Entertainment

The Ultimate Media Center

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Do you know what the Ultimate Media Center setup is? Please tell me! I thought I found it a few years ago with Tivo, but then I wanted more so I had my Tivo hacked (Yes I didn’t want to deal with it myself so I had it done). Then I went out and built my own DVR with Beyond TV and thought that was perfect. Then I wanted more. I know I am demanding and all, but I keep upgrading and changing my DVR/TV setup.

Now I am on the fence between trying out Myth TV or just getting a dam DVR cable box from my provider and not bother anymore with the endless tinkering.

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Cleaning Day

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Well plans change. My original plans to go out on Labor Day didn’t pan out. I ended up getting the idea in my head to clean my apartment. Not just dust and mop, but go through my closets and clear out old crap that I haven’t used in a while and was taking up space. I know I should have gotten rid of more, but it was a good start.

After cleaning up I decided to unpack the last box I had that I haven’t touched since I moved. yes it has been over 2 years since I moved last, but I didn’t really need to get into the box of books in a while. I finally broke it open so I can put all the stuff in the box into my new inventory system. I have been using Delicious Library for a while now to track my DVD’s and Xbox games (all 3 of them) but I have a ton of books that I also needed to put into the system. So I took a few hours today and got all the books into the system. Now that I cleaned up some shelf space in my closets I can actually put the books away.

I finally feel rested and ready for the hectic week ahead at work. It is late, and I hope I can get a good night sleep. That is the one issue I have had all weekend. I have gone to bed late so I am not tired until like 1 am. I am going to take something to help me get to sleep tonight so I can be 100% tomorrow. I am hoping to get to see my family this week. I was going to get out to my sisters for dinner Wednesday but I think she has my nieces school orientation that night so I don’t know what the plans are now.

My Exercise Routine

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So far I have gone for 3 rides on the new bike. I just got back from one a while ago. Man I was tired. I think if you feel like you are going to puke you did a decent work out? I remember that feeling when I was in training for the life guard test my senior year of High School.

I think I have a routine I am going to follow until I get more stamina and build up the cardio. I leave my apartment and head over to Central Park. I take the bike road/trail up to the 102st service road (cuts the look down by a mile or so), then I cut over to the west side. I ride on the west side until just 72nd street (i think). From there I can cut back over to the east side and ride back uptown to the exit from the park by my apartment. From there it is all down hill back home. The hardest part is the big hill south of 102st on the west side, and another incline on the east side north of 72st. those two areas alone give me a crazy work out. Well honestly I can’t make it up the hill on the east side just yet. I walk the bike each time I have tried it.

My goal is to get in decent enough shape that I can expand my ride to eventually include the entire 6+ mile look of the entire park. From my progress so far I need to work on my condition a bit before I can try that. The good thing is the last 2 times I rode I actually looked forward to the ride. That is a good sign to me!

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Superman Returns

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We left work early today since not much was going on. Danny, Jayson and I went to see Superman Returns. Overall it was a good movie. I did come to a few realizations during and after that movie though that had nothing directly to do with the movie, and that is I don’t want to goto movies anymore. I used to love going to the movies. My friend Rich and I used to do it all the time. Now I can’t really justify it to myself. I don’t want to spend $11, plus another $10 for food (i have to have popcorn and a soda when I goto a movie) to sit in a theater with noisy inconsiderate people. I also don’t want to have to get there an hour early just to get an OK seat. I finally got fed up with the whole process today. One of the final straws was the fact that the theater didn’t even have the AC at a decent level during the movie. That was after the lobby of the theater didn’t even have AC on. That seemed to me to be a purely cost thing. Why run AC on the ground level by the tickets, but upstairs in the theater it was on? It wasn’t some sort of problem. That is like the 3rd movie I have been to at the theater south of Union Square on 13th and had that issue.

Superman wasn’t a bad movie, but it wasn’t worth that level of aggravation, and cost for a movie. I would rather wait for it to come out on DVD and watch it on my 40″ LCD in HD for the flat rate I pay on Netflix than deal with all that production at the movies. Now some movies I will just suck it up and go, but I won’t go as much as I used to. It just isn’t worth it.

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A New Old Hobby

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Today I finally went out and did something I have been saying I was going to do for a while. I bought a bike. Since the winter time I have wanted a bike to ride for a few reasons. First I need to exercise a bit more (aka at all). Second as a backup mode of transportation. I was fed up with walking during the transit strike. The funny thing is that biking for me is not something new. When I was a teenager and younger I used to bike everywhere. I did it all the time, and I enjoyed it. Even when I was old enough to drive I still would use my bike to go places locally.

Since college my off and on outdoor exercise has been roller blading. It is fun, but it is not something you want to do if you want to travel long distances. The more I think about it, I don’t know why I didn’t go out and get a bike sooner? After recommendations from friends I bout a Trek bike. The model I originally wanted was out of stock. It was a bike specifically designed for urban areas like Manhattan. I ended up with something similar in the same price range. So far it seems great.

My goal is to ride a few times a week, weather permitting. I have one ride down today! I need to force myself into this, since I think I need to exercise!

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Rangers Vs. Islanders

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My friend rich called me this afternoon and wanted to know if I could goto the Rangers vs. Islanders game at the garden tonight. Not to pass up tickets for hockey I decided to go. The tickets being free was an added bonus. The seats where amazing. They where his companies season tickets. they had 4 seats and only the 2 of us. We sat in the second row of the upper area of the first level if that makes any sense?

The Islanders won, and it was actually a good game. The third period was a nail bitter. I had a great time. I wish I was able to go to games more often.

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Netflix Throttling Shipments

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A few months a go (January or February) I signed up for Netflix. I always thought it was a great concept, but I was always worried that the DVD’s would take forever to get to me and I wouldn’t get my moneys worth. I changed my tune after renting a bunch of stuff from Blockbuster. They where costing me more, for renting the theoretical amount of DVD’s I could rent at Netflix for a month, and I can’t stand Blockbuster. They are one of those companies like Walmart that think they know best and edit certain movies for content. Blockbuster, if I don’t think the US government knows best in the what I should and shouldn’t watch department, I don’t think the I trust you to edit crap for me. You aren’t filtering content for “family values”, they are just your interpretation of them. My mom took me to an R movie when I was as young as 12 and I turned out just fine. She did it because she knew I wanted to see it, and checked it out ahead of time. Maybe parents should act responsible like that instead of relying on you to edit crap. Had to get that off my chest, but that is a bit off point. OK, so not a fan of Blockbuster so I tried the free 2 weeks of netflix.

in the begining it was great. I would send in a movie and they would get it the next day. They would then send me out a new one that day and I would get it the next. The whole process took 3 business days. I started getting into a rhythm of watching the movies the day I got them or the next and sent them back on the third day. Then problems started. Netflix would not get the movie for an extra day or so. Then they wouldn’t ship them out for an extra day or so. And the worst would be they would take an extra day or so to get to me. The worst return time I saw was 4 days before they said they got something. Friends of mine have seen articles on the internet where people are claiming netflix is throttling heavy users. I am starting to believe it, or at least question their methods and claims of “unlimited” dvd rentals in a month.

Now my reasoning for signing up with them was if I got 2 movies a week it would still be cheaper than going to the video store. For a while I was doing slightly more than that number, but with the rate the turn around stuff I don’t see that happening anymore. I would be happy with at least 8 DVD’s a month (i have the 2 dvd package and 2 per week x 4 weeks in a typical month). If they can’t do that I will have to look at other options. But even if they can meet that requirement, I will still get pissed if they take forever to ship or receive something. It is just an emotional response to perceived bad service. And no I am not over reacting. If you email me saying I will get something one day and I get half of it, and the other half comes days later when they both where shipped at the same time I have to wonder if you are playing games with me.

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Computer Rebuild, Again

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Today I am wiping my Presario desktop. I am moving all my DVR hardware onto it and re-installing the OS. My little DVR machine is fine, but it does not have enough inputs (internal or external). That made it difficult to add extra drive capacity or another TV tuner. Since I am not really using my more powerful Presario desktop for anything other than remoting into it to use VMWare I figured I would combine the two. The hardware should be able to handle both tasks without any problems. It is after all an AMD Athlon XP 3200+ with 1.5gig of ram and 2 250gig SATA hard drives.

I am in the process of installing Windows XP now. hopefully the Beyond TV & Beyond Media install’s go well, and I have no problems with the video capture cards. More news later

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RAM & a DVR

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I ordered a 1 Gig RAM upgrade for my new iMac. It finally arrived and I installed it today. It was actually pretty easy to do. I was happy about that. The machine is noticeably faster now. Especially when I have several apps open. With the original 512megs on board I noticed the system would freeze up when I was doing some intensive stuff this weekend. The added memory is a nice solution to my problem. Now all I need is more apps that are run on the intel chips natively.

I also got a new USB DVR adapter for my DVR machine. The goal is to have 2 tuners running on the same computer. Snapstream says it will work. The problem I have is that I have 2 different revisions of the same USB DVR hardware. One driver version works with one unit but not the other. When I get the second one to work the first one decides to stop working. I gave up after several hours of messing with the system. I am RMA’ing the unit and will probably just go out and buy a PCI tuner card. I didn’t want to do that, but in order to do what I want I will need one. I may also just move the DVR setup to my HP desktop since it is not doing much right now. Still pondering my options.

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Poker Night Again

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Yesterday we had another poker night. I hosted this one. We had a good turn out. We started out with 7, and then Thomas came late and took the spot of Brian and Amy who left after they lost. We tried a tournament first. No re-buys so the game went fast. It ended up being john and I vying for first and second place. To get everyone into another game quickly we decided to split the pot instead of playing for a first and second place. That got me $60 (then you factor in my buy in I walked away with $40).

After the tournament we played a cash game. It was fun. I was up, then down, then up, then down allot, then up allot. I ended up loosing $30 to john only to win that and more from him and rich right at the end of the game. John and I where the big winners of the night. Rich was up for most of the cash play, but ended up slightly up when we where done.

It was fun. I am going to try and schedule another game in a week or two.

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