probably would have been reduced to a mere caricature but Stone paints a sensitive, moving, even-handed portrait of the much maligned president. Anthony Hopkins delivers an overwhelming performance as Nixon. It's amazing how seemingly easy that Hopkins inhabits the role of the former president - the intelligence, the ruthlessness, the paranoia, the manipulation, the awkwardness, the ambivalence as well as the humanity. Hopkins performs every gesture, nuance, inflection, and subtle expression that is as telling if not more that what he speaks verbally (ie Nixon's facial expressions often didn't match the words or what he was really thinking/feeling showing the inner conflict). The supporting cast are also amazing. Joan Allen more than holds her own as the first lady Pat Nixon. Mary Steenburgen as Nixon's mother Hannah Nixon, Paul Sorvino as Henry Kissinger, James Woods as H.R. Haldeman, the late JT Walsh as John Ehrlichman, Powers Boothe as General Al Haig... all top notch performances.

The screenplay is so awesome from beginning to end that it's really hard to pick a favorite scene. There are so many memorable scenes but the ones that come to mind as I write this,
- Opening bible verse from Matthew 16:26 .. very fitting for this film.
- Flashback scenes between Nixon and his mother - again, Mary Steenburgen is just wonderful here.
- Nixon vs CIA Director Helms - this was a deleted scene now restored into the film. I love the cat & mouse game here, the tension in this scene is awesome.
- Nixon & Manolo in the white house kitchen during the middle of the night. I love the reference to JFK and how Nixon was always under the shadow of JFK.
- Nixon & his staff on the presidential yacht - great writing here -> "triangular diplomacy," "bold moves," and "Nixon the madman."
- toward the end of the film where Nixon turns around and stares at the portrait of JFK -> that lingering "shadow of JFK" ... love it.
- Nixon and Kissinger in the Lincoln Room near the end of the film.
- Nixon's farewell speech - this was the actual speech from the real Richard Nixon. great speech. very emotional & heartfelt.

What ties the film together is the lovely score from John Williams. Most people know John Williams scores from movies like Star Wars but I think his score here is equally impressive and underappreciated.

Nixon moves at a very brisk pace with crisp editing and all the various montages. So even though the films clocks in at a staggering 3.5 hours there really isn't a dull moment. There is just tension, tension, tension from the get go and Stone keeps it that way throughout.

Stone's audio commentary is also a great listen. I love all the factoids as well as the insight as to why he composes the various scenes as he does. He's also very level headed especially in response to his critics.

Before this release, I've been "getting by" with the non anamorphic SD DVD and let me tell you - the SD DVD transfer left a lot to be desired. But the film itself is so strong that the experience with the SD DVD was better than say...VHS *gasp*. The Blu Ray, without a doubt, is a huge upgrade and really heightens the experience. Sure I could nitpick on the DNR but the overall upgrade in picture and sound is remarkable.

Mike's visit

2008-09-02T13:07:00.000-07:00

Eating at Tom's #1 World famous Chiliburgers

This weekend Mike had a wedding to go to in Long Beach and crashed at our place. It was a bit of a drive for him from our house to the wedding but hopefully it was worth it for him. We had some interesting conversations on a variety of topics, played demo clips on the home theater for a good part of Sat evening, ate Shakey's pizza + mojo potatoes, had Lucille's BBQ the next day, and Tom's #1 World famous Chiliburgers the day after that. I feel a little guilty about subjecting Mike to all that unhealthy food this weekend but man, it sure tasted good. It turns out that Mike is also a fairly "selective" eater like me but in different ways.

With Mike's visit, I finally need more than two hands to count the number of bay area visitors. Mike could very well be our last visitor before we move back to the bay area. How special he is!

Visiting long time friends

2008-08-26T23:56:00.000-07:00

I typically prefer not to blog "diary" or "journal" type entries but I'll make an exception today (and whenever I feel like it again in the future). I made it a priority this week to hang out with some bay area friends that I have not seen in a long while. During the conversations, I was trying to remember when I last saw them, I just couldn't remember. So I want to blog it here to help me remember in the future.

Early part of the week, I had met up with Carolyn, JLT, Joel and the kids. I had a kind of weird/embarrassing incident before I went over to JLT and Joel's home. I was at a work offsite at City Beach and agreed to bring over some King Egg rolls (what I always bring to people's houses). The closest King Egg roll on the way was in Newark. As I came out of King Egg rolls, I was startled by a man who was standing close to me while I was about to get into my car. During the moment I thought he was making some unusual noises with his mouth and given his proximity, I made a dash for my car without hesitation. The man happened to be hispanic, noticed my dash and as I was in my car, he tried to speak to me through the car window and asked something along the lines of "do you think I am crazy?" in spanish. I was embarrassed because I didn't want him to think I was being racist or fearful of him because he was hispanic. But at the same time I was startled enough at the moment that embarrassment/awkwardness were ok if it meant that I had zero risk of being in harms way. The rest of the evening turned out a lot better at JLT and Joel's house. It was great to catch up. Naomi and Nolan are growing up so fast now. Naomi talks a lot more now and says some of the cutest, darndest things. Nolan is walking now. He even approached me on his own several times and gave me hugs and I thought to myself, "Hey, I could get use to this." I still feel a little shy and awkward around kids but maybe it will be different when we have our own.

The next evening Alice and I had dinner at Tsunami Sushi in MountainView. We also had a nice chat about a lot of things. Even though Alice and I don't see each other a whole lot, it's pretty much as if we just spoke the day before (which is a good thing). Our waitress was also very gracious - much more so than other restaurants. Being a skeptic, I thought to myself, "How can anyone be this kind? She can't be this nice to everyone." So as we walked out, I looked back and and I tried to observe the waitress while she was interacting & not interacting with other customers and she seemed to have the same genuine, gracious demeanor. I was impressed.

Ellie and Ben's visit

2008-08-23T13:27:00.001-07:00

Next door to Nubi Yogurt - an outdoor seating area for a restaurant still being built. I was trying to see if the natural lighting would work better than the flash.

Eating at Maki Yaki

Ellie and Ben recently came back from Korea and we met up for dinner last night. The pictures above, are from our new P&S camera - the Canon SD870IS with all settings in auto mode. Our older Canon S400 died. It's been on it's last leg for some time now - a lot of memory card errors. I tried different memory cards, re-seating the memory cards, and changing the batteries . Each of these seemed to work for a little while but after the last weekend, I couldn't get the errors to go away. I even tried taking the camera apart to see if I could verify the "internal bios battery" but I think I made the problem worse as the the camera would not turn on properly anymore. I kind of gave up at that point and decided to just get a new camera.

There are so many new features on the current gen of cameras compared to our old S400 but the wide angle feature of SD870IS was what won me over. I'm hoping to get more comfortable with the all manual settings.

Short Bay Area trip

2008-08-20T14:32:00.000-07:00

Last week, Viks and I were in the BA for a few days. From the looks of it today, Viks will be doing additional fellowship training with Dr. C starting next summer. I'm really excited for Viks since this has been a very challenging year for her to say the least but now the future looks incredibly bright. We were both invited to Dr. C and her husband's (also Dr. C) home for dinner. Aside from their impressive credentials, accomplishments and business acumen, what struck me was how both Dr C's are so down to earth and gracious.

We dropped by Mike's place to check out his new Epson 1080UB front projector set up. Mike seems to be pretty happy with his new set up. And I don't blame him. Wow is all I can say. Out of the box and with good HD material, the Epson has nice saturated colors, lots of punch and a high contrast image. The image is also sharp, bright, and there are nice control settings if you want to adjust grayscale and primaries/secondaries. The unit also has good zoom and lens shift for placement flexibility. Historically, I've been much more of a fan of DLP but the current Epson has definitely changed my perception of LCD front projectors. LCD has come a long way! However, what does concern me re: LCD PJs are dust blobs (afaik, the optic path is not sealed) and panel misconvergence as this a 3 chip LCD but these issues could be more of an exception rather than the norm. Viks was more interested in playing with Mike and Christie's foster pups but even she commented on how nice and sharp the image was. So maybe I can upgrade soon! hehe.

We also went to check out Eric and Ivy's newly remodeled home. Their place looks nice and it's great to see all their hard work paying off for them. It kind of inspired us (or at least me) to want to pursue a beater home and fix it up as well despite knowing all the time, effort, and pain involved. But for now we're gonna take a wait and see approach with regards to buying our next home. I think the housing market has more bad news to absorb such as Alt-A and prime loan resets. From all sources I've read and people I've spoken to, we are supposedly only in the 3rd inning of this housing debacle. Hopefully, we can time things better this next go around as opposed to our current home.

Before we flew back we even squeezed in a mini day trip to 17 mile drive. The weather was great. Everytime we go there, it feels like a mini vacation to me. They even have some paved bike trails so a future bike trip by the ocean sounds interesting.

Sabrina and Jon's wedding

2008-08-08T23:59:00.000-07:00

@ the Ritz Carlton, Laguna Niguel

Give me a ping, Vasili. One ping only, please.

2008-08-04T14:49:00.000-07:00

Lately, a lot of AVS'ers have been complaining about the film studios butchering their hi-def releases with excessive digital noise reduction and edge enhancement. The DNR attempts to remove film grain but the issue is that fine detail is also removed. For example, faces will have an unnatural, wax-like appearance - or think botox. The edge enhancement tries to sharpen the image but can result in halos around objects. I am in the camp that likes film grain, I can see these anomalies and they do bother me. But to be perfectly honest, I can live with the imperfections of DNR/EE as long as there is appreciable upgrade to the standard definition release. I would probably not want to admit this on AVS as I would just end up being flame bait. I recently picked up Dark City and this is a title that could have an AKA of "DNR/EE City." DNR/EE are both there but for me the pros (it's a new directors cut, 1080p transfer) outweigh the cons.

Paramount released a decent blu ray transfer of The Hunt for Red October with minimal DNR and EE. It's not razor sharp and colors are not brilliantly saturated like many new releases but for a catalog title that is almost 20 years old, it looks pretty darn good to my eyes. Well worth the purchase if you love the movie.

I remember a few years ago having a Sean Connery impersonation contest with an old college friend,
Captain Ramius: Re-verify our range to target... one ping only.
Capt. Vasili Borodin: Captain, I - I - I just...
Captain Ramius: Give me a ping, Vasili. One ping only, please.
Capt. Vasili Borodin: Aye, Captain.

5.8 Shaker in Sunny So Cal

2008-07-29T12:13:00.000-07:00

Soon after I blog about my concern on a big quake coming, of course a quake comes! I was just going downstairs for lunch and all of the sudden felt the tremor and I just stopped and stood in our mini hall way before our kitched holding the wall for dear life! Ok just kidding. It wasn't that dramatic but I was thinking "Oh sh*t" several times in my head. Nothing got knocked over but I could hear the fridge shaking. At one point, I was kind of scared our walls would crack a bit or maybe our windows would crack/shatter as I could hear the stress on them but it turned out not to be as bad as I feared.

Edit: USGS updated that the quake was in fact a 5.4 and not a 5.8.

And even more praise for the Dark Knight

2008-07-20T23:18:00.000-07:00

I know it's been said a million times already but count me in as well in saying that The Dark Knight really lives up to the hype and deserves all the praise and accolades received. The Nolan brothers have written one of the most complex and satisfying screenplays. The storytelling here is terrific and all characters are given ample time to shine. I can't really add to what already has been said about Heath Ledger's performance except that it shook me to the core in a similar manner as Javier Bardem's portrayal of Anton Chigurh in "No Country for Old Men." I have to be honest and say that I was unsure of Christian Bale's performance in Batman Begins but I now think he's more comfortable as Batman and gives such a strong performance that you really empathize with Bruce Wayne much more so than any of the previous actors. And I gotta give an ovation to Gary Oldman. He is one of the most underrated actors of our time. I hope he gets some Oscar recognition soon. Amazing actor.

Other comments - great soundtrack/score, just the right amount of action that furthers the story - nothing gratuitous, great blending of CGI + live action (the lack of which is huge pet peeve of mine) .

The Dark Knight is one of those examples of why film lovers love film so much. As great as Batman Begins was it now feels like more of a prologue and you (at least I) get the feeling that Christopher Nolan just couldn't wait to unleash the story he really wanted to tell in the Dark Knight. The film definitely takes a darker turn something typical of 2nd chapter movies (ie SW Empire Strikes Back, Indy Temple of Doom, LOTR Two Towers, etc) . At the end of the movie, the enigmatic title of the film suddenly is not so enigmatic anymore.. it's very fitting.

I'm tempted to see the film a second time but this time on IMAX. It really does deserve repeat viewings to really soak in the experience.

Your auto mechanic is ripping you off

2008-07-20T13:52:00.001-07:00

My sister posted on her blog about her friend's startup that recently launched RepairPal. Very cool site and very useful information. Just this morning I went to get an oil change and tire rotation. I was bracing myself for some unexpected needed maintenance/ repairs since I have never , EVER received an oil change without being "recommended" some additional work. Today I was told my auto transmission fluid was discolored as well as my power steering fluid. Cost? $149 for ATF and $122 for p/s flush. In my mind I was thinking "wow" and this is not even the dealership. I then went to RepairPal and for my car model, year and location the cost range is $64 - $78 and listed three choices. These choices are independent shops and are not open today so I'll have to double check the pricing but if the range is true, that is some big savings.

Moral Hazard

2008-07-19T23:56:00.000-07:00

I recently received our revised property tax assessment. And let me tell you it is a lot lower. So the good news is that our property tax bill is lower but the bad news is if we were selling today, we'd be selling at a significant loss. Now, I knew this was a risk in 2005 but I have to admit I've felt like a deer seeing headlights (I'm talking BIG freaking headlights) when the property reassessment came. So I've been internalizing this fact and current events for some time now.

It is disconcerting when you hear about the Feds bailing out Bear Stearns and most recently Fannie Mae / Freddie Mac. I think time will reveal if this was the right thing to do but for now the message is is pretty disturbing. Essentially the actions by the Feds say "privatize gains" but "socialize the losses." And that you're a fool for putting down 20% (which we did) when you could have put down 0% and just walk away when things got rough. The only positive of putting down 20% was that it allowed us to re-finance much more easily given our LTV but that positive pales in comparison to the flip side.

Now the above may be more bearable if we were planning to stay here long term but it's no secret that we don't want to. Renting out our place may be the most sensible option at this point but I've also thought a lot about the risk of the "next big quake" and what would happen if our house required extensive rebuild. Would the goverment bail us out as well?

Coldplay @ The Forum July 15th

2008-07-16T12:09:00.000-07:00

"Fix You" - one of my favorite Coldplay songs

"Square One" - Chris sliding down the ramp on his back and singing.

What a great concert. It's like the AM/PM commercial -> "You can never have too much good stuff." The 20 track set list was awesome and pretty close to the Monday night (14th) show. There were 9 tracks from Viva La Vida or Death... , 5 tracks from Rush of Blood.. , and 4 tracks from X&Y, and 1 track from Parachutes and 1 new track.

"Life in Technicolor" (Viva La Vida or Death...)
"Violet Hill" (Viva La Vida or Death...)
"Clocks" (Rush of Blood to the Head)
"In My Place" (Rush of Blood to the Head)
"Viva La Vida" (Viva La Vida or Death...)
"42" (Viva La Vida or Death...)
"Yes" (Rush of Blood to the Head)
"The Scientist" (Rush of Blood to the Head)
"Chinese Sleep Chant" (Viva La Vida or Death...)
"God Put a Smile Upon Your Face" (Rush of Blood to the Head)
"Square One" (X&Y)
"Speed of Sound" (X&Y)
"What If" (X&Y)
"Lost!" (Viva La Vida or Death...)
"Strawberry Swing" (Viva La Vida or Death...)
"Yellow" (Parachutes)
"Death Will Never Conquer" (new track or B-side?)
"Fix You" (X&Y)
"Lovers In Japan" (Viva La Vida or Death...)
"Death and All His Friends" / "The Escapist" (Viva La Vida or Death...)

A nitpick but I felt that right after the "Technicolor" intro, the band jumped into the vocals of "Violet Hill" a bit too quickly and the leading intro for "Violet Hill," which I think is very nice and has a certain mystique to it, was cut out. I was hoping for "Trouble" or "White Shadows" was going to be played but they weren't. "Trouble" was actually performed the night before. I was surprised they played "Chinese Sleep Chant" . This was the one track the crowd did not seem to get into as much which did not surprise me since it has more of that indie/alternative sound. Toward the end of the show, the band went all the way up to the third level (same level as us but other side) to play an acoustic version of "Yellow" followed by a new track "Death Will Never Conquer" that was sung by drummer Will Champion . It was funny because when Chris got up there, he said "So this is what it's like?" Chris screwed up a bit on Speed of Sound but he's so charismatic that everyone just laughed along with him. The highlight of the show for me was "Fix You" as well as the encore performance of "Death and All His Friends"where the music reached a climax and the VIVA background drops down. It was incredible.

The crowd was awesome. Lot of energy and sing-a-longs. During show, Chris told us (Tue 15th night crowd) that in "Starbucks terms" the first night (Mon 14th) crowd was "Grande" and that we were "Venti." Funny.

In terms of visuals, there was the album cover as the backdrop - which later became a black & white live video feed of the band performing, and you had the signature "Coldplay globes (orb/bulbs)" which changed colors and later on became a live video feed of the band performing, a nifty laser light show, and toward the end lots of confetti shaped like butterflies that filled the air for several minutes during "Lovers In Japan." It was like NYE in July. We sat in the back so it was bit hard to see the band. I know I sound like such a total whiner by now but I wish they had made better use of the projection system for the fans in the back.

And dude! You can't have a concert in LA without the stars. I didn't see them but apparently Kathryn Heigl , Leo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire, Miley Cyrus (Mon 14th show) were rockin' out with Coldplay as well.

At the end of the concert, I heard a fan comment how it went by so fast and how it felt like the shortest concert ever. I clocked it in at around 90 minutes and to me it did feel a bit short but I also think that time flies when you are having a good time.

I think back to high school when I use to go to the local record store and spend what little money I had on B-sides and live tracks so that I could have every version of that track that I loved so dearly. But a recording is just a recording. For me there's no substitute for live music as you will never hear that song as it was performed that evening. Listening to the albums now bring back happy memories.

2nd try - adjusting greyscale on the Mits HC3000

2008-07-12T15:51:00.000-07:00

Ok, I learned that despite the nice looking post greyscale adjusted CIE chart that I had on my 1st try, I had an issue of running out of red at 80 IRE. This can be visibly seen on the RGB graph from the previous post . STEP 6.12 from Kal's guide explains this phenomena in greater detail. The fix is to lower the contrast but the catch is that you lose light output. So a tradeoff has to be made - color accuracy vs light output. Now I use to hear about this tradeoff all the time but it wasn't until I actually saw the results that I better understood and appreciated what it really meant.

Some good guys over at AVS have been helping me out as well. Long story short, on my 2nd try I fixed my red contrast to 0 and adjusted the green and blue and I also set Brilliant Color to off per the recommendation of an ISF calibrator. My latest results are still not perfect but I am getting even closer now. My latest settings are now at,

1) Gamma: Cinema (this was pre-set. I did not change during calibration)
High: 0
Med: 0
Low: 0

2) Contrast: 0

3) Brightness: -1

4) Color Temp - Contrast (RGB HighEnd):
Red: 0
Green: -16
Blue: -20

5) Color Temp - Brightness (RGB LowEnd):
Red: 1
Green: 0
Blue: 0

6) Brilliant color: Off

I do appreciate the much improved color accuracy even at the expense of light output. I don't think I would have happy with the 1st try results long term. What I don't know is if I could get use to such a dim image. The dimmer image that results from calibration is exacerbated by the fact that bulbs dim over time with today's projectors. My lamp is in low mode and I could set it to high in increase brightness but I would be concerned with the added fan noise and greyscale could require calibration again. Still, I might experiment with it. Another option - much to the scorn of videophile purists/ISF calibrators is that I could turn Brilliant Color back on which does indeed improve the luminance. Brilliant Color might be the compromise.

After 2nd try - With green contrast down significantly versus before and with Brilliant Color set to off the image is dimmer. But on the plus side you can see more details on Tobey's face.

Before 2nd try - on the left side of Tobey's face, details are crushed.

2nd try - less pink on the veil folds but now there is a pinkish cast overall. It's been a challenge to get that perfect white. But you can see more details now in Charlize's face.

1st try - the veil folds were overly pink and Charlize's face is lacking fine details.

CIE Diagram after 2nd try. Everything within the circle this time and hence even closer to D65!

RGB levels after 2nd try - No more red drop off at 80IRE and DeltaE less than 3 which is even better than before.

Luminance after 2nd try. The problem is that after 60% or so, red starts dropping off relative to green and blue. I will try to set red contrast lower than 0 and readjust.

Gamma after 2nd try - average at 2.26 which is not bad

Closer to D65 - adjusting greyscale on the Mits HC3000

2008-07-09T20:31:00.000-07:00

For some time now, I've wanted the HC3000 calibrated but the thought of paying $400+ dollars for an ISF calibration was a bit too steep for me. I also held off until recently because it's known that the color output on a digital display bulb can drift quite a bit over a short duration of time vs other technologies like say a CRT tube whose color output will more likely remain stable.

I think my DLP bulb now has about 1,000 hours or so. I am pretty sure the light output on my bulb has dropped by at least some amount but it's one of those things that has not been very obvious to me since I use the projector enough that the change is gradual to my eyes. My point being, because of the gradual dimming I have never known the best time to calibrate the projector. However, as I watched more movies, I slowly noticed how off the colors were. And so I've built up this itch to have the projector calibrated as I mentioned above. Using calibration discs like DVE or Avia by themselves and adjusting by eye are better than not calibrating at all but it's generally agreed upon that if you really want the best picture possible out of your display, it's recommended to use a device like a colorimeter that can perform accurate measurements so that you can appropriately adjust all the various settings like the color temperatures.

Not too long ago I came across Kal's GREYSCALE & COLOUR CALIBRATION FOR DUMMIES and realized that a great, cost effective DIY calibration solution exists and many people seem to give it a lot of praise. As per the guide, I finally picked up an Eye One LT colorimeter and a DVE HD Basics and with Kal's calibration guide, I was off to the races.

All said and done, the settings after adjusting the greyscale are now as follows,

1) Gamma: Cinema (this was pre-set. I did not change during calibration)

2) Contrast: 0

3) Brightness: 0

4) Color Temp - Contrast (RGB HighEnd):
Red: 20
Green: 0
Blue: -7

5) Color Temp - Brightness (RGB LowEnd):
Red: 4
Green: 0
Blue: 2

6) Brilliant Color: On (this was pre-set. I did not change during calibration)

My other "first stab at it" results are described in the screenshots below. One other side note (and this is maybe more for myself to help me remember for future reference). When I set up on the tripod as shown above and adjusted the positioning recommendations as described in step 1.14, I could not get my peak light output (The 'Y' luminance value) above 39.6 (or 11.562 ftL). I'm not sure if this was due to the age of my bulb or a design limitation of the HC3000.

Post-greyscale adjusted image. Charlize Theron's face looks more balanced than before the adjustment. I compared to Art Feierman's image on the BenQ W5000 and while my image is not as nice as on the W5000, it's an improvement over the pre-adjusted image and seems to be in the right direction at least. Like the reds on Tobey's face, I think there is a pinkish cast over Charlize's veil that does not look right to me. So despite the progress as shown in the charts and measurements below, I think some additional work might need to be done. It's a real challenge to find out what the director's intent was.

Pre-greyscale adjusted image at "default" settings (color temp: medium). Dude, way too blue!

Post-greyscale adjusted image. Tobey Maguire's face looks less ghastly for sure. But I'm not sure if the face is too red? Or Director's intent? If anyone knows, please do share.

Pre-greyscale adjusted image at "default" settings (color temp: medium). Tobey Maguire's face looks too blue, lifeless, almost corpse-like *gasp*

CIE Diagram - Post greyscale adjustment: Ah, much better! I felt a sense of accomplishment when I saw this diagram. Again, the 90 and 100 IRE point were off as shown in the RGB level chart below and you can also see they are outside of the blue outer circle. All of the other points fall well within DeltaE<10> which is a good thing.

CIE Diagram - Pre greyscale adjustment: Dude, way outside D65. *shakes fist to the sky*

RGB levels - Post-greyscale adjusted. RGB levels are much closer to the 100% target. The 90 and 100 IRE points are off but all of the other points fell well within DeltaE<10> which is a good thing.

RGB levels -Pre-greyscale adjustment. RGB levels are way off from the 100% target.

They just won't go away

2008-07-07T12:43:00.000-07:00

Another summer, another season for ants. We've been lucky so far in that the ants are mainly in our kitchen *knock on wood* and not in our bathrooms like in previous years. Terro did a great job with the ants that were on our kitchen island but for over a week now, we've had a lot of ants coming from underneath our countertops near our kitchen sink. According to what I've read from other users, Terro is one of the best solutions but it can take a bit of time as the ant colonies can split up or you may have the next generation of ants to deal with. The thing that annoys me the most is when the ants are on kitchen floor. I hate stepping on them. I've used Black Flag spray on some of the gaps/cracks around the floor/cabinets where the ants were coming in but it only stops them for so long. Ants are quick to adapt and will find another way in. Also the thought of all the neurotoxic chemicals inside the house is not very comforting. So after some additional research, I've learned that Johnson's baby powder is non-toxic (obviously) and can be a very effective part of an ant control solution. As you can see above, I've sprinkled some baby powder around my Terro bait and it really does keep them contained. The ants will not cross the powder! And thus I've also sprinkled baby powder around the cracks/gaps near our kitchen floor and while there are some ants on the kitchen floor it's better than before.

We also picked up a bag of Diatomaceous earth that I plan to use on the areas around our house like windows, doorways, dry plant areas. We'll see how well that works. More pest control tips here.

Wuh-aaaaal-leeee

2008-06-30T00:54:00.001-07:00

This is a great year for animated films. Earlier this summer, we watched Kung Fu Panda and I was pleasantly surprised by how well written, genuinely funny and entertaining it was. If I were to say that Kung Fu Panda was a great movie then WALL-E is sublime. It's hard for me to put in words just how wonderful and magical this film really is. From the opening frames, you get a sense that you are about to watch something very special and after a little while you realize there is also something unique about this film vs previous Pixar works. The first half of this film is poetry. There isn't a whole lot of dialog here but the cliche "you say it best when you say nothing at all" applies here. Pixar does a great job holding your attention through the vignettes, the humorous interactions among the characters, the dystopic visuals, and the wonderfully chosen music and score. The 2nd half seems to have more adult themes going on: an ecological & technological parable, politics - a slam on the current adminstration, human over consumption & obesity. But at the heart of it all is the simple but poignant love story between WALL-E and EVE. The two characters are about as different as they come but their chemistry just works. The irony is that there is more heart and soul in this film from these two "robots" than many films with actual human beings. WALL-E is a film that you love to love and WALL-E himself is arguably the most lovable Pixar character to date. In case it's not obvious by now, I anxiously await for the Blu Ray release.

Viva La Vida or Death And All His Friends

2008-06-18T22:44:00.001-07:00

I'll come to straight to it. "Viva La Vida or Death And All His Friends" is a great album. I''ve been listening to it non-stop for the past two days now. I know opinion is divided and that's ok. The album really is a gamut of emotions beautifully interwoven in a 46 min listening session. Yes, I said session cause it really should be taken as a whole. I have to confess that it took me about 3 - 4 listens to appreciate the different sounds - but now I'm really hooked. True to form, some of the lyrics are kind of cryptic but the chords are lovely. The album is definitely -not- a recycled Parachutes, Rush of Blood..., or X&Y. And this is what may put off some fans but I would say "Patience, Luke.." The experience gets more and more rewarding with each listen. Instant gratification doesn't always lead to a lasting experience right? There is a good balance of top 40 mainstream appeal with tracks like Viva La Vida and Violet Hill but the album still retains that indie/alternative sound with tracks like Chinese Sleep Chant. I like how some of the songs like 42 break away from the conventional form and the last track Death And All His Friends is maybe a bit too clever for it's own good with it's kind of "Technicolor redux" at the end that gives the album a nice bookend or maybe it's intended to be a circular motif. Too bad tracks like Lost! (Acoustic Version) and Lovers In Japan (Acoustic Version) are only available in mp3 format. A real bummer for the audiophile. One of the lingering questions I've always had - how many of Coldplay's "personal" songs are about Chris Martin or perhaps another band member? Because if you are not singing about your past experiences, are you really able to express the true meaning of the song?

Concord Records SACD Sampler vol 1

2008-06-11T19:24:00.000-07:00

I am very slowly expanding my SACD collection. Up until recently, I have had only two SACDs (Karajan's 1977 version of Beethoven's 9th and Keane). Now I have three with the addition of the Concord Records SACD Sampler. The rear surrounds really come to life in a seamless, non-gimmicky manner - kind of like the Dolby True HD track of Dave Matthews + Tim Reynolds Radio City Blu Ray.

There are some great demo tracks here - "Straighten Up And Fly Right" by Rosemary Clooney which starts with the original mono track through the center channel and seamlessly widens to a modern 5.1 version. Very cool. Then you have the popular "Watermelon Man" by Poncho Sanchez and Mongo Santamaria - again, amazing use of multichannel here.

Although not apples-to-apples, whenever I listen to ordinary CDs, the sound is often very harsh and I'll get listener's fatigue. Our family room is not very acoustic friendly (tile, walls). I suppose a throw rug might help but all things being equal SACD sounds much smoother to my ears vs the CDs that I have. Yes, SACD is pretty much a dead format. But the catalog of titles is > 5000 and there are some real gems to in terms of classical and jazz.

Good deed & karma

2008-06-09T15:11:00.000-07:00

I received a phone call today at my work from a very nice woman who found my dad's wallet in San Francisco Chinatown. She was able to call me since my dad had my business card in his wallet. The wallet is in the mail now and I thanked her and asked her how I could provide reimbursement for the shipping and she said, "Don't worry about it. Karma points. Someday, someone else will find my wallet. Just go visit your dad more."

Going to see Coldplay!

2008-06-07T00:22:00.000-07:00

At the Forum in LA July 15th. Man, I can't wait. I am literally counting the days until Viva La Vida comes out. I've been listening to Violet Hill over and over. Wonderful track and should do well commercially.

The only complaint I have is that it seems impossible to get concert tickets at standard ticketmaster pricing. Even when trying to use "pre-sale" codes from Best Buy or KROQ, the tickets are unavailable and you are forced to use ticket brokers who easily charge what seems to be 2x+ ticketmaster pricing. Talk about getting mugged.

The Unusual

2008-06-03T23:05:00.000-07:00

A lot of things have been going on in recent months and it seemed like a good time to have "the usual" again. I especially enjoy these larger gatherings cause I can only imagine that as time goes by, it will likley get harder and harder to get people to come out due to changing life circumstances. I think the chicken marsala has become my "usual" dish at cheesecake factory. Moving forward, I intend to order that dish every time!

Glimpse of fatherhood

2008-06-01T23:54:00.000-07:00

Don't let the wife beater attire fool you. Ed cooks, cleans, and even showed me how to bathe a new born (Kenneth).

Alyssa is growing up fast! Irwin is a proud dad.

Nong Shim noodles

2008-05-31T10:29:00.000-07:00

It's amazing what you can buy on Amazon these days. Amazon had a deal today on my favorite ramen noodle bowls -> $10 off $29 or more of Nong Shim noodles. I picked up two four cases of qty: 12 = qty: 48 for $28 w/ free shipping. I think the 12 packs normally retail at ~$13 each.

House MD: Wilson's Heart season finale ending

2008-05-22T12:54:00.000-07:00

House MD: Wilson's Heart (season finale)

2008-05-21T23:57:00.000-07:00

Man, the season finale of House really turned my eyes to faucets. And this is coming from a guy who scoffs at any emotional outburst when watching TV -> "What? You're sobbing over a television show? Ha! You pathetic wuss!"

"Wilson's Heart" is arguably the strongest episode to date. The writers really brought out the big guns for this one. There was a ton of symbolism (bus ride, brilliant white hospital room for Amber (aka "Cutthroat Bitch"), white bus at end) and a plethora of themes -> friendship, denial, unfairness in life, love, grief, moving on. Now, these themes by themselves we are pretty familiar with and in fact they are frequently forced down our throats by countless television shows and films. But if you believe that life imitates art, then I'll go out on a limb and say that the execution here in terms of the writing and acting really takes the understanding of those themes to the next level.

Have you ever seen a House episode with bad acting? Seriously. But in this season finale, there was some extraordinary acting. The most heart breaking moment was toward the end where Wilson and Amber spent their final moments together. Amber was woken by Wilson long enough to know she was dieing. He just held her saying he wanted more time and she replied how they will always want more time. Wilson asked her why she wasn't angry, and she replied, "That's not the last feeling I want to experience." While clutching her, Wilson turned off the life support and she slowly faded away. Devastating. ( it helps to have watched the entire season seeing how Amber's character evolved from "Cutthroat Bitch" to very likeable and the history she had with Wilson to appreciate the poignancy of this scene).

Farewell Amber. Not many of us may have really liked you at first. However, you were a necessary plot device to further the characters around you and you grew on us such that toward the end we even cared a lot for you (in that non-creepy sort of way of course). Heck, you've even turned me into a pathetic wuss. But that's OK. It was worth it.

Unnatural Causes

2008-05-21T22:43:00.000-07:00

I recently watched a really good PBS documentary, Unnatural Causes, that explores the relationship between income level and health problems. Pretty enlightening. Some key takeaways,

- Social class has a significant effect on health. People with lower income generally have more health problems due to less access to resources and opportunity. For example, in poorer neighborhoods you have more liquor stores and fast food restaurants than any other businesses. How is a person living here suppose to eat a healthy diet? A person in these areas probably relies more on public transportation. Add working two jobs and there is little time for exercise. Then there is that constant stress and fear from not earning enough and not knowing what is going to happen tomorrow resulting in constant elevated levels of cortisol -> high blood pressure -> not good.

- History: Post depression government introduced social reform that reduced wealth inequality and that gradually led to longer living in Americans. Black rights reform improved lives for African Americans. However, since the 80s the income inequality gap has widened again.

- People in the upper income bracket average ~10 yrs longer lifespan vs people in the lowest income bracket since they have access to better food and actually have more time to exercise and are more mentally and emotionally stable.

I am kind of torn on that last bullet. I am far from wealthy but my income is also not the worst. Am I really healthy? I think I have reasonable money saving habits so I don't really feel -that- much pressure when it comes to finances. Before I was able to work from home, I found it very challenging to make time to exercise but I argued with myself that at the time it was honestly more of my own choice and not so much of me not having a choice at all. Same goes for access to good food. I use to not cook at all and eat out a lot and it was often calorie dense food. But again, that was my choice. I am not even close to being a great cook now but nowadays I am much more conscious about diet so I'll bake more chicken or salmon and make basic vegetables like broccolli and try to limit my junk food.

But I think to myself what if something other than income could significantly alter my lifestyle that could trigger more stress, make it more difficult to exercise and cause me to eat Mickey Ds 5 days of the week? For example if someday I have to commute again and if it's a long one, I honestly do think it would have a detrimental effect to my health. Still pondering on this..

Dark City DC Blu Ray coming July 29th!

2008-05-15T13:53:00.000-07:00

Dark City original DVD release box art

Good Blu Rays are few and far between these days. So when there is a notable release I get pretty excited. Dark City is one of my favorite sci-fi films of all time. For me, it ranks right up there with Blade Runner. This release will actually have a never-before-seen Director's cut, 7.1 DTS HD MA track, and will retain Roger Ebert's wonderful audio commentary. The DVD looked pretty good at the time of it's release so I'm really hoping they don't screw up this release in the picture quality department. I have mixed feeling toward the new box art. I mean I guess it looks kinda cool but on the other hand, it's Dark City so shouldn't the box art be *gasp* DARK like the original DVD release? Oh well, I feel like I am nit picking. Can't wait for this one!

Mother's day

2008-05-11T23:44:00.000-07:00

How easy it is to take our mothers for granted. A little appreciation brunch at Tanglewood in Santana Row. Even my sister came back for the weekend. I thought the sliding doors leading to their own "Hell's kitchen" was pretty cool.

Iron Man - hurry up with the Blu Ray please!

2008-05-04T10:07:00.000-07:00

- lives up to the hype. at the end, I couldn't help feeling just a tad bit unsatisfied. blame the trailer for giving away too much of the action scenes. but let's not nit pick - Ironman is a very nice way to kick off the summer blockbuster season.
- Robert Downey Jr well casted (I'm mixed on Gwyneth & Terence)
- 2 hr Audi commercial although not as in-your-face as GM/Ford was in Transformers
- Iron Man suit well designed and kicks some serious ass. coolest piece of gear ever!
- CGI on Iron man blended well with the live action (similar to Transformers)
- there are some really neat ideas here on the "future home"
- Stan Lee cameo is funny & nice foreshadow of War Machine
- not as emotionally resonant as Spiderman 2 but that's ok
- bring on the sequel! next film: will Starkes perform "upgrades" and give himself powers like Uni-beam? Starkes succumbs to alcoholism - will Rhodes (Howard) have a bigger role as War Machine? Will the sequel introduce The Mandarin?
- my new top 3 superhero movies
1) Spiderman 2
2) Iron Man
3) four way tie among X-men 2, Superman (original), Daredevil Director's Cut, and Batman Begins.

Our 3 year anniversary

2008-04-30T22:19:00.000-07:00

Crazy how time flies..

DLP Digital Cinema becoming mainstream

2008-04-29T15:46:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I've been to a movie theater. I think the last movies I saw were Jumper (awful movie) and American Gangster (decent, but not Ridley's best) at my local cineplex. While the movies were ok, I was pleasantly surprised to find out that each theater room was outfitted with a Christie CP2000 series DLP projector. I couldn't believe that all of the film projectors in the cineplex were gone! At home, I've become so accustomed to digital projection that whenever I see a film based projector in a commercial theater, the image appears too soft to my liking. So hence, what I like about digital cinema projectors - the image is very clean and sharp but at the expense of inky blacks / high contrast. With today's technology, including home theater projectors, that seems to be the tradeoff - you either build a light cannon with less than stellar contrast or a lower light output machine with superior contrast. Resolution is now commonly 2K and on a screen up to 100ft, you can discern the pixel structure if you look for it but honestly, it's not too distracting. In fact, knowing/seeing how good the image is makes me wonder why some people still fuss over 1080p resolution on a 42" - 50" HDTV.

I've missed on the April releases so far but it looks to be a great summer in terms of movies !

My Blueberry Nights -> 4-4-08
Forgetting Sarah Marshall -> 4-18-08
Forbidden Kingdom -> 4-18-08
Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay -> 4-19-08
Iron Man -> 5-2-08
Speedracer -> 5-9-08
Tracey Fragments (Ellen Page indie) -> 5-9-08
Chronicles of Narnia Price Caspian -> 5-16-08
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull -> 5-22-08
You Don't Mess With The Zohan -> 6-6-2008
Happening (M. Night Shyamalan) -> 6-13-08
The Incredible Hulk -> 6-13-08
Get Smart (Steve Carell) -> 6-20-08
Love Guru (Mike Myers) -> 6-20-08
Wall-E -> 6-27-08
Wanted -> 6-27-08
Hancock -> 7-2-08
Hellboy II: The Golden Army -> 7-11-08
The Dark Knight -> 7-18-08
Step Brothers (Farrell, Reilly) -> 7-25-08
The X-Files 2 -> 7-25-08
The Mummy -> 8-1-08
Pineapple Express -> 8-6-08
Tropic Thunder -> 8-13-08
Clone Wars -> 8-15-2008
Quantum of Solace (new 007) -> 11-7-08

Savings improvement method

2008-04-26T13:26:00.000-07:00

Going over budget. How many of us actually stay within budget each month? Tracking our monthly spending has been a powerful tool but despite saying to ourselves "Ok, we are only going to spend up to $X amount on discretionary items each month," we've still managed to go over our budget more than we would like to admit. So what we've started doing now is taking our monthly overspend and carrying over to our next months spend tracking. The idea is that when we tally our expenditures for the next month, we''ll have accounted for the overspend from the previous month and this greatly influences our spend decisions for the present month. The end result - even if we go over budget for a month here and there, we are still meeting our savings goals from a long term perspective. I wish we had done this earlier but better late than never.

A very cool cooling solution

2008-04-21T20:16:00.001-07:00

On top of the Onkyo and behind the PS3 with the thermo sensor on the right. Very unobtrusive! The fan to the immediate left of the thermosensor is where the Reon chip is.

You would think a pre-amp/surround processor which by definition has no amplifier inside would run cool. Maybe with some Mfg'ers but not the Onkyo 885. In the case of the Onkyo, it has a Reon video processor that runs relatively hot and sits right near the top of the inside. It can be visibly seen if you look through the ventilation holes. The funny thing is I don't really "use" the Reon video processing. I set the Onkyo to "through" mode and let my source devices perform the video processing and yet you almost feel like you can grill a steak on the Onkyo. For sometime, I considered a DIY cooling solution but then I can across the amplifier/reciever cooling solution above. Don (drmckenzie) who sells these on eBay has several flavors and I opted for the solution with the themoswitch (ebay item #: 360042894734 ). It's so cool (no pun intended) - the 80mm fans are dead SILENT. I honestly could not even hear them turn on. The fans have a foam padding underneath that work really well to absorb & minimize fan vibration. You can also adjust the fan speed via the voltage selection switch. The thermoswitch turns the fans on at 32C and they stay on for a bit even after you've turned off your equipment - I'm guessing until the temperature falls below the 32C threshold. I saved the best for last. The fans actually work as advertised! The top part of the chassis is no longer too hot to touch! Don also responds quickly to your questions. Great seller. Great product. Highly recommended if you're in the market for a A/V cooling solution.

Epithelial inclusion cyst

2008-04-20T23:17:00.000-07:00

For some time now, I've had a epithelial inclusion cyst very near my right eye tear duct. Viks removed it for me this afternoon. I thought it would be a simple tweezer removal but because you can feel pain without being numbed, she had to inject me with some anesthetic and then she used a tweezer and scissor-like apparatus to perform the actual removal while I was lying down on the futon. The injection kind of hurt like a shot but once I was numbed, it was painless. For a few days I still have to apply some erythromycin ointment daily to prevent infection.

Mr Mortgage

2008-04-20T15:59:00.000-07:00

I have found another "doom & gloom" real estate blog worthy to add to my collection -> Mr Mortgage's Guide to the TRUTH! In a nutshell, this guy has anecdotal evidence that says the recent legislation to temporarily raise the conforming limits is a bust. He says the darn rates are still too high for people to want to re-fi or buy new. What is also scary (or encouraging - depending on which side of the fence you are on) is the Alt-A loans situation he describes for California. He has empirical data and it is pretty alarming just how many people have used their homes as ATMs. But now that many home values have tanked, a person living in those homes and who has these types of loans could very well have his/her LTV ratio all f-d up making it enormously challenging to re-fi and he/she could risk defaulting. And of course more defaults leads to more foreclosures which leads to more downward pressure to home prices. *cue the violin music* (I don't think the author is saying people should never take the cash out option. I'm sure there are circumstances where it's appropriate. I'm pretty sure the comment was toward people taking the cash out option for luxury items.)

This is going to sound really mean spirited of me since my own family and many of my friends have homes in the Bay Area. But I have to be brutally honest here. Part of me is still actually hoping for a major correction in Bay Area housing. And by no means is it because I want financial harm to come to those I care deeply about. Not true. We want to move back but like everyone else, we want the most for our hard earned money. Even today the Bay Area housing market fundamentals still don't make a whole lot of sense to me. I compare it to the year 2000 where you had ridiculous dot com valuations. I don't really buy the "Bay Area is unique" or "Bay Area is out of land" arguments either. A small premium for the aforementioned I can live with. But charge a premium such that a couple with an average six figure double income can only (or barely in some parts) afford a fixer upper? That just seems out-of-whack to me. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter what I think or feel. More and more the numbers that I can see are saying that at least in the short term a fair number of us are going to feel a pinch or a major pain.

Let's not forget that Viks and myself are also in the line of fire here with regards to our own home value. Not too long ago, we were barely able to re-fi without putting more money down. We were fortunate to close the re-fi with minimal out of pocket. And we were the folks who even put down the traditional 20%. Talk about adding insult to injury. So to put my previous paragraph in context, "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me!"

Looking for high yield, low risk holdings

2008-04-17T18:44:00.000-07:00

4500 layoffs at AT&T. Dollar plunge helps IBM, Google, Coca-cola earnings. Citi writeoffs. And yet there is a stock market rally? Despite the strong rallies here and there, the fundamentals don't seem there yet and stock market has been a little too volatile for my comfort level so in early March I pulled out of most of our holdings with the exception of some bond funds. The only gripe I have is the paltry YTD returns with current investments. For example our savings yield had dropped to 2.96% which is expected due to the Fed moves. The bond funds we still own are,

Vanguard Long-Term Treasury Fund Investor Shares (VUSTX) with a YTD return: 4.05% (fee-adjusted)

Vanguard Inflation-Protected Securities Fund Investor Shares (VIPSX) with a YTD return: 5.31% (fee-adjusted)

This is barely keeping up with inflation! But yah yah, I know very well of the inverse relationship between risk vs reward. In Nightly Business Report, I learned of investment products like Inverse Index Funds which short the indexes and of course there are Bear Funds but these are little too exotic for me. Some people seem to think gold is the way to go but while I understand the dollar is weak, gold seems to have pretty inconsistent performance in down markets. Sometimes boring but safe is the way to go. I recently looked at money market funds but they don't seem to have much better yields over savings yields. CDs are a -little- better but the added yield is not worth the lock in period to me. So the search continues.

I've been kicking myself for not unloading more of my company stock when it hit it's 52 week high. I've been wanting to better diversify but greed got the better of me. The only consolation this year was that I learned from my own mistake and had my mom sell her holdings at her 52 week high. So based on my experience, in the future I plan to sell on strength so that I can diversify into other investments.

DTS-HD Master Audio has arrived for PS3!

2008-04-14T23:10:00.000-07:00

When I first got the PS3, many people including myself banked on Sony enabling DTS-HD Master Audio capability. I tip my hat to Sony for finally delivering on this highly demanded feature. The ver 2.3 firmware update that enables DTS-HD MA was announced to be available on Apr 15th (tomorrow) but I was curious to see if they meant Apr 15th 12am Eastern time! So I checked around 9:30pm this evening and sure enough the PS3 detected that an update was available! I wasted no time in downloading the update. Went through without a hitch.

I only had the chance to do a brief demo since Viks had to sleep early tonight so I quickly put in Live Free or Die Hard. Yipee-kay-yay-mother*censor bleep*! Doh! From what I remember - prior to the 2.3 FW, the extracted DTS core track sounded pretty awesome. I can't do an A/B comparison anymore since the PS3 no longer outputs the DTS core but the sound is noticeably better. Dialogue is more clear and like Dolby True HD or uncompressed PCM, I think the element I appreciate most is the improved dynamic range. It's one of those things that you may or may not notice right away. But once you do notice, you really start to appreciate it and when you go back and listen to lossy tracks on DVD they sound thin and veiled.

From the impression I got tonight, I will again say that I don't think one lossless format sounds superior over another or that lossy formats like Dolby Digital Plus sound worse. Despite all the hype about the specs on lossless audio I still think that the quality of the soundtrack source and mastering job have more of an impact to the overall sound experience vs simply relying on lossless encoding. For example, take a much older film like Die Hard 2 that is encoded with 24-bit/48kHz DTS-HD MA vs a newer film like Transformers HD DVD with a lossy Dolby Digital Plus. It's no contest that Transformers is a much more livelier track despite the fact that it's using a lossy audio format. A good analogy is Blu Ray picture quality. Just because you buy a Hi-def Blu Ray disc does not guarantee that it will have stunning picture quality (Just read the reviews of recently released Blu Rays like Commando or Predator). So it kind of ties into the question as to why we need three lossless formats. I'm not sure how it benefits the consumer. More than likely it probably confuses consumers. But rather than continue down the path where I sound like I am complaining that not only do we have lossless audio but we now have three choices in lossless audio, I"ll simply say that when done right (good source/mastering job + lossless encode), lossless audio sounds pretty amazing but like many things, you can't simply rely on the marketing numbers.

Fox studios seems to be in bed with DTS. I got my Fox Blu Ray demo material lined up for tomorrow evening -> The Simpsons, Kingdom of Heaven, Shoot 'Em Up, X-men The Last Stand, and the of course more Die Hard!

X-Arcade Tankstick - as advertised

2008-04-10T12:01:00.001-07:00

Got my replacement Tankstick on Monday. It's been working well without a hitch. I'm using two TV dinner stands as a makeshift table for the Tankstick. The Tankstick overall is pretty heavy duty and it doesn't shift or move while you're playing which is a good thing. Way back in the day I had an older but much lighter weight "fighting stick" for my Super NES that would often shift around during button mashing. Iit just didn't work out very well. Viks was playing a game with me on Tues night and because the TV dinner stands are not that sturdy there was some rocking but it was really not that big of a deal. While playing with Viks, I was glad I opted for the Tankstick over the standard two player version since the trackball adds some nice spacing between two players.

The button configuration maps to the Dreamcast perfectly and looking at the PS3 buttons, it should map perfectly for Street Fighter as well. The feel of the joystick and the buttons really are of arcade quality. I cannot complain! I'm having a blast playing Marvel vs Capcom 2 now. Amazing what a difference a joystick can make. It almost feels like I have a new game system.

One of these days, I'll check out some MAMEs. I know there is a ton of good stuff out there.

Best NCAAB championship game in a long time

2008-04-07T23:54:00.000-07:00

At least Kansas avenged the Bruins tonight. But seriously, no matter what team you support, if you are a fan of March Madness you could not have asked for a better game than tonight's. Unlike the previous two year's championship games, both Memphis and Kansas seemed pretty evenly matched throughout the entire game. You just could not tell who would win. The backcourt and frontcourt on both sides were awesome, defense was great on both sides, and I lost count of the number of lead changes. And wow, how about the Kansas comeback near the end of regulation - down by 9 pts, the Jayhawks fouled + forced the pressure free throws, clawed their way back and finally Chalmers' clutch 3 to sent the game into OT! They don't call it March Madness for nothing! It's mind boggling how the game came down to Memphis' missed free throws. I use to think fouling and forcing your opponent to go to the line was an act of desperation & futility. But apparently it does work!

Dawn of War - Soulstorm multiplayer

2008-04-07T23:33:00.000-07:00

Josh, Danny, Nick and myself finally played our first multiplayer game together online. We played co-op vs 4 CPUs. We did well on the smaller maps but we struggled on the bigger maps where the enemy CPU had access to a lot of strategic points and could tech up fast and eventually overwhelmed us. Part of our struggles also had to with our inexperience with the new Sisters of Battle race as well as the fact that we all were playing the Sisters of Battle race and so we could not leverage the strengths of other races. But win or lose it's all good fun. I know I'll be content playing this game at least until the new Dawn of War 2 is released in 2009.

Foreclosure Heat Maps

2008-04-07T16:37:00.000-07:00

The Bruins got knocked out and it's Monday. I'm annoyed so what better way to kick off the week with some doom & gloom. This is a really neat link on the level of foreclosures at any given area in the US. Our area is pretty bad (plenty of heat!). For illustrative purposes the above is a snapshot of the Bay Area since up until now I had thought the Bay Area has been pretty resilient. In some parts it still is like Palo Alto and Sunnyvale but wow, look at the red in East Bay. Flame on! Accuracy on some of the data is questionable (time lag?) but hey, don't shoot the messenger here.

Time will tell but it will certainly be interesting to see if the Peninsula area gets more red. AMD just announced a layoff but it's unclear how many of layoffs are in the Bay Area vs Texas. My point being could this be the beginning of the lay off cycle in the Bay Area which might lead to even more downward pressure on the housing market? I wish there was an easy way to compare the level of foreclosure today vs 2000-2002 when unemployment was higher.

DTS-HD MA bitstreaming bug

2008-04-02T23:01:00.000-07:00

There is an issue on various Onkyo and Yamaha receiver/surround sound processor DSPs where DTS-HD MA tracks on certain discs can cause loud popping and can potentially cause damage to speakers when bitstreamed. The PS3 only outputs lossless tracks in PCM so no worries there but my Toshiba XA2 can bitstream DTS-HD MA. While I have not read any HD DVD specific issues, I have a German import of Terminator 2 coming that has a 7.1 DTS-HD Hi-Res track. No evidence of issues with this disc yet (only bitstreamed Master Audio tracks reported so far) but I don't want to find out the hard way.

Now the funny (or annoying - depending how you look at it) thing is that Onkyo has not issued an official fix for my 885 SSP but they have a fix for many of their recievers. Luckily, some brave souls on AVS have tried and confirmed that the DSP fix for the Onkyo recievers also works on the 885 SSP. If only all CE updates were as easy as they are on the PS3 or even my Toshiba XA2.

The short form:
For this Onkyo fix, the way it worked was that I had to obtain a .wav file from a fellow AVS member, burn it onto a CD, check that the CD player had all the correct settings and run through a careful sequence of steps on the Onkyo to update the DSPs. And this is separate from the general firmware update! That is another deal which I won't go into here.

The bloody details for those who are interested:

First I used CDBurnerXP (thanks to Wilco for this recommendation) for my PC to burn the DSP update. I burned .wav file as an audio file.

Then I used my PS3 for the CD playback portion of the update. On my PS3 I used the optical out and connected to optical 1 on the 885. I had the following in my PS3 settings

1) Music settings -> Audio CD output freq: 44.1/88.2/176 & bitmapping : off

2)Sound settings -> Digital optical out: 44.1kHz & 48kHz

My 885 has FW 1.04 / 07927A and originally had the following DSP versions,

1 – 07927A
2 – 07518A
3 – 07820B

I followed the Onkyo pdf file instructions. They were pretty straightforward,

On the Onkyo unit itself (not the remote)
1) Hold "Display" and then while holding display press "standby/on"
2) press tone "+" (it's the bottom button not the top)
3) press "return" (you should immediately see "S/PDIF..."
4) I immediately hit play on the PS3 controller and the PS3 played my CD

I then saw "S/PDIF Update" then "Writing 1st DSP" then "S/PDIF Update" ...then "Writing 2nd DSP" then "S/PDIF Update" again then "Writing 3rd DSP" and then "S/PDIF Update" again. I never did see "Complete" or "Clear" as the Onkyo instructions suggest. I just kept seeing "S/PDIF Update" and after about 10 min of not seeing any change, I stopped the CD and manually power cycled the 885. I immediately checked the DSP versions and was relieved to see,

FW 1.04 / 07927A (no change to FW)

1 – 08214A (this is new)
2 – 07518A
3 – 07820B

All my 885 settings were erased and I had to run set up again. Good thing I blogged all my previous settings. Since the PS3 cannot bitstream DTS-HD MA I just did a sanity test of a Blu Ray disc outputting PCM of the DTS core track from "Live Free or Die Hard" just to make sure my Onkyo was working and things seem to be fine.

Now, the above may seem like a big deal but in retrospect it wasn't all that bad. At least I didn't have to send my unit back to Onkyo. That would annoy me much more. Back to happy listening.

X-Arcade Tankstick DOA! doh...

2008-04-01T19:41:00.000-07:00

I decided to get the X-Arcade Tankstick. Shipped out last Thursday and arrived today. The joystick came double boxed and there were no signs of physical damage. But when I tried it out on my Sega Dreamcast, PS3, as well as my laptop the joystick LED would not light up as it was suppose to. After exhausting the manual and website FAQ, I called up tech support and they suggested I open up the chassis and see if some of the molex connectors for the external cabling to the internal PCB board were loose. I inspected and reseated the molex connectors and still no luck. The tech support guy, Jeremy, was helpful and arranged an advance replacement today and also a prepaid shipping label for the RMA. After this experience, I'm really glad there is a lifetime warranty for these units. Marvel vs Capcom 2 in all it's glory will have to wait until next week.

Weekend edition

2008-03-30T23:07:00.000-07:00

Kev's visit:
My friend Kev drove down from the bay area and we hung out for a bit since his wife was at a bachelorette party. It was nice to just shoot the breeze about everything from family planning, housing market woes, remodeling to home theater. Kev is one of my home theater shop talk buddies. He's been interested in a used Toshiba XA2. I had him do a blind A/B shootout of Star Wars SD DVD on both the PS3 and XA2. The image that he liked better was on the XA2 (which he didn't know was the XA2 until I told him). But what I found interesting is that he said that had I not performed the blind test, he would have been content with the PS3 upconverted image.

Since we live farther away from most people, I can count the number of visitors on my side with less than two hands. I think Kev is like visitor # 6?

Final Four:
I've been glued to CBS for most of the weekend.

- Memphis vs Texas -> *yawn*
- NC vs Louisville -> *yawn*
- Kansas vs Davidson -> Man, could've made the brackets ugly. In fact I was hoping history would not be made! What a heartbreaker. Davidson had this game. It just seemed that Curry should not have been the one to take the ball in. He took way too much time dribbling when it was obvious he was going to be the one to make the last key 3 pointer. Duh, of course Kansas was going to madly defend Curry and force him to pass to a lesser shooter. Terrific game up to the end.
- UCLA vs Xavier -> So this is what Bruins are like when they dominate! The "Love-fest" continues. I hope we can repeat the same level of play with Memphis -> frustrate them with the slow-grind-it-out style and signature Bruin defense. Shipp's got to get out of his slump!

Team Fortress 2 !

2008-03-28T17:14:00.000-07:00

Meet the Team Fortress 2 cast - this video cracks me up everytime. haha!

Team Fortress 2 actual gameplay on my favorite map: CTF_2FORT!

This is other game I have been wasting a lot of time on. I can't say enough good things about Team Fortress 2. Valve has hit a home run here. Not only is this game one of the more balanced multiplayer shooter games I have played in a long time, but it's also a very polished game too. You can tell right away that a lot of love and care went into making of this game. Valve also put a lot of humor into the game like the voice taunts and character stances yielding plenty of laugh-out-loud moments. In terms of visuals, it doesn't try to be photo realistic like a lot of next gen games. It's more cartoonish that adds to the humor. I think the best way to describe game is that it looks as if you are playing through a Pixar movie but with guns, LOTS of GUNS. In fact, I've always been impressed with the Steam Engine. Amazing visuals without requiring gobs of system resources. If only other game developers could be as efficient. I am running Team Fortress 2 at 1600x1200 + high settings on my four year old PC! Both the Dawn of War series and Team Fortress 2 have great replay value and what I've been really happy about is that these games have effectively suppressed the itch to get a new gaming rig.

Dawn of War - Soulstorm

2008-03-28T13:28:00.001-07:00

Man, I lost count of how many hours I've burned playing the Dawn of War series. Viks just shakes her head in dismay. Ever since Dawn of War has been released in 2004, it's been my favorite real time strategy game. I stopped playing RTS games like Command and Conquer because of Dawn of War. The recently released DoW Soulstorm is now the 3rd expansion pack (it's actually a quasi standalone as you don't need the previous games to play all 9 races in single player campaign or skirmish mode). The game has retained and expanded on the same great gameplay, frenetic pace, right balance of farming vs action (emphasis is on the action though - turtling will end your game fairly quick). Each race has a really nice variety of weapons, special abilities and battle styles making the strategy very deep and the voice acting is awesome and really immerses you into the game. In addition to comments I already made above, I think what sets DoW apart from other RTS games is that your infantry is not marginalized as soon as your opponent has tank vehicles ie the Celestian squad of the new Sisters of Battle race has excellent anti-vehicle abilities. The various infantry classes are in fact key to winning.

But we all know things in life are never perfect. There are known bugs in the 1.0 release. Some reviewers have poo-poo'ed the game saying it's more of the same and that the graphics are showing it's age. My personal take is that it's not "more of same" it's actually "more of a good thing" - and that's a good thing! And regarding the graphics - given that the engine is relatively old, I think the game still looks terrific. I use to think graphics were the highest priority when it came to the overall gaming experience. But Dawn of War has so many good things going for it that I don't even notice that the graphics are not Crysis-like/photo realistic. And lastly, you come across some whining about race balance issues. I won't say that the game is 100% perfectly balanced but I'll say it again - Dawn of War has so many good things going for it that even with all the "issues," there are enough good elements to outweigh the bad.

Up to now, it's been Josh, Danny, Nick and myself playing together in co-op multiplayer on the previous expansion packs. We usually play skirmishes vs the CPU given the varying skill levels among us. We haven't played Soulstorm together yet but I am looking forward to some great multiplayer action soon!

X-Arcade stick on my mind

2008-03-26T15:47:00.000-07:00

A few years ago I wanted one but could not justify the cost since they were practically as much as a new game console. Today they are about half the cost of a new game console. But it's not that the X-arcade stick went down in price. Game consoles are just much more expensive these days.

So why do I want one now? Call it "stars aligning" or whatever but it all gradually started with watching movies with the Marvell characters (ie X-men, Spiderman, Hulk) and the new trailer for Ironman! I remember how much fun I had playing those characters in my Marvell vs Capcom 2 game. So I dusted off my old Sega Dreamcast (yes, it still works great), started playing a bit, and was reminded again just how over the top the game is and also how pixelated the characters look today. Then I remembered why I didn't play the game as much as I wanted to. While the game is incredibly fun, the Sega DC gamepad is a real stinker when it comes to performing special moves . The Sega gamepad just feels awkward when it comes to fighting games, the controller response is hit & miss, and the experience just results in frustration.

I also started to get the Street Fighter itch again! Last week I was in nostalgic mode -> reminiscing the good ol' days in high school cross country where Ansen and I would take a "detour" during practice and go to Roundtable Pizza and play Street Fighter 2. I was never quite good enough to beat a lot of those guys in the arcade but I held my own. For me, the SNES gamepad was spot on for doing the "Hadokens" and "Shoryukens." Street Fighter is making a comeback now with Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix and Street Fighter IV for PS3!

So the timing just feels right to get a high quality joystick. The Hori Fighting Stick 3 seems to get good feedback but I'm leaning more toward the X-Arcade as it seems to be more true to the original arcade experience. X-arcade also has adaptors for both the DC and PS3 (but PS3 is USB so I'm not sure why an adaptor is needed - need to call) I haven't made up my mind yet as to whether the X-Arcade Tankstick or the Dual Joystick is best for me. I really don't need the trackball of the Tankstick but I was reading a review about how spacing between the player 1 and player 2 controls of the Dual stick can feel a bit too close for comfort.

Can you hear the difference? MP3: 128kbps versus 320kbps

2008-03-25T15:39:00.000-07:00

Try this test out! It's quick and painless.

I got it right but I listened twice using my Plantronics USB headphones (which I primarily use for my work IP softphone). It might have been easier had I used quality speakers.

Jim + SMC's wedding - Yank Sing

2008-03-21T15:44:00.001-07:00

"Bloggers" photo

Since many people commented that they could not hear my speech, here it is for those interested.

My name is Warren, and I have the great privilege of being both the best man and a good friend of the bride.

Three years ago Jim was actually my best man and standing right here where I am.

When I first found out that Sabrina said "yes" I was really excited for Jim. During his bachelor party last Sat, friends were asked to share an anecdote about Jimmy. I kept quiet for the most part since I didn't really want to give away too much of what I was going to share this evening.

Way back in the day, Jim was a first year in college and I was a second and we both lived on the same dormitory floor in Rieber Hall at UCLA. But I didn't really know Jimmy at the time. I was actually friends with his roomate Ed who was also a 2nd year.

Now if you lived in the dorms chances are the food you ate was not exacly what you would call fine dining. So I’d go over to Ed’s to see if he wanted to order from Thai Talay. But Ed was hardly ever there. Jim, for some odd reason was there a LOT - studying hard of course.. So I just started shooting the breeze with Jimmy . To my surprise Jimmy was a really easy guy to talk to - very laid back and very approachable.

We both moved out of the dorms and into the same apartment complex. Jim and I were pretty comfortable around each other at this point. We actually lived right across from each other and our apartments were so close that from one of the living room windows, you could see very, very clearly into the other person's living room window. And because of this, Jimmy and I would routinely have obscene finger gesture wars across the windows.

Soon enough, Jim became my go-to guy for many things:

- If I was hungry at dinner and didn't feel like cooking (or if I was tired of hamburger helper), the first thing I'd do was look across and see what Jim was cooking.

- If I was hungry AFTER dinner, I'd go over to Jim's apt to see if they had any ramen noodles or sometimes we'd go to Norm's for some late night STEAK AND EGGS.

- If I felt the need to procrastinate , I'd invite myself in and just pester Jim and his roomates.

- If I needed groceries, I'd call Jim and ask "Hey, when are you going to Ralph's next?"

All that time I was thinking and laughing inside. “Hmm .. I sure do bug him a lot. One of these days he’s gonna crack and tell me to bug off” But Jim never once snapped at me although he must have felt like it many times. This just speaks to some of his good qualities. He’s very patient, very generous, and always willing to go out his way for you. And what I admire the most is that Jim is consistently like this to his family and to all his friends. So it’s not hard to see why Sabrina agreed to go along for the ride.

So now would be a good time to share how Jimmy and Sabrina met. By this time we were all out of college and working. Sabrina (who I affectionately call Sabrina…Ming…Chou) - Sabrina and I had a mutual friend from high school and we both work at the same company. For the longest time, I'd have lunch with Jimmy and Sabrina separately. And at that time I was not intentionally trying to play matchmaker but in my mind I thought "hmm..you know, Jimmy has this happy aura around him, is down to earth, and laughs a lot” Sabrina Ming Chou – also has that happy aura around her, is down to earth, and laughs a lot.." -> I wonder..

So one day I tried to casually ask them both to lunch on the same day and I asked both of them if they minded that I was bringing a friend. I remember Sabrina being pretty laid back about it but Jimmy, on the other hand, was a little suspicious and asked "uh, why?" I tried playing it down and the three of us ended up eating at Tung Kee Noodle (of all places).

Now if you thought that there were sparks between the two. That would be a big NO. I’d have to save their intial meeting was a little more FIZZLE than sizzle.

After that lunch I remember Sabrina telling me "Hey. Your friend Jimmy . He's kinda quiet huh?" And I said to myself "Well, so much for that"

Fast forward a year or two to my wedding. Little did I know at the time that the Jimmy was hitting on Sabrina Ming Chou - at my wedding! Can you believe this guy? A few months after my wedding I get an interesting message from Jimmy to the effect of "hey. uh. i got something to tell you. you know your friend Sabrina Chou? I kind of like her"

It took some time but when you see the two of them now, you realize they’ve come a long way from that very first time they met. It’s clear how well they compliment each other . The way they balance each other, laugh together, how they affectionately look at each other, and even the way they argue with each other - it’s quite entertaining! I can safely say that today there's definitely more SIZZLE than fizzle.

Jimmy, Sabrina, I just want to say that I'm incredibly happy for you guys Sabrina, you got a great guy who’s who will go to great lengths to make you happy. Jim, without a doubt you found your match. Try not to screw this up? But seriously, I want to wish you guys all the best in the coming years and a long and happy life together.

Ladies and Gentlemen, please all join me in a toast.

To Jim and Sabrina ...Cheers!

Jim + SMC's wedding - Shakespeare Garden

2008-03-21T15:36:00.001-07:00

Excellent time for a bird to turd on you

Jim + SMC's wedding rehearsal

2008-03-15T15:18:00.000-07:00

Lunch at Ton Kiang

Wedding rehearsal in the Shakespeare Garden

Jim's bachelor party

2008-03-08T23:57:00.000-08:00

Dinner at Morton's steakhouse.

Jim, Josh, Mike T, Mike C, Nelson, Greg, myself went mountain biking at Wilder Ranch, Santa Cruz. Man, what a brutal workout but at the end, you feel pretty good that you went through the pain.