Lighting is pretty important. As Sui fell asleep for the umpteenth time on the couch, struggling to stay awake against a dim standing light (), it was time to renovate the lighting in my condo. I also tried poking her awake and got slapped.
Like almost everybody else, I switched my incandescent bulbs for energy-saving CFL’s, courtesy of multiple government subsidies, a few years back. Sure, there was a difference in lighting, but I didn’t think much of it till now; some rudimentary research showed that stores still sold high wattage bulbs, used in higher-end lamps, at a performance level unattainable by current CFL’s. Also, there were supposedly added benefits to using halogens and full-spectrum lighting as well, and that fluorescent flicker people complain about is probably keeping me irritable.
For brevity, Part I and Part II of this guide.
Hm, I’m about a week late on my self-imposed schedule. It’s been feeling a lot like Christmas; I’ve been receiving the packaged spoils of my Black Friday extravaganza, propelled by the 3+ months of shopping abstinence imposed when I was anticipating the new condo. With that out of the way, really good prices hawked by sagging retailers, and a need to furnish the little things by my lonesome, well, it’s been a pretty happy and busy week.
But the speaker wires are strung, the remote is mostly set up, and the netbook is unboxed and running; time to get back to writin’. Onto the Wii!
Here’s the previous post if you missed Part I.
As I write and edit this post, the memories of a great Thanksgiving feast has been swiftly superseded by the traditional binge shopping event known as happy, happy Black Friday. The internets have been clogged, innocents have been tragically implicated, and civilization takes another step closer to the capitalistic anarchy idolized by desperate retailers.
Not to say that I’m above the shopping frenzy, of course; I just prefer to wrestle for the overhyped (cyber?) door-buster deals in the comfort of my room. Having hedged my shopping funds on my persistance of hitting the F5 key instead of, say, my endurance against the lack of sleep in the frigid morning airs, I was able to nab me a cheapish HP 1000 Mini netbook within two hours of multi-tab, multi-browser clicking.
Incidentally, the live.com search deal that made the price possible still works for eBay, who’s currently featuring a 30% cashback offer.
Anyway, back to that console guide…
In these troubled times (), video games – specifically, consoles – are supposedly the stocking stuffers of choice this winter. The theory goes that money that would have gone to vacations and gasoline are instead funneling into the more mundane home entertainment sector; that is, people are looking to buy new TVs and things gadgets that hook up to ‘em.
Of course, 
It helps that HDTV prices have followed the stock market’s lead, and the season of excessive shopping starts with everybody’s favorite overcrowded sale-fest, the soon-to-be epic Black Friday. Since I’ve had a few friends ask me about TV’s and consoles recently, I figure I should write a console purchasing guide, for those who are confused and intimidated by the machines lined up in the store.
I was going to do one big post, but realized there was so much to put down that I split the original into three big posts.
And for those who don’t like reading (spoilers!) – the final, conclusive recommendation for a console this winter is…It depends.
Of course, million dollar views around here cost two million dollars.
I haven’t had much time or energy to post lately. It’s been a pretty hectic 2-3 weeks, starting with learning that my roommates – both of them – don’t intend stay past New Year’s Eve. Suddenly, instead of comfortably relaxing in my chair leaking crumbs on a carpet I don’t own, I’m running around scouting out a new location to plant the colonial flag of Allenstown, population one. With a stewing rental market resulting from a dismal housing market, I figured I ought to finally look at home ownership.
It’s been exactly a week since I received my new LCD TV (as of the first revision of this post).
I will say that I’ve learned from my last experience with buying overly large electronic appliances and transporting them up to the living room. Despite the feather-like 70 lbs. of modern flat screens (the rear projection TV was a beefier 140 lbs.), I went with Amazon, who featured free shipping and white-glove delivery for all its big TV’s; that is, they carry the set up to your room, unpack the contents, let you turn it on to verify the picture looks satisfactory, and remove any unwanted boxes. They also ship fast, offer pretty good prices even among online retailers, allow for to up 30 days of price matching (i.e., they refund the difference if the price drops on their own site within 30 days of purchase), and laugh at the prospect of charging sales tax. So yea, I’d recommend Amazon for your TV shopping needs.
