This is Hi-Fi

Tonight was my first session of my triathlon training swim class. It's official. I can't swim worth a damn. It helps that my end goal is just to be able to continually swim for long distances. I have no delusions of grandeur about my ability to swim at a rapid pace. They were making us do these drills that work on fixing certain aspects of your technique, and I had to stop 4 or 5 times, just to make it one length of the pool which isn't very far. At least I could feel myself improving throughout the session. I still suck, but progress will continue. I might need to go for some extra sessions, to get the full benefit out of this. As of right now, swimming in a triathlon (even a sprint) seems very far out there.

Lesser audiophiles might have quit and went home to reposition their speaker placement, but I fought through it and was actually the last person out of the pool. Perhaps if my coaches are as good as they seem to be, I might surprise myself. I do know one thing. I probably learned more about swimming in about 90 minutes than I have in the previous 20+ years.

I think I'm about to succumb to temptation. I was super close to getting an NEC HT1000, and even closer when the HT1100 was announced, but I could never quite stomach the pricetag. Now that I can get something that will do native 720P for less than half the price, it seems like a no brainer.

I'm going to let the election decide. If Bush wins, I buy the AE700. If Kerry wins, I squirrel all my money away in offshore tax shelters and save them for a rainy day. If Badnarik wins, I'll go buy the G35 that I wanted.

Well, it's past 1:30AM. John Edwards just gave a lame speech about how they want to count every ballot, etc blah blah blah. Time to go to bed. This won't be done until tomorrow.

I upgraded my version of Movable Type and MT-Blacklist to better combat the combat spammers that have been visiting this site. Hopefully there should be no difference to the end user experience. If you were looking for prescription drug recommendations, dieting advice, or the kind of pictures that your mom wouldn't approve, look elsewhere.

Well... maybe not. On the other hand, swimming appears to be within reach. After struggling for about half the session today and all of last week with the random drills that they had made us do, I finally started to get the hang of it, when they gave me a drill that resembled actual swimming. I'm not very balanced, my breathing needs a LOT of work, and my technique is non-existent. However, I'm super close to getting to a point where I can continuously swim without stopping, which would be a huge accomplishment for me.

I'm starting to think that I will actually be able to do a triathlon now.

At some point around college, I had successfully weaned myself off of TV. For most of college, the only thing I really watched was some college sports, a little bit of Beavis and Butthead, and every episode of Buffy and Angel. Unfortunately, I've been sliding down that slippery slope, for the last 6 months or so, and I figured I would share what I'm watching:

1) The West Wing - This year, they appear to be getting back to some issues. It sure would be nice if real life was this easy. How should they solve the Israeli-Palestinean conflict? Oh, just get them to sit down together and talk. Why didn't we think of that earlier? In any case, the cast is still chock full of interesting characters with good dialogue.

2) Nip/Tuck - A tale of two plastic surgeons in Miami. An incredibly fun show. Totally decadent. It helps fulfill the void of Buffy and Angel by providing a healthy dose of dark lighting, and just a wee bit of slaying. Look elsewhere for vampires, though...

3) Desperate Housewives - When I first saw the preview for this show, I thought this was definitely the beginning of the end. As it turns out, this is actually a damn good show. They totally pimped out Teri Hatcher and Nicolette Sheridan in the previews, but that's not what this show is really about. OK, admittedly there was quite a bit of skin from Marcia Cross and Eva Longoria this week, but it does have some substance under the surface. One of the housewives is Felicity Huffman who I absolutely loved on Sports Night.

P.S. I forgot how nice En Vogue's harmonies were. It's fun to flip through the "unloved" section of my CD collection every now and then.

The deed is done. My projector is on the way. Can't wait!

P.S. If you ever decide to start a blog, realize that trying to title every post with relevant lyrics is not that easy...

My best friend from Joisey was in town this weekend visiting his new bride's sister. The sister in law has a 16 month old son. On Friday, one of my co-workers invited a bunch of us to have lunch with his wife and their 8 month old daughter. Spending time with both of them has definitely confirmed one thing for me. It is possible to have a baby and still look great if you put your mind to it. People are always looking for excuses not to exercise, and I don't think giving birth is a good one. Gotta set good examples for the kiddos so they don't end up as part of the growing obese population.

After months of anticipation, I got bored of looking at a big container of saltwater and decided it was time to start putting some fish into the tank. I picked up a lawnmower blenny on Sunday, and he appears to be happy exploring his new environment. I'm hoping to get a pair of clowns so I can have a mated pair, but my local aquarium store said that the aquacultured marine fish wholesalers still haven't recovered from hurricane season.

I saw the Sister Seven reunion last Saturday. I'm glad I ran into a coworker's posse downtown, so I didn't have to kill 5 hours by myself. They had posted that doors were opening at 7:30, but S7 didn't go on until midnight. Doh!

After about a 2.5 hour set, I was leaving when I realized I had a ringing in my ears. =( My first case of tinnitus. For those of you that have never gotten it, it's REALLY scary. I kept thinking that I might have done some serious permanent damage, especially when it didn't go away when I woke up the next morning. In fact, it wasn't really gone until Monday night. Well, I'll never forget my ear plugs again.

I'm trying to singlehandedly boost the consumer spending index. I can't have a new projector without media, right? I walked out of Fry's carrying 6 Superbit DVDs: Air Force One, Dracula, The Fifth Element, Spiderman, Starship Troopers, Underworld.

Some of you know that I was waffling picking up the Underworld DVD for a while. By all accounts it's a horrible movie, but the holy trinity of vampires, slaying, and dark lighting was too much to ignore. Not to mention an absolutely fetching Kate Beckinsale in leather. Can't wait to see that on the big screen. =)

Once again, Heather Nova's words ring true.

I got my projector on Friday. I spent the better part of this weekend reconfiguring my entire living room to accomodate this change, as well as taking care of some long overdue organizing.

As recommended, I didn't buy a screen until I could try it out at home and verify that it worked well at the desired size. I actually got surprisingly decent results projecting it onto my slightly greenish wall. A friend of mine said, "it's just optimized for Shrek". As it turned out, watching football on the big screen was quite alright. I didn't actually get to play much with my DVD player as I was preoccupied rearranging and watching football, but it sounds like I've got a bunch of expensive cabling purchases in my near future. Hopefully I can get my screen in time for the big game on Sat.

Dammit. I really need to get more sleep. I inadvertently broke a promise today by trying too hard to help someone and forgetting the purpose of my task. I never make that mistake. Well, I guess that's why they say "never say never". Ack, suckage.

Just finished updating some documentation that I promised for someone. I really should have done this before deciding to watch a movie and spend an hour on the phone working through some financial numbers. Hooray for a native 720p projector. I've been doing a terrible job of looking out for #1 lately, and this wasn't exactly the best way to go about it.

If you didn't catch Sportscenter tonight, go watch the last minute of the game between the Pacers and Pistons. This was the worst sports scene I've ever seen. This is way worse than the snowball incident at Giants Stadium from a few years back. The worst part is that, Ron Artest's reputation is going to cloud the fact that he did very little wrong. For all the mistakes he has made in the past, he was pretty much laying there, minding his own business.

These fans need to go to jail. You can't just throw cups of beer at people, assault them, and get away with it.

It's been pretty rainy/gloomy for the last few days, but there's a silver lining in every cloud. Last week, I picked up an ATI HDTV Wonder to try and get HDTV broadcasts over an antenna. After a bunch of screwing around, I managed to get everything setup with a minimal amount of effort. Not only is it working like a charm, I'm getting the Dolphins-Seahawks game on CBS, even though the same channel is showing the Chargers-Raiders game on Dish Network. I guess SD and HD broadcasts don't always have the same content.

Of course, the Dolphins are losing 17-7 at the half. Maybe having HD isn't such a good thing.

OK, this is ridiculous.

Fri 6:30 PM: I bought 3 Blue Chromis.
Sat 9:30 AM: I feed the fish and all 3 Blue Chromis are there.
Sat 4:00 PM: I add my last bag of sand to the tank. All 3 Blue Chromis are there when I start, and I think all 3 are there when I finish (I don't think I accidentally buried one since they're pretty fast and they swim near the top).
Sun 11:59 AM: I wake up and there are only 2 left. I look in the overflow and I don't see anyone in there. I quickly check the sump and I don't see anyone that has fallen into the drain. Grr.
Sun 8:00 PM: I feed my fish and see there are 2.
Mon 9:00 AM: I'm down to 1.

Where are they going???

Magnepan has updated their web site. It almost looks half decent now. If you're looking for speakers, check out the MMG, MMG W, and MMG C. All are significantly better than comparably priced junk that you can buy at Best Buy. And they come with a 60-day money-back guarantee!

After taking a tour of several area aquarium stores with the parentals, we ended up buying a pair of Percula Clowns for the saltwater tank. My poor blenny has had the tank mostly to himself, and my lone Green Chromis (earlier misidentified as Blue Chromis) was sadly swimming back and forth all day looking for pals. Unfortunately, I've got no anemone yet, but the two clowns are happily playing. The smaller one seems to be doing a minor amount of bullying, but that's a good sign. Clowns are born asexual and will change asexual-to-male or asexual-to-male-to-female as they mature. Basically, the most dominant (aka bossy) fish becomes the female, and the one most willing to put up with crap will become the male. If you somehow end up with two females, they will fight to the death. And people say fish don't have human qualities...

I also picked up a pair of Tiger Barbs for my freshwater tank, today. I've always had a bunch of tiger barbs. Starting from 1999 until a couple months ago, I've always had a couple of them together, since they are communal fish. Unfortunately, my last 2 females died this spring, and I was left with the lone "baby" tiger barb that I purchased with my Mom back in 2001. When I put the bag into the tank to acclimate the new arrivals, he was right up to the bag, checking out his new tankmates. As soon as I released them, he was immediately giving both of the new arrivals (1 male and 1 female) plenty of attention, including a little mating dance. The poor guy hasn't seen another tiger barb in close to 6 months. In fish years, that's probably the equivalent of being in prison for about 15-20 years.