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n2lee
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read my profile
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Name: Noble
Gender: Male
Interests: i have a ton of interests... they're just not very obvious. but yeah just talk to me and u'll probably find out eventually.
Expertise: i'm an engineer... we're experts at everything! unless it involves writing a paper of some sort... =|
Occupation: Engineering
Industry: Engineering
Message: message meEmail: email me
Member Since:
8/31/2004
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| so bluray won the HD format war for movies.
congrats sony, your strategy of putting bluray into the PS3 actually worked. that was probably the simplest and fastest way to make inroads into people's houses, while supporting the playstation brand of videogames. the gamers would buy the ps3, you could brag about the amount of bluray players there were (even if people didn't use them), and the numbers would eventually go on your side. then the movie studios would be duped into thinking bluray was winning by a landslide (it was winning but not by a landslide earlier). And it worked. Now you, sony, can now claim the other way and say you are winning in the video game market, because people will buy the ps3 since you control the prices to make it the cheapest bluray player. but time will tell. i for one, see bluray as too expensive at the moment. long live regular dvds and upscaling dvd players! at least until players drop into sub $150.
i predict that other bluray players will now be allowed to drop lower than the ps3, but not yet... in a while. the ps3 must get as much market as it can.
and... you'll never catch the wii! 
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| AT&T Uverse review:
Signing up:
easy and fast. they didn't have the ice cream truck they said they would though, so no free ice cream. that was a downside. of course it was 40 degrees out, so it may have saved us some shivering. but free ice cream!!! 
Installation:
Pretty good. Took about 4-1/2 hours for the guy to hook up
everything. He knew his stuff for the most part. Very easy going
guy. Got some free stuff since they were practically giving me
anything I wanted. (gotta love being an early adopter). And he was on time, within the 2 hr window I was given.
Feed quality:
I
have to say, I think the compression on the HD is a little too much.
Going from cable, the HD looks a bit worse in my opinion, but its
nothing to cry about. Its very slight, and I don't care anymore after
a month. But on the flip side, standard TV looks better... much better
than cable did. So overall, I like it better since there is more
standard def than HD at this point. Another thing I just noticed a few days ago - if you're recording a HD channel and then record a SD(standard def) channel, then watch a 3rd channel, there's a noticeable degradation in the 3rd channel's quality. So their 1 HD show and 3 SD shows at once is somewhat eh... I'd consider it to be 1 HD show and 2 SD shows, really.
Startup Time:
It takes a bit longer (like maybe 5 seconds more) to start up the TV than cable did. But again... not a big deal.
Internet:
Same, no hiccups, etc. I haven't detected any slowness since it was installed (comparing to when we just had DSL).
Pros:
It is about the same price as cable + DSL.
We get a DVR that can record 4 shows at once (although only 1 HD show at a time).
I have one less bill to worry about (cable bill)
I got 1 month free of TV (~$60) and $100 cash back (that has yet to come still)
I got a free equipment - a switch (8 port)! (~$50)
Free installation
Cons:
If the internet goes down, so does the TV.
For the 2nd tuner I have to sacrifice some bandwidth on
my network since its connected via ethernet.
Feed degradation while recording 2 shows and watching the 3rd.
Overall:
Pretty happy. I can see why it could be a lot worse, but its not. Its pretty good.
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| life update:
movie reviews:
pirates 3. what the heck was that!?
half
the time you don't know what's going on, the other half spent trying to
figure out what people are saying. even with captions, every 5 minutes
we'd have to ask "what is going on?" annie fell asleep 1/2 through.
all i know now is that if they took the water wheel scene from the 2nd
movie, threw it into the 1st movie, we could erase from our memories
pirates 2 and 3. and save 5 hours of our lives.
game reviews:
warioware smooth moves.
pretty
fun, especially w/ a group! single player is just as fun w/ a group.
by yourself, not really fun, but throw in the energy from everyone else
and its a blast!
mario party 8:
really fun, even on single
player. some strategy but not overly complicated. so far we've made
addicts out of the brothers in law and made ourselves sick of it by
playing 4x a day over xmas break.
smarty pants:
a
trivia game sort of a la jeopardy. pretty fun, although some questions
are pretty out there (as expected). but it can be kind of fun.
definitely not worth $50, but probably worth $20-25 if you have alot of
trivia freaks.. uh i mean friends.
signed up for u-verse (tv over ip/tcp protocol) from AT&T.
we'll see how that goes, but it saves us a few bucks a month. they run
fiber optic to the gateway in your neighborhood (same gateway for dsl,
i presume), then its all over copper from the gateway to your house
(just like dsl). good part is that there no wiring installs. bad part
is that i can't brag about having fiber optics.  only reason we're
switching is the free dvr (4 shows at once) and the $159 incentive in
cash back/free service. kind of sick of TW, given the idiotic problems
we've had, not to mention how much they charge for a tv/internet combo,
and the annoying phone calls asking me to get internet.
we'll see how it goes, i'll definite reflect on its value when it comes (if my internet still works, that is... )
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| i'm glad my tax money is being used to possibly fund some very interesting research that will change the world as we know it...
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071116/lf_nm_life/initials_performance_dc_1
/sarcasm
if you want to save 4 minutes of your life, you can read my summary here:
Research shows that people who have names that start with K will strike out more in baseball, and you people who have names that start with C and D, you'll do slightly worse in school.
*rolls eyes*
Come on, there's gotta be more valuable research that we can use this money for! Or at least feed some hungry people or something. Instead of funding crappy projects like this that have absolutely no warrant or goal. I guess it MIGHT have some statistics thesis, but if these researchers got paid to do this, I would be very annoyed. You know what's next? People suing their parents for being negligent in picking a name. And they don't mention people with names that start with A, B, or F. (Good luck to all the Fred's in the world...) What about everyone else? I will make my own list for your viewing pleasure:
E - elephants will be slightly more attracted to you
G - gorillas will undoubtedly hurl bananas at you more than everyone else
H - you're more likely to fall in holes
I - you'll be more likely to be insulted by anything and everything
J - you'll find any joke slightly more funny than everyone else
L - people will find your lips slightly more interesting
M - you're more likely to have a mullet at some point in your life
N - you'll be slightly more satisfied with your name 
O - you'll be more likely to say "oh" and "ow" and "ouch"
P - you will have a slight aversion to pillows and scream at the sight of them
Q - you'll be more of a star trek fan
R - you'll have more success in feeding rhinos, but not running away from them.
S - you'll be a better salesman/woman/person/thing
T - you'll be slightly more prone to entering toysrus and big on t-shirts
U - you will be slightly more prone to using "u" instead of "you"
V - you will collect vases and like vanilla more than chocolate
W - you'll be waxing your car or paying someone to do it all the time
X - you're more likely to reflect xrays off your body into anything else
Y - you asked "why?" alot when you were a kid, more so than others. you like the color yellow and sunlight.
Z - wild zebras can't hold you back from doing anything and you'll snore.
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| so yeah san diego was ablaze last week. we were evacuated but nothing burned down for any of my family. it was rather scary to see a repeat of a 'firestorm' from 03 and now. but it coulda been alot worse if not for the firefighters - they really did a incredible job saving everything they could. unfortunately even then, some houses burned. a few people at my work lost their homes, but we're pulling together to help them out.
on a lighter note, we saw a preview for this movie last night...
Love in the Time of Cholera... Yes it is real, i'm not making it up - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0484740/
Now, if you don't know what cholera is (at least the dictionary version of it), here's a link: http://webster.com/dictionary/cholera
Perhaps a more descriptive definition can be found at wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cholera
So I really am wondering if Cholera is someone's name or if this will be some sort of movie that one should watch only in a bathroom. Why would one name their book or movie this? it boggles the mind. but its also... freaking hilarious!
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