Survived Another Year

Yesterday was my birthday. I am teh oldz.

Lots of people called me, emailed me and MySpaced me, which was really nice. Thank you everyone, you make me feel like I belong to the human race which is something I often don't feel, since I'm such a hermit these days and I'm lousy at keeping in touch with people even if I care about them a lot. I'm weird that way, sigh.

Even better than that (which is very hard to do), we went to Ground Control last night and everyone there also offered me much birthday love, which was surprising and wonderful and I really couldn't absorb it very well even with the help of some jynnan tonnyx (of which I'm still feeling the aftermath, heh...). It was declared my birthday night and most everyone sang some kind of metal or hair band type song to celebrate. It was awesome!

But the very best part of it, which was a complete surprise, was that when I got up to sing (Ground Control is a karaoke night) what I thought was going to be a Van Halen song, instead, to my chagrin, somehow The Lovely Girlfriend managed to get a hold of my song "Only In Your Mind," which GC Master Andrew turned into an actual karaoke song with the digital lyrics and some embarrassing photos of me which were projected on the wall behind me. That song has never been performed in front of more than maybe 2 or 3 people at our old apartment back in NJ, and here I had to sing it with no warning in front of 30 or 40 people... at least most of them were our friends! I was able to sing it with no problems though... I guess it's like falling off a bike.

My girlfriend is the Best. Girlfriend. Ever. She totally surprised me and nobody has ever done anything like that before. It was far better than any surprise party could have been. Doing that was one of the most caring, insightful and wonderful things anyone's ever done for me. TGF has shown me over and over again that she is Miss Right, but never more so than last night. Thank you hunny, I love you very very very much.

Also thank you for letting me get a bit drunk and ham it up all night. I know it embarrasses you to death so I appreciate that quite a lot. ;)

So, here's a bunch more thank yous which I want to send out:
Andrew and Heather, for karaoke-izing my silly power ballad and miraculously procuring us a pair of Rolling Stones tickets;
Tiffany and Craig for the gift certificate and the insanely great mega-chocolate cupcakes, which are far better than bukkake!
Freak Coleman for the free food (which soaked up the booze, but gave me terrible heartburn later, heh);
Tina and Connie-Lynne (and TGF too) for jynnan tonnyx! (Ow, my head...);
Everyone else at GC: Schreeck, Jen, Howard, Jenz, Cricket, Jacob, Prisko, Mike the Bartender, Kar3n, Jason, New Jen, Sean, Josh, David, Jenner (bon voyage!), Steve, Evelyn, Dean and... uh... well, everyone else who was there. I'm probably forgetting someone important, because my head is like a sieve.
Phone calls, emails, etc: Mom, Sideshow Steve, Carlos, Gus, Bruce, Lyn, Parker, V, Gayla, Queenie, Kat, Nadia, Cheryl, Shauna, Kadimah, Eain, Emily, Gina, Whitney.
Early wishes: Natara & Rick, Teaa & Scott, Teafaerie, James, and the Denizens of the Asylum.

Geez. I have a lot of friends. I need to stop hermiting and actually spend time with them and be a human being.

Thanks everyone. I didn't know you all cared so much. It's really nice to know.

Apparently, I am this kind of muscle car:

What kind of muscle car are you?
1968 Chevrolet Camaro Z28 You are a 1968 Chevrolet Camaro Z28. You love your car....your friends love your car and thats whats most important to you! Your car really hauls ass! You feel bad that they aren't making Camaros anymore....but don't worry...cuz you know they'll be back!
Take The Quiz Now!	Quizzes by myYearbook.com

Pretty close, yep! :)

I am this kind of guitar:

Which guitar are you
Gibson Les Paul You are a Gibson Les Paul. You are a favorite of some of the best metal AND rock and roll bands. You are flaxible and can be used in almost any genre. you are a classic.
Take The Quiz Now!	Quizzes by myYearbook.com

Check!

And, answering totally honestly, I am this guitar player:

Which Guitar Player Are You?
Eddie Van Halen You are Eddie Van Halen! You are the lead guitarist for Van Halen, and one of the most innovative guitarists ever. You are the master of tapping, and supply it in nearly every solo you play. During concerts, you have solos that last for almost a half an hour; true rock n' roll style right there.
Take The Quiz Now!	Quizzes by myYearbook.com

Uncanny! There really is something to these quizzes! :)

OK worky work now. See ArtBlog for an important notice.

OK, I'm officially a "Yuppie" now.

That there is my new TV. It's pretty freakin' huge. Note that the green area in the image below represents the entirety of the space occupied by my former television, which was not really that small - a 27-inch CRT TV.



So, yeah. This one is a 50-inch (diagonal) Samsung DLP projector unit. The screen is actually a bit more than 44 inches wide horizontally. As you can see, it's absolutely the biggest TV I could fit into the space in my entertainment center. I was a little afraid that it would be too big, but it turns out that from the couch, from which I took this picture, it's pretty much perfect.

And man, does the picture look great. I'm very happy with this purchase... of course I did about a month worth of homework and shopping before I bought. I upgraded my cable service to HD, of course, and the (unfortunately few) HD channels just look... mindblowing. The best and most consistent one is the Discovery HD Theater channel, with all programs shown in HD 1080i resolution, the highest currently available via cable or satellite, and everything on it is just spectactular. I mean, really, until you see it you have no idea. Think about the best hi-res images you've ever seen on a good computer monitor, and blow that up to 44" wide in your mind. Yeah.

The other HD channels are less consistent in picture quality, but still look light-years better than regular TV. I watched the various football games that were on yesterday; 3 of them were in HD, while the fourth (Chargers/Browns) was in plain ol' TV, and the difference is just ridiculous. The HD picture is so good, you can clearly tell the difference between the live picture and the taped instant replay picture in both HD and regular. That's not something I've ever seen before.

One of TGF's friends came over with a copy of Mirrormask, and that looked fabulous, just wonderful. I now have to buy it because it's just visually so amazing. And now of course I have to watch all my DVDs again on the huge screen. Man, I bet The Incredibles is going to look... yeah, you know. I hear all the Star Wars DVDs look spectacular too. No more letterboxing, woo!

Anyway, so I'm happy with it. I haven't played any games on it yet, tho I did wire them all up. Because of the way the HD video signal has to work, I wound up rewiring my whole setup, and buying a new Samsung DVD/VCR combo - for only $120!! - that has an HDMI output like my cable box, for the best picture quality. So now, in addition to the old TV, I now have Sony DVD player and VCR for sale, cheap! E-mail me if you wanna buy 'em...

And good riddance to the Sony stuff. You may recall my complete disgust with Sony about their stupid rootkit spyware on their music CDs... I wasn't kidding, I'm not buying any more of their stuff, period, except maybe for some films on DVD (Mirromask is a Sony film... sigh). I'm not even going to buy their game hardware unless I'm forced to. No PSP, and definitely no PS3. Sorry, I'm not blowing $700 on a game box. I switched to consoles because buying PCs for gaming along with Macs for work costs too damn much. I'm groaning a bit because the Xbox360 costs close to $400, but $700 is out of control. I can buy a full-function PC for that... or half a MacBook. Screw you, Sony, you're a big mess and your hardware quality has gone downhill pretty badly. I did look at Sony TVs for comparison while I was shopping for my new one, and they all had lousy pictures in comparison and were way overpriced. Thanks, Samsung, for being the new Sony!

OK enough gushing about the damn TV already.

I've had really bad insomnia for the last 3 nights. I've had maybe 9 or 10 hours total sleep since I woke up Friday morning. I have no idea why, though maybe it's something in the Chinese food I had delivered Friday evening and was eating all weekend? This is not good, very not good. Not sleeping is brutal on me these days. I feel extra crispy around the edges. I really hope I can get some real solid sleep tonight...

Back to work...