If it existed, my favourite soft drink would be caffeine-free Coke Zero. I do realize there's a caffeine-free diet Coke but that product doesn't taste like Coke at all. Did you know they sell a vanilla Coke Zero in Canada? Has anyone seen it in a store?
Though I don't know exactly when it will be delivered, I finally picked a TV on Tuesday. I eventually decided on a 50" plasma from Samsung, specifically the PN50B550. For the longest time I thought I was going to get a plasma from Panasonic. Now that Pioneer is out of the plasma making business, it's commonly thought that Panasonic makes the best plasmas. In fact, reviews do state that most of the time Panasonics plasmas perform better than Samsungs. After doing all my research though, the two questions eventually came up: how much better were the Panasonics and how much more would I be paying for it?
It turns out that how good a TV looks can be a very subjective and personal thing. I looked at the PN50B550 and the Panasonic TC-P50G10 side by side in the store and it was very hard to tell the difference. I do realize though that comparing TVs at a store is not very useful. Going into the store, I knew the professional reviewers said the G10 had deeper blacks which provided a better contrast ratio. To my untrained eye though, I could not see a difference. The B550 looked great too.
Of course, I could have just relied on the reviews and their hard facts and decided yeah, the G10 is the one for me. The problem was I'd have to pay an extra $700 or so to get the G10 for a difference I knew existed but for which my eyes couldn't really see. Then I discovered some odd design choices that Panasonic made. For example, the G10 has three HDMI inputs compared to the four on the B550. Also, the G10 had some resolution limitations on its VGA and component inputs. Another thing and I know this isn't a big deal but the G10 has a really bland style to it. Aesthetically, the Samsung looks much better from the bezel to the "floating" glass stand.
The final thing that really sold me on the 550B was that with my EA employee discount, the price I got for it was less than the MSRP in the US. That's a really good deal. In Canada, we usually get screwed on pricing for anything that is also sold in the US. So the fact I got it for the lower price and in Canadian dollars was a big positive.
I'll be getting an update today when delivery is available. I am quite excited to get this new toy in my living room.
Like many young boys who grew up in the 1980s, I watched professional wrestling, mainly of the WWF variety. Yes, it was the "World Wrestling Federation" back then before the other WWF, the "World Wildlife Fund" forced the entertainment company to change it's name to WWE.
I wasn't a fan of wrestling at first. A lot of my elementary school chums were quite into it before I was, throwing their support behind their favourite wrestlers. Nearly every day there was some sort of debate at recess and/or lunch hour about who had the better finger-four move or who had the better manager.
Eventually, the talk and my curiousity led to me to watch one of the syndicated WWF shows. It took a while but I was entertained by the theatrics of the sport. Much later on, I realized that it was essentially a soap opera drama packaged in a format that was palatable for boys of school age. I was never an over the top fan of wrestling. For example, several of my classmates would go to WWF shows that would come into town. I never bothered with that but that didn't stop me from eagerly awaiting several episodes of Saturday Night's Main Event.
For wrestling fans of that era, the most highly anticipated event each year was of course the Wrestlemania. It was the Stanley Cup finals of wrestling. Wrestlemania had the most outrageous storylines and it was there you could count on shocking title matches. The weekly shows were nothing compared to the big event. It was also a Wrestlemania that caused me to stop watching wrestling altogether.
Sometime in 1988, Wrestlemania IV came out on home video on VHS videotape. Since I did not watch it on pay-per-view, I decided to rent it, not knowing the card or the schedule of events. Little did I know that the running time for the tape was about four hours. I like to think I had a lot of patience as a kid but I was no match for Wrestlemania IV .
About two hours into the tape, I was getting mentally fatigued. How long was this thing? How could they possibly drag this on any further? At one point, I stopped the tape and took out of the VCR to look at the running time on the sticker. It was then I realized I had just under two more hours to go. It was also then that I realized this was the heaviest VHS tape I had ever handled. By this time, my parents had made dinner and I had to go eat it.
After returning from my meal, I played the tape again. I got through another twenty minutes before I finally had enough. I stopped the tape, rewound it, and put it back in its case. It was returned without any more subsequent viewings. I never watched wrestling on TV again from that day forward. I essentially outgrew it and got tired of it in a single, fateful day. It was like when someone forces you to smoke a billion cigarettes in a sitting to get them to quit.
I wonder sometimes if and when I would have stopped watching wrestling. Perhaps I'd still be watching today. Would that even be possible? Who knows? Maybe I'd still be a passionate fan today, just like this guy.
Departing from my regular usage of the Internet, that is looking for porn researching rare Brazilian tree frogs, I decided for some reason to look for videos of Vietnamese pho on Youtube.
I found the above video which features a decent looking bowl of pho tai. The beef is too well done for my own tastes but it's a matter of personal preference. If I had it my way, the beef would be still tinged with a bit of red in the bowl. Otherwise, it looks to be a pretty good bowl with all the extras available. Is it just me or can you almost smell the broth through the video? Great, now I'm craving pho. The second part is here.
