So everyone else starts posting more often then normal and I skip a few days. And I thought my break was sorta relaxed so far... :)

Wednesday was slow. All day whenever I looked at a clock I wondered how in the world it wasn't later. I did end up getting some random stuff that just hadn't gotten done out of the way though. Trimmed down the inbox a bit. Lunch was C1, which was good although we had a couple traitors in the group. It was Paul's first visit and since he's now talking about how good it is I guess that went well. Mike was working late attempting to get us to the point of having backups after about a week of no backups and having at least one flakey file server. Because of this, after work Nick dragged Mike and I out to Jake's for some good burgers. They went a little crazy on the cajon powder which lacked spice anyways but their sorta mustard dipping sauce had potential. I'll have to try something else next time. That evening I actually sat around and watched TV. Not sure what I think of this whole watching TV thing yet, but after analyzing the signal strengths and MPEG blocking and audio drops I decided that I have issues with multipath (yes, figuring that out was much more interesting than any of the shows on TV). I also found out that Target canceled my order along with everyone else's for the HDTV, which I was sorta expecting - oh well, it was worth a try. FedEx also tried to deliver my speakers. Sorta surprising given they were shipped late Monday, but as I've said before FedEx is by far my favorite shipping company for reasons like this. If only I had been around.

Thursday was Thanksgiving. Also known as the eat food and try not to go crazy day. I showed up at my parents house at 8 (I think that's the earliest I've gotten up in the morning since I moved). They were shocked that I got there on time, and nobody was ready. Eventually we got ready and started on our road trip. The begining of that was copying music from my laptop to my MP3 player and talking. The talking part is never my favorite so once the copying was done I tried to settle into my music. I listened to this year's Cities 97 Sampler and I like probably half of them. The other half I'm not so crazy about, but I think I could stand listening to at least a minute of pretty much all of them. We arrived and ended up doing the usual thanksgiving stuff with turkey and other food. After that I was introduced to this cool came called Quarto. As usual with probably every game I like, it's a strategy game. Basically you get 4 pieces with at least one matching attribute in a row. The twist is your opponent gives you your piece. My cousin and his wife also brought a tape of this awesome TV show called Most Extreme Elimination Challenge. It's originally what looks like a Chinese show but it's dubbed in English. And I can almost guarantee that nothing that's said in English is a true translation. Think every painful US challenge game taken ten times farther but they don't bother keeping score and just rank the most painful failures of the game. If you want to know what the new lines involve, I'll just say it's on SpikeTV and leave it at that - as their web page says, "they put the "FU" back in FUN." I did get dragged into some other games, but spent most of the rest of the night sorta napping while listening to music. Then there was another 2 hour car ride home which I got to mainly sleep through, followed by a drive back to my place. I was already short on sleep at this point, so the long day wasn't treating me very nice...

Friday I got up shortly after 10 since I had to be around for the previously mentioned FedEx delivery of 6 boxes. They showed up around 11 and due to it taking 3 loads on the dolly to get them into the garage the FedEx guy and I talked about how many idiots there are on the road. Apparently people can't understand why a delivery truck with the back open is stopped and not moving half the time so they stop behind rather than going around. Anyways, it didn't take me long to carry in and unpack some of those boxes. They were new speakers, which sound much better than the old ones. They also now are basically matched all the way around and I now have high-quality center and surround speakers. Due to the need to set sound levels and the previously mentioned multipath issues I actually made a trip out shopping. The SPL meter was easy to locate but as sorta expected the Radio Shack guy was pretty much clueless about multipath rejection on their yagi antennas. I picked up one that judging from the beams is one of the better ones they had. Since I don't have a cable run up to the attic yet I have it in my living room pointed out the front window for testing and aiming (hey, no furniture in there yet so I was using it as storage for boxes anyways). Of course the nice 4+ft tall boxes from the speakers make a great stand for the antennas so it goes through the window and not the wall. I'm not so sure about it's directionality since I can get a signal from St Cloud (northwest-312deg) with it pointing pretty much straight east (88deg). As for the SPL meter I popped in the DVE disc and calibrated reference to -5db on my receiver. These speakers are definitely more efficient, since on a test chapter after calibration it had no problem reaching 111db and the receiver claims to be able to put 15db more gain behind it no problem. While feeling the jet fly past is cool, it can't be all that great for the ears so movies will definitely not be that loud. The imaging is very good on these though. On both the DVE disc and a certain SACD I was again trying it could position stuff behind my head way too effectively (it's freaky to have it sound like something's falling or blowing up or even making a loud sudden noise right behind your head). I did some more evaluation of the DTV stuff, and most of them seem to be better. Still have issues on a couple, although I think it may be somewhat config so far. It'll be nice when stuff is actually HDTV, although hopefully they'll get better MPEG2 encoders. They also need to stop playing the "louder is better" game with audio. You can't use the MTS encoder and transmitter to limit the audio with soft distortion like on analog when you're passing it directly into an A/D converter. Especially if that's gonna be followed by a DD encoder to make the distortion sound even worse... Finished off the night by watching Blue Thunder. While an interesting idea and sorta cool to have helicopters and jets having combat over LA, don't bother with this movie... The video isn't that great, and the soundtrack is crap.

Anyways, since this is now a book, I'm gonna go get some sleep.