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The number three item I was choosing between would be a set of Global kitchen knives. Now, when I say set I mean a total of three, lol, not a big block full of knives. There’s no way I could have afforded a ‘complete’ set of them, hell, the three knives I planned to get came in at a hefty $162.

As one could have figured out I bought the surround system instead, didn’t buy the fine china (but compromised by purchasing completer pieces for the Nova Blue dinnerware I already own), and didn’t buy the Global knives. I again compromised, shock, and bought a set of knives that met all of my qualifications… except for the ‘big name’ quotient, lol.

My qualifications for knives are pretty basic, the same kind that you should keep in mind when making that sort of purchase: 1. They need to be full-tanged, 2. They need to have visible rivets (if not the Global ones), 3. The handle would need to be either part of the knife (as with the Globals) or be made of plastic (the good kind for lack of any other way to describe it), because there was no way I was going to put up with wood, 4. The knives must NOT be serrated, with the exception of the bread knife of course, and 5. Unlike most knives out there I require any knife I purchase to be fully forged instead of stamped or laser cut out of sheet metal.

That last bit, making sure the knives were forged, and of course had a bolster and all the other good stuff that goes along with such a knife, pretty much excludes everything out there in the range of “affordable” by most person’s standards. I was pretty much set on the idea that any good chef’s knife would cost me nearly $100, regardless of if it was a Global, Kyocera (the ceramic ones), Wusthof, or Henckels.

I didn’t plan on making a compromise in this particular area, until I randomly decided to go into Kmart (of all places) after stopping to pick up a bottle of wine for Matthew and myself for ‘movie night’ or whatever, lol. I went in to look at wine glasses, I was just curious to see if the semi-cheap Martha Stewart ones were molded or blown.

I’ve been wanting a good set of knives for rather a long time, ever since I bought this $10 set of rainbow coloured Ikea ones… and for all practical purposes those $10 knives are pretty good, meant to be thrown away when they lose their sharpness… not that they’re all that sharp anyway. With that in mind I’m always looking at knives anytime I’m somewhere that sells them, even if it is Kmart. I glanced at the wall and saw this $10ish paring knife and did a slight doubletake. “Whoa, wait, is that a bolster?” “Omg, it is… and it says forged on the packaging!” Well, right then and there I knew I’d be buying it, if nothing else it would make a great ‘bar knife’ for slicing up limes and oranges, etc. I already have a bar knife, but it isn’t anything special, just something that came in a tool set given to me by David & Louise.

I then looked around and saw empty places where other knives, like an 8″ Chef, would normally be. Hmmm…. and I saw they had lots of boxed sets, but pretty much the usual crap you’d expect for $50 or so. Again, with a slight doubletake I glanced a photo of a bolstered knife on a boxed set. I nearly came in my pants when I realized it was a full set, 14 pieces including block, steak knives, and honing steel. Granted, this was a “MSE” boxed set, so it wouldn’t be anywhere in the range of $600 like a ‘real’ set of professional knives would be, but I didn’t expect the price… at ALL. I looked… $60 for the set. No fucking way! I was thinking double that. I grabbed hold of the box, inspected it, and decided it would now have a home in my kitchen. It could not have possibly been priced correctly, they only had two sets, so it was one of those “buy it immediately and run out of the store” moments.

Once I returned home I started doing a little research, the kind of research I always do before buying something (usually), so this time it was a bit in reverse. I couldn’t find this set of knives on either the Kmart or Martha’s website, which I thought odd, but I kept looking. I found a google cached page of Kmart’s website where they were selling a 7 piece set (half the number of pieces) of forged knives identical in appearance to mine… guess what the price was… $60. The steak knives alone would cost $45 if bought outside of the set. This was an absolute steal of a deal for steel, haha, so bad. I felt quite content with my purchase, even if they were no way on par with the tragicly more expensive knives I wanted, they had to be better than the cheapass Ikea set I’ve been using for almost two years.

On television they’re always testing sharpness by slicing tomatoes, makes sense since they’re all squishy inside with that tough skin. Well, errmm… these knives, it was pathetic. They were dull, and I mean, like trying to cut the tomato with a hammer kind of dull. I wasn’t disappointed though because I figured they probably wouldn’t have been sharpened to their potential from the factory…. I’m glad I figured that too, lol.

After rummaging around downstairs in the “room of junk” aka the laundry room, I finally made my way over to the gun cabinet. Gun cabinet you ask, well, yes, because in one of the locked drawers I knew there’d be a set of Arkansas stones, you know, to sharpen knives with. Add in another lengthy period of time I finally found the key, because of course you don’t want that sort of thing to be easily found, right? lol…

I spent a ridiculous amount of time slowing sharpening every knife. It took forever because I hadn’t sharpened a knife in at least ten, probably more like fifteen years, and I didn’t want to wreck these within hours of owning them. I cleaned them up, and started to masacre more tomatoes. Also keep in mind that I’ve had a bumper crop of tomatoes from the garden, more than could ever be eaten, but not enough to can them… lol. So, it wasn’t like I went and bought tomatoes to destroy for this playtime.

Sharpening them on the stones made all the difference in the world. We’re talking ‘hot knife through butter’ sort of slicing and chopping. Sweet! They have surpassed the Ikea knives without doubt. Now, the question was how long would they hold that edge? I haven’t any clue what the alloy composition of the knives is, so that’s something left as a “time will tell” of course. They weren’t “easy” to sharpen, but they weren’t “difficult” to sharpen either, so I think they’ll do alright.

Slicing up the tomatoes was just a playtime activity, as I mentioned, the next day they would get a real test. Oh, and btw, the woman did arrived about a half hour after I posted my little bit of worry below, lol, apparently she neglected to inform me that she’d not be home as usual because she was stopping by her sister’s house, d’oh. I made ‘gourmet’ meatloaf, even though that kind of sounds like an oxymoron, it really was the best tasting hunk of beef I’ve ever eaten. I was able to fully test out the knives by chopping up lots of fresh herbs (something the Ikea knives were awful with, it was more like tearing them than chopping), dicing up lots of garden-grown peppers and also onions. For the first time in my life I could actually CHOP, SLICE, and DICE, without it being this insane hassle that left me hating the entire idea of cooking.

I’m glad I have fingernails.

I’m planning to make a fairly elaborate dinner Friday evening, just because I want to, really. There was one part of the meal I wasn’t so sure about, given that I’ve never had this thing known as a “Jicama” before. Apparently it’s kind of like a slightly sweet potato. So, I go out and find this strange and brown blob of a veggie and decide I’d go ahead and make that part tonight, just to see if it was worth serving, as one should. Now, this thing is hefty, a good pound of whatever you want to call it. I’m thinking… “okay, I’m supposed to julliene that entire thing?!” It was pretty effortless with a nice and sharp chef’s knife, score for that compromise again.

When I was sharpening the knives I didn’t make them quite as sharp as I could have, mostly because I was getting sick of the whole process, but also because the sharper a knife is the more quickly it will dull, and, well… I wanted to see how good of a job I was doing before I devoted more time to it. I read stories of people with the Kyocera knives and lopping off fingers (or tips of fingers to be precise) quite accidently because they were just that sharp. Given my limited experience with a ‘good’ knife, well, I didn’t want that to happen to me, lol.

I’m dicing up this red onion, trying that little candle trick that Martha called a “good thing” to avoid the tears. Let me tell you, it’s total bullshit, lighting a candle to burn off those evil little chemical vapors doesn’t work, or, maybe it does to the slightest extent, but it was still unpleasant. I only had half an onion to chop so I didn’t do my usual running water thing and rinse the knife constantly, (It’s the onion reacting with the metal of the knife that causing the tears, in case you didn’t know).

So, I’m chopping away, trying to remember the technique of tucking the fingertips in so they aren’t chopped off, lol, but with that technique I fear lopping off my knuckles instead. Then it happens… I feel this sort of “ding” on the hand holding the knife, the sound of the onions being chopped was suddenly different too. I immediately stop all movement and look down at the other hand, to see the knife dangerously close to my index finger, it is that way because I’d just lopped off a rather huge chunk of my fingernail. Knives 2, finger 0. No pain, no blood, the knife was effortlessly able to cleave off that huge chunk of fingernail, it also cleaved off a decent sized portion of cuticle, lol. “Oh shit.”

Ssssh, but I just picked the finger bits out of the onion and continued on my merry way, lol.

If you’re in the market for a new set of knives and have a Kmart nearby, I’d say go for ‘em… but only if you’re capable of sharpening them. The steel is for honing, so it won’t actually make them sharper in that sense… You’ll need a set of stones, I honestly have no clue how much they cost, but the kind you buy in a kitchen store are pretty expensive… the sharpening is easy, you just need to be careful to keep the angle correct (I chose 20 degrees). They don’t say “Martha Stewart” anywhere on them, well, except on the shears, but they do say “MSE” which is slightly less embarassing, but still lacks of the dignity of one of the “big names” being imprinted onto them.

Oh, and Jicama is pretty good, it does taste kind of like a potato, but, errm… different. ;)

The woman went back to her normal schedule recently after having completed her phase in the testing program, basically it adjusts her days off back to Friday & Saturday instead of Saturday & Sunday and shifts the scheduled hours back, so she doesn’t get home at five in the evening anymore, but more like six something.

Before she left for work this morning she asked me if I knew how to make meatloaf, hehe. I’ve never made it before, but it is by far one of the most simple of foods to prepare, all you do is throw ground beef and a whole bunch of other crap together… one giant meatball. So, I was pretty much, okay… with it. I love meatloaf, btw, even if it is a fairly banal sort of meal, lol. Kind of like macaroni & cheese… it can be made from a box with this powder substance that is supposed to become cheese… ick, or it can be made from cheddar, swiss, parmesan, and bleu cheese, baked and topped with breadcrubs, you know, gourmet-esque like I make, lol. So, given that, my meatloaf cannot possibly be ordinary… ;-)

I planned it to be ready at six, when she was supposed to be home… it’s now half past seven and there are no signs of her yet… errr.

I have this obsession, many actually, but one has been especially strong lately. It sprung to life about a month ago after meeting this particular guy. No, I never mentioned him on here… I may someday, but in the meantime I find the reasons to keep quiet more compelling. And since the mere mention raises questions, no, I’m not ’seeing’ anyone, I’m just as single as I had been since …, by all reasonable calculations. I think it would be unfair to the other person to be jumping into something.

My obsession is the ultimate romantic dinner. Maybe not ultimate, but to create an atmosphere in a sense that could prompt one to pee themselves, lol. I was telling Sam, whom couldn’t quite grasp what I was going for, that if I were invited to dinner at some guy’s house and he had us dining on fine china that I would pee myself.

I’ve been wanting fine china for rather a while, but I couldn’t find a reason to buy it, that gave me enough reason. Fine china is not inexpensive by any stretch, we’re talking roughly $100 per place setting… the wallet says “OUCH!” My plan was to buy two place settings, but in a pattern that I could count on being around for quite a while so I could eventually finish it. Simple and elegant was key, white bone china with platinum banding. I couldn’t really find anything in the pricerange I liked that had the style I liked, that was from a maker I ‘trusted’ to meet the longterm pattern commitment I required. There was a Vera Wang set by Wedgewood that I really liked, but it is $160 per place setting, just a bit too much for me at the moment.

As you might have guessed by now, the fine china was one of my ‘options’ when making my consumerism decision. I chose not to do it just yet, afterall it would be something only for very special occasions, limited usage. It would be relagated to sitting in the box in the corner of the lounge like my other dinnerware.

I’ve been slowly completing the set of Sango Nova Blue stoneware, my other dinnerware. I bought my first piece, or technically it was bought for me, as a Christmas gift last year, bought the 16 piece set in January (I think). It sits in the boxes it came in downstairs, I’ve never used it. Well, that isn’t completely true, I did make baked macaroni & cheese for Jon & myself in the onion soup bowls once, lol. That is as close as I’ve come to making dinner for a boy, heh… not counting holiday dinner when Patrick came for Easter — my set wouldn’t have supported that number of people anyway.

I made a compromise. The woman wanted to stop by Hechts, which is also in Hagerstown, so we stopped there before I took the DVD player back the other day. They had all of their Sango completer pieces on sale. Granted those types of department stores almost always have that stuff on sale, because they mark it up 100%, lol. The key here was that they had an additional 10% off their sale price, which actually made it worthwhile, add in the fact I had a ‘10% off your total purchase’ coupon, score. I was able to get the $70 completer set, a square baking dish, and an ‘au gratin’ dish for roughly $40. It should have been, if not on sale, more like $120 or so… very sweet.

I have pretty much everything at this point, give or take… The 16 piece set of bowls, salad/desert & dinner plates, and a mug; I also have espresso cups, onion soup bowls, ramekins, and the completer set consisting of serving plate, serving bowl, creamer and sugar bowl. The creamer will serve as my ‘gravy boat’ because I think the one they sell is ugly as sin. I also have this nice borosilicate glass sugar & creamer set by Bodum anyway. I just need to find some sugar cubes to use, hehe… I really want to ask “one cube or two?” someday.

They do have a few other things available, but the only stuff I’d be interested in would probably be the rest of the bakeware. I’m not ever going to use salt & pepper shakers because I have those towering grinding mills for that… or I’d use the tiny individual type in a dinner party situation. I’m also not too hot on the idea of a butter dish, I think I’d rather scoop out some spread onto little ‘finger bowls’ for each person. The ice cream bowls look way too much like the regular bowls, and I don’t think they sell ‘rice’ bowls, so that’s probably out. I don’t see the point of the canisters, I’d rather have stainless ones. I don’t remember where I saw them, maybe Bed Bath & Beyond, but apparently they make square salad plates… I’d go for that, lol.

Last weekend I was sitting here deciding what to buy, not exactly a common thing when you consider I was able to buy just about anything within a particular range. Oh, that’s the beauty of getting paid and feeling financially irresponsible!

I narrowed the selection down to a few things, most of which wouldn’t interest many, regardless they were things I’ve been wanting. As mentioned in an earlier post about the lounge I’d been wanting to upgrade the surround sound system. The amp I had bought (my first), an AIWA 200 (something) is still a great amp, even though it is incredibly old. It has tons of inputs and outputs, including video switching, that was my main selling point… back then I connected a tape deck, cd changer, vcr, computer, the works. It also has 120 wants per channel, pretty sweet, even by today’s standards. The downside was it only did 16 Ohm surrounds. While I could have probably gotten away with using 8 Ohm surround speakers, provided I didn’t turn it up very high (which was easy, damn thing with the Pinnacle speakers was deafening at one quarter volume), thus minimizing the possibility of blowing the amp.

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For those confused… An Ohm is a measure of impedance (resistance, basically how difficult it is for a signal to travel or ‘work’). It’s a little weird, actually, but the higher the Ohm rating of a speaker the crappier it is. It’s more difficult for the signal to actually do something. The weird thing about it though, is that a higher rated speaker is easier to drive with the amp, it draws less power to do its thing (because it’s harder for it to get the power, due to greater resistance). If you’re still with me, which I doubt you are, but whatever… haha. Anyway, if one would connect speakers rated at 8 Ohms to an amp that is setup to provide for speakers rated at 16 Ohms, well, the speakers could (in theory) draw more power than the amp is capable of producing and, well… kaboom! There went the amp… fizzle. The same is true in reverse, you don’t really want to go connecting 8 Ohm speakers to an amp designed for 4 Ohm speakers, as it is possible (in theory) to blow the speaker. This is pretty rare though, and so rare that it really doesn’t need to be worried about…. the primary reason for blown speakers is that of supplying too many ‘watts’ of power to them. Hook up a speaker rated to handle 100 watts at peak (instead of RMS) to an amp that pounds out 200 watts, turn the amp up full blast, and KABOOM! You just blew the cones out of the speaker… d’oh. That actually happened here with a pair of very pricey Pinnacle speakers… idiot brother (or I should say, ignorant at the time) hooked a mega powerful car amp up to said speakers… blew them all to hell and back. I was a hundred shades of pissed off when I discovered that, needless to say.

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Okay, blah blah… I wanted a new surround system, one with surround speakers that would actually be good enough. I priced a system back when I started working on the lounge, I was looking at minimum $700. That was unappealing, I didn’t want to go HTIB, it just didn’t seem right, even though they’re much less expensive… problem is the speakers usually sound like tin cans too. I had bought an RCA (ugh) HTIB many years ago just to get the 16 Ohm surrounds to hook into my AIWA, awful doesn’t begin to describe them.

The AWIA, as I said, is a great amp, even to this day… it’s just lacking in the critical surround sound department. Granted at the time surround systems were not very common things, so it was more of an added, yet half-assed feature. It doesn’t have any digital inputs, which at the time didn’t exist, thus it can’t support Dolby Digital or DTS. You need digital to get ‘true’ surround sound, period. Dolby ProLogic just doesn’t cut it.

Since this is something I’d been wanting for a while I’m always keeping my eyes open for it. I saw this really neat looking HTIB by Panasonic a few weeks ago at Target…. It was integrated though, meaning it had a DVD player built in… They figure that if you have a DVD player built in you don’t need digital inputs for some reason… makes some sense, since that is primary what they’re used for, but regardless that caused it to be struck from the list. What if I wanted to hook up a Tivo, or digital cable/sat boxes, or even a swank Apple Airport Express? I’d be SOL. Prior to that dreaded discovery I did check out reviews for it and in general people really liked it, said it sounds great, etc… I just don’t know what they really mean by that, since great to one person can be shit to another.

I discovered that Panasonic made a few other systems, including those without DVD players built into them. The lack of a DVD player, in my opinion, is a bonus… I have a very good Philips DVD player already, I paid $150 for it… it has BOTH coaxial and optical (toslink) digital out, something getting to be unheard of, there’s either one or the other usually these days.

Price, always important, even to someone like me who tends to spend money as if it is water (even though I REALLY should not!). It’s difficult for me to keep together enough money to buy a super duper system like I wanted, simply because I always find something to spend it on. It doesn’t help that I have about ten pages in a notebook devoted to things I want to buy…eventually. They range from simple things like napkins and glass cleaner to seriously expensive things like that Francis Francis espresso machine I lust unendingly for.

Related to price, just how good is good enough for me? Do I need to buy “the best” or will something more low-end work perfectly for me? A perfect example is the process of choosing which laptop, I lusted for a Powerbook, I could have bought it too… but in the end I chose the iBook, it was perfect for me and allowed me to also buy a digital camera and wireless access point with enough cash left over for, well… whatever. I still love the iBook years later and to my amusement Matthew said in amazement “wow, that’s fast!” when using it a couple of weeks ago. Fast? HA… it’s only a 600MHz G3! Oddly enough, it keeps up in Photoshop just as well as the 2.53GHz P4 I’m writing this on, lol.

With the volume at one quarter (maximum), as mentioned before, the 120 watts per channel AIWA was essentially major overkill in the power department. I had to be careful to ‘keep it down’ or risk waking the family anytime I had someone over for drinks or whatnot. This check with reality was what I needed. I could truly get away with running speakers that handle 50ish watts and still have it at half volume. Bigger is not always better when dealing with real situations.

To get to the point, finally, I bought a Panasonic HT-05 system. It has a peak of 600 watts total, and that includes the subwoofer. It’s RMS rating is somewhere in the 370 watts range, providing on RMS 30 watts to most channels, not counting the subwoofer. The speakers have a max rating of around 55 watts. This meant I could listen to it fairly loud, just increasing the risk and possibility of causing the speakers to go into clipping (audio distortion caused be overpower situations).

It does NOT have a DVD player built in, it has two optical digital connections and one coax digital connection. Coax is important because for one it is a hell of a lot cheaper than fiber optic cable and as mentioned before my DVD player will do either. Something amazing is that the ‘universal’ remote control actually controls EVERYTHING. I had hoped it would control the Panasonic TV, but you never really know, lol. The Panasonic TV’s remote wouldn’t work with anything other than the TV, making its ‘universal’ nature a total joke.

I do have a couple of gripes though. While in general I like the remote’s layout, shape, etc… there is a button labeled something like “A/V System ON” which one would think meant by pressing it everything would power on, say… you hit that button and it turns on the DVD, TV, and Amp. Nope, it doesn’t function as an “all on” button. You have to press “TV” and then the “AV On” button and then the “Receiver On” button. Repeat the first process to also turn on the DVD. That’s ever so slightly annoying, but realistically that’s what I had to do with my other universal remote too. Easily dealt with by leaving the Amp & DVD player on 24/7, heh… Hell, my TV is on nearly that much, just because I forget to turn it off… bad Indi!

The other gripe is about the speakers, something mostly unimportant and I knew it going into it, but they have bases, which is nice, but they don’t come off! The nice part is that they have little rubber feet to isolate vibration and thus not turn whatever they’re sitting on into part of the speaker box, that is definitely good. When they’re hanging on the wall they look a tiny bit, well… stupid. Most probably wouldn’t even notice it though, only minor points taken away.

Actually, I have three gripes. The receiver won’t allow for ‘programming’ the Game/Aux option to use any of the digital inputs. I connect my iPod to the Game/Aux ‘choice’ through RCA audio cables at the moment so that isn’t much of an issue, but when adding the Airport Express it would be nice to not have to choose “DVR” to listen to it. Again, just a minor grip, it could not possibly be difficult for them to have added that in, right? The iPod on its own doesn’t have digital out anyway, and I suppose the dock doesn’t either, though I wish it did; the Airport Express does have ‘mini-optical’ out though, lol. Tangents, oh how I love thee! There is no way I’m aware of to get a digital audio signal out of the iPod (argh!), connecting it via USB to the Airport Express doesn’t seem feasible because one would still need a computer to pipe it to the mini-optical out on it through Airtunes. With the iBook and the Airport Express I’d kind of eliminate the need for the iPod being hooked into the sound system… it’s a tradeoff though, because then I’d need the iBook on and running. I think I prefer the current setup even if it is *gasp* analog.

I love the new system though, gripes aside and they are minor. I’ve not yet ‘cranked it’ because I’ve not needed to. Oh, one more gripe is how the volume level works, it’s done in decibels FROM maximum. This means that at a setting of “30″ you have 29 more ’steps’ before you hit max, so when turning the volume higher the number actually gets smaller. To me this is completely counter-intuitive! At least it lets you know how much louder you can make it before it maxes out. I think it goes down to -90 or something, but that’s insane because I can’t hear anything below 50 or so. With digital signals it doesn’t need to be as loud anyway because the signal is much, much stronger. Listening to a DVD I have it set at 30 and it’s pretty fucking loud… Normal TV watching from the couch it hovers around 40, needing to bump it up a bit if on the bed some 20 feet from the center channel.

Dolby Prologic does a good job of separating stereo into surround for most TV programs, Dolby Digital sounds sublime… and once I figured out DTS, well… blow my socks off yummy sound.

The DTS saga was the epitomy of me being stupid, actually no… not being able to get any digital sound was the epitomy. I bought my fancy coax cable, knowing that I could use a regular RCA style cable, it’s just the whole impedance thing… they’re the same physically in terms of appearance, but impedance is different when dealing with a regular ‘audio’ RCA cable and a ‘digital’ coax cable with RCA ends. I hooked the fancy cable into the wrong plug! It made sense to me, without being able to see the label, that the coax audio would be next to the digital audio connector… oh, and it is, but on the other side of it, lol. I plugged the audio cable into the composite video out… no sound, no matter what I tried, lol. I felt seriously stupid once I figured out why I had no sound.

DTS, well, that’s pretty similar in the realm of stupidity. I have only one DTS (Digital Theater Systems – a competitor to Dolby Digital) DVD, it’s The Fast & The Furious, such a stupid movie, but we have it for some reason. I assumed, because I know that DTS is better than Dolby Digital (subjective, not objective), that if DTS were available on a DVD it would automatically use that of course. Since it didn’t go into DTS I worried that my super fancy DVD player couldn’t do it, it was too old or something. Leave it to me to drive thirty minutes to Hagerstown to buy a new DVD player at 2AM. I bought a fairly nice one that claimed DTS ability. Granted, I was a little confused… I didn’t know if the DVD player and the receiver had to be able to use it, or if just one or the other, etc. I should have thought about it a little better, because if a DVD is sending ‘raw’ instead of processed ‘pcm’ data through the digital line that the DVD player’s processing ability was totally unimportant provided the receiver could figure it out. To be clear, as long as your surround receiver can process DTS and your DVD player can output RAW sound data, you’ll be able to use DTS, you do not need a DVD player with a decoder!

I didn’t figure all that out until I STILL couldn’t listen to the DTS audio on that stupid DVD. I kept hitting the nifty ‘audio’ button where one should be able to switch tracks to find the stupid little stopsign/hand icon being displayed — the DVD wouldn’t let me change it. After researching the DVD I found out this was a gripe others had with that particular DVD, you need to choose between which English languge track (DD5.1 or DTS) under the “Languages” option of the main menu. It never occured to me to check that menu for DTS, changing the type of digital audio is NOT changing the language… pay attention DVD authorists! If you have audio options put them in a menu called “Audio” or “Setup”… “Audio” as the menu title works perfectly fine in the semantic sense even if you include different language options, having audio setup options under “Language” DOES NOT.

Once I found that option the DVD warned me about only using DTS if my equipment supported it and thus had to ‘agree’ to allow it use the DTS encoded audio. Somehow this brought about the lightbulb of realization for me, I quickly unhooked the new DVD player, set the old one back up, and bingo… I had DTS audio coming from my supposedly non-DTS supporting DVD player. Needless to say, even though that Panasonic DVD player (the S27… the lowest end, since Walmart doesn’t sell the one I would have rather bought, but they do have a lovely EASY return process, mwahaha) worked fine, and btw, even though Panasonic doesn’t claim support for DVD+R discs, which would have been a major flaw considering I burn DVD+R (it is better, objectively, not subjectively, compared to DVD-R) the Panasonic DVD player reads DVD+R discs without issue, score for that. I guess the specifications/features indicate DVD-R because their recorders use it… it’d be assinine to do only one or the other, either way.

So, yes, needless to say I took that new DVD player back, no point in buying a new one if the one I had did everything I wanted it to do. Yes, it would be nice to have a DVD player here in the office, but I’d probably buy some PoS $30ish dollar player for up here, especially considering my computer can play DVDs, ya know?

Another weird thing, to which my brother Matt says is becoming more common, the speakers connect into the subwoofer, as the subwoofer contains the actual amp. This prevents one from ever upgrading the subwoofer, and could pose a placement problem because of the six foot ‘control cable’ required between the receiver and the sub, but for me it’s a non-issue. The subwoofer sounds good though, it fills out the sound without being overly thumpy… but of course with electronica there is enough of a nice thump happening to not complain about the lack thereof too.

Conclusion, choice well made, the Panasonic HT-05 is a great receiver and speaker set, plus it sounds amazing in my roughly 12×25′ lounge. Want to know what I paid for it? You’ll gasp… $200! It lists for $300, (I think), Circuit City and various other places had it for $250, Bestbuy (which meant a trip to Frederick — an hour each way roughly) had it for $200! Yes, folks, we call that a steal. Add in $16 more for ‘cheap’ wall mounts from Walmart, and even though they come to roughly $4 each and are made of plastic, they seem to work just fine… especially compared to $25 each at the CC or BB, lol. Also add $10 for better speaker wire… the shit that comes with the system is, I’m guessing, 20 gauge, which is just too thin. I thought I had 16 gauge wire, but upon restripping to hook it up I determined it to be 18… pretty good, but, no… 16 is considered much better still. I didn’t opt for 14 gauge, I think it’s overkill and, really, I don’t think it’d fit into the little clips anyway.

I deviated from the point of this post so badly that I don’t even want to try and bring it back to where it should be, lol. I gave it away as to what I bought, but didn’t go into what I could have bought instead, but I will… just wait. ;)

As much as I loathe this country at times, I’m so glad that we don’t have Value Added Tax like some other countries, like those in Europe in particular. I have to renew my imeridian.co.uk domain, pretty normal as I have a dozen or so I need to renew on a yearly or semi-yearly basis, but the VAT thing annoys me considerably. Regardless of where you’re from you need to pay it, of course being a non-EU citizen one can file a claim to recover it… in my case it’s totally not worth it of course.

The VAT on a domain purchase is insanely high by ‘our’ standards. I was pissy about having to pay Texas sales tax for my company’s usage of servers… they finally stopped doing that, which is nice, because given the dollar volume it really does add up after a while. Renewing the .co.uk domain is fairly inexpensive, a little over five quid (and that’s for two years). In essense this makes my .co.uk domain the cheapest one I hold. Then VAT hits, and granted it’s only another quid or so… but in the grande scheme I’m paying 25% tax on that domain! That’s as much as is built into the price of alcohol here, excise tax, yum… lol. I’ve not kept up on conversion rates, and oddly enough the dollar is a bit stronger against GBP than it had been when I was ‘aware’ of it, but still, give or take, a pound is worth two dollars — I’m paying $2 of my $8 purchase on tax to Her Majesty (making it about $10 — still cheaper than I’m paying for dot coms anyway, I guess).

It’s a stupid thing to complain about, I don’t need the domain, I can’t do anything to change it, but it’s just one of those annoying little things, that’s all.

I knew when I put Latter Days on my Netflix list seven or so months ago that it would be a good film. It was released onto DVD on the 7th, just a week ago, and I watched it this morning. Without doubt I’m one of the first to see it, especially when judging from the pristine condition of the dvd sleeve.

I was so interested in the film that I strongly considered driving to see it on the festival circuit… unfortunately that was going to interfere with seeing Sam, so I never did. As luck would have it, I didn’t see Sam either… I do regret that.

I knew it would be good, I just didn’t expect it to be as good as it actually is… amazing. It’s a must-see.

Sort of related, Cowboys & Angels is opening in a few days, it’ll be in Chicago on the 12th of November, hmmmm… Birthday in Chicago perhaps?