Tuesday, June 26, 2007

I Can See Clearly Now

After this morning's epic post about the previous week's activities, I finally went to bed (feeling much better, thank you) around 5:00 am. All that hurling, coupled with a half-hour in the hot tub, conspired to sap all the energy from my body and I completely collapsed into an unconscious heap as soon as I hit the Blob.

It seemed like ten minutes passed, and Rob was knocking on my bedroom door telling me the cable guy was already here. But it was 8:01 am--we were the first stop on his route for the day. He spent a few minutes testing outlets and whatnot, and finally jury-rigged a solution that didn't cost us $50 for a service call. The downside is that I now have a tangle of co-axial cable coming out of two outlets in my bedroom, along with a splitter leading to the modem/computer setup. He offered to staple everything down along the baseboard, but I declined, figuring I'd just hide it all with my desk once I finally get it over here.

Once he left, it took about ten minutes before the HD receiver finally cycled through all of the updates and we got cable access. It took another twenty minutes or so of messing around in the spaghetti behind the entertainment center before we figured out how to get sound and pictures at the same time and which inputs the tv/receiver/dvd had to be set on for everything to work properly.

But once we figured it out, it was like the heavens parted and sweet high-definition goodness was poured out upon us, and we drank heavily from the digital cup. We spent an hour in wide-eyed wonder watching SportsCenter in HD, marveling that we could read the numbers on the empty outfield seats whenever a deep fly ball was hit. As a bonus, we discovered that HBO HD is included in the package, so I still get to watch Entourage every week (we opted not to get the HBO/Cinemax channels in order to save some cash), and we even have a Cinemax HD channel too. You know what that means--soft porn in High Def! Woot! I guess we'll be treated to the "Gene Simmons view" of Shannon Tweed's nekkid ass late at night. But the really cool one is the Discovery HD Theatre channel--and a show about underwater volcanoes is coming on in an hour and we'll be found sitting in the living room ooohing and aaaahing like a couple of retards at a fireworks show.

Seriously, I had no idea that HDTV was so cool. Only because I'd never seen it before. But the only thing I can liken it to was the fact that I have a relatively weak eyeglass prescription, and seeing HDTV compared to standard was like putting glasses on for the first time. It's amazing how sharp, clear, and brilliant everything looked. We found ourselves staring at the PBS HD channel for a half hour, watching a show about Mormon handcart pioneers caught in a snowstorm in Nebraska. Not exactly must-see TV, but like I told Rob at the time, I don't really want to watch this, but it's just so cool that I can't look away!

But only having about three hours of sleep last night started to catch up to me, and I needed a nap. So I kept the door to my bedroom open and crashed, while Rob turned off the TV and just put some Pink Floyd on the surround system. Talk about getting mellow in a hurry--Rob fell asleep in the chair in the living room, and I was around the corner passed out in my bed. I slept well, but dreamt about flying pigs and cartoon hammers and whatnot.

I'm awake now, and delaying the inevitable trip back over to the old house to get more stuff. I'm going to wait until after dark so that I can put stuff in the bed of the truck without having it melt. But since Rob is in the living room watching Star Trek, I figured now was a good time to make another update.

Mikey

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