Double Journey

So I’ve had my TV a little bit over a month. I am going to write up my review in two parts. The first part will be all the things I love about my new TV. The second part will be all the things that annoy me about the TV.

Let me start off by saying that I love this TV. I am extremely happy with my purchase and I don’t think I could have bought a better TV for myself. I had a big party last night for the Fourth of July, and had a lot of people over watching lots of different source material and everyone really enjoyed it.   We watched a few different things.   We watched Ratatouille, National Treasure, and Planet Earth all in HD, and the picture looked fantastic.  I think it even convinced one of my friends that it was time to buy a new TV.

My setup is not extraordinary.  I don’t yet have a stereo system hooked up to it, so I’m using the TV’s onboard speakers.   They actually sound pretty good and I can’t really complain about them.  I have a Wii and a Standard DVD player hooked up over component cables, a MediaCenter PC and the DirecTV box hooked up over HDMI, and an old Xbox hooked up over the Composite connections.  On to my review.

Picture Quality - Admittedly, this is my first HDTV.  The step up from regular TV is gigantic so if you haven’t had a HDTV yet, you won’t be disappointed with this as your first one.   That being said, I’ve seen a lot of my friends’ TVs and I think mine stack up well against all of them.  It’s hard to really compare TVs without a side to side comparison, so I won’t even try it, but all I can say is that I’m very happy with the set.  The movies I have seen are all fantastic.  You watch Planet Earth on this thing and it is unbelievable the detail that you can see and how great the picture looks.  If you are like me, and watch a lot of sports, you won’t be disappointed.  I watched the NBA finals on this TV and was just watching the Wimbledon Finals right now.  The experience was fantastic.

All of the sources I have on the TV look good.  The connection to the computer the, DirectTV feed, and the OTA antenna, being the only true HD sources I have,  look fantastic.   The Wii and the non upconverting DVD player look good but obviously not as sharp as the HD sources.

People like to break down this category into things like black levels, color accuracy, etc.   I say that’s rubbish.  Judge with your own eyes and taste.  All I can say is that for me, and pretty much everyone else who has watched the TV, this TV will suit you no matter what your taste may actually be.

Price and Shopping Experience - I bought my TV from Amazon.  Like most would be, I was a little nervous about buying such a high price item online.  However, when I was only paying about $2280 for this TV with delivery included, it was too good of a deal to pass up.  Considering that the step down version of this TV, the 50PZ85U retails for $2300, and this is a significantly better TV than that, then it was a no brainer for me to go to Amazon.  The delivery was when it said it would be, albeit slower than I would have liked.  But it was delivered safe and sound and with no problems whatsoever.  If I had to do it all over again, i wouldn’t hesitate to buy my next TV through Amazon.

THX Setting -  This is the big feature that accounts for the price difference between the 85u and the 800u.  Is it worth it?  Hell Yeah!  This is the setting I watch most of my programming in.  The colors look realistic.  Some could say that it looks a little duller, and it wouldn’t be totally inaccurate.  The colors are not over-saturated, and a lot of people like the over-saturated look.  My girlfriend for one.  But I love the look of THX.  It makes colors look like Colors are supposed to.

Design -  I know not a lot of people care about this aspect of their TV since they just want something that will produce a good looking picture, and not necessarily look good in a picture.  However, I have a girlfriend who has dreams of being a designer.  And so it is important that the TV looks as good as the pictures it can produce.  I thing this TV looks great on or off.  The “one sheet of glass” design is nothing to get too hyped up about, especially since they put on a plastic bezel around the edge.  But it still looks fantastic and one never even notices the bezel.  The girlfriend couldn’t stand the fat lip under the 85U, so she almost made me get the 800 on this fact alone.

So overall, on a scale of one to ten, I give it a 9.  No TV is perfect, and I have a few problems with some things, but I’ll get to those in my next post.  Overall a great TV, and if you are willing to spend the cash, it seriously is the best bang for your buck.

I used to buy cheap furniture. I was young, and didn’t have much money, and didn’t really think nice furniture was all that important. However, I recently turned the corner. Not sure if it has more to do with age or with my income. Probably both.

I bought a media console pictured similar to above. I bought it to match the TV that I will eventually get. In times past, I would have just found a nice cheap piece of furniture that would have sufficed to do its job of holding my TV. However, I figured I was about to spend a fair amount of money on my TV and figured it needed an equally nice stand. It’s made of real wood, a far cry from the Ikea furniture I’m used to.
The odd thing is that I have always believed in buying quality items. Growing up, my family bought the best we could afford despite the fact we didn’t have much money. My mother would always tell me that in the long run, buying something of quality would save you money because you wouldn’t have to replace it.

I’ve done the same strategy with stocks. I’ve only bought a few dozen stocks in my life. For the most part, I’ve bought companies which are considered high quality, companies with long histories of strong earnings. Since they are of higher quality, I don’t replace them often. Almost all the stocks in my current portfolio I have owned for over two years. It is especially good in times like this when the markets are shaky.

I’m once again making the journey between Seattle and Los Angeles.  This time I’m taking it as an opportunity to take a vacation.  We have been traveling down the Oregon Coast and have made it to Northern California as I write this.  It’s been great so far.  We decided to take the slow route.  Instead of just taking Interstate 5 all the way down, we decided to take the 101 which hugs the Oregon and California coat.  There isn’t a lot on the Oregon coast, but we have taken our time and enjoyed the beaches.  Well enjoyed them as much as possible on these Balmy April days.

The Oregon coast is odd.  It seems so disconnected from the rest of the world.  I say that because we would literally go an hour in the car without seeing another car going in our direction.  And it wasn’t like we were driving in the middle of the night.  In fact, we only traveled during daylight hours.   I kept thinking about the towns like those in the Pixar movie Cars.  Everyone takes the Interstate and has forgotten about these little towns that use to be on the main highway.

I’ve taken three days off of work, this is the second day.  The first day, I kept checking my work mail.  I have a smart phone, and it allows me to stay connected almost anywhere I am.  That is normally a good thing for me, but not a good thing when you are trying to relax and have a good vacation.  So today, I made it a point to not check my mail.  I didn’t even look at the subject headings.   This was exceedingly difficult for me.  My whole job is to know what is going on and to be available.  Disconnecting is very very hard for me.  But so far, I’m glad I did.  I’m still itching to check my mail, but I have to admit, I feel a lot more relaxed than I did yesterday.  Hopefully, I can stay disconnected tomorrow and decompress even more.

My Birthday was this weekend.  This would explain the lack of post on Friday as I took the day off of work to just lounge around and not do a heck of a lot.

It was a big birthday for me actually.  I’m now 30.  However, I’ve long gone past the point where I do anything really significant for my birthday.  I spent the day looking for some furniture and enjoying the California weather.   My girlfriend came down from Seattle this weekend and it was good timing for her.  While it was warm and sunny down here, I heard it was snowing in Seattle.  Sucks to be up north.

At night, we went to Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse.   We were going to eat in but I decided that it would be better (and frankly easier) to just go eat out.  Ruth Chris is well known for its steak, and it didn’t disappoint.  I got the Surf N’ Turf which meant a lobster tail and Ribeye steak.  It was mighty tasty.  Since I don’t really drink alcohol, and we generally don’t order apetizers, the bill came to “only” $130.

I was thinking as I was eating in the restaurant how fortunate I am to be able to go to this type of place when I feel like it.  I really don’t worry about how much money I’m spending at these types of things because I do it so rarely and have more than enough saved so that it doesn’t hurt my bank account.  At dinner, my girlfriend and I talked about her friend who is a lawyer who makes more money than I do yet has almost nothing saved.

Now if I wanted to, I could probably eat out at this type of restaurant almost every single night.  It would be expensive, and at the end of the month, I wouldn’t have very much saved, but I wouldn’t be going negative either, not even close  So it got me thinking what on earth can people be spending their money on to go through that much money.  If I can afford to go out to one of the nicer restaurants in the country every single night, what must someone who makes more money than I be spending his money on?

Other than that, it was a nice relaxed weekend.  The one other highlight was going to watch my friend Jenny play in a softball game and being part of her team’s first victory.  If you have seen them in other games, you would know what a big victory it was as most people have never played a game of softball in their life.  I think my cheer leading was a major reason they won as this was only my second game in attendance, and they generally lose.  Coincidence?  I think not!

I am in the market for a new TV. I’m one of those people when I buy something I analyze it to death to make sure I get a good deal. It’s what I did when I bought a fridge, and it is ten times worse now that I’m trying to buy a TV.

Here is the thing, despite the fact I want to get a really nice TV, I probably don’t need one. I’ve gone over two months without any Cable TV and while I sometimes miss it, I have definitely found other things to occupy my time. It’s been rare when I sit around and think, “Gee, I have nothing to do now. I wish I had a really great TV.”

And the thing is, I not only save money not buying the TV (and not buying something is as good as earning that money), but I don’t pay for cable. I would probably get satellite and I would get an HD setup since I would have a HDTV. That would cost me somewhere in the neighborhood of $70 a month. Something I could definitely afford but doesn’t hurt me not to spend it.

Now that I think about it, I actually don’t spend much more money living in California vs. Washington. My rent is $1700 per month. That is about $300 more than a similar place in Washington. Add to the fact that I do not pay for water, trash, gas, a second parking space, or anything else other than electricity and the gap narrows even more.

So I had to buy a refrigerator for my new apartment. Despite living on my own for the last decade or so, I’ve actually never owned a fridge. There was always one in every apartment I rented. This unit didn’t have one, so I had to go out and buy one.
It actually took me a real long time to decide what to get. You see, I’m just not use to buying big ticket items. There are very few times I’ve ever spent over $500 on any one purchase. I had considered just getting a cheap fridge and saving the money. Why get a good fridge when this isn’t a real permanent option and I will in all likelihood move within a year?

The counter argument of course is that I hate buying things that I get rid of after a short time only to replace it with another item. You end up spending way more money than if you were to just buy the better item in the first place and you are incrementally happier with that purchase for the life of the product.

This is part of the reason that this journey will prove and has proven so difficult for me. I am not use to buying things and getting rid of them quickly. I do things for the long haul, and this short time frame is just foreign to me. Well that and the fact that I barely have any time to sleep much less think about how I’m going to make money.

Somehow I managed to equate the stock market with buying appliances.  I really must be some sort of finance geek.

Yesterday we had a very nice, albeit typical, California day. It was in the mid to high 70’s for most of the day and even got to the point I turned on the AC just to cool the apartment down a bit. There was one person who was even more happy than me to be back in California. That would be my cat pictured above. One of the big drawbacks in living in a place like Seattle was that we just did not get much sun. To make matters worse, my apartment in Seattle did not really get any direct sunlight.

When you have a kitty that loves to sun bathe, that can be a problem. Now that we are back in Southern California and I have a southern facing apartment, kitty just loves to spend his day sprawled out and laying in the sun. Lucky for him he doesn’t realize how much more expensive it is to live here. Despite a higher salary than what I was earning in Washington, I’m really not saving more money. In fact, I’m probably saving less. We will see how it all equalizes as soon as my move in cost are gone and my girlfriend eventually makes it down, but for now, definitely not saving as much money as I was before.

I went back to Seattle this past weekend, and one of the places I stopped was good, old, cheap Sushi Land. Actually, I went twice. Considering I only had four meals there, taking half of them at Sushi Land should tell you how much I miss the place. My two meals there came to a total of about $20 each. For that price, I was able to eat until both me and my girlfriend were quite full. Since I normally focus on nigiri rather than rolls or noodles, I’m able to eat quite cheaply. Most of the nigiri is $1.50. The one general exception is pictured to the left, the sockeye salmon.

Sitting here in bright, warm, Southern California and thinking about the sushi almost makes me want to move back. OK, maybe not.

It seems like I’ve been without Internet forever, when in reality it has only been a few days.  Even when I was on the cusp of getting it, wouldn’t you know it almost didn’t happen.  I was explaining to my friend Sandy one time how nothing ever comes easy for me.  I’m not sure why that is the case, but it’s true.  So when the cable guy came to install everything, he couldn’t find the closet where he needed to make the connection.  After much searching, and finally asking a neighbor, we found it.  But wouldn’t you know it, it was locked.  As the cable guy came late (which was annoying in itself) there was nobody in the office to actually let him in to turn the cable on.  Lucky for me, there happened to be one maintenance guy still around after hours because he was putting together some new gym equipment.  He was kind enough to let us in.

So I thought we were finally close, he would find the right cable, plug it in, and we would be on our way.  Of course, like I said, nothing comes easy.  He goes back and forth trying to get a signal, but just can’t find one.  After many attempts, we discover a cable that is not plugged in on the patio.  So we go through the whole exercise again.  Still nothing.  So we take the cover off the wall, and discover a mess of other cables.  So we try a few of those.  Finally a signal!  Two hours later, and I’m back online.  Have a lot to say, but at this point I’m tired, and going to call it a night.  I’ll resume my regular posting schedule shortly.

As my last post has indicated, I have moved.  Unfortunately, I don’t have my internet access setup.  Since I don’t blog from work, this means that my posting and responses are going to be a little bit spotty over the next few days.   It’s amazing to me how disconnected I feel when I don’t have access to the internet.  I checked my e-mail and there wasn’t that much for me to really pay attention to, but I still felt very disconnected from the rest of the world until I was actually able to check it.  And there are the little things.  My AV definitions of my computer are out of date, so it keeps bugging me to update them.  My media center PC can’t update it’s guide so I can’t easily figure out what the heck I’m watching on TV.  It’s times like this that you realize how for so many of us, it is so important to be connected.  The internet is supposed to be turned on this Wednesday, so I only have to last a few days.  It’s going to feel like an eternity to me.