Alive in Italy

Well I've been meaning to post here about my experiences in Italy thus far. But I haven't had an internet connection where I've had the chance to relax and just browse the 'net let alone post about my experiences thsu far. I promise - posts are coming. I have text written, I just need some time to edit it and make it more readable rather than a slew of messy notes. For now, with just a single full day left before I make the long flight home, just know that I'm doing great! I am also very excited to see the Oilers play in the Stanley cup final!!!!

Heraldk

Surreal-ity

I was talking to one of my friends this week and we both agreed that the last week or two have been pretty surreal. For me, doubly so! The Edmonton Oilers are just one win away from making the Stanely cup final for the first time since 1990. That's a really long time ... long enough that I can barely remember sitting up "late" with my dad watching the games. At that point, I really didn't know what it meant since I was only seven years old. The last time I really was cheering for a team in the stanley cup final was 1993 when the Montreal Canadiens (for some reason, it is my favourite eastern conference team) won the cup. So a good 13 years later, and Edmonton is on the verge of getting back there!

The other reason I'm getting this surreal feeling is I leave for Italy at 2:00pm tonight! I'm there for about a week for a computers and games conference. Our hex program will be competing in the olympiad, so we're really excited about that. At this point, I don't think it has quite hit home yet that I'll be in a country a half a world away from home. Its only for a week ... but I haven't been that far from home before. At the same time, its really exciting to go see a new place for awhile - and I can't wait to see what I can take pictures of with my new camera!!!!

Heraldk

A relaxing, unproductive weekend

Well, I hope I can get myself going next week. Both this weekend and the week preceding it were wildly unproductive affairs which is really not what I'm aiming for at this point when there's plenty I *could* be doing. I wasn't even all that busy with other stuff ... I just kept getting distracted by silly little things like Sudoku. I'm aiming to get to bed at a reasonable hour tonight and then get at the work I've got piling up tomorrow. On the other hand, I did get the chance to watch parts of all three hockey games CBC broadcasted today. The Oilers came out with an impressive effort in an exciting game that started at 11am our time *rolls eyes*. Ottawa's game was also quite exciting, even though they lost. I tuned into the calgary game 5 minutes into the third period ... but this one was not nearly as exciting. Anaheim looked in control of the game for most of the period especially with Calgary's Dion Phaneuf making a couple of terrible blunders that basically cost them the game.

In other news, I played some $2/$4 poker today at full tilt poker. I ended up down $2.50 for the afternoon, but I started playing again this evening and at the moment I'm up $38 which is kind of nice for half an hour of play tonight.

I also played in the PSO freeroll tonight, but wasn't all that successful. Its a shame because first place was a cool $2500 USD! I started out well by hitting some pretty good cards, but after that I just couldn't get a hand. I took a couple hits to my stack and then was forced to look for a hand. Finally, I picked up pocket kings and tried to get a double up off of a guy who used to be chip leader but had recently lost nearly all of his stack. He pushed me all in on the flop and I called. He had QT which had hit a ten on the flop ... and he turned the queen to win the pot. Ouch! So I was out in 133 place or so out of 281 people. Not terrible, but I think i could probably have done better.

Heraldk

Housekeeping

Not much of a post here tonight. I just wanted to mention a couple of bits of the current news. The Italy trip is looking like a go ahead for sure. Ryan was looking into plane tickets for us today. Hoorah! Its gonna be a good 16 hour flight to Turin at least. Gotta bring my laptop so I can get some stuff done :)

Next, one of the 2 papers I've been working on of late was officially accepted to AAAI - one of the top notch AI conferences around. So that's pretty exciting! I dunno if I'll be going to Boston for the conference, but it would be cool to do that too.

Next, I did another casino promo, this time at Starluck casino. This time, I was up money almost the whole way through and came out with a $100 profit. Hoorah! I'm gonna wait for my cashouts to clear before I do any other promos. My next plan of action is to do a Party Poker reload followed by a Full Tilt reload. Lots of poker to play in the next couple months!

I am quite enjoying the long weekend. Ryan took us out for lunch today after the hex meeting to the new asian village, which was really cool and nice. I then played a bunch of poker this afternoon and finished up about $60 or so on the day. All in all, the weekend is off to a good start. Sunday I have dinner at Diane's parent's place, and then Monday is dinner with my family. Yay Easter food!

Heraldk

On TV!

Well this doesn't happen everyday. Last night (the 30th), I was on discovery channel as part of some coverage of the poker group at the UofA. A few weeks ago, they came through and filmed mostly Darse, but got some footage of me "coding" and a mock "poker meeting". While the process makes me a little cynical at the whole television thing, it is kinda cool to see myself on TV. The video will probably hit the discovery channel daily planet video archive in the next day or two if you want to check it out. I'll post a link in the comments when I notice it there.

The story was actually surprisingly better than I thought it would be. Despite the fake-ness of it, there was actually a decent amount of content (for a short blurb anyways). Cool stuff, that's for sure!

Heraldk

Paper Push

Well, lets see how this goes. Darse and I are working on a paper that is due on Thursday at some undefined time on that day. The nervous thing is that this paper is much less complete than the last paper I worked on. There's *a lot* of writing to do yet. So the next couple days are going to be pretty busy for that! After that, I get to really start concentrating on the Hex codebase in a push to get our hex program ready for Italy (which is looking like a pretty sure thing, as far as these tihngs go). I'm pretty excited!

But first, this paper! This has been a very busy week with many things getting my attention. I had a playoff intramural floor hockey game on Monday, and the playoffs for volleyball are on Thursday. On top of this maddeningly busy schedule, I'm still attempting to make it to the gym most days of the week ... which is helping burn me out faster than before. Ugh.

So ... wish me luck on getting through the week!

Heraldk

Italy?

Wow ... this would be cool. Apparently there is funding available to send our Hex programming team to Torino Italy where they are holding the CG (Computer Games) conference and the Computer Olympiad competition.

I had just about gotten myself out of working on the project with the attempts to focus on my own thesis work ... but now I'm going to have to put some time into the hex project, or I'd feel guilty for going to Italy without doing any work since several months ago. I think the Hex project is one that will continue to suck me in long after I leave the university!

Oddly enough though, this comes at a pretty good time. From talking to Darse and my supervisor, it looks like I'll be cutting back on what I was going to do for my thesis. It's kind of nice because this way it'll be easier to present my thesis as one overall topic instead of a dual focus sort of thing. More on this later, when I know for sure whether this is going to happen.

But that means that I can afford a little more time. Between getting ready for Italy and my own research though, I think I'm going to drop playing poker for a little while so that I have time to spend with Diane and some time to play some brainless games so I don't go insane :)

I'm pretty excited though - it'll be cool to go to Italy!

Heraldk

Calm winterness

There's something strangely calming about walking outside after its snowed. Edmonton got a huge dump of snow this weekend ... making this March the most snowy March EVER. When you walk outside for a bit, there's this hint of quiet beauty in the air. Maybe I'm just imagining it, but the crisp cool air with the clean snow just seems to bring me a feeling of peace. I'm in a weird mood again tonight. I'm not sure what it is, but I kinda feel like the world is rapidly changing around me and there's nothing I can do about it. Have you ever had the feeling where you're drifting away from the world? That's how I feel now, I think.

A lot of the friends I've known in past years have drifted away so much that I either don't even know where they are anymore ... or I do, but I just don't talk to them much. If it weren't for the odd msn collision, I would probably never hear from them again. It feels weird ... like pieces of me are being torn apart. And yet, I can't seem to get off my ass to change things. I should be able to, shouldn't I? I mean, all I should be able to do is make a little concerted effort to have coffee with my friends of old.

Maybe it comes down to energy? At the end of the workday, I find that I don't have enough energy to do much more than sit down, play some video games and go to bed. I would love to get off my behind to go do a project, or learn to play the guitar, or something. If anything, maintaining old friendships seems to be harder than any of these tasks ... and if I can't do these projects, how can I do something harder?

And yet, it bothers me. What can I do about it? I don't know. It tears me up inside though.

Heraldk

On Sweetness

You know, it's odd. This is the first time in a long while that I haven't spend any part of the weekend with my girlfriend Diane. To be frank, she is the most wonderful thing to ever happen to me and being away from her is not exactly what I'd choose if I had a choice. But that's not a problem. Really, it's comforting to know that Diane is still there, on the other side of town ... and that she's with me. Perhaps not in person, but she's there. I can sit here at my computer, look down and see one of the pictures she gave me and I can't help but smile. There really is nothing better than the love of someone who cares for you ... and the chance to return that love in greater quantities yet.

Sorry if this is too sappy, but I'm in a little bit of a weird mood tonight.

Diane and I have been together for more than 2 years. The beginning was a pretty exciting time (as all first months of relationships tend to be) for both of us. I dunno if I'd say that the excitement has worn off. Instead, I would say that the excitement has perhaps ... stabilized. There is something extremely comforting knowing that there's someone out there whom I know loves me perhaps as much as I love them.

Trust. You know, trust is a weird thing. It seems to me that in general it is tough to trust other people. I have been really fortunate to have a group of friends that somehow I know I can trust. Perhaps its because I'm in a close-knit department where I found many like-minded people. At any rate, I feel particularly blessed because the most special relationship I've found in my life ... (Diane, of course) is the person I feel I can trust the most.

I'm not too sure where this post was going ... I think I'm going to wrap it up there. Really though, I think the point of this post is that I very much appreciate the situation I have in my life. I very much doubt that everybody is as lucky as I am when out looking for their significant other. Diane is truly a special person to me.

Heraldk

Poker Room

Well I finally get to do the Poker Room PSO promotion. PokerRoom.com was my first ever poker room that I signed up for and I played a couple of their freerolls there. What I didn't realize was that that was going to interfere with my doing a PSO promotion there. Fortunately, I was allowed to wait 6 months after closing my previous poker room account and now I've reopened it and am ready for business! So I finally get to play at Pokerroom which is something I've wanted to do for awhile. I really like their software, and they have a lot of traffic which is kind of nice. So that's what I did last night. I also played in the 4th PSO league event. I played terribly - I didn't make a laydown that I should have and that cost me far more chis than it should have. After that, I was shortstacked and didn't get lucky. Oh wells.

Other than that, life has been going really well. The research front is trucking along ... even speeding up a little bit as I help get another paper ready for the end of the month. If this and the paper we submitted last month happen, I'll have 6 papers in my research career before I get to my thesis. Sweet deal!

Diane and I are doing awesome together. We spend a lot of time together and frankly, I couldn't be happier. We've been together for more than 2 years, and it still feels almost dream-like, though I think I'm finally convincing myself that it really isn't a dream. Yay!

This past weekend was a busy one. On Friday, I joined a group of friends for a night of beer tasting. It t'was quite enjoyable. I hadn't been at a drinking party in a long time, so it was kinda fun to do that ... not that I had a huge amount of alcohol. Just enough to feel a pleasant buzz. On Saturday, we went out for Dimsum, and then hung out for a bit before going to a games party that one of the profs in our department put on. It was fun, as usual. Sunday was pretty quiet and I was pretty glad for it. Diane and I joined my parents for dinner to celebrate my sister's birthday. We played some games and it was fun.

So that's my life update. I have no idea how I'm going to keep this pace going, but it's pretty fun at the same time!

Heraldk

Big trades for the Oilers

Well, hockey season is super exciting this time of year. The trade deadline was yesterday, and our Edmonton Oilers are looking poised to make a push higher into the standings and deeper into the playoffs. Here's the trades we made: To Minnesota: 1st round draft pick, conditional 3rd round draft pick To Edmonton: Dwayne Roloson

Edmonton gets a pretty good goaltender and they don't even have to break up any of the team to do so. This really is about as good as it could've got since so many teams are looking for goaltenders. Not only that, teams that were supposed to be offering goalies decided not to trade them after all (Buffalo, Phoenix, etc). So in theory, Edmonton now has their goalie situation sorted out. Here's hoping!

To Boston: Marty Reasoner, Yan Stasny, and a 2nd round draft pick. To Edmonton: Sergei Samsonov

In this trade, the Oilers get a speedy winger who won the 1998 calder trophy, and can score goals. In return, they don't give up all that much at all. I have never really been impressed with Reasoner (though I have had no reason to dislike him). So we give up some prospects for a fast player who looks to fit right into the Oiler style of hockey ... sounds like a good deal to me!

Assuming the team continues to play as well as they have (lots of blocked shots, 2nd fewest shots on goal in the NHL, decent scoring power) ... we should see the team finish strongly in the last 20 games of the season and I am really looking forward to seeing them go deep into the playoffs.

Gooooo Oilers!

Heraldk

Paper weekend

Well, I was supposed to be skiing this weekend. Supposed to be. The 24th Parkallen scouts have their annual ski trip on the family day long weekend every year. It was a blast last year and I was quite looking forward to going out this year. Unfortunately for skiing, I had to stay in town this weekend because ... I'm working on a research paper! Five of us from the poker group are preparing a paper for one of the top-notch AI conferences, AAAI. If it should be accepted, I'll have my fourth publication with a likely fifth coming later in the year.

So while I'm upset that I can't go skiing, I can't really be too upset. This paper means a lot more to my resume and career than one skiing trip will. Still, I wish I was out in Jasper with my sweety! Instead, I get to slave away collecting results and writing parts of the results section. Fun!

Heraldk Oh yeah, and I celebrated my 23rd birthday yesterday. w00t.

Devon Winter Challenge Camp

Got back last night from the big camp our rovers do - the Devon Winter Challenge Camp. For those who don't know, the event consists of a number of challenge activities that the scout troops go through. They are marked on these events and at the end of the camp, they top score gets a prize. The DWC camp is one of two big challenge camps put on in the winter each year in our region (the other being Mad Trappers). These camps are a great time for all involved. We ran an event called Landmines, which was basically like frisbee golf with orienteering. The idea was each scout troop got a list of bearings, and used them to find each hole. They then had to throw the frisbee through a bicycle tire tied to a tree. They then went on to the next hole taking the next bearing from the location of the tire they just found. I thought the event would work really well, but apparently scouts aren't being taught how to use a compass anymore, and that's a little worrying. There were a couple of notable exceptions, but a lot of troops had trouble finding all the holes.

We also ran campfire for the second year in a row. As usual, we had an array of fun run-on type skits to keep the kids entertained throughout. It went pretty well, I would have to say.

I got back last night and was pretty tired, so I managed to get to bed a whole lot earlier than normal. Trouble was, because I had slept outdoors for the past two nights, I found my condo waaaay tooo warm and had trouble sleeping. So today I'm really pretty tired. Oh well, I'll have to recover my sleep before the upcoming ski trip!

Heraldk

Edmonton Sonata Arctica Show Review

Well last night was the Sonata Arctica concert that I've been looking forward to for quite awhile. For those who don't know, Sonata Arctica is a Finnish melodic metal band that took the scene by storm when they released their first full length album. When I first heard some of their music, they almost immediately became part of my musical library. This was the 2nd of two shows that I thought I'd never ever see in Edmonton. The first was Stratovarius in October of 2004. Both of these bands have huge followings over in Europe, but North America hasn't seemed to have discovered how good this genre can be. Oh well, I suppose the radio would probably ruin it anyways. Damn radio.

Anyways. I was pretty pumped for the show. The opening band, going by the name of "Helden" got going around 9:30 or so. This was a band I had not heard of, and probably with reason. They were a pretty new band and while their guitarists showed a lot of promise, I was totally turned away from them because the vocalist did nothing more than scream into the mic. I'm sorry, that's just not appealing to me.

Finally, SA took over the stage, and the wait was totally worth it. Tony, the band's lead vocalist has an absolutely amazing voice ... more so than I thought from the records. I was very impressed with how he was able to sing in a very clear high melodic voice and then switch over to a growly kind of tone that still kept the essence of the melody. Such talent!

The keyboardist was sensational. He had a keytar, which was a very cool way for him to show off how damn fast he could move his fingers! Its just not fair ... some people can play way too darn well. The keyboardist was featured many times on the albums playing dueling solos with the guitarist, and the show was an incredible example of why this should be done way more often. If the keyboardist hands went blazingly fast, the guitarist's fingers had to have gone at least as fast!

Incredible on many levels. The band played one encore of three songs. The first "song" being a medley of a whole lot of big songs that they didn't play during the show. They then went on to play two more crazy fast songs including Don't Say a Word, and then delayed the final chord of the last song as long as was possible.

The best part was how much the band looked like they were enjoying themselves. Particularly Tony who added little fun quirks into some portions of the music. I forgot to mention that Tony was dressed in some crazy plaid pants. Yeah, that's right, plaid pants. Taken aback at first, I couldn't help but think ... cool!

All in all, I was very happy with the show. Tony promised the crowd that they'd be back to Edmonton sometime after their next album. I think I will have to be there!

Heraldk

Jasper in January

Well, department ski trip weekend is now over, and I'm in a pleasant but kind of guilty stage of tired non-workness. I didn't get a lot of sleep this weekened, but I think I may have got a heck of a lot more than I might've got had I stayed up for all the parties that went on. Diane and I left Edmonton around 4:00 or so, and made our way into Jasper around 9:00 with a stop in Edson for dinner. It was a nice calm drive, and we didn't see any reason to get there in a big hurry. When we did arrive we checked into the hotel and packed our gear into the hotel. Mike and company were so anxiously awaiting the arrival of guitar hero that they had already left a message for us that we were given when we arrived at the hotel.

We got our stuff into our room and brought guitar hero up to Mike's room where it got hooked up to Nolan's projector and the party started! It went until about 12:30-1:00 when hotel security came by and told use we were too loud. Darn. Oh well, we needed the sleep anyways. Jeff S and Jess were our roommates, so we trundled down to our room and settled in. Slept until 8:00 when Diane and I got up and went to Marmot to spend the day skiing.

We didn't actually get out there until after 11:00 since we stopped in town to rent skis. As fate would have it, a guy needed to sell some extra lift tickets, so we saved the GST on those (they're $40 + GST normally in January). So we got to the hill with our tickets in hand and went skiing for a few hours. My knees weren't incredibly happy with me - does anyone know if there are any ski tips out there to reduce stress on your knees?

After the hill we returned back to the hotel to shower and clean up for the dinner at L&W with almost everyone in the department. It was fun, the food wasn't bad and we enjoyed. Afterwards, the party was in a big room that we booked for the department. It was really fun. Guitar hero was set up against one of the walls, and games were played by all. Much fun to be had.

There was an after party which Diane and I joined for a bit. It was loud and lots of drinking happened. I was tired so both Diane and I left the party early. Didn't get a ton of sleep as we had to get up to go on the Maligne canyon hike the next day.

As part of the tradition, the department goes to Maligne canyon and does a hike down in the canyon every year. It was a lot of fun last year ... and it was similar this year. Check my photo gallery (gallery.heraldk.ca) for some pictures.

After the hike, we stopped in Hinton's BPs for lunch/dinner and then we returned to Edmonton tired but happy with a good weekend. Its pretty incredible to spend a weekend with Diane ... she's pretty special, and I really can't describe how wonderful it is to spend so much time with her :)

Heraldk

Alberta Poker Championship Tournament

I mentioned a little while ago that I had won a satellite some friends and I put on to enter into one of the Alberta poker championship tournaments. It was a $200+20 affair, and it was last night. The summary is ... well, I did well, but didn't make the money. There was ~133 people in the tournament with the top 15 places paying out. It didn't take me too long to get comfortable. The play was not amazingly good, and I picked up a lot of pots with my tight aggressive play. People respected my raises, and I continued to pick up a decent hand once in a while. I doubled up about halfway through with pocket kings. First guy min-raises and I come over the top for all my chips. He calls (I think he thought I had a smaller pair and didn't want a call) and flips over pocket Jacks.

I took out a guy with 92o in the BB when I caught two pair and put the short stack all in. A few rounds later, I took another short stack out with 73o when he went all in and gave me 5:1 pot odds to take him out (I made a flush on the river with my 3 of spades).

Then I ran into a very dry run of cards. At that point in the tournament I had an above average stack, though not a huge amount above average. Probably around 24,000-25,000. Now I know that I played a little too tight, but its a little hard to make a big raise with Ace-rag from early position (I never got an ace in late position) ... and that was about as good as the hands were. I saw 75o several times, and worse hands than that ... and all the while the blinds and antes rose at a phenomenal rate. Over those rounds, my chip stack dropped to 16,500, and I just couldn't find a hand to play. Then comes the hand that I kinda wish I had played differently.

I have 16,500 in chips. Blinds are 700/1500, with 200 antes. UTG raises to 3000, and then UTG+1 re-raises to 8000. I'm in the big blind and look down at TT. What do I do? I'm scared of the raise-reraise thing. The player UTG could well have a monster with his minraise. A re-raiser has got to have something, and its likely AK or AQ at a minimum (if not JJ, QQ, KK or AA). Both players have similar chip stacks to me. I think one of them outchips me by a couple thousand and the other has a couple thousand less than me. If I call, I'm pot committing myself ... and the initial raiser still can act after me. I decided to fold, but I really wasn't too sure if I should have called or not.

Turns out I should have. UTG had AJo, and UTG+1 had AKs. Board doesn't pair anybody and my tens would've stood up and I would've almost tripled up. *sigh*.

Oh well, now I'm hoping that the cards turn out better for me. They don't. A couple rounds later, I pick up KTs (the best hand I'd seen with no action in front of me). Guy to my right folds but didn't seem happy to be folding, and I push. A guy on the other end of the table yells "NICE", and flips over AA. What can I do? No bad beat for him, and I'm knocked out in 26th-ish place. Top 15 get paid. *double sigh*.

It was fun though. Until I had that bad string of cards I really felt I had an edge on a lot of the players. I felt comfortable, and seemed to have this respect from a lot of players that I'm not certain is entirely deserved. But then again, I wasn't in a lot of pots. Just enough to pick up some blinds and antes and stay alive. I can't wait until the next chance I get in one of these big tournaments. I think I've got a good shot at the money on each try :)

Heraldk

Voting Day

Ugh. I hate politics. Everytime it happens it feels like I've got to decide between a bunch of idiots who make a mitt-ful of promises that there is no way on earth they will keep, or if they do keep them all then they'll screw over an aspect of the country they didn't stress in their political platform. Blah. I'm scared of the conservatives. I'm not entirely sure why, but it seems oddly creepy that Stephen Harper seems like such a good candidate when last time around, he scared the crap out of most anyone I talked to. Paul Martin is running a terrible campaign from where I'm sitting - he is running a fear based campaign which I heartily disagree with. While I might agree that I don't want to see Mr Harper in charge of our country, I want to hear why YOU Mr Martin, will do any better! All your campaign has done is made me want to vote for someone other than the liberals. Since I can't quite bring myself to support the conservatives, I have to move onto the other options.

I ended up picking the green party. Why? Because I empathize with their position. I hate how they are a party with candidates in all the ridings in Canada and they had enough of the vote to get federal money to support this year's election ... but their leader is not invited to the leadership debate. A debate where the bloc-quebecois leader is assumed to be in attendance even though they are a Quebec-only party. I just don't understand.

Frankly, it won't matter who I voted for. My riding is so overwhelmingly conservative that there is no way I can stop that. But, I have to place a vote, and so I'm going to put it where it'll do the most good.

Heraldk

Guitar Hero

My roommate ordered the PS2 game guitar hero last week and it arrived last night. Excited, he went home to his parent's place (where it was delivered) and returned to our place and we promptly set it up and started playing. For those who haven't heard of it, its a game where you have these guitar shaped controllers and you basically play DDR, but with a guitar instead of hitting arrows on a dance pad. There are five buttons for frets on the guitar, and you have to hold the button down while strumming on the switch where you'd normally strum on a guitar. You also get a whammy bar for more fun.

Not convinced this would be fun? Well neither was I until we started playing last night. It was really surprisingly fun. Not only that, its *hard* when you get into the late "normal" difficulty levels and even harder when you start the "hard" difficulty levels!

There's so much fun stuff to do! I haven't played poker online in about a week, which is a little odd for me. Oh well, I'm sure I'll get back to completing my full tilt deposit bonus any day :)

Heraldk

New TV!

Its been a little while since my last post, so this will be a post that catches you up with what I've been up to for the last little while. First, the big news: I bought a new TV! I ended up choosing option 2 from my list of options in TV Shopping. I figure that choosing that option is the best price/performance that I can get for my money. While LCD screens are really starting to go mainstream, I decided to hold out on that and rely on a more proven technology. I decided on the Toshiba 30HF85C. Its a 30" CRT HDTV, and a pretty massive one at 111lbs. From my eye, the TV has excellent picture quality, and has enough inputs to handle my xbox, dvd player, vcr and my roommate's PS2.

I picked up the TV yesterday. It cost me $690 for the TV and then I bought some cables and I actually went for Vision's extended warranty for 3 years. I usually go against buying extended warranties, but two major things swayed my decision here. First, if you don't use the warranty, you get the same amount in store credit (so in 3 years, if I don't use it, I can buy something new and fancy - perhaps a HD-DVD system). Second, if I ever have problems, instead of dealing with Toshiba and having to send the TV to them, I get to have people from visions come and fix it at my house. With the TV being an 111lb behemoth, I figure that's a good bargain. I guess thirdly, the warranty was $75, which I didn't think was unreasonable.

Alright. What else have I been up to? On the weekend, I played a bunch of poker and won about $100 over the three days. I spent some time hanging out with Diane which was wonderful as always :) On Sunday night, my mom, Diane and I went to a church seminar where they played a taped presentation by Lee Strobel called "A Case for a Creator". It was pretty interesting ... but I think I'll save my comments on that for another post.

Yesterday was TV buying day. My mom was free and was thankfully willing to drive around to Ikea and then to the south side visions so I could by a TV stand and then the TV. We got back to my place and I set everything up and then cleaned up my living room which was torn apart the night before to make room for the new television.

So that's been my busy week, and the next week looks like it'll just get busier! Such is life ... Heraldk

TV Shopping

Well I've started to go into the full swing of Television shopping. There seems to be a dazzling array of options out there, and its tough because I'm not really sure how much I should spend. So I figure if I post my options, one of a couple things might happen.

1. By typing out the options that I have, I can more easily weight the pros and cons of my potential decision.
2. If someone is actually reading this and has an opinion they can post a comment saying what they think.

So here are the options I can choose from.

1. Basic CRT Tube Television, No HD capabilities
2. CRT Tube Television with HD capabilities
3. Small LCD Television (26-27")
4. Larger LCD Television (30-32")

Option 1 The cheapest option and one which makes the best fiscal sense is the simplest, and cheapest option. Unfortunately, this option also lacks the features of future television viewing. HD capability is all the rage at the moment - and while I don't have an HD source just yet I don't doubt that I'll get one in the near future.

An option like this will cost up to $500 for a TV up to 32" in size. The TV would be a behemoth as any CRT TV greater than 27" in size is way more than a single person can lift and move.

Option 2 The next option is to get one of the few HDTV enabled CRT TVs. While more expensive than the non-HDTV CRTs, these TVs give the most future video viewing pleasure for the buck. While not as sleek and sexy as the LCD options, this is significantly easier on the pocket book. There is also a hidden advantage to the CRT HDTV in that LCDs still cannot display true black colour very well. But CRT TVs do not suffer from the same problem.

This option will cost roughly $1000 for a 30-32" TV. Less is possible with a 27" model from Toshiba. There aren't a lot of options in this category, but they tend to be cheaper than their LCD cousins.

Option 3 Option 3 is where we get to the fancy stuff - the sleek, sexy LCD monitor. As an aside, I don't really want to consider plasma screens as they are mostly offered in screensizes larger than my living room really justifies, and to my knowledge they are largely affected by image burn-in. So that leaves LCD technology which is really starting to take over it seems. I'm really really tempted to get one. The price on these beauties are really starting to come down which means I can possibly afford to pick one up. This is category one - the smaller LCD TV ranging up to the 26-27" range of television. My major concern is that some of the cheaper LCDs may not have the picture quality to justify purchasing them even at their cheaper price. The more expensive brands seem to be a lot better, but they're also rather expensive.

The price points for these TVs range quite a bit, but I've seen TVs reasonably cost in the $1000-$1200 range.

Option 4 Oh these are sweet. 30-32" of awesome screen space, but very thin and light in comparison to comparably sized CRT screens. The downside is the price. So the question is ... are these worth the high higher sticker price?

The lowest price I've seen these come is $1300 and they go up well over $2000. You're paying a lot for brand name and quality of the LCD screen I think. But its hard to say - I need to look at a lot more of these especially since if I pay for something here, I'm really looking for the screen to last me a looooong time.

Other Considerations My living room really isn't big enough to house a screen larger than 32" so that's what I'm looking at. A smaller screen might be a better option if it carries a nice lower price tag since then I can make it a secondary TV when I move to a place that can house a larger screen. I want something of quality that will last several years, wherever it is housed.

Thoughts? There's a lot more running through my mind with this issue, but that's kinda what I've got so far. The world of TVs is a vast and confusing place I'm finding. Ugh.

Heraldk