VHS is now completely dead

Saw this online and thought "Huh, thought this format had been dead for years..." Guess it finally is.


The last of the somewhat big distributor of VHS films has shipped the beloved (and hated) tape for the last time.

Ryan J. Kugler, co-owner of Distribution Video Audio, Palm Harbor, Florida said "It's dead, this is it, this is the last Christmas, without a doubt."

However, VHS had an amazing run and I'm sure it is a testament to the fact that DVD will also be here for many years. When a format becomes as main stream as DVD and VHS it takes some time to kill them completely off.

Source: CNET.

Another reason to fear baths...

Going Purple

Well Christmas came and went and I find myself not only going purple but enjoying it. For those of you not fascinated with the world of High Definition DVD you might not know what this means. When Hi-Def DVD came out a few years back there was 2 camps, the HD-DVD(which came in red cases and although they use the red laser lines like traditional DVDs, they also use the blue-violet lasers to allow for the High Definition) & the Blu-ray by sony,(which came in blue cases and does the same as HD-DVD but with more room available on their disks). Most people chose a side and they were then a member of the "red" team or the "blu" team.

I waited until early this year when HD-DVD made a bold push and lowered prices and offered a huge free HD-DVD incentive, and purchesed my first system. It was great and everything I read said this was a good choice. Although Sony only provided movies for Blu-ray; Universal, Paramount and Warner Brothers still produced HD-DVDs. If you have a High Def player you can upconvert all your standard DVDs to "like" HD quality. So many of the Sony's I already had looked fine even if they weren't true HD copies. Then the evil empire, Sony, made a move to crush Toshiba and the HD-DVD line. They offered a bunch of cash to Warner Brothers to be exclusive Blu-Ray providers. At the time there were 2 exclusives on each side with Warner Brothers doing both, however, Warners Brothers did more in HD-DVD and preferred the format(especially since they helped perfect the technology). Another arguement is that a continued war between the two formats would end in both loosing, which is a good arguement as well, but we all know money pushed this deal through.

Toshiba cut it's loses and said no more, the other studios joined Warner Brothers and by April of 2008 no more real HD-DVDs were being made. This was ok because of the fire sales and the hope the Blu-ray would maybe come down in price, which it didn't at first. Enter a bad economy and Black Friday. Walmart has a decent Blu-Ray player for under $130, so I decide I want to get one now. I'll fight through the nonsense I've read about Blu-ray and get the new movies coming out that deserve a High Definition showing, ie Iron Man and Batman: Dark Knight.

I opened it a few days before Christmas. I was blown away...not just the picture but the sound was amazing. I watched Iron Man, Dark Knight, and Kingdom of Heaven and all 3 just sound like you are in the middle of the action. I love my HD-DVD player and movies but after 2 weeks I already have 11 Blu-rays and they all look and sound great. So no longer am I a supporter of red and I've never been on a soap box for Blu, nope now I am purple because I love them both.

Hernias are for wimps...

Monday, April 23, 2007

OUCH - WHAT'S BEEN A HAPPENING WITH ME Current mood: drained Category: loopy Blogging I haven't been on for a while so I thought I'd get on and whine. I went to the doctor last Tuesday and after a very uncomfortable search was told, "You have a hernia and lovely brown eyes". I then stumbled out of the office with a surgery date of Friday the 20th. I was stunned and a bit nervous. Well everything went ok and it turned out I had 2 hernias and lovely brown eyes, 1 was there at birth and finally just "blossomed" and #2 was working it's way out....I guess too many deep squat thrusts will do it to you. Now here is my whine...my f*ing crotch hurts! I had to remove my magical ball of dope yesterday. Actually Dawn removed it because I couldn't see it and although it didn't hurt and it was easy to do, I know it was the same as asking her to cut of my little finger or any other surgical procedure. That's true love for you! So anyways this ball is set to give me magical medicine every hour for about 50 hours. On top of that I also get some pain meds that are pretty good, but I'm starting to think advil would be just as good but only for one reason. I can't sleep on those pain pills. I sorta fade in and out, but I haven't actually slept much at all. It's more like time traveling...I'm doing something then it's 20 minutes later and I have no clue what just happened. It is very annoying to wake up every 20 to 40 minutes all night long. Although I don't feel totally exhausted so I must be doing something right. Now here is the worst part. At 2:30 in the morning yesterday I woke up with hiccups...that's right the affliction of all 10 year olds everywhere who need to be on ridlin, or however you spell it. Those bastards lasted til 4:00. They were so bad my wife woke up and tried to help me get rid of them like she does when Hunter gets them, although hearing Batman isn't my real father didn't scare me half as bad as it does him!:) After a few minutes of her helping I found myself having to lean over, kiss her on the head and apologize for leaving because there was a good chance one of us wasn't going to make it out of that room if I heard her say "shhhh" one more time. I was past the point of calm. I did greet her at 3:50 in the kitchen. I grabbed a kitchen knife and presented it to her, begging her to stab me in the chest. Anything to get it to stop. 10 minutes later a wall of pure hatred finally beat those air bubbles down and this "gentle giant" slept. Lucky for me, the meds give me crazy dreams when I do sleep so I can be on edge when I wake up. Hunter woke me up at 7:00, minutes after Dawn left. He startled the ever-living shite out of me and guess what...that's right the hiccups started immediately. I could have cried, but I didn't. No I got up turned on cartoons for my son, started the shower for myself, bit my lip to hold off the pain of a new hernia free day and curled into a ball and sucked my thumb until the water was at a temperature I could handle. Just kidding...but I'm not. So in the shower after both begging and threatening God, the evil hiccups stopped. Too bad I don't know which one I was doing when they relented, but really we all know it had to have been pity that spared me, right? I'm going to say no, I think he paused me to round up JC and the boys because really nothing is more funny than a man days after surgery with a handful of hours of sleep dealing with the hiccups as he tried to shower for the first time by himself since he was sliced open. They came back minutes later. I had them for another hour before, as I was leaving the house with Hunter, God took pity on me and they left for good, crossing my fingers. I have a follow up appointment with the doc on Thursday, my birthday, and I wonder if he'll be able to explain why I only seem to get a fever when I take the pain medicine and what the burning pain that flashes through my lower thigh now and then is, but most importantly why they shaved "Harry Potter rocks!" on my crotch when everyone knows The Ring is King!

off my space

i am getting rid of myspace...one less thing to keep up with. Therefore I am going to post some of my previous blogs on this so I have them in one place. Oldie but goodies I hope.

All you liberal d. bags can suck it

This Picture is Worth A Million Words.

We truly take a lot for granted. Forget the football 'heroes' and movie 'stars.' Pass this on so that all may know the price of freedom.

Only two defining forces have ever offered to die for you,

Jesus Christ and the American Soldier.

One died for your soul; the other for your freedom.

Surprise!

Hard at work...or hardly working

That's what I wonder about blogging. In truth I started this as an attempt to get myself writing again; thinking if I wrote a couple of times a week on the blog, it might help me start writing fiction again. I am finding it a struggle to make myself write a few paragraphs now and then on the blog, not from lack of ideas, but simply from an inability to inspire myself to actually get up and do it. It's like a piece of my brain is shut off and I can't figure out how to turn it back on. As frustrating as it is, I am sure this is better than going through last years b.s. again. Even though this is a busy time of year, I am going to try and get 3 things a week posted. I guess my whining counts as the first post for the week, maybe I'll writing something useful or insightful next time...although probably not.