9 out of 10 monkeys believe they are not behind glass

A guy I work with, Levi, got a call from one of our users about a broken HP plotter. (A plotter is a color inkjet that prints our engineering sized documents). Levi went and checked it out. Of course the screen was giving a 12 digit system error code which means the same thing to us as ancient aztec writing. Levi called HP to explore service options… and almost fainted. 1400 bucks for a service call 3-5 days out, and 1600 bucks for a next day call.

At this point Levi is kind of worried and asks me if I know of any service places around Denver that could do the same thing for a whole lot cheaper.

I said no. But in my past life I was a service technician for HP, so I told him that I would take a look at it. I pulled it apart, replaced the bad hard drive with a formatted blank one, sealed it back up and called my boss, Phil.

And I asked him where I should send the bill. I figure if I charge 700 bucks, that is a steal.

Almost free!

Ok. Not really.

Close enough, though. Jess and I went and test drove a handful of vehicles over the weekend and think we decided on the Scion xB.

The Toaster. The Box.

Whatever. It drives nice, has a ton of room and we could afford it. So I put in the order yesterday.

With an aftermarket sunroof that covers most of that huge box. It should be a nice ride.

And the best part?

No monthly payments. That is very nice indeed.

Having a home theater PC on a TV that can handle it is very nice indeed.

Hitting iTunes, or even Winamp, radio on the system is great. The sound gets piped to my reciever over fiber, and the video hits the TV at 1920×1080 resolution. The visualization stuff with winamp (the pretty pictures that move with the sound) looks awesome and on a decent sound system, even internet radio sounds great.

Surfing the net from the couch is kind of neat too. I was surfing some car sites, looking at the new models and the like for our upcoming car shopping, and having a 3D model of the car on your big screen is a great way to look at vehicles.

But the real kicker is actual HDTV. The Kansas City Chiefs game was cool to watch.

And I hate football.

It is like being mesmerized by the very blades of grass, hypnotized by the depth and clarity of the field and the players, even the audience in the stands. You just start to fall into it and an hour later, you snap alert with instant clarity and realize that you have been drooling all over your remote.

Ok, not really. But dang. Every channel should be in HD. The movies on my HTPC look awesome. I have an program that processes the DVDs to output to the size of the screen, cleaning up defects and the like at the same time. Makes the Sony upconverting DVD player my wife uses pale in comparison. And I thought it looked good on my old gen1 hdtv.

Its like I am a kid at christmas. My name is Ralphie and I just received my official Red Ryder, carbine action, two-hundred shot range model air rifle, with a compass in the stock and this thing which tells time!

Hopefully I won’t shoot my eye out.

And the summer movie season sucked.

I had such high hopes too.  Pirates 3, Superman, X3, Cars, etc… a multitude of just, eh, ok, films.

Did anyone else notice?  Just how the season has fizzed along, but nothing really stands out?

I have read that Talledega Nights (the new Will Ferrell movie) is more of the same.  Good.  Quotable.  Funny.  But not a total delivery.

And so the season closes.  Snap crackle pop.

Nothing really stands out for the Holidays either.  The new 007 movie and some other stuff, but nothing huge.  Hopefully 2007 will be different.

Harry Potter 5 & 6. Spiderman 3.  Pirates 3.

…And hopefully something that is not a sequel.  Just a thought.

I have bad news.

We all are dying of a terminal disease.

It’s called life. You won’t get out alive.

But, how you go out is your choice. Do you want to go out as an overwieght, diabetic, sickly individual, pooping in a diaper cause you have no bowel control? Or do you want to go out in your own bed, legs sore from the hike that day, sleeping so deeply that the grim reaper has to hit you over the head to wake your ass up to the after life? Personally, I want to be the latter.

Now I have been guilty of many of the common fitness sins. Lack of time, too expensive to do it, no energy, the burnout… everything. I have thrown up way too many times after too hard of a work out because of those breaks in routine. So we come back to my search for personal sustainable fitness.

The idea: A sensible diet is 90% of the battle in maintaining wieght and health. Read more