• First movie on the new TV - Pirates of the Caribbean.  I showed my parents the beginning of Lord of the Rings - The Two Towers on it as well.  It was hard to turn it off, but as the kids were around…
• South Park on a 73 inch TV is something to behold (no seriously).
• The new Mitsubishi’s (at least the one I have) has a new mode for handling standard tv images called Stretch Plus.  In the stretch mode, the square picture is stretched out to fill the rectangular screen.  The problem with this is that people tend to have wide heads or shoulders, etc.  The Stretch Plus format does a much better job of keeping things proportional.  At my normal viewing distance I have to look very hard to see a problem with the picture.
• Lighting is a problem, as we expected.  During the day you have to pull the blinds and turn off the light to watch the TV.  Even with this, some of the viewing angles are pretty poor.
• Standard tv images look blurry if you are too close to the screen.  Most shows are fine when viewed from the couch (15 ft away), but The Planets Funniest Animals looked like crap even at 15 ft.  I think it is the poor video quality amplified by the big screen, but even the studio shots were pretty bad.
• I have tried multiple antennas, but still have not found one to meet my needs for getting a decent HD signal.  I have tried an amplified rabbit ear style and a Terk Tube antenna.  Neither gave me all of the local HD channels consistantly.  The Terk antenna can be mounted outdoors, but I am not ready to try that.

I have decided to go with the 73 inch Mitsubishi (73713 - Platnum Series).  Further investigation into the 70 inch Sony Grand Wega presented some interesting complaints.  There are reports that the TV’s frequently have bad LED’s, resulting in one or more green dots permenantly on the screen.  If there are a significant number of these, Sony will replace the TV, but just a couple of dots is not enough for them.

From what I have seen and read about the Mitsubishi, I have pretty high expectations.  It is a rear projection TV with a built in HD tuner.  Beside numerous normal inputs, the TV has a firewire port and supports a number of memory card formats, (Compaq Flash, etc), so you can display digital pictures directly on the TV.  In theory I should be able to hook my Digital Camcorder up through the Firewire and control it using the TV remote. [[So in otherwords, its a big tv with a bunch of features I will never use]].  The difference between the Mitsubish 73713 and 73513 is primarily the picture.  The 73713 (the one I’m getting) has extra hardware for focusing, in theory providing a better picture.  I never got to see the 73513 in a store - the answer the sales rep gave me was - it looks like that 65 inch, only bigger (gee thanks buddy, off to the next store).

I will provide more info on the TV once I have it in my house under my lighting conditions.

For the sound system, I decided on the Yamaha 1400.  I also considered the Yamaha 2400, but for the price difference it didn’t seem worth it.  The 2400 has 10 more watts/channel, 2 more surround sound modes, and an RS232 port - which I wouldn’t use.  Other than that, according to the manufacturers specs, the 2 are equal.

The feature that sold me on the Yamaha 1400 over the Yamaha 5660 was primarily the Night mode feature.  This will allow me to watch movies in surround sound after the kids are in bed without worrying about waking them up.  The night mode cuts out the subwoofer, and clips the highs and lows.  John O, and I tested this feature at the Sound Room, watching Spiderman.  We could still hear all of the dialog, but the background noice was clipped to an acceptable level.

The coolest feature about the Yamaha 1400 from a techie point of view is the dynamic equalization.  You sit with a microphone in your primary viewing area.  The receiver sends sound to each of the speakers independantly, and then adjust the sound level and equalization based on feedback from the microphone.

For speakers I decided on the Klipsch line.  The front speakers are Klipsch RF-15 floor standing speakers.  The Center channel is the RC-25.  The rears are the RS-25’s.  For the subwoofer I chose the RW-10 - a 10 inch powered sub.  I had considered the Velodyne DLS4000, but I decided to buy everything from one place, and Ultimate Electronics did not carry Velodyne.  The Sound Room was in the running for this deal, but my sales rep quit right before I was ready to pull the trigger.  Also, Ultimate offered free delivery.

While I was in my home theater mode, I decided I needed to upgrade DVD players.  One of ours is messed up, and I wanted a progressive scan for the new TV.  The Pioneer 563 does all the latest tricks, including DVD audio and SACD.  The receiver and speakers were out of stock, so the DVD player was the only thing I actually walked out of the store with yesterday.

• Justin: Dad, you know that new invention that lets you pause TV?
• Me: Tivo? yes.
• Justin: I don’t think that’s very nice.
• Me: No??? Why not?
• Justin: If you pause it to go to the bathroom, all those people who are watching it have to wait until you unpause it.

I chipped a molar on a chocolate covered almond the other day.  Today I went to the dentist and they placed on a temporary crown (I get a permenant one in 2 weeks).  My mouth was pretty numb, but I thought it was getting better so I decided to get a Coke.

Drinking a Coke with a semi-numb mouth is a very weird sensation.  The Coke feels warm on parts of my tongue and where my mouth is still numb.  Some of my mouth still has no feeling, so I can’t even feel the Coke when it is in those locations.

Because its Friday, and I got part of what I was working on functional…

Ben has 12 pennies on his desk, 4 pairs matched. Based on this, I am guessing that in a random sampling of pennies, you will usually have a matching date by the 4th penny.

Steps:

1. Grab a handful of pennies.
2. Place one on a table/desk and check the date.
3. Repeat step 2 until you have a match.
4. Count the pennies and report back the results in the comments section here.

I did this twice, one the first try the match was the 4th penny, on the second it was the 6th. On my 3rd try it took 7 pennies. I’m guessing if enough people do this we will see a normal distribution with a mean of 4 or 5 and a standard deviation of 3 or 4.

Posted by: jim on 1/16/2004 2:01:10 PM , 4 comments

Submitted by Tracey at 1/16/2004 2:26:28 PM

It took 8 for me.

Submitted by frank at 1/16/2004 5:00:29 PM

Why can’t you just look this up in your Probability and Sadistics book? Sounds like something that should be a homework problem for that class.

Submitted by jim at 1/18/2004 9:27:25 AM

There are about 50 years of pennies in circulation, weighted toward more recent years. I don’t think its a simple sadistics problem, since it is difficult to know the exact distribution of pennies per year (avg).

Submitted by Rick at 1/20/2004 5:55:18 AM

You have way too much time on your hands at work.

STATUS:QUESTIONABLE/EXAGGERATED

Email from Mrs. Sanz

Green Party “Terrorists” according to Ashcroft
>
> http://www.alternet.org/print.html?StoryID=14884
>
> Green Party “Terrorists”
>
> Frederick Sweet, Intervention Magazine January 6, 2003 Viewed on
> January 3, 2004
>
>
> Writing about his no-fly nightmare in the Fairfield County Weekly, art
> dealer Doug Stuber, who had run Ralph Nader’s Green Party presidential
> campaign in North Carolina in 2000, was pulled out of a boarding line
> and grounded. He was about to make an important trip to Prague to
> gather artists for Henry James Art in Raleigh, N.C., when he was told
> (with ticket in hand) that he was not allowed to fly out that day.
>
> Asking “why not?” he was told at Raleigh-Durham airport that because
> of the sniper attacks, no Greens were allowed to fly overseas on that
> day. The next morning he returned, and instead of paying $670 round
> trip, was forced into a $2,600 “same day” air fare. But it’s what
> happened to Stuber during the next 24 hours that is even more
> disturbing.
>
> Stuber arrived at the airport at 6 a.m. and his first flight wasn’t
> due out until nearly six hours later. He had plenty of time. At
> exactly 10:52 in the morning, just before boarding was to begin, he
> was approached by police officer Stanley (the same policeman who
> ushered him out of the airport the day before), who said that he
> “wanted to talk” to him. Stuber went with the police officer, but
> reminded him that no one had said he couldn’t fly, and that his flight
> was about to leave.
>
> Officer Stanley took Stuber into a room and questioned him for an
> hour. Around noon, Stanley had introduced him to two Secret Service
> agents. The agents took full eye-open pictures of Stuber with a
> digital camera. Then they asked him details about his family, where he
> lived, who he ever knew, what the Greens are up to, and other
> questions.
>
> At one point during his interrogation, Stuber asked if they really
> believed the Greens were equal to al Qaeda. Then they showed him a
> Justice Department document that actually shows the Greens as likely
> terrorists — just as likely as al Qaeda members. Stuber was released
> just before 1 PM, so he still had time to catch the later flight.
>
> The agents walked Stuber to the Delta counter and asked that he be
> given tickets for the flight so that he could make his connections.
> The airline official promptly printed tickets, which relieved Stuber,
> who assumed that the Secret Service hadn’t stopped him from flying.
> Wrong! By the time Stuber was about to board, officer Stanley once
> again ushered him out the door and told him: “Just go to Greensboro,
> where they don’t know you, and be totally quiet about politics, and
> you can make it to Europe that way.”
>
> In Greensboro, after Stuber showed his passport he was told that he
> could not fly overseas or domestically. Undeterred, he next traveled
> an hour-and-a-half to Charlotte. In Charlotte, the same thing
> happened. Then Stuber drove three hours to his home after 43 hours of
> trying to catch a flight.
>
> Stuber said he could only conclude that the Greens, whose values
> include nonviolence, social justice, etc., are now labeled terrorists
> by the Ashcroft-led Justice Department.
>
> Questions about how one gets on a no-fly list creates questions about
> how to get off it. This is a classic Catch-22 situation. The
> Transportation Security Agency says it compiles the list from names
> provided by other agencies, but it has no procedure for correcting a
> problem. Aggrieved parties would have to go to the agency that first
> reported their names. But for security reasons, the TSA won’t disclose
> which agency put someone on the no-fly list.
>
> Frederick Sweet is Professor of Reproductive Biology in Obstetrics and
> Gynecology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.
>
>
> © 2004 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.

I couldn’t find much proof either way on this. The original website looks to be slanted heavily to the left, and the story is a personal account, so it’s a little difficult to verify.

I do know there are militant environmentalist groups (ELF for one) that there has been a lot of buzz/complaints on weblogs that they weren’t being targeted by Ashcroft. ELF was responsible for burning a car dealership in California - ironically, the burning of the car dealership released more pollution than the SUV’s that were destroyed would have released in there entire lifetime.

I submitted the letter to Snopes (http://www.snopes.com). You may want to do the same. I think they determine what to investigate based on how many people make the same request.

Additional Thought:

• Why did he have to re-buy the tickets?  If the airline/security prevented him from boarding the plane, shouldn’t he have gotten a refund or voucher?

1. Snopes has an article similar to this saying its false.
2. http://old.fairfieldweekly.com/articles/grounded.html suggest it might be true