Wmcmanus

Sure he's not just being a drama queen?

That, plus they only see a small fraction of it all in those fleeting moments as they're passing by, whereas we see the entire video with all of it's brilliance, as well as the music. Might just look like a bunch of Asian goofballs to someone walking past them. But I honestly had the same thought that Steve did. Of course, I grew up in a farm town in Illinois with 4,000 people, so anything like this would be pretty incredible.

Make sure you go to the beach, but you were probably already planning on that. Never been to Cancun. When my former finacee's mom died, the whole bunch of those lazy, good for nothing Jamaicans wouldn't even chip in to put the poor woman in the ground. It was left to her, which in turn also meant me, to come up with 90% of the funeral costs. Same thing apparently happened when her dad died, but I was long out of the picture by then, so it wasn't on my nickel. I don't think they even had a bottle of Appleton Estate to pass around. Consider yourself lucky, and have a great time with Nana, et. al.

He's like a brother to me, and in 14 years I've never really done anything substantial like this for him. He's been very emotional in recent years, and especially this year. His mom told my mom (they've been best friends for 50 years) that he's reverting back to childhood in terms of his emotions. He recently told her, "Nobody loves me anymore..." like you might expect to hear from a 12 year-old who is going through a crisis. It really sucks because he was one of these guys who had it all. College educated, very well employed, happily married, and doing triathlons. He would do 500 situps and 500 pushups every morning before doing a 20k bike ride. But most of all, he had more friends than anyone I know. Where they've all gone now is beyond me.

Planning to get him one of these as well (the "standard" model for $60): http://tv.toptenrevi...929-review.html Don't really know anything about this issue, except that you ought to at least do something to provide some backlighting to help reduce eye strain. Given that he watches TV pretty much all waking hours (or at least has it on in the background), I figured this would be important for his night time viewing. I'm hoping there will be a way to diffuse this lighting from behind the TV as well, because I don't want it to be blinding everyone else in the house when they walk around back there. The TV itself will be sort of in the middle of a very large room.

Sort of in this same boat myself this Christmas. Looking for a high end TV for a childhood buddy of mine who is in pretty bad shape these days. He suffered a major brain aneurism almost 14 years ago, and was lucky to survive it. Took him 6 weeks to come out of the coma, and he's been paralyzed from the waist down and on the left side of his upper body ever since. He's atrophied quite a bit in recent years, especially after his wife left him. Until then, he was at least attempting to do physical therapy, but in reality everyone always knew that he would never walk again. Apparently, he wasn't so innocent in his marriage back when he was physically able, so I don't blame her for ultimately leaving him. She has since remarried, and had a child. He, in the meantime, moved in with his mom and step dad. Moved into their living room to be exact. He's got a full-time care taker who keeps him company and his mom does what she can to help him and to keep his spirits up, although she's 70 now, so it's really a tough situation all around. Anyway, his 10+ year-old TV, which he brought with him when he moved in, has been on the fritz for some time now. It's a 52" boxy looking thing that never had much of a picture, even in it's better days. So I've been debating what to get him, and have ruled out plasmas because he'll have the silly thing on all day and night. There is no way to control the room lighting. It's a huge room with several angles, cut outs, and big windows. He's pretty much located in Grand Central of their home, if they tried to control the lighting for him, they would all be living in dark. His mom is retired and at home, whereas his step-dad is 10 years younger and still working. The LED LCD variety seem to be much better for day time viewing and when you can't control the room lighting. I've settled in on the Sony XBR-55HX929. http://tv.toptenrevi...929-review.html Although I haven't had the chance to view it myself, my mom and sister have done a lot of legwork for me and say that it really does look substantially better than anything else out there. They've looked at dozens of TV's and agree with me (based about what I've learned just by reading reviews) that this is the best thing out there right now. It'll cost $2,700, but I'll get over that. My sister and her husband want to get him some kind of Yamaha "sound bar" thingie which apparently simulates a 7.1 surround sound, and I don't know enough about it or have the energy to fight them about it. Besides, I really can't imagine that they would want a bunch of speakers positioned all over the place in there. My mom is going to buy a stand for the TV after working with his mom in terms of what will work best. I'm heading home the day after Christmas and will be bringing my Oppo BDP-83 for him as well since I don't use it anymore since upgrading to the 95. This kid really has it rough, but I've never, ever, ever, heard him utter a word of complaint. He's still 90% of what he ever was mentally, so he's always fun to visit with, plus he's still a big sports fan and I can't ever argue with that. He deserves the best, and unfortunately cannot afford it himself, nor can his parents. They just had to buy a very expensive hospital bed, etc., so it's the least I can do. It could just as easily be me sitting there all day, every day.

Nice tree, Nate.

"Here I briefly EDIFIER plan." Wow! Thanks for the EDIFIERcation...

No sir!!! That shit ain't happening on my lap, Mikey!!! Little boys, sure, and girls of all ages, but no big boys! No pets either! How many figgin' times do I have to tell the photo company people about that?!?! The excuse I use is that I don't want to handle a dog or cat and then an 8 week old baby 5 minutes later. But the reality is that I don't want shit, piss, grime, drool, and fur all over my expensive custom made suits!

Did 5 Santa gigs today, have 6 tomorrow, 7 on Saturday, and 1 on Sunday. Nothing Monday or Tuesday, thankfully, and then it starts again on Wednesday. Have 58 events scheduled so far with 47 left to go, and the phone keeps ringing. Have had to turn down a bunch of Saturday stuff already. Funniest one was this guy who owns a large janatorial company here who I bumped into a couple of weeks ago. He told me then, all proudly, about how he's having a big party for 300-400 guests, and that I'll be "invited" to attend. Got a call this afternoon from someone at his company as a I was driving from one event to another... "We have an invitation for you for our party for Saturday night. You can pick it up any time..." I said, "For me to attend or to hire me to be your Santa?" Then it was, "Oh no, it's just for you to attend, but Mr. Roper told me to tell you that it would be Ok for you to "play Santa" if you want to... then you can have some jerk chicken..."

Happy belated... hope it was a good one.

If you like Clapton, blues, vinyl, and good deals... I sure do. http://www.popmarket.com/details/26588810

Found a random picture of myself on Facebook from an event I was at recently in "Caribbean Santa" attire: http://img.techpowerup.org/111206/Random%20pic%20of%20me%20found%20on%20Facebook!960.jpg]

That still seems so complicated to me. I can kind of divide by 14 in my head and get things right most of the time, but it just seems like putting something back into a squeeze bottle after it has come out. You can do it. Sure. But why? I guess it must help you to get a better point of reference. Kind of like when somebody says, "Boy, it hot here! 90 degrees today..." and then suddenly Doug's head is set in motion, as he subtracts 32 and divides the remainder by 1.8 and shouts out, "Oh, yes, 32.222 repeating decimal is pretty hot!!!"

Awesome.

Loved his stuff, always so soulful and chilled out. That man could play. RIP, and thanks for sharing your talents.

I guess we'll need to hear them, but I suspect that you're right.

Yes, all around great guy! Happy birthday, Dave.

About half way through it, I figured it was some gay shit...

Happy birthday, Tom. It seemed like only yesterday when I was saying that to you! Have a good one, and keep making the years count, buddy.

My reaction as well. But it's a reputable company, so that's why I'm wondering if this is a serious attempt to enter the high end IEM market, or more or an Ultrasone move whereby you stick a big price on some bling'ed up looking thing and then hope you'll find a lot of fools who think it must be "the best" because it's the most expensive?

You don't like airplanes?

Makes you wonder if they're really worth a shit... Or if perhaps they're the IEM equivalent of the latest and greatest overpriced Ultrasones... and that some numbskull who doesn't know crap about headphones (IEMs in this case) simply chose to rave on like mad about them because he figures high price = great sound. http://www.avguide.com/blog/the-best-earphones-youll-hearone-day?utm_campaign=Weekly+Email&utm_medium=email&utm_source=email-270&utm_content=Surround+Speakers+from+MartinLogan,+Paradigm,+and+Wharfedale+ Any "review" that makes absolutely no reference to any other comparative products is pretty useless. It just demonstrates the reviewer's lack of experience/understanding, etc. Yet, who knows. Maybe AKG is on to something here. Seems like they're trying to catch up with the likes of JH Audio, realizing that there is a market for this kind of thing. Big money for non-custom IEMs though...