11.30.2004
12:27am

I'm too young to remember Betamax...

HD-DVD versus Blu-Ray: things look like they might get pretty dirty between Sony and Toshiba. I for one hope that they can decide on a mutual format but as of right now it looks like a DVD-Audio versus SACD situation. Both companies will be too proud to back down on their own format so basically the consumer gets the shaft by having two different formats of high-definition DVDs. The good news is that HD-DVD/Blu-Ray will probably be a niche format at least until the transports become decently affordable, in the $300-400 range. Right now with HD-upconvert players at $200 I can only bet that true HD players will be quite a bit more expensive. Much more processing/decoding power required for high-def MPEG-4. It should also be interesting to see if we get any 1080p format players or if everything will be 720p/1080i. Then following the wave of HD players we will have HD recorders so all the rich media buffs can transfer their HD TiVo shows to optical media. I've already had several shoppers at Best Buy ask where the high-def DVD recorders were located... haha come back in about 6 months.

Along a similar tangent, 3-chip DLP should be making an appearance early next year. Hopefully the infamous RBE (rainbow effect) should be gone in the next-gen DLP HDTVs, and maybe we will see some true 1920x1080 RPTVs to supplement the one Sharp Aquos LCD TFT that we stock right now. (nostalgia for NCSSM here with all the acronyms). I'm also hoping against chance that Best Buy will showcase some additional front projectors; as it currently stands very few people are willing to go through the hassle of installing a full projection screen, or if they do they purchase through Sound Advice in Orlando and not Best Buy.

11.28.2004
11:25pm

Mmm... two weeks of class left and a few exams--almost close enough to taste the free air. Next semester should be interesting, but I'm looking forward to a little break inbetween.

I decided on a name for my hamster after some consideration; he will be Nicodemus, a tribute to Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH. Yes, I know he's not a rat but close enough... probably the only rodent I will have for a long time. Anyway, NIMH was one of my favorite books as a kid and I should probably reread it at some point; the animated movie was great as well.

11.27.2004
10:11pm

After two crazy days at Best Buy the Thanksgiving rush is finally over. The great 2-day deals will be gone tomorrow (cue awww). I made a trip tonight to CompUSA and Circuit City to see if they had any good deals left but it seems that most of them were just 6-hour specials from black Friday. I stopped into Sports Authority to say hello to Ron and was sorta surprised to see how large their store is. It's as big as Dick's Sporting Goods, with the large warehouse layout.

11.25.2004
11:11pm

Hope everybody had a nice Thanksgiving, got to spend some time with family and stuff themselves with turkey. I had a leisurely day consisting of some computer games, a couple movies, and some reading. I bought a Florida Today paper to read all the black Friday sale ads for tomorrow, but it doesn't look like I will be in line at 5am; nothing worth a significant wait. I will probably stop at Target to get a couple DVDs and maybe at Kmart as well for some Christmas shopping. I detest holiday crowds but the sales are pretty good. Best Buy is running some great deals as well so there will probably be quite a lot of people there when I go in at noon. Fortunately the 6-hour specials will be over by that time so it shouldn't be quite as chaotic. In any event, it can only get better after tomorrow so if I make it through my 10.5 hour shift I should be able to handle anything, right?

I've had some problems coming up with Christmas ideas this year. The best I could do was a list of DVDs and CDs that I would like. Maybe this means I've acquired most of the electronic crap that I could ever want, or maybe just that my focus has turned to more-expensive things that fall outside a typical Christmas budget. "Umm yes I'd like that $2000 amp and $7000 plasma and as a stocking stuffer maybe a $1000 pre/proc." I can't wait to get a bunch of rich grandparents coming into Best Buy looking for gifts, should be a piece of cake to sell a bunch of accessories and gift cards. All associates check your conscience at the door and retrieve it at the end of your shift, please.

11.24.2004
2:54pm

No school for 5 days... hurray. I went to the mall this morning to look for some wall posters and found a couple good ones for the living room. Last night I went over to Ron's and played with the baby hamsters; now that their eyes are open they can be handled. He said they should be ready to leave by Sunday give or take, so I got a cage and food at Petsmart today. Ron's adult female is already pregnant again so he will have another batch for sale pretty soon. At least he got another cage to separate the male and female, so no more surprises. Rolando wasn't too keen on getting a hamster so I guess mine will be the only resident rodent.

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban came out on DVD yesterday so I rented it and watched it last night. Rolando left for Las Vegas around 3pm so I won't see him again until late Sunday probably. In the meantime I've got Half-Life 2, Halo, and Best Buy to keep me company. Oh and if I get really bored there are always books to read...

11.20.2004
4:59pm

Woke up at 5:45am to get ready for work at 6:30am. This morning we had our Best Buy Black Friday dry run, with employees emulating customers that we might expect on the day after Thanksgiving. I can't say anything specific about the black Friday deals, other than to say that home theater and computers will be particularly busy. They have a special checkout queue line set up this week for all the extra customers. Our basic instructions were to assist customers as best as possible within our designated areas, and to let the "grab and run" people do their own thing since they are just bargain hunting. If any of you are planning to wait in line Friday morning, Best Buy will have line sellers in place at 4:30am to distribute product tickets and prepare the waiting people for the store opening at 6am. Limit this year will be three (3) door-buster items, as in the past.

Florida Tech Fall Open House - went very well this morning, probably the best that I've ever done before. We had the usual people from Student Ambassadors, including the new members, giving tours today along with some volunteers from student life. Saranya and I took the ECE people this time, and surprisingly our groups weren't too large; about 30 people each. The student panel was larger than prior ones since we were in the Hartley room and could handle more people; I think FIT had close to 90% of families show up for this open house. Judy and Steve were in full swing this morning trying to talk to everybody they possibly could, and they were visibly relieved when the day came to a close.

After open house I finally watched Hellboy and returned the DVD to Blockbuster. I stopped at Kmart as well and picked up the new Collective Soul and Guns 'N' Roses CDs that were on sale. I'm listening to the Collective Soul CD now, called Youth, and it seems to be pretty good, although not quite up to par with Dosage.

Since my web site is hosted by Florida Tech I'm not required to have any sort of advertising banners, but I saw a Verizon ad today that caught my attention so I decided to post it below. It relates very well to my modern physics class.

11.17.2004
11:20pm

Pulled from Slashdot today: TiVo plans to add advertising banners when using the "fast-forward" feature of their DVR boxes. A primary reason a lot of people subscribe to TiVo is to eliminate the commercials during network programming, but apparently the company wants to increase revenue by selling advertising directly onto the device. This seems like a really horrible idea to me, at least from a conceptual standpoint. TiVo service has always been promoted as a commercial remover so this seems to go against their current business model and will probably upset a lot of subscribers.

Also in the news today, the Virgin Mary grilled cheese sandwich was posted back on Ebay after a short hiatus. However, the bid this morning was $99,999,999 so I don't think anybody took the auction seriously. A multitude of items featuring the keywords "not virgin mary cheese sandwich" also appeared today, trying to ride the wave of popularity generated by the news channels. It was worth a good laugh for today, and several people emailed FitForum to share the humor.

For Software/Hardware lab tomorrow we were supposed to write a Tic-Tac-Toe program using classes, so Ron, Rolando and I decided to do it today. I finished in about 1.5 hours, Ron in about 2 hours, and Rolando was almost done at 4 hours. In any event it was a good review of stuff I learned back in C++ at NCSSM, even if Dr. Kozaitis didn't do a very good job covering it in the lecture. I went to the SA meeting at 7pm in Clemente where Steve went over some admissions processes and details for Open House. We have to be there at 9am on Saturday, which should give me enough time to drive back from my 6:30-8:30am meeting at Best Buy.

9:59am

Wow, it's been quite a while since I updated. Half-Life 2 was released yesterday at 3am via Steam, and on store shelves during normal hours. Buff and I went to Best Buy and each picked up a copy, and Cory went and bought the game later on. The level of detail is simply amazing, as all the reviews foretold. Even with my Radeon 7500 I can play at 800x600 with medium detail, which isn't too bad for a game designed with PCI-Express in mind. I won't go into plot details here since they are published on other sites already, but the development seems even better than the first Half-Life game. It's a good thing I don't have work tonight, because I'll probably be playing a lot more.

Rolando rented the movie White Chicks from Blockbuster and we watched that two nights ago, and it was actually pretty funny at parts. I particularly liked the part when "Buffy the white girl slayer" started signing Vanessa Carlton's "A Thousand Miles" in a high-pitched voice. Lots of humor to be found throughout the movie, typical of a Wayans film.

And in other news, Florida Tech's Open House is this Saturday so all the Ambassadors will be busy that morning. Steve is going to give us his usual pep talk at the meeting tonight; can't wait...

11.12.2004
12:47am

Just a quick note since I'm still awake, waiting for my clothes to dry. Ron and I had our Modern Physics test today on rotational/vibrational energy levels, Fermi energy/gas, and quantum electromagnetics. It actually wasn't as bad as we expected, only taking about 45 min instead of the usual 75. If I score an A on this test I don't really need to pay attention in class for the rest of the semester, but I will anyway because it's cool stuff for the most part. It does kind of worry me that Dr. Lopez tests on maybe 1/3 of the material in the textbook, so I hope the concepts aren't going to be too critical for ECE. In any event I can always keep the textbook to use for future reference.

Ron's Russian dwarf hamsters had six babies about four days ago, so he's been advertising them on FitForum to find potential buyers. Apparently a few people are interested in buying some as Christmas presents. Chelsea has already vouched for a black one if one of the babies has a dark coat, but the majority look like they will be white. Ron offered me a hamster as well, so I might take him up on that depending on how healthy they look in the next couple weeks. Their eyes should open this weekend and they will be weaned in another 3 weeks. If Ron doesn't sell all the kids Jason has a boa constrictor that would be all too happy to adopt one, but it doesn't look like that's going to happen.

Best Buy is having an inspection tomorrow so everything in the departments had to be uber-nice. I spent most of the night downstocking and rearranging and laser-lining, and I still didn't get everything done by 10:30. I'm feeling much more comfortable with my job now that I know how to actually process customer requests. We had a Bose Lifestyle 38 system returned today because one of our salespeople told the customer the speakers were white-colored, when we only stock the black version. So if any of you go to shop at Best Buy make sure you know what you are getting before you purchase; ask two different sales associates if you can, get that second opinion. Also addressing something that happened today, if you see a super-duper deal on the Best Buy website and they are sold out, chances are we will not have said clearance item in our store. Just FYI.

11.10.2004
3:42pm

Not even halfway there...

Today I had my Circuit Theory test, which I think went pretty well. Dr. Grossman was nice enough to give us a large number of extra credit problems to offset any faults on the regular questions. I got my Prob/Stat test back from Monday's class, and I got a 54/50 on that without even studying. Tomorrow I have a Modern Physics test, but I think this exam will be my "dropped" grade since I have to work most of the night on the Sci/Tech Comm project. If I have time to study it would be great, but otherwise I don't need to worry too much. This week is already exhausting enough without another test. The CT problems that were supposed to be due Friday have been extended, so a little relief there as well.

I noticed on CNN.com today that the Bush administration is going to push to open the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge for oil drilling, now that the Senate will have more Republican bias next term. Everybody wants gas prices to be lower, but I think this would be going too far, despite claims that they can drill without disturbing the wildlife. Regardless of how careful the contractors are, they will still alter the environment. Hopefully the EPA will inhibit the bill, but the results are doubtful.

I noticed the Florida Tech Crimson had the headline: "Bush wins another four years." My motto for the 2004 election: "America loses four more years." Despicable, enraging, but the populous has conveyed its stupidity and there's no going back now. $Diety help us all.

11.8.2004
6:03pm

I've been really busy lately, with work and school projects. I've got 31 hours scheduled at Best Buy this week, a Sci/Tech Comm project due Friday, and two tests. Tonight I have to complete a Modern Physics assignment, study for Circuit Theory, and work on the proect. Six or seven hours of sleep is the norm, and I doubt it will get much better for a while.

On a positive note, I got to see The Incredibles in DLP at CinemaWorld, and Pixar has really outdone themselves this time in animation. Some of the action scenes have amazingly fast motion with exceptional detail, and I can only imagine the months of rendering time it took. The story and characters were great as usual, making some pop culture references without being cliche. Syndrome's robot weapon is very similar to Dr. Octavius from Spider-man 2, and the movie draws several parallels with the James Bond series of films. The Incredibles manages to be a thoughtful family film as well, without falling into the "Spy Kids" type drama. One of the jungle chase scenes is remarkably similar to Return of the Jedi, with flying saucers chasing the superheroes at breakneck speeds. Pixar definitely earned the PG rating with this film, for lots of intense and threatening situations, but it's still clean fun like Toy Story and Monsters Inc.

As always, Pixar precedes the feature film with a short, this time it's called Boundin'. Some people on IMDB have compared the clip with the relationship between Pixar and Disney, where Disney tries to hold Pixar down but they keep on boundin' anyway. Personally I didn't read too much into the clip, just seems to be a basic moral message like "For the Birds" and others. They also showed a teaser for next year's Pixar/Disney movie called "Cars," which looks funny but I hope they come up with a good story. It looks to be the last in the line of Disney/Pixar projects, so Disney will have to use in-house CGI animation thereafter.

11.2.2004
11:50pm

Watching the electoral votes be tallied on NBC... looks like this is going to be a really close presidential race. I worked in the home audio section at Best Buy today so I didn't get much of an opportunity to watch the news as the first states came in. Florida will probably be last again because of some logistical problem, and a recount is all-too-expected if the popular vote is very close.

In other news, this week and the following is going to be horrible in terms of homework, studying, and projects. My Sci/Tech Comm group is definitely meeting tomorrow night to crack down on this report and get some pages churned out. In addition to that I've got three tests next week and a couple big homework assignments. At some point I have to decide what classes I want to take next semester and meet with my advisor again.

11.1.2004
12:12am

When Ron, Rolando, and I were out running tonight we saw a coffee table and couch sitting by one of the Saratoga dumpsters, so we called Cory over with his pickup and promptly acquired them for our living room. Both items appeared to be in pretty good condition after cleaning them up a bit, and the best part is we didn't have to spend any money! I suppose we owe a thank-you to whoever threw them out. I actually watched some television tonight since NBC was running some parody debates from this election, the 2000 election, and the 1992 election. They picked on candidate slip-ups like Dubya's "rumors on the Internets," Kerry's flip-flopping, Clinton's lewdness, Bush's deficit, Perot's crassness, and Al Gore's "lock-box" obsession. Everybody go vote tomorrow, even thought it undoubtedly means waiting in long lines. This election is too close to call in the battleground states so every voice counts. If Kerry wins tomorrow I'll definitely be celebrating, and if Bush wins it will be "more of the same" as Kerry likes to say. The only thing that would really upset me is another drawn-out recount process in the likeness of Election 2000, but the way things are looking now the presidency may be decided by a handful of ballots.