Christmas Shopping

I have yet to buy one present for the family. Working in a different state puts a big damper on Christmas, no tree, no gifts under the tree, lights, decorations, etc. I don't know what to get my wife. I asked her what she wants and she doesn't know so I told her she's getting an iPhone if she doesn't pick something. We've been going through this for a couple weeks now so I'm thinking she really must want an iPhone cuz she picked a gift yet. Getting Hayley gifts here in MN sucks because we can't bring them back to CA, so we're stuck with deciding if we should wait to get her gifts until we get back to CA or get her some here and letting her play with them when we get back.

Anyway, have a Merry Christmas.

Super Mario Galaxy Saves the Wii

Going into the holiday I was thinking of selling the Wii. All the games I've rented haven't been that great and except for tennis, baseball, and golf the wii-mote hasn't really had a great use. I rented Madden and I didn't like the passing configuration at all. I'd much rather play Madden with a game pad. With the demand for the Wii I was thinking I could sell it with the extra wii-mote and games and make enough money to buy an xbox 360.

Before heading to MN I read an article that said Super Mario Galaxy was the highest rated game of all time. Intrigued, I thought about buying it but I put it off to think it over. Eventually I bought it and tried it out. If this game didn't pan out it would've been the last game I bought without renting it first. The game has about 15 minutes of dialog at the start which was disappointing cuz I thought it was going to be like that throughout the entire game. However, as the play wore on this game turned entertaining as the it galaxies start out simple and teach the controls along with achieving milestones. The farther into the game you get the harder it gets.

I'm really impressed with the creativity that went into this game. There are so many different features to this game. Both the num chuck and the wii-mote are used extensively and both can be used for totally different functions at the same time which makes quick thinking a must.

I'm happy with the game and I'm not thinking of selling the Wii now. Hopefully the Mario Cart lives up to the hype as well.

Heading Back to MN

Enjoy the holidays all. I'm heading back to MN until after the New Year, and I'll have limited access to the Internet so there will be little activity on the blog. (I know at least one reader that will miss it)

911 Challenge!!

For the last three weeks we've been hitting up University Chicken. It's a college sports bar so we're pretty much the oldest bunch in the bar. They have an assortment of food, but they are best known for their wings which are friggen awesome, as long as the sauce is at the lower half of the scale. (shown above) Last night we saw two attempts at the 911 Challenge. The rules of the challenge are:

1. Sign Waiver and admit you are an IDIOT for attempting the 911 Challenge.
2. Eat 12 911 Global Thermo Nuclear Wings the to the bone in 10 minutes or less.
3. Nothing else to eat or drink while taking the challenge.
4. No napkins allowed during the challenge.
5. Lick fingers clean after eating the last wing.
6. After licking fingers clean, wait 5 minutes before eating or drinking anything.
7. The Most Important Rule: Participants — wash hands very, very, very well before going to the bathroom or rubbing your eyes (think about it)!

Winners get a T-Shirt and their picture put on the wall. After watching the two attempts there's no way I'd even think about attempting it. The wings are in so much sauce that the wings have to be fished out. The sauce is basically a deep dark brown thick mud. It doesn't look edible at all.

Two guys tried it first, both of them downed the first wing in about 20 seconds. contestant one continued at the same pace on the second wing, contestant two had to take a second before starting on the next wing. Contestant two finished the second wing and chocked a bit. The crowd around him started call for a garbage. He got about half way through the 3rd wing and started dry heaving. Now if that were me I'd quit right there, but he kept eating cheered on by the entire bar. After finishing the 3rd wing he took about 20 seconds off, he kept looking at the 4th wing and bolted for the door and threw up outside, disqualifying him so he was out. Contestant one was now on his 4th wing and I think he just quit after seeing his buddy bolt for the door, he seemed to see his fate if he continued forcing them down.

About 30 minutes later we saw another attempt. The guy brought out 4 tubs of wings for what I thought was 4 guys, but the guy put them in front of the 4 girls sitting at the table. One girl ate one wing and she was done. The other three were working on their 4th wing when we left. Over 5 minutes had past so there was no way there were going to finish the challenge. But I was impressed that they were able to eat 3 of them and who knows how many more.

Wild vs San Jose

We hit the Wild vs Sharks game tonight in San Jose and it was the boring game ever. The Wild skated like they had lead sleds in the arses, it was so pathetic. They turned it on a bit in the final 10 minutes of the third period but by that time they were down 4-0 so it was pretty much over by then. There were a couple fights but none of them involved Boogaard so that was a bit disappointing. I see in the box score that he didn't have any minutes and checking the injury list he's listed as day to day.

It was my first pro hockey game so that was cool and it was affordable ($26). I don't think you can get anything under $50 at the Excel Center. The HP Pavilion is a great arena as well. We sat in the nose bleeds but we could still see the game.

Big Screen Repair Success!!!

I finally broke down and decided to fix my big screen. A guy from work was nice enough to drive down from San Fransisco to help out. Mike had experience soldering but not much experience replacing chips. I opened the TV up and wrote a diagram of the circuit boards and all the connections free hand and labeled where each connecting wire should go, and any wire not labeled, I labeled myself with tape and a sharpie. Mike laughed at me a bit for being so cautious but I figured it would make a good check list when we were reconnecting everything to make sure we didn't miss any of them. We spent an hour on the first chip trying to remove the solder on the chip. Finally Mike figured out that he could melt the solder and push the pin through with the soldering iron. After figuring this out the second chip took 5 minutes to remove. Then we use the wick to clean up the solder from the empty holes.

Inserting the new chips wasn't that easy as the pins (20 of them) were really flexible and they didn't match up perfect so it was another 15-20 minutes to get the chips in. After being super careful reconnecting everything I plugged the TV and turned it on. There was no smoke so that was awesome, the 10 seconds or so waiting for the TV to warm up was intense. Did the fix work or not. The TV came up in setup mode and the picture looked terrible... but I made some big adjustments to the conversion when it went out in the first place so I reset the conversion and whoohoo!! the picture was perfect. A couple high fives and some fist pumps followed. I was so happy I saved a $500 repair bill. In all I spent $10 on the new chips, including another $5 for shipping, and another $50 or so for the soldering iron and solder. I bought a battery operated soldering iron which didn't have enough wattage so I ended making another trip to Fry's for a plug in soldering iron. So I could've saved $15 had I bought the right soldering iron.

The entire repair took about 2.5 hours. I probably wouldn't have figured out soldering myself had Mike not been there, so I owe him a big thanks and a lunch or two. He soldering the first chip in less then 2 minutes. He let me attempt the second chip and then cleaned it up after I was done. I'm pretty confident if I had to do it again, I could get it done in under an hour. I'm happy I got the experience of fixing it, not only did I get to try soldering, I got to see what the inside of a projection TV looks like.

TV Parts Are In

The parts for my Big Screen arrived today. Now I'm kind of getting nervous about cracking it open. I need a soldering iron and crap before I can proceed. Maybe I'll have myself talked out of it by then.... If I actually go through with it I'll video it and post it online for others to follow.

Comcast Crap

So not only is my only TV on the fritz, my Internet isn't working. I called Comcast last night and they said I have a bad modem and I should bring it in to get it replaced. They close at 6 and it was 5:50 so I had a night without TV and Internet. I've never been happy with Comcast since we got to CA. Their PVR box sucks, the picture isn't that great, and the Internet is hit or miss. But this was all fine for the most part cuz I was only paying $70 for it, not bad since we have a few premium channels with it. Our last cable bill was doubled since our initial year is up. So now we're supposed to pay $140 for crappy service, I don't thinks so.. and I top of it, Chad and Paul, who got the same Comcast package as us, at the same time last year, didn't have their rates raised. So I guess we won the Comcast "Raise the Rates" sweepstakes. What a friggen joke.

Weather

It's raining today and the forecast for the rest of the week has rain just about everyday. It could be worse though, we could have a blanket of 5-10" of snow with high temps reaching only 20 degrees like back in MN. I'll take this 50-60 with rain any day. Although I hope the snow is still around when I go back so I can build a snow fort with Hayley or go sledding somewhere.

!#@#!@#!@# TV is on the frits

After an afternoon of watching football I decided to hit Fry's. That place is crazy messy, all the displays were out of order and nothing matched to the prices listed next to it. I was surprised cuz Fry's is normally good about keeping the store organized and clean. I walked through the game section and an alarm went off in the Apple section. I looked around and nobody was responding. I also went to check out a video camera that I could attach to my helmet when I'm mountain biking and another alarm when off in the isle next to me. Again I looked around and nobody responded. Either this place is way understaffed or they're that busy.

When I got back home I turned on the TV to catch the NFL highlights and the picture is totally messed up. I spent about an hour trying to align the guns with the built in adjuster, switching inputs around and what not. This wasn't working so I went online to find the problem and it's sounding like a convergence problem that requires a couple resisters and two STK packs. Whatever the heck that is. The forum also said that it will cost around $350-$500 to have a repair guy fix it. For FAACK sakes, I can buy a new 32-36" LCD for a few hundred more. I also read a quip that said "this is common after owning the TV for 5 years", which is about the age of mine. So I'm going to have to replace this stupid part every five years at $500 a pop. Are you friggen crazy!!! arrggg. I'm so mad.

While researching this I found a blog with this guy posting about how he repaired his TV. He has a Panasonic 47" which can't be that different from a 53" so I'm tempted to give it a shot. If I mess up the TV, I'll just buy a new one. (A little anger may ensue as well) If I can fix it myself it should cost around $50. I guess I could ask around work to see if there's an engineer with some soldering skills. I'll smolder on it for a while.