Monthly Archives: March 2009

Televisions

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I might have mentioned this before, but my television was acting up. I called Best Buy, because I had the four year warranty through them, in order to get it fixed. A month and a half went by and I had to miss other activities to wait at home for the repairman three times. Finally though the television was deemed a “junk out”, which is Best Buy speak for “you get your money back and you can get a new TV”. This was sort of the answer that I wanted desperately so I rushed to Best Buy as soon as I got the confirmation number to see what I could do.

Derek had to help me carry the old television, which was a 46″ Toshiba CRT projection television, to the store. Customer Service gave me the gift certificate and I started looking at TV’s. I already knew what I wanted to get. I had done a fair bit of research in the past month on the topic and while I would have liked one of the new LED televisions I certainly do not have the funds for it. I ended up getting a Samsung 46″ LCD.

Derek helped me bring it inside and we set it up. It was not long before I noticed that it just did not really fit in how I had the living room setup. This television is much lower, because it lacks that obnoxious cabinet projection TV’s need for the projection. It looked beautiful and we played around with a few Xbox 360 games just to see them on an LCD screen at 1080p. There are so many details in games that I’ve spent hours and hours in that I’m just now noticing.

I went back the next day with my son and we got a TV stand and I also picked up the VGA connector for the Xbox 360, because naturally I want to play with that. They had a TV stand that was perfect for what I wanted to do. Large enough shelves so that I would only need one table in the living room to hold the Wii, cable box, receiver, and Xbox 360, a red wood look that matches the TV’s red tinge (Samsung calls this “Touch of Color”), and it was on sale. We loaded it up and brought it home. I asked the guy with the cart to hold my glasses for a second, because I wanted to try loading it into the car myself and while it made sense in my head he declined and proceeded with much more effort than it would have taken me to do so.

We spent the next 3 hours constructing the TV stand, unplugging everything, and moving everything to the new stand, and then finally plugging everything in. I think my son learned quite a few things. What an optical and coaxial cable look like, how to plug in component cables, and while helping me construct the TV stand some invaluable stuff there like how to use an Allen wrench. It was a great day. I can’t remember the last time we spent so much time together. We did the whole project and then sat around and watched cartoons. We ate chili and both ended up passing out in the living room.

Weekend

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I drove the kids up to see their Mom this weekend. They got their Christmas presents. They both got shirts which they’ve been wearing when they get home from school, since they can’t actually wear the shirts to school, because they aren’t part of their uniform. They both got several toys and other assorted things as well. I remember seeing that Eddy got some Dragon Ball Z figures, but these ones are bigger than normal. These are like 8″ figures. Usually the figures he’s gotten before were smaller than this. Patty got a clothes hamper that looks like a pig. I would have taken some pictures or something, so that I’d be able to remember everything that they got, but I thought why take pictures of toys?

I guess they all went for a walk as well and had a good time.

Science Project [Update]

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This is the car that managed to go 16 centimeters at school, because apparently the yarn that drives the whole thing got caught up in something. I told her to wind it down the middle, but it’s a little tricky, because the car isn’t exactly solidly built. You have to be pretty careful about winding it, and then you have to make sure the wheels are positioned correctly, because the axle can move to the left and right and the wheels themselves are only really wedged on the axle by a bunch of tape I wound around it.

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Science Project

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Patty had a project for science class where she had to make a car powered by a mousetrap. Using the provided mousetrap she worked pretty independently, because while I had promised to help I ended up working quite a bit on my own homework for the last couple weeks. The day came that it was due and the mousetrap car she had constructed did not quite work.

For one thing the axles were held on with staples that were going to fall out of the board. The staple idea itself wasn’t that bad, and honestly I’d probably try that again if I had to make another car. Second she had the rear axle flush against the board, which did not leave room to wind a string around it. See, the way she designed it the string would go from the mousetrap to the rear axle and then when wound up and the trap set the car would go forward. I fixed these flaws.

Some people asked me if I thought what I did was “cheating” and to be honest I don’t think so. Would Patty have eventually worked out details such as needing to move the axle away from the body of the car? Would she have seen the error in the way she used the staples and had to have invented an alternative? Sure. With time both of these things would have readily been made obvious to her and she would have worked those out. To answer the question then I don’t think it was cheating. I did not really do that much.

Rock Band 2

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I had an issue with the strum bar not working on the wireless guitar for Rock Band 2. I was sort of aware of the problem, which is to say that I had seen it before, but dismissed it the one, and only, time I played guitar and noticed it, because I thought it was just a temporary hiccup. Well, it was not temporary, and when Derek and Tim came over to play Rock Band 2 this weekend neither of them brought their guitar and the problem reared its ugly head. I thought they fixed these sorts of problems for Rock Band 2. I had the same problem, basically, with the guitar for the original Rock Band, and I had to return it.

The real reason I am bothering to post about this is because while the situation is resolved it was not handled the way I would have preferred. It would seem that EA who have been very vocal about the enormous losses they have endured having to replace faulty equipment have moved to a 60 day warranty on all peripherals. That’s not really that much time. It is the kind of thing that has earned EA a reputation for being poor at customer service in a community of gamers. That reputation was well earned today.