Krunk – Page 72 – Krunk4Ever!

July 27, 2007July 27, 2007

Credit Card Arsenal

While paying for dinner today, the conversation of credit cards came up and both Tekman and I use our Amex Costco card because it gives us 3% back. I was shocked to hear there were a few in the group that don’t even get 1% back, the bare minimum reward most credit cards come with nowadays. I brought up the fact I have 4 credit cards I use on a daily routine and people were shocked at how many I use. They were curious if I used it to keep track of purchases which I guess is a side effect of what I do, but it was mainly due to the fact different credit cards have different reward levels for different purchases.

My current arsenal includes the following:

– Chase Cash Plus Rewards Card –

chase cash plus rewards card

Your Chase Cash Plus RewardsSM card earns rewards 5 times faster on everyday purchases.

With your Cash Plus Rewards card, you earn 5 points for every eligible dollar spent on gas, grocery and drugstore purchases. Plus, you earn 1 point for every eligible dollar spent on purchases made elsewhere.

You can redeem 5,000 points for:

* $50 check
* $50 gift card from popular stores & restaurants

Buy the things you need and get the rewards you want with your Cash Plus Rewards card!

5 points for every dollar translates to 5% cash back. I’m limited to a maximum of 30,000 points annually, which translates to a max of $300 in cash back. I don’t think I’ve ever reached that amount, probably due to the fact I’m single and no kids. There was even a $50 or $100 bonus when I signed up for this card. However, this card is no longer available to sign up for.

This card came out to compete against the Citi Dividend Platinum Select card which had the similar rewards program with 5% back on the same 3 categories. I also have the Citi Dividend card, but have retired it due to the fact the reward program has dropped to 2% from 5%. You can still sign up for the Citi Dividend card, which now also includes convenience stores and utilities and gives 5% cash back for the first 6 months, but drops to 2% afterwards.

According to this FatWallet thread, it appears that this reward program maybe ending soon. People have been getting letters from Chase stating the program will be changed to 3% cash back on the 3 categories you spend the most money in. I personally haven’t received the letter yet and my online rewards program details still shows what I pasted above.

I basically use this credit card only for gas, supermarket, and drug stores.

– Advanta BusinessCard –

advanta platinum businesscard

Cash Back

Automatically earn 5% Cash Back on gasoline, office supplies, utilities, computer equipment, cell phones and Internet services, and 1% on all other purchases.

This one has a limit of $25 cash back per month, so I don’t use it for gas since I have the other card. There’s already been a couple times where I surpassed the $25 limit, seeing how I purchase a lot of computer equipment. I also stack my cable internet/tv bill and my garbage bill on this card. Any time I make a purchase at Office Depot or Staples, it also goes on this card. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to put my energy bill (electricity and gas) since Puget Sound Energy doesn’t accept credit cards. I don’t have a phone bill and my dad pays for my cell phone bill, so that isn’t applicable to me either, but may to you. They automatically mail you a check when you accrue $50 in cash back and I hit that amount pretty much every 3 months.

You can still apply for this card. There is one caveat for this card, and that’s the fact you do need to provide a business name. The name of your business gets printed on the Credit Card itself in italicized Times New Roman font, but besides that I don’t believe they verify if you’re the real owner of this business or if it even exits. I am not suggesting you lie and provide fake information just to get this card. I’m just providing as much details as possible.

A very similar card is the American Express SimplyCash Business Card which also has 5% cash back on gas, office supplies, and wireless services and 1% cash back on virtually all other purchases. However, the fact the SimplyCash card is an American Express while the Advanta card is a Mastercard means the Advanta card would be accepted in more places.

– American Express TrueEarnings Card –

american express trueearnings card

Eligible Purchases earn a rebate of 1, 2 or 3 percent, as follows: 3% at restaurants, 2% for travel purchases from airline, lodging, car rental, cruise line, travel agency and tour operators; and 1% on all other Eligible Purchases. The rebate is issued annually in your Cardmember billing statement as a coupon redeemable at Costco. See your Cardmember Agreement for eligibility requirements and complete terms and conditions.

This is the card I save for restaurants and of course Costco, since that’s the only credit card they accept. There is no annual or monthly limit like the other cards I’ve mentioned, so you can earn as much cash back as you want with this card.

Unfortunately, to be applicable for this card, you need to be a Costco member, which automatically means the $50 membership fee.

Another thing about this card is that they mail you the cash back in the form of a Costco check. Don’t be fool that this is a gift certificate that has to be fully used at Costco. You are always allowed to opt to get the entire check in cash at any Costco register. However, if I’m at Costco already, I don’t really see myself ever walking out of there empty handed, though I have done that before.

– Discover Cashback Bonus Card –

discover cashback bonus card

Sign up to get 5% Cashback Bonus on gas, hotels and summer fun with the Get More program.
Only Discover Card offers 5% Cashback Bonus on Get More purchases in categories like travel, home, gas, restaurants, movies and more. Watch your e-mail alerts and Account statements to see which categories will give 5% Cashback Bonus next.
5% to 20% Cashback Bonus at top online retailers through ShopDiscover
Get up to 1% Cashback Bonus on all your other purchases automatically.

The Discover card has always been a toss up. Their 5% cash back program changes every quarter (3 months) and some times you get really good categories like restaurants and movies, but other times you get stuck with home and apparel which I hardly make purchases in. The worst part of the program is they make you click the sign up link in order to activate the new quarter’s 5% bonus program. Therefore if you forget to do so every quarter, you won’t be getting the benefits of the program. Plus the fact that about half the places I go don’t accept Discover really limits its usage. It appears this card also doesn’t have any cap on the amount of cash back you can get back.

They also often have specific stores which give you 5% cash back. I took advantage of it when they had Amazon.com, Circuit City, Lowes, and Linen ‘n Things.

This card is available for anyone to sign up for.

– Fidelity Investments Rewards Card –

fidelity investment rewards card

Unlimited rewards; earn one point for every dollar in net retail purchases

Every time you accumulate 5,000 points, convert them to a $75 deposit into your eligible Fidelity Account2, a 1.5% redemption rate

Redeem points for travel on major U.S. airlines with no blackout dates or for brand-name merchandise, gift certificates, and more

MyConciergeSM Personal Concierge Service offers customized services 24/7, including dining arrangements and reservations, gifts and personal shopping, tickets for sporting events, concerts and shows, unique transportation, and more

This is the newest card in my arsenal and is what I consider to be my fall back card. Why settle for 1% cash back which all these other cards are already providing, when you can settle for 1.5% cash back. If something doesn’t fall into any of the categories that gives me over 1.5% cash back with the credit cards above, I’ll end up using this card. This latest statement shows that I’m currently at 4500 points. So $500 more, and they’ll be depositing $75 into my Fidelity account.

Unfortunately, to benefit from this credit card, you’ll need a Fidelity investment account. As a Microsoft employee, I have one by default, but not many people do and Fidelity isn’t the cheapest stock broker out there. However, it probably is one of most reliable stock brokers around, having great customer service and research information available. After you deposit the $75 into your Fidelity account, I’m pretty sure you can immediately withdraw if you want, but I’m guessing they’re hoping you’ll be investing that amount.

For more information, you can visit Fidelity’s site.

July 24, 2007July 24, 2007

Detective Conan – Childhood Ending

While watching Detective Conan around episode 400 (yes, I’ve reached episode 400+ on Detective Conan), there was this really cute ending I wanted to share:

640×480 version:

320×240 version:

The sequences were really cute, so cute that I’ve watched this ending whenever the episode ended with it (I usually skip the endings and openings). You have little Shinichi teaching little Ran how to ride a bicycle, followed by a dog chasing little Shinichi. Then you have a sequence where little Shinichi displays his mad soccer skills and when little Ran wants to play with the soccer ball, she only dribbles it like a basketball. Little Shinichi says to use her feet, but she keeps on dribbling it. Little Shinichi laughs at her and little Ran kicks the soccer ball into his head. Even little Hattori and little Kazuha makes a cameo.

So cute…

They should seriously make an anime about little Shinichi and little Ran, and how Shinichi became an awesome detective and how Ran became an #1 karate champion.

July 23, 2007July 23, 2007

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Just watched this movie on Friday night with Stanman and ChemChampion. Actually bumped into Brian at the theaters. I thought the movie overall was generally fun, very imaginative. I definitely thought about starting to read the last 2 books, but after a good night’s sleep, I gave that idea up.

Official Site
IMDb: 7.9/10 (29,599 votes)
Yahoo! Movies: The Critics: B / Yahoo! Users: B+
Rotten Tomatoes: Rating: 77% / Average Rating 6.9/10
Apple Trailer
Amazon.com Showtimes
Amazon.com Soundtrack
Amazon.com Book
MY RATING: 8/10

Spoilers: (Show)

I’m not going to bother giving a summary since if you’re a fan, you’ve probably seen it or am planning to see it regardless of what the story is about. If you’re not a fan, then you won’t really be reading this in the 1st place.

Hjo3 mentioned about the annoying character Luna Lovegood in his blog entry. I personally didn’t think much of it. In fact I thought the story was setting her up to be Harry Potter’s girlfriend with the ending scene. Now that Harry Potter and Cho Chang are broken up, he’s single again. Harry’s relationship with Cho was rather short lived. I wonder if they had more in the story. Back to Luna being Harry Potter’s new girlfriend. That idea was quickly shot down by Stanman who has read the 6th book and tells me… (YOU MIGHT NOT WANT TO READ THIS IF YOU HAVEN’T READ THE 6TH BOOK. SKIP TO THE NEXT PARAGRAPH PLEASE. YOU’VE BEEN WARN.) Harry Potter ends up dating Ginny Weasley, Ron’s sister.

Anyway, back to Luna. Remember how Harry was able to see the flying horses? Luna points out that only those who have experienced death can see it. If anything, her part might be just to explain why Harry Potter was able to see creatures and hear voices others couldn’t. What totally befuddled me was when they decided to take the flying horses to London. Two things don’t really make sense to me and may for those who’ve read the book can explain. I asked Stanman why they choose to use flying horses instead of their brooms and his answer was that maybe some of them weren’t good on the broom. Then I asked if only Harry and Luna could see these horses, are the others just hanging onto some invisible object? He had no idea what was going on there either.

Stanman also noted that the prophecy that Harry crushed was actually made by the hippie teacher who taught making predictions was being banished from Hogwarts. I had actually made that link in my mind while watching the movie, but I guess they ran out of time to talk about that. However it turns out that was the only prophecy she has ever made. I pointed out that she also made the prophecy that the ministry lady was going to be in grave danger, which turned out to be true. Stanman says that’s the prediction she always gives no matter the situation.

Anyway, I was at Costco today (only spending $45 there today – I’m proud of myself), and they had stacks and stacks of the new and final Harry Potter book: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. They even had someone dressed as a wizard or a student from Hogwarts standing there helping distribute the books. Speaking of the final book, I knew a few friends who had lined up for the midnight sale of the Harry Potter books. They’re probably done reading by now.

Ungsunghero points me to Keith Olbermann’s speculation: (Show)

For those who’ve read the final book, I would like to know if Keith Olbermann’s speculation was correct.

July 22, 2007July 22, 2007

Sleuth – HD Trailer

About a week ago, Apple posted an High Definition trailer for the upcoming movie: Sleuth (IMDb). As I later found out, Sleuth (2007) is actually a remake of the 1972 Sleuth (IMDb). I do have to say, that’s one expensive DVD on where the lowest price on Amazon.com is $59.99. What’s even cooler about this movie is the fact that Michael Caine is in both movies, however his row is switched. Michael Caine plays the wife’s lover in the 1972 version and plays the scheming husband in the 2007 version.

There’s been people saying Jude Law is the new Michael Caine as the Alfie remake where Alfie was played by Michael Caine in the 1966 version, Jude Law played Alfie n the 2004 version.

sleuth trailer poster

Anyway, the reason I’m posting about this movie is that less than a day later that Apple posted the HD trailer, they decided to pull it off their website. Both HD Trailers and HD-Trailers.net had linked to the trailers, but those links are now currently dead.

Fortunately, I had downloaded the 1080p version and with the request from filmomanas, I uploaded the trailer.

Look like Apple decided to completely pull this trailer from their site. I can’t even find the regular movie trailer info page anymore. I still have my copy of the 1080p trailer which I downloaded yesterday and decided to upload it to FileSend: Download Link

I decided to use FileSend because it allow uploads of greater than 100MB (seems to be a limitation on many of the file sharing sites). The 1080p trailer itself is 129MB. However, it does have a wait time of 30 seconds, which is the downside. I took that into account, but the fact it has a really fast download speed, made me choose it over a couple others. I was able to download from FileSend at a sustained 600KB/s. Unfortunately, I don’t have the 480p and the 720p version. Other than that, enjoy!

The trailer makes the movie look quite interesting.

July 20, 2007July 20, 2007

Speaker Stands – Part 2

Now that my speaker stands can stand on their own, I could continue with my setup.

I started building the rest of my speaker stands:

Next I needed to measure the speaker cables. I got 300′ of 12AWG speaker cable, and 12AWG was definitely over kill for these tiny speakers. However, given the fact that they’ll be about 50ft in length and the potentiality of me upgrading the speakers to better ones later, these cable would be fine.

I later found out that these cable were so thick, it was actually a bit troublesome sticking it into the back of my rear and side speakers.

With the practically infinite amount of speaker cable, I was now able to go around things to keep it hidden from view.

Despite the fact the speaker stands were no longer falling, the fact the center of gravity is closer to the front and the stands were sitting on top of soft carpet, the front legs of the base would dig a bit deeper into the carpet than the back, still causing some tilt. The slightest push will still tip the whole thing over. I was thinking of sticking some flat pieces of wood underneath it to counter the carpet softness. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any flat pieces of wood just lying around. I did find some MSN poker chips I got at the company meeting almost 2 years ago. That gave me an idea.

Here’s my final setup.

I thought I did a pretty good job with hiding the cables.

The wire you see on the left of the single seater is actually the power cable for my exercise bike, so that’s normal. All the cables are along the wall or hiding beneath/underneath my couch.

As for MonoPrice, I updated the product manager with the situation and I’ve requested that he remove the incorrect review that I posted, which he seemed more than happy to obliged. The tech support did get back to me. I told him the problem was resolved, besides some tilting. He said he should be able to help me with it and asked about the what type of floor the speaker stands were on and if I could take some photos of it and let him analyze and determine what could be done to make them more stable.

July 19, 2007October 22, 2007

Speaker Stands – Part 1

I got my order of speaker stands, speaker cable, and some miscellaneous cables from MonoPrice last week.

The speaker stands I got were these: Speaker Stand – Silver (SS-01) – Set of 2. I actually got 2 sets of them since I had rear speakers and side speakers to elevate. I was contemplating on mounting on the wall, but that didn’t give me as much freedom and my layout is a bit weird. If you don’t recall, this is what my layout looks like:

Everything was fine until I finished building my first speaker stand. If I hooked up my speaker to it, it wouldn’t stand on its own. It appears my speakers were too heavy. My rear and side speakers aren’t that big. They measure 4″ x 6″ x 10.5″ and weighed 2.6lbs. I actually found a neat way to measure how heavy items are. My digital scale won’t turn on unless something heavier than 10 or 20lbs stands on it. Therefore, to weigh the speakers, I first weigh myself twice (to guarantee accuracy of my own weight), and then I weigh myself holding the object. Simple subtraction afterwards nets me the objects weight.

I was somewhat pissed at this point. I have 2 sets of these useless speaker stands. I even started browsing Best Buy and Circuit City to see what available options I had. They were all over $50, but I was feeling desperate at this point. I shot an email to MonoPrice support and also left a review (no longer available – which I’ll explain later). There’s one interesting thing about MonoPrice’s “Average User Satisfaction Rate“. When you submit a review, you give it a rating, however the rating is between 4 and 10, where 4 corresponds to 2 stars and 10 corresponds to 5 stars. Meaning, the product’s rating are partially inflated. Somewhat deceiving in my opinion and it guarantees that no product’s rating falls below 2 stars.

The reason it wouldn’t stand is the fact the pole is in the center of the base and by stick a 2.6lb speaker to the front of it, the center of gravity is shifted forward, pulling it forward and down, which inevitably causing it to fall. At this point, I was trying to think of all the possible remedies, such as adding more weight to the base, finding a way to fix the stands to the floor, having wires and strings to hold it back from falling, leaning it against the couch, etc. All ghetto solutions and none that I would’ve been satisfied with.

The following day, the product manager sent me an email back claiming his 3lb speakers work find with these speaker stands, but he forwarded my email to tech support and they would try to assist me in figuring out what’s going on. Ungsunghero and I weren’t exactly sure how “tech” support would be able to help me with a mechanical problem. I decided to take some photos of the stands with speakers on it and Ungsunghero suggested I take a video of it falling (into a pillow).

At this point, I noticed there was an indentation on the top of the base, which I haven’t noticed before. The speaker stand came with 2 sets of screws, nuts, and bolts for the 2 variations of speaker back panel connections. There was this big twist ring (apparently called the twist lock), which I didn’t really know where it went. It fit the bottom of the pole, so I thought it was meant to lock the weight in from sliding out. However, the indentation made me realize that the twist ring was suppose to sandwich the base panel between it and the weight.

After I corrected this, my speaker stands no longer fell. However, they were still tilting forward. I attributed this to user error and bad instructions. The instructions were rather vague and incomplete, as there was no mention of what to do with the twist ring at all.

To be continued…

July 18, 2007October 20, 2007

Web Ads

Recently, I’ve been playing with different ad sites and applying them to my different websites.

If you haven’t noticed, on my main blog, I’ve decided not to use AdBrite anymore, which for some reason dropped a lot in ad revenue over the past months. I switched to Text Link Ads, which was advertised by dnScoop and so far, I’ve made $19.07 in the past month, which I’m happy about.

They even have their own WordPress plugin. They sell ads for both the overall site and individual blog posts. I currently have 3 blog posts with ads:

At first I had no idea that the plugin actually wrote an extra paragraph on the bottom, followed by Related Link, so I had actually hacked the plugin to add additional entries to the top ad block.

I’ve also been experimenting with different colors and styles to make the ads not look as ugly. I have to say, the default ad block was rather ugly (if you recall seeing it for the past few weeks). I’ve updated it to a new background color and I think the top and bottom borders actually make it look decent.

Of course if you’re registered on this site, you won’t be seeing the ads.

However, Text Link Ads is picky with which sites they use. They only allow ads on certain sites that reach a minimum audience and apparently all my other sites are too new or don’t have enough viewers yet to join the Text Link Ads program. So for those, I’ve stuck with AdBrite for now.

However, I’ve been having a lot of problems with AdBrite recently with it posting semi-adult ads on my sites. For Ad content, the default is “Only clean, family-friendly ads” and I’ve double checked that’s the selection I have for all my ad zones. They have this option “Also include edgier ads (but still no adult ads)”, which I’ve never selected.

I disabled the auto-approval of network ads and these edgier ads stopped appear, since I assume they’re only showing the ads I’ve approved. I contacted AdBrite support and inquire about this and they said this should not have been the case and asked for screenshots so they can investigate the problem. I re-enabled the auto-approval of network ads and 30 minutes, these semi-adult ads started popping up:

I immediately took some screenshots and disabled the auto-approval of network ads again. I’ve sent them the screenshots. We’ll see what their response is.

July 14, 2007July 14, 2007

Transformers

I watched Transformers today with Stanman. I entered the theater not expecting much, but I did hear some good things from friends and I do like some of Michael Bay films (e.g. Armageddon and The Rock). Speaking of which, Armageddon was actually mentioned inside the movie. Anyway, I was a big fan of transformers as a kid. I remember watching transformers and G.I. Joe back to back.I totally bought into the idea of having transformable cars and machines and play imaginary battles with it. I personally thought the movie was rather fun. Storyline was expected, but not bad. The special effects were awesome. Definitely a watcher if you were ever a fan of transformers as it stayed true to many aspects. They did change a few things around, but you’ve gotta give this guy credit for using the original voice actor for Optimus Prime from the cartoon series.

Official Site
IMDb: User Rating: 8.0/10 (43,361 votes)
Yahoo! Movies: The Critics: B- / Yahoo! Users: A-
Rotten Tomatoes: Rating: 56% / Average Rating: 5.8/10
Apple Trailer
Amazon.com Soundtrack
Amazon.com Showtimes
MY RATING: 8/10

Spoilers (Show)

The movie’s storyline was pretty straight forward. They tried to merge original Transformer aspects into modern day human civilization, which I thought was decent. When Optimus Prime busted out his sword, I was totally psyched. That was so cool!

The movie was also littered with ads. I’d say it was probably on par with I, Robot.

I also don’t recall Megatron ever being an jet. I guess turning into a tiny gun was a bit weak for the evil boss for such a big movie project.

There were a few things I didn’t quite get. It just didn’t make sense. When Megatron was getting unfrozen, why the heck was there no one aiming guns at it, trying to shoot it down. They already knew about which type of weapon would hurt/harm it, but nope, they just let him break free and get away.

Also, what the heck were they thinking about taking the cube into the middle of the city? It appears the main reason was to get onto a chopper? Seems silly, but I guess meeting up in the middle of the desert wasn’t cool enough. They had to take it into the closest big city so many casualties can occur. I also wasn’t sure what the point of getting the cube onto the chopper was. Would it be more secure? Were they planning to transfer it to some other top secret location?

Having the boy run while 2 Autobots cover him was also silly. I couldn’t stop thinking how slow he was running. i mean they are Autobots, one cover and the other drive him to his destination really fast.

In the scene on the roof where the boy tries to hide from Megatron, what was the point of going close to the edge and hiding behind the statue. Seems like a rather stupid movie. I guess they had to set him up to fall so Optimus Prime would catch him.

One thing I did noticed was that this cube only made bad robots, which I’m assuming were Decepticons. Maybe all robots that are born are just aggressive and hostile and begins shooting everything around it. Optimus Prime mentioned he also had a cube inside him. Maybe that was what created Autobots. My question would be, why doesn’t he create more Autobots.

Speaking of how to destroy the cube. They mention one way to destroy the cube was to merge Optimus Prime’s cube with the Allspark cube. Does that mean Megatron also has a cube and does merely touching the cube to the chest kill it? I mean, the destruction of the cube wasn’t explained too well.

I also didn’t know Optimus Prime and Megatron were brothers. Doesn’t appear to be made up, as it was revealed in Transformers: The Movie Prequel comic according to Wikipedia.

It does look like they set up the ending of the movie for a potential sequel. I want to see Dinobots!

There was a trailer showing a farewell party and suddenly a giant explosion in New York City. You could see the head of the Statue of Liberty flying across the street. No one knows for sure what this trailer is about. Rumors is that J. J. Abrams is remaking a popular Japanese movie in English and some people have suggested Godzilla due to the noise it was making. You can watch the trailer on Apple or read more about it on IMDb. The interesting thing about this movie is the date: 1-18-08, which is the day I turn 25. Well, maybe it was only interesting to me.

July 8, 2007October 22, 2007

Sound Heaven

So a ton of new toys arrived yesterday:

I was even contemplating of working from home on Friday, but I had some work that needed to be completed.

Anyway, my entire body (arm, thighs, back, etc) was really sore today. Almost didn’t want to get up. These boxes were heavy. One thing I found out about living alone is that it sucks to have no one immediately around to help you carry heavy things. I even ended up taking apart the Onkyo box and and bringing it into the house piece by piece.

It was a good thing I purchased the TV stand last week. It’s no longer available at Costco. The cheapest I can find it now is $250 at Target and Stacks and Stacks, and I picked it up at Costco for $190 + tax shipped with lifetime warranty.

First thing I had to do was build the TV stand:

I actually had trouble moving the TV over onto the new stand. It was really heavy. I even removed the speakers (which I won’t be using anymore) to make it lighter. At first I was thinking of just putting it onto the floor and then hoisting it back up onto the new stand. After trying to lift it up myself, I decided it was a no go. I then parked the 2 TV stands side by side and slowly edged the LCD TV and then in one quick motion, moved the TV onto the new stand because it was shorter in height.

I carried the old stand down to the storage room and there it’ll stay until I find a nice family that’ll take it. It’s actually a sturdy little beast, but unfortunately won’t be able to hold both my Media PC and my receiver. I then pushed the new TV stand to where it’ll probably end up to check out how it’ll look.

Next came the interesting part, setting up the Onkyo HT-SR800. There was a giant subwoofer, 3 mid-size front speakers and 4 smaller rear and side speakers. This was a 7.1 setup, one of the features I was looking for. Another feature I needed HDMI. However, do note, I believe this receiver only supports upto HDMI 1.2, which means it doesn’t process audio signals via HDMI (HDMI 1.3). That means if you want audio with HDMI, you have to associate it to either digital optical, digital coaxial, or analog composite.

Hooking up the wires was fun, though I found out later that the included “speaker terminal tool” was really a tool to help me twist the speaker screws. Oh well, it wasn’t too bad with just the finders. The included speaker cables were 10-11ft for the front ones, and 30ft for the side and rear ones. Since I didn’t want speaker wires crawling across the floor, I had to wrap it around my sofa. Here’s the current layout:

The layout is actually drawn to scale where 2 pixels = 1″. The little black dots represent speakers. I didn’t include the center speaker, but it’s located immediately underneath the TV. 30ft of speaker was barely enough to reach the side right speaker and has to run across the bottom of my fireplace. Also, the side and rear speakers are on the floor and the couch blocks a lot of the sound coming out.

That’s why I decided to pick up some speaker stands, speaker cable, and some other stuff (optical toslink cable and component cables) to complete the setup. Of course whenever cables are concerned, MonoPrice is my preferred store. I can’t believe how inexpensive their speaker stands are. $12 for a pair: Speaker Stand – Silver (SS-01) – Set of 2. There aren’t that many reviews on the silver one, but you can check out the reviews on the black version.

I only had 1 optical toslink cable which I had used before to connect my Xbox 360 to my computer. However, since my LCD TV didn’t have optical in, I haven’t bother setting it up. Now that my receiver has 2 optical toslink inputs, I can connect both my computer and Xbox 360 to the optical toslink port. As you can see, the 1st thing I tested was my Media PC:

Unfortunately I ran into problems. First of all, I hadn’t figure out how to configure the which audio input to use at this point. After reading the manual a bit, I figured out how to set up that association. I had a video playing in the background in the meantime. However, there was still no audio. I thought maybe I needed to enable digital output as in XP, but I was unfamiliar with Vista’s new audio setup and it took me awhile to find it. Well, I actually found the option in the Realtek HD Audio Manager software that came with my motherboard. However, even after setting the digital output as the default audio device, the movie that was still playing still didn’t output sound.

I then tried connecting the Xbox 360 to the optical port and sound immediately came out, so that ruled out any potential problems with the receiver or the cable. I looked at the optical out on the PC and there was red light coming out and if I connected the optical cable to it, you could see the other end light up.

I’m not exactly sure what popped into my head, but I thought about restarting the video and suddenly it worked and sound was coming out! It must’ve been because the video player started playing when the it was still associated to the analog output and set that as the device to output audio to. The application needed to be restarted to switch to the new audio output device.

The rest of the setup was just putting all the equipment onto the TV stand, putting the TV into the perfect angle for viewing, and making the cables look nice.

Cleaning up was mostly moving the big pieces of boxes down to storage or throwing them away. All the little styrofoam bits was picked up by my Roomba after I told it to start vacuuming.

This setup even included a mic which helps calibrate the receiver. That part was cool and it actually looks like it’s doing some heavy calculation as this setup portion takes about 5-10 minutes to complete. It would make beeping sounds from all the speakers one at a time and you have to repeat this process from 3 different locations. I’ll have to recalculate it when my speaker stands arrive, but it’ll do for now. It’s nice to be in sound heaven.

July 6, 2007July 6, 2007

Night Watch / Day Watch

So a few weeks ago, Stanman and friends and I got together to watch Night Watch.

Official Site
IMDb: User Rating: 6.4/10 (12,939 votes)
Yahoo! Movies:The Critics: B- / Yahoo! Users: B-
Rotten Tomatoes: Rating: 58% / Average Rating: 5.9/10
Apple Trailer
Amazon.com DVD
MY RATING: 6/10

For those that don’t know, Night Watch is a high budget Russian movie. It originally was a novel written by Sergei Lukyanenko. The story is actually comprised of 4 books:

Night Watch
Day Watch
Dusk Watch (known as Twilight Watch in the U.S.)
Final Watch (hasn’t been translated yet, but available in Russian)

Day Watch has already been released as a movie (was also recently played throughout the film festivals). Stanman and friend and I watched it 2 days after Night Watch.

Official Site
IMDb: User Rating: 7.1/10 (3,325 votes)
Yahoo! Movies: The Critics: B- / Yahoo! Users: B+
Rotten Tomatoes: Rating: 65% / Average Rating 6/10
Apple Trailer
MY RATING: 7/10

Twilight Watch (the movie) is already in production and plans to be released later this year to complete the trilogy. I’m not sure how correct this is, but I’ve heard that the 3rd movie, Twilight Watch will end the series (film wise) and there won’t be a 4th film to compliment the 4th book.

To put in simple words, the Watch series is a Russian take on or super humans, known as the Others. The following paragraph from Wikipedia gives a good background of the story:

The division of Light and Dark had always existed between the Others. Those of the Light believed it was their duty to help the weak and the helpless. Those of the Dark shunned all obligations. They did what they wanted, regardless of morals and consequences. For many millennia, the two sides fought a vicious battle. Both were willing to use any means necessary to achieve victory. Eventually they realized that if they continued their battle, neither side would survive. The leaders of both sides forged the Grand Treaty—a set of laws to govern the way the Others used their powers. The Light Others created the Night Watch, the Dark Others the Day Watch, to ensure that neither side would violate the Treaty. The Inquisition, a group composed of both Dark and Light Others, was created to ensure that neither side became too powerful.

The first movie was called Night Watch because during the night, the Light Others who form the Night Watch are responsible in making sure the Dark Others don’t break any rules. The second movie was called Day Watch because during the day, the Dark Others who form the Day Watch are responsible in making sure the Light Others don’t break any rules.

Spoilers: (Show)

One of the interesting aspect are the vampires in this movie. Not all Dark Others are vampires, but Dark Other when given the license to, can create vampires from regular humans. I have no idea if this closely resembles the Russian culture of vampires or not, but nonetheless, it was an interesting contrast. They do feed on blood like regular western vampires, but there are some major differences that Stanman pointed out. First of all, when Anton was fighting the vampires, they would disappear and the only way to see them was by looking through a mirror. In western culture, when you look at a mirror, you don’t see the vampire. Another interesting thing was Anton had to drink blood (pig’s blood since it closely resembles human blood) to get a feeling of where the vampires are. To protect oneself from vampires, they wore a chain mail / barbed wire like thing around their neck. We thought that was ingenious. Vampires typically suck blood from your neck, so what the heck is with silver bullets and garlic and crosses. You want to protect your neck!

This entry is already very long, but if you’ve watched the movies, you must be super confused by now. Night Watch was very dark and horrible at explaining what the heck was going on. Day Watch on the other hand was somewhat light and it was easy to grasp. Then again, Stanman filled us in on some key details he read off Wikipedia. Here are some excellent readings on Wikipedia: