Journal Xerithane's Journal: The conquest of aquiring new objects. 23

So I had a great weekend, of sorts. Friday night, I had visions of wonderful plans with the SO. Last week I was working some major overtime and being burdened with perhaps one of the most mundane programs I've ever had the fortune of working on. She was excellent, truly an angel amongst mortals. Keeping me well fed, hydrated, and generally very happy through the seemingly unending hours of the night. As a way of saying thank you, I attempt to take her out to her favorite restaurant. I've never been there, and it's one of those fancy "Our lights our dim and our hosts wear suits" style restaurants.

Generally not my style, because I tend to see a lot of quasi-pretentious people fronting like they have money. The whole Everybody-who-is-Anybody crowd tends to annoy me, because it's likely more that they are just going for an attempt to impress the other people trying to impress other people. But that's not what this is about. I call to make reservations, and get promptly shot down but she tells me to just show up and the wait shouldn't be too long. On the order of a half hour or so, and they have a full service bar so I figure that is fine.

We have plans to go shopping before the restaurant, as I'm in need of some more clothes. I'm very picky about my clothes, they must be amazingly comfortable or else I will quiver and whine like a small schoolgirl. No luck, couldn't find any shirts that I even had a moderate liking towards. However, the SO got herself a shirt that really just makes me bite my fist and say, "Damn." Several times, even.

Then we go to the restaurant, and promptly leave after being told it's over an hour and a half wait, and the bar is packed with people trying to pretend that paying $8 for a Bud Light is reasonable. Instead we go to a nice Italian restaurant, and had a good time. Just a quiet little restaurant, had a 5 minute wait, and good service with great food. Price was reasonable for a restaurant with that type of service, so I was pleased.

Then we ended up not doing anything else, just relaxing at home for the night. Definitely a good way to spend the night.

Saturday we're just going to watch some movies, hang out, buy myself a joystick. The joystick took much convincing. In the end, I was triumphant, but she knows me too well and put a $30 limit on what I could actually spend on said joystick. We go to CompUSA, and she disappears and starts playing with the Force Feedback joysticks, and was getting a lot of entertainment from them. That's when the angel pops up next to my shoulder and says, "You know... you could talk her into getting one of those..." Then the devil pops up and says, "Hey... look at that Thrust Master Pro Force FeedBack Precision 2003 XP+ Robotech-orgasm-inducing Features" and I was hopeless confused. She grabbed me when she saw that lustful twinkle in my eye and paraded me to the check out stand and I got a nice Logitech Wingman something or other. It works nice.

We then go to watch some movies at home, after picking up Demolition Man and Ringu. Don't laugh, I like Demolition Man. Sylvester Stallone knitting is a great thing to see. I put in Demolition Man, and the DVD player churns, squeeks, summons some devils from the netherworld, and promptly ejects the disk displaying a "Consuming Alternate Dimensions" error message all over.

A bit of history on this DVD player. My parents found it, and it was a super-small form factor DVD player. It's roughly about 1/3 the size of a typical DVD player. They got it for me as a gift, without actually telling me anything about it and I have been secretely wishing it to die a horrible , terrible death since. Not because the DVD player is bad or anything, just the remote. I seriously hate the remote. I would feel like an ass getting another DVD player, and having to tell my mom, "Well, it was great, Ma, but damn, that remote is horrible."

So, we load up into the car, head to Circuit City, where service is most definitely state of the art, if by state of the art you mean completely devoid of any form of art, or in fact service. I immediately go after the DVD-recorders, and get shot down using the +9 Womanly Smackdown of Reasoning. Her, being the practical, intelligent woman that she is, says, "Here, it's nice and not expensive." It doesn't have progressive scan, DVD-RW reading capabilites, or MP3 playing capabilities! I can't let this happen. I counter with a $400 or so RCA DVD/MP3 player with a freaking 40GB hard drive in it. She then weilds the +10 Mirror of Dorkiness causing me to recoil, at which point I stumble across a nice Sony DVD player with all the features I want, except a hard drive and a recorder. So we pick it up, and proceed to watch Demolition Man.

I love buying new toys because the old one, that I absolutely loathe because of some superficial device, dies. Now if only my receiver went out so I can take a trip to the Bose store...

If there are any audiophiles around here, not that I can even hear that well, what's a good medium grade ($5K or so) home theater setup aside from Bose? My hearing is shot, but I want something that is very clear and easy to hear. I don't care much about the trembling bass, just really crisp sounds. I like Harmon Kardon stuff as well, but I want something that looks a bit more spiffy. Right now, all my theater equipment is all black boxes and such. I want something nice and spiffy looking. Another option I was thinking about is building a computer w/ professional grade sound equipment and using that.

Thoughts, comments, ideas?

And yes, the joystick does work wonders in BF1942. I crash the Desert Combat helicopters with the utmost ease now. I think the longest I've managed to stay in the air is about 4 sectors, while spinning around in circles for about 5 minutes.