Rodawakening's Blog

The past few months have been a little painful for me, since Circuit City went out of business. It was my favorite electronics store. Their clearance sale was one of the worst I've ever seen, because the discounts were insulting. Since then I've been purchasing electronics from Costco, Best Buy, and Wal-Mart. Going to Best Buy was a pride swallowing experience because I had a bad experience on Black Friday 2007, that pissed me off to no end. Here's why; I made a purchase to pick-up in store at 5am that day. I get there at 1:30pm to pick-up my stuff. I went to the Customer Service area and handed them my print for pick-up. I'm told Customer Service is closed and they aren't doing in-store pick-up. What...are you serious! I just find this hard to believe, so I find a manager and tell him that, "I have an in store pick-up and is Customer Service really closed?" That SOB says, "Customer Service will be opened at 2:00pm". I smile and say thank you. Then I walked around the store to kill time. As I'm walking around I pick up all the items on my list to help speed up the process, when it's time for me to check-out. 2:00pm rolls around, I go back to Customer Service and again, I'm told that Customer Service is closed, they aren't doing in-store pick-up, and to come back tomorrow. So from that point until a few months ago, Best Buy was dead to me.

Now on to the reason for this post. Circuit City is back! But wait! It's not the same...the layout, it's not nearly as nice as it was before. It's looks familiar to another site. Oh no! The "new" Circuit City is now owned by Systemax. *Dun, dun, duuunnn* It's the same company who bought CompUSA. Basically Systemax buys the once great stores, resurrects them, and jacks up the prices. Since the return of CompUSA, I haven't bought anything from them, because a quick search for the same product will reveal that you'll pay more money there. So far I'm seeing the same thing for Bizarro Circuit City (Superman reference try and keep up). Hopefully things will get better for us technofiles. Maybe Wal-Mart will step-up? Hmmmm!

So maybe I'm exaggerating a little. But my point is I saw Star Trek last night and it was great. Great story, full of action, well used humor, and flawless special effects. I'm not going to be a spoiler by mentioning anything about it. It is a must see for anyone looking for a great action movie. Live long and prosper.

I'm not what you'd call an avid photographer, but when the opportunity occurs. I do like to take pictures. The Iphone takes a pretty decent picture for a phone, but it has no flash and it's only 2MP. I have a Canon S3IS, which is a great camera. It takes clear sharp pictures and it records video, but it's kind of large and if I don't have a backpack I have to carry it everywhere. When you're somewhere like an autoshow it can be annoying because you're trying to get in and out of cars, with a camera, bag, and whatever posters you've picked up along the way. So I needed something in between, something that was small enough to fit in my pocket, powerful enough to take a really clear picture, and records video. I've been researching small cameras by different companies such as Canon (obviously), Nikon, Casio, and Sony. Over the weekend I purchased a new digital camera. *drumroll* The winner is...the Casio EX-S10. It's a 10mp ultra-compact point and shoot. It's super small, takes great pictures and video. Unlike the Canon I have, the Casio video files can be dragged and dropped into Itunes. Yeah, it's that simple. That's important to a person with 4 video capabable Ipods. I've tooled around with it for the past couple days and I really like it. I've even posted one of the videos on Youtube. I highly recommend this camera to anyone looking for the above mentioned features, plus it has so many more that I haven't listed. The only negative thing I have to say is that it feels so small in my hands that I'm always afraid I'm going to drop it. But then again I'm used to taking pictures with a tank.

Here's the newbie (this picture was taken by the Canon S3IS):

Not a bad picture for a 3 year old dinosaur.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chjXWrJba9U

I know...I have issues.

Elsie and I had plans to see the new Star Trek movie. She met up with me around 10:20am, then we were off to the theater. We got there around 10:40am, just to find out the showings were sold out until 4:00pm. WTF! Nothing's open yet and we weren't going to wait for the 4pm showing. We were both hungry, so we decided to go to the Cheesecake Factory for brunch.

The food, service, and pricing were excellent! See Lis. You should've came to see Star Trek with us. Oh well maybe next time. BTW. How was your Western Omelette Ramen? LOL!

This has been a really busy week, both mentally and physically. I've been working really hard at work, trying to wrap up a few projects. I've also been trying to figure out which laptop I want to buy, as well as, helping my friend make her laptop purchase too. I had a Toastmasters' meeting on Wednesday night and that went well. I'll explain what Toastmasters is in a later post. Two of my favorite TV shows had season finales this week also. Lost was great, Smallville really sucked. I'm going to take it easy tonight, maybe go out and get a few shirts and shorts for the summer.

I really can't wait until next Friday, because I'm going to order my laptop. Since Monday is Memorial Day, I took Friday and Tuesday off to make a long weekend. Which reminds me, I have to get an idea of what I'm going to make. I have my annual Memorial Day Cookout. I already know I have to get some Pepsi. Maybe I can get some input from the Rodamaniacs. Until next time...

I haven't figured out if I can post all multiple things at the same time without creating a new entry. I had to combine three posts to make this one.

Last night I was searching for templates to freshen up my blog. I saw a few that were promising, but when I installed them, they were really confusing on how to tie all the links and pictures together. I'm okay with the current one even though it needs some tweaking and I haven't finished with the tab links. That's all for now, I have to get dressed for work and get my iced coffee.

Yes folks, I'm still here. I'll give a quick recap of what's been going on. I did get the Iphone 3G (November 2008). In my opinion it's the best mobile phone in the market. It does however has its negatives, such as no MMS, can't forward SMS, and can't cut and paste text. From what I've read those issues will be addressed in the release of the 3.0 OS, scheduled to arrive when the next Iphone comes out this summer.

I've put the motorcycle purchase on hold for now, but I still plan on getting it. I haven't rode one since last summer, so I'll be taking the safety class again when I'm ready to buy. As of now I'm still sticking with a Suzuki GSX650F. I still want either the Hayabusa or B-King when I'm more experienced.

That's all for now. Maybe I'll be back tomorrow?