Yep, our beloved pup Kona has had something making him sick the last few days. I haven’t has a pet who hasn’t had a critical illness be sick like this so I have been freaking out. He seems like he is getting better, but we are still keeping an eye on him. I know some people don’t really care about pets, but we don’t have kids so our pets are kind of like our kids. He really isn’t himself, I hope he keeps getting better so we can get back to being crazy.
I have been a netflix customer on and off since 2002ish. I typically shut it off in the late Spring through Fall and rejoin in late Fall early Winter when I have time to set aside to watch movies. I also often canceled because, well, movies would just sit around unwatched, or I’d be ready to watch one but it was the in between day waiting, or maybe I didn’t feel like watching what we had received.
Right around the time I canceled last, which I believe was about a year or so ago, Netflix had rolled out their instant movie access where you can just stream the movie. I think it’s a great idea of course, but frankly, I don’t want to sit in front of my PC to watch a movie.
Anyway, I let time roll by, we got a couple LCD HD TVs and then I needed to decide if I wanted to splurge and upgrade my cable to get some movie channels or to restart with Netflix. I despise the rates Comcast charges for cable, it amounts to robbery in my opinion. I don’t believe there is a meeting place of getting what you pay for. I would pay a certain rate for a la carte choices, someday…someday. So I choise to spend the extra ~$20/month with Netflix instead of Comcast because I could pick and choose my movies, still see new releases and all that.
Now a month and a half back into having Netflix again I find myself a bit in my old ways. We have two movies I have been sitting on for two weeks and one I keep forgetting to put in the mail. So last night I said, lets see if we can hook the laptop up and try an online movie. So I rooted around some old boxes for a video cable. I knew somewhere I had one for the LCD monitor in my office. I use the digital cable for it so the regular video cable was stashed.
Once I located the cable I tried connecting the laptop to the TV, I kept getting a message that the video source was unsupported. Tried Renee’s work laptop and it worked, but no audio on that puppy. Then I realized it was a resolution issue with the lappy and the TV, made some adjustments and it worked. Sweet! Uh, well now we have video and sound, but the sound is from the laptop. Back to my boxes, I know I have at least one of those little headphone jack to RCA cables somewhere, it is about 10 to 15 years old, but have it. Luckily, I was able to locate it much quicker than the VGA cable.
Connected the RCA’s to the PC Audio in on the TV and now we had sound and video. Now the TV is about 6 - 10ft away depending where you are sitting. The laptop is sitting right next to the TV and I am lazy as shit. So I use the lappy to log onto Netflix and try using the wireless mouse, woo hoo! It works from across the room. So now we are able to use the laptop, no keyboard, but that’s fine. Since we were testing this out I knew there were some movies in my queue that were good for instant watching.
We chose Stephen King’s Cats Eye, hadn’t seen it in probably 15 or so years. Was very cool to be able to do this, the quality was great and we were very excited. So today after doing some work and playing with the dog we watched another. This time the quality was not so good, looked like a typical downloaded movie, but still nice to be able to watch this way. Now we are eager to watch some old TV shows and movies.
I know there are no new releases this way, but I think it’s a great way tp catch up on TV shows, and to watch some of those older movies I really enjoy.
Just a few more weeks and we are off to Vegas with a whole gang of people. Should be a great time. Of course it’s not coming soon enough. We are stimulating the economy with this trip, since we planned it a year ago we had saved up to pay for it. Now thanks to our friends in the govt they are paying for the trip…sort of. Either way it’s nice. I figure there’s $1,200 we didn’t have before, now we can spend it on something we enjoy.
Sure winter has come and gone. Still, in Colorado we aren’t really done with winter until almost May. Rolling in today is a pretty large storm that they are predicting will dump 3″ - 8″ here in town and up to about 2′ in the mountains.
We missed some great skiing last weekend and typically most resorts are closed by now. I need one more day of skiing to be truly satisfied with this season. The weather is going to be sunny and warm so that will make for a great spring ski day and a great end to the season.
The next step, will be to change the oil on the BMW and get to riding again. We haven’t really had any solid weather for riding. I am eager to get back on two wheels and hit the road.
Sorry this is a pretty mediocre post at best. Not really into posting anything worthwhile today. 
Recession! Recession! Recession! Today I run through my daily routine of reading the news. I hit up my local news station site, 9news.com, I notice an article that is entitled: Bernanke warns of possible recession. Immediately I’m like, well this can’t be good. If BB is dropping the R word in front of congress then we might really be in some trouble.
Being interested I get into reading the article, well midway through the second paragraph:
…Bernanke didn’t use the word recession.
Then onto the third paragraph I see
Under one rule, six straight months of declining GDP, would constitute a recession.
Of course that is what is reported by the news source, not Ben Bernanke’s words. Then the article (which I hope you’ve read by now to understand by tirade) moves on to talk about how BB thinks we’ll actually get some decent growth this year. So yeah, 2008 is off to a sluggish start, we did have positive, albeit slowed growth for the first quarter, but we haven’t totally stalled.
I’m not about to delve into a debate on economics, the government or what the future holds for the housing and financial markets, but I will gladly entertain your remarks about the media and their constant grab for sensationalism. Why would you title an article this way when BB never even said that? Here, let me answer that, because a lot of American’s are on the edge of their seat every time someone uses the term Recession. I’m not sure why, the term has been used loosely for the last 9 months.
It’s a lot different today than it was ten years ago. We have instant access to information, good or bad. The media understands this and like any other business they need to make money. They make money by roping you in and keeping you captivated, from airing gruesome pile-ups on the highway, to heart wrenching stories about puppies from broken homes. They take a story, embellish the telling of it and increase viewership which in turn allows them to sell advertisements. This is where they get a lot of money.
My point here is, if you read something that is clearly distorting reality, by misleading the reader/viewer call them out. Their job is to report the news, unbiased and accurately. Car dealers and retailers get sued for false advertising, the press should be held to similar standards. If you are going to intentionally sensationalize a headline only to have the reader find out that the title is inaccurate then you are misleading your reader.
I’m done.
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