jeremy's blog

This morning, I awoke to about an inch of snow outside my door.  Some areas got as much as six inches overnight.  Once I managed to get my vehicle to stop sliding sideways and start moving forward, I took the amazingly traffic-light freeway to work, achieving a less-than-15-minute commute followed by another sliding sideways adventure in the nearly-empty parking lot at work.  My vehicle is now safely parked, and hopefully, the parking lot will be much less slick by the time I leave work.

It's supposed to snow/rain all week and next weekend, which is a good thing, 'cause I might go snowboarding again on Saturday or Sunday, and it's always much more fun with fresh snow (especially when it's fresh on every run...heh).

So, my brand-spankin'-new Dell XPS 420 Media Center arrived yesterday morning, a full three days ahead of FedEx's estimated delivery date.  Yeah, I was stoked.  The first thing I noticed was how heavy the box was.  For what was essentially a tower, keyboard, and mouse, the thing was pretty heavy.  It wasn't until I actually pulled the tower out of the box that I realized why--that thing is solid.  I mean, it's gotta be one of the sturdiest cases I've ever seen.

That wasn't the only thing to impress me, though.  As I was pulling the tower out of the box, I noticed what looked like a control panel on the top, front side of the case.  I got very excited, realizing that there was about a 99% chance that it was a Windows Sideshow device.  By excited, I mean jumping up and down (figuratively--I was still holding the unit) and yelling!  LOL More...

Well, I've done it.  I took the plunge and bought a 80GB second-generation Zune (in black, of course).  I'll be picking it up in a few hours from the nearby Circuit City.

I blame my friend, Jeremy, for his podcast fanaticism.  When I tried to get podcasts onto my trusty iriver clix2, I ran into problem after problem after problem.  I love the clix, and it will continue to serve as my first-choice music player, especially for working out--no need to subject the Zune to that kind of torture when my flash-based player is more than capable and weighs significantly less. More...

After nearly a year of striving to meet my goals, I have admitted to utter failure. Granted, it's not as bad as I have made it sound, but from my perspective, I would probably be better off starting over.

Why do I think I've failed so miserably? Well, for starters, all the measurements I've taken over the past year are pretty much useless. The muscle measurements were all flexed and the waist measurements were all with me sucking in my gut. Yeah, I realize that it's almost second nature to do that to boost the ego and decrease the perception of not being in as good of shape as we want, but that's no excuse for me. I just read Vince DelMonte's transformation story, and I never realized how similar my experience has been (though, I can't claim a 48-pound increase in mass over six months). More...

Last week, I ran across a pretty incredible deal from Dell.  They were (and, through tomorrow, still are) offering their XPS 420 system for as much as $700 off the regular price.  I have been eying this system for a while, as it is one of the few (read: other than HP's) moderately-priced Media Center-capable systems that can be configured with Digital Cable Tuners.  Unlike HP's offering, Dell's can be equipped with dual tuners, and, if I'm not mistaken, I can pop in some standard analog tuners in addition to these, giving me the ability to record up to four shows simultaneously.  Not that I need that capability or anything...
Anyway.  I went with the mid-range base system and configured it to have just what I wanted.  Essentially, it's a fairly powerful (by yesterday's standards) system that will replace my almost-a-year-old custom-built Media Center.  I was rather amused at the inability to select an amount of RAM below 3GB, not that I'm complaining.  For under $1500, I think I got a pretty darn good deal, especially in light of competing offerings from companies like Life|ware that start at $2000.

I should receive it by Friday of this week, but the tuners are delayed until sometime in early February, so I guess I'll have a couple weeks to get the system configured how I want and all.  I guess that'll also give me time to schedule a reliable appointment time with Comcast for getting them to send somebody out to plug two CableCARDs into the external tuners.  You'd think I could just go and pick them up from the retail office in Redmond (which is maybe 10 minutes from my work).  Lame.