Any of you monkeys want a banana?

I had a chance yesterday to check out a HDTV for the first time. WOW!!! The picture was incredible. You could see depth in it. It's a Sony 32 inch set, connected to a hd satellite system. Of course, this all comes at a price. The tv set is 1300 dollars, and the upgrade to our satellite system would be at least $200. As much as I like the idea of 3-d tv, we went for the 35 inch Sanyo with the 10% discount (thanks to Rachel). Total cost:$428 (the thing weighs 168 lbs. Good thing Jon and Chris were here). Much better. The reason we were looking for a new tv is because our 'old' set had failed. The picture was dark and could not be adjusted any brighter. The part that's so annoying is that it's less than 7 years old. Pisses me off. It is an RCA.

My DVD player is also an RCA, a christmas gift from the kids 3 years ago. About a month ago a problem started that I had to work on. There's a small friction pad that rubs against the motor shaft, perhaps for vibration dampening, or to stop the disc quickly when you want to open the tray. Anyway, I found that if the tension was reduced, it would work normally. So I reduced the tension permanently. It's been working fine for the last month, so I guess it's 'fixed'. Since these last two events have occurred, it seems to me that RCA might be a brand to avoid. I know I'm going to in the future. Too bad too, because RCA used to make some pretty good stuff.

I'm constantly reminded that you can't ever believe what you read unless you check it out yourself. Rose got these little two-way radios for Christmas (she had been wanting a set for a while). The packaging claimed 'up to a 5 mile range'. Perhaps if it was 2 miles straight down and back up and you could see the other person, then maybe it would reach 5 miles. Otherwise, in a real world trial, we got about 3/4 mile range out of them. This is the Cobra Microtalk 2-way radios. I hate false advertising. It just PISSES ME OFF!!!. Other than having approximately 1/6 the advertised range, they work pretty well. We used them yesterday to track each other down at the mall.

I was playing with some ideas for the Thank You card and came up with this:

I thought it was funny and touching. When Rose saw it she started giggling, so I knew I had a hit. Anyway, I'm going to do up a couple cards and show them to the family today to see what they prefer. I guess we'll see who has a sense of humor.