February 2007 Archives

This past weekend, Tiffany, Daniel and I headed out for another trip to the Red Carpet. One of these years, we will get our act together and enter the raffle to get seats at the actual red carpet ceremony, but in the meantime we have to settle with visiting it the night before. Two years ago, we actually got to walk down the red carpet, but this year security was either tighter or our timing was off as we were only allowed to get next to the carpet. We still posed for some photos, but they are in Daniel's camera so it will take a few days to get them posted online.

On the actual day of the awards, Daniel and I headed over to Mandel's house to watch the awards as well as the Amazing Race. It was nice to watch them in true HD and we had a great time with the pause button as we caught various celebs and misc others in the audience doing dumb things or making crazy faces. There were lots of people at the party and we had a pool to see who could get the most winners correct. I must admit that I am way off my game (compared to years ago when I would actually post them on the site). Several people got 15 of the nominees correct!

We stuck around and watched the latest installment of The Amazing Race: All Stars which has been awesome so far. the first two teams that were eliminated were ones that I didn't really think should have been there - I like Kevin and Drew, but they just didnt seem ready - maybe Drew should have let Kevin pair up with someone from another team (maybe with either Gary or Dave from season 2).

IMAG0291
Originally uploaded by Club Josh.

Coder and Sara came down from the High Desert and we hung out for a bit at the resort this past weekend. It was super crowded for the President's Day weekend, but we just took our time and had fun.

The cable guy came yesterday and could not figure out what was causing the issue with my TV so he ended up giving me the HD version of my cable box. This version has an aspect ratio setting so I can force my TV to the correct 4:3 ratio. Of course, being an HD box, it processes a much cleaner signal to my television and I even get to see the HD signals. My TV is HD-Ready which means if I have the correct converter I get an awesome signal. So I am pretty happy with the change of boxes, but I am still not certain if I will be paying a higher price per month.

I picked up JMJ's The Symphonic Jean Michel Jarre which is a full orchestra rendition of some classic tracks. It sounds pretty good and I think it is a great add to my collection. I was surprised that it was supervised by Jarre himself and not just a crop job by some random hack with a two-bit orchestra. If anything, it helps bide my time until Teo and Tea gets released next month.

Other than that not much going on around the house. Today I managed to pay one of my credit cards a second time. It sucks because I really cannot afford to have that much money down in my account, but at least I will not have to make a payment next month. I will probably try to do it anyways so I can be a bit ahead on my account. Needless to say, it will be a tight couple of week until the rent is paid. I guess it is better than NOT paying..

So I broke down and called the cable company regarding the issues that my television is having with the new cable box upgrade. The technician told me that someone else had called regarding the same issue with the same television. Turns out my suspicion was correct and that they upgraded the cable box software last week, He told me that there were a bunch of boxes that had to have their software reloaded. He walked me through reloading the software, but sadly it did not work as my cable box sat there for a few hours struggling. I finally aborted the upgrade and will have to wait for the cable guy to come out to give me new boxes.

I was then looking at the iTunes site to see if there was anything of interest and I noticed that all of the prices were $1.69. I thought that was an odd price point and then searched the Internet to see if I could find out why or when they upped the price. In the search results I noticed that all the articles it was pulling up were about iTunes in Australia. Gosh I am a dork - I had my country set to Australia (no doubt looking up Kath and Kim stuff). After upgrading to iTunes 7.x, I noticed that the prices were all back at their normal 99 cents.

My wonderful 36" Sony WEGA television has developed a bit of an issue in the last week. My cable box rebooted itself and now when you change the channels, the television determines that it is seeing a Widescreen image and then letterboxes the channel. I do not know if this is part of an upgrade to my cable system where it is automatically broadcasting in widescreen or if there is simply a bug in the TV. It is more of an annoyance than anything, I just hope it is not a symptom of something more serious since I can hardly afford to replace it. (as much as I would love to have a 40" Bravia LCD 1080p television).

Interesting to note is that if I TiVo a program, it automatically looks normal. Also, If i turn off the cable box and then turn it back on again the channel appears normal. So who knows what the issue is.

I went into the breakroom at work today and Fox News was having a discussion on whether the whole "Global Warming" thing was a sham since there was a record breaking freeze in the mid section of the country. Sadly, Fox News apparently has not heard of a warm spell in Southern California. It is the middle of Winter and I am beginning to think that the poles really are shifting...

Today's Weather Highlights:
Embarrass, MN -42 Degrees F
Grand Forks, ND -30 Degrees F
State College, PA (Chaos) 4 Degrees F
Chicago, IL (Kris) 11 Degrees F
New York, NY (Nathan) 19 Degrees F
Geneva, Switzerland (Jonathan) 46 Degrees F
Sacramento, CA (Matt) 66 Degrees F
Club Josh Resort, CA 82 Degrees F
Brisbane, Australia (Chris) 86 Degrees F

It is interesting that my weather is more like Brisbane than Sacramento...

Jarre is releasing a new album called "Teo & Tea" at the end of March!! I am a bit excited to hear this album since he has not really had a studio album since Metamorphosis in 2000. Below are the promos as well as the audio for the song courtesy of YouTube:

You can also download the full track from Warner Music France Here