So today I figure out that the MLB Extra Innings package I get from Comcast has a channel that gets broadcast in HD format.  That means this afternoon I’m watching the Yankees in HD.  Yeah, it’s Comcastic.

4 years ago when we moved to Georgia, I bought a 27 inch Sony Wega TV set. Yesterday it died. I looked online and found that this is pretty much death for the Wega models. Repairing the set would have been $250 (at least), and I didn’t want to bother with that.

I found an incredibly discounted Toshiba 30 inch HD set at Best Buy. It’s beautiful. Tonight we watched the Braves in HD, which is pretty amazing. We also watched a rerun of CSI. It’s amazing how much the HD broadcast adds to the episode. I know this is nothing new for most of the known world…I’m late to adapt to the HD availability.

This Toshiba isn’t the greatest set available. For the cash I was looking to spend, it was, but if I had my way (i.e. available funding) I’d get the set 1 size bigger than Wulfgar’s. …gotta keep up with the Joneses, you know.

On another note (and I know Wulfgar would disagree), I’m not very confident at all in what BrandsMart has to offer. We went in there today, and this stupid lady on commission couldn’t tell me the difference between 2 different sets, except to say that 1 was $50 more. She wanted to sell me another Wega, and I told her no. She said she could get me a good deal on it, and I told her I was only shopping for another TV because my Wega died. She wouldn’t take no for an answer.

I finally got so upset with her, I turned to the wife (with the sales chick standing there) and said “That’s it. I’m not buying a TV here. Let’s go to Best Buy.” Fortunately for me, Best Buy had a good deal because I really didn’t want to go back to see that woman. Next time I need something big, I’ll go check them out, but the commission-paid hounds over there just ruin the experience for me. Yeah, if you can save a few bucks, it might be worth the headache. But I wouldn’t suggest buying something big without at least giving Best Buy a chance to get the sale.

They’re in there. I know they’re in there. And they’re mocking me. From the other side of that wooded boundary line, they mock me. Slithering through the woods, they mock me. They sent out one of their young as a reminder that they’re still there.

That young sacrifice, initially a one-piece, 4-inch long youngster, is now two-piece, 2-inch long youngster. His family must surely miss him, and they are most probably plotting against me even now.

They too will die if they cross the comfortable confines of their wooded homes. They have been warned. War has been declared. They all must die.

There’s an email that goes around whenever gas prices go up. It’s this crazy scheme that if nobody buys gasoline on a given day, the gas companies will have so much extra inventory that they would have to drop the price to get rid of the backlog.

Some idiot started that email. And every time I get it, I just delete it and figure that the sender isn’t smart enough to know that one day of not buying gas won’t have any impact at all on gas stations.

Don Wildmon sent me another email today. He wants me to reduce my gas usage by 3% and really put the crunch on the gas companies. If I lower my demand, their supply goes up, and my price goes down. Well, that’s just stupid. As soon as their price comes down, Don would declare victory over the gas stations, and everyone would go back to their normal activity, driving demand back up.

If old Don had sent this message to me only, I would have just done what I always do: laugh at the sender and delete the message. But no. Don saw fit to send this to the thousands on his mailing list. He even wants us to sign a pledge. Yeah, that will make a difference.

Come on, Don! Isn’t there some company supporting gays that you could pick on? Or shouldn’t we rant about how Target is doing something evil? Maybe we could gripe and complain to a television channel about their low morals in programming. I’ve mentioned before that I think most of Don’s coalition pointless, but this is just over the top.

If you really want to save on gas, sell the gas hog V8 SUV and buy a little Honda Civic. Then you’ll be free to gripe about how Honda makes their cars too small.

30 years ago today something wonderful happened. Rick Monday, outfielder for the Cubs, ruined a couple of hippies’ protest on a baseball field. The two hippies had run out on the field with an American flag and some lighter fluid. Monday ran and swiped the flag from the hippies so they could not burn it.

Monday’s comments on the incident include this gem: “What they were doing was wrong then, in 1976. In my mind, it’s wrong now, in 2006.” Rick Monday, you’re a wonderful American.

There’s a great article about the event, with lots of comments from Rick Monday here.

I saw Rick Monday in Vero Beach this spring, but unfortunately I didn’t recognize him until he was gone. I’ll be looking for him next year though. Anybody know where I can get a Rick Monday autographed baseball?

Andy Osenga has posted a song from his upcoming CD “The Morning” over on his blog.  It’ll only be up for a few days, so go listen now.

On a side note, he did it using a pretty sweet little plugin for Wordpress. I swear, Wordpress is just amazing.  (almost as amazing as Andy Osenga).

Osenga’s blog post is here.

This weekend I decided to get on a bike and see some of the Silver Comet Trail that I’ve heard so much about. It’s this long 60-mile trail that goes from somewhere near I-285 all the way to the Alabama line.

Here is an image I stole and cropped from trailexpress.com.

On Saturday, I started in Hiram, GA (marker #9) and rode about 6 miles east to marker #6. 12 miles round-trip…not bad for a first time effort. Then on Sunday afternoon, I started again at marker #9 and rode west to marker #12. That round trip is almost 12 miles again.

Though I made it without passing out from exhaustion or collapsing from the heat, Sunday was a much tougher ride. My legs began protesting shortly before I was even a mile into the ride.

So this morning, I come limping into the office and ask a guy I work with about biking. He’s into it like it’s some sort of cult, so I wanted to know what he’d consider a decent ride. His response? 40-50 miles! That made me laugh.

Maybe one day I’ll be able to do 50 miles on the Silver Comet Trail, but before that, I’ve got to find a more comfortable seat.

We recently ditched the dish. We had been Dish Network customers for about 3 years, and there were a couple of problems that we started having with the service. Additionally, you have to have more than just their basic package to get Turner South to see the Braves games. I buy the MLB package every year, but the Braves games on that get blacked out. This year, they even started blacking out the Braves when they were on ESPN. That was the final straw for me.

I called Comcast and got hooked up on a special deal since I cancelled my Dish service. Tonight I watched the Yankees & Orioles, Diamondbacks & Dodgers, Mets & Padres, some Biography, stand up comedy, and Tom & Jerry.

So we’re paying less, getting more, and I can watch 3 ball games, educational programming about Patty Duke, semi-humorous comedy, and classic cartoons…all at the same time.

Yeah, life is good.

We’re watching House tonight. It’s a show where a really sarcastic, obnoxiously arrogant doctor fixes weird problems. I guess I originally liked it because of the sarcasm and arrogance. The writing is emotional, with twists and turns throughout the episode. Something has happened lately, though. I’ve realized that every episode is the same. Sure, minor issues change from one episode to the next, but the show basically follows this format:

1. First, you see people living their lives and doing something normal. Then one of the people collapses.
2. The person has some weird problem that makes them go get Dr. House. House makes a sarcastic comment and then realizes the seriousness of the situation.
3. House makes a couple of wrong guesses about what’s wrong with the patient. The doctors that work for him argue about what they should or shouldn’t do to keep the patient from dying.
4. At some point in the show, the patient will vomit unexpectedly (usually as soon as the doctors leave the room) or experience massive bleeding from below the waist.  Sometimes it’s both.
5. House figures out what it is, but he has to break some rule (usually ethical) to get the problem solved. He does it anyway.
6. House’s boss tries to stop him from breaking the rule, but House refuses to listen to her.
7. At the very last minute, they fix the problem and the person lives.

If you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all. Literally.

My parents are addicted to Diet Mt. Dew. It’s insane. And if it tasted good, maybe that would be understandable. The problem is that it has always tasted like antifreeze (or how I would expect antifreeze to taste)…just barely good enough to make me try it once in a while, but still nasty enough to make you want to induce vomitting.

I saw that the Mt. Dew people have a new marketing spin on their antifreeze. They said they changed the formula to give it a “tuned up taste.” I figured it was worth trying. Plus, I hadn’t had any antifreeze in a while. So I grabbed a 20-ounce when I was at a local stop-n-rob recently.

I was shocked. It actually tasted good…and not the “antifreeze” kind of good. I’m not nuts over it so much that I’ll buy it in bulk (like my parents), but it’s a nice change from the old nasty antifreeze flavor.