Waiting From Home

The TV was supposed to be delivered between 9 am and 1 pm, so last night I took home a test Blu-ray player so I could work from home while I waited. Starting at about 8:30 I set it up and ran some tests on it. It took a while to get onto the company VPN with my netbook - I could have sworn I'd done that before, but if I had, I had not saved the bookmarks. Not a problem, got them off the big PC upstairs. Tested wireless first, but the unit did not have a menu item for it, so I ran 50' of Cat5 from the router upstairs to the player through an air duct out in the hallway. Did that last time I worked from home. It passed its tests, but there were some network disconnects, and it only played at half bandwidth. Looked good, though.

I ran out of tests which could be done at home, so I used it to watch The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. I had read the book, and had been assured this would not spoil the movie for me. It mostly did not, but only because I have a crappy memory. They did a good job of staying true to the book, but there was some license taken with the love themes, and they left out a handful of scenes which I thought made the book better. I was disappointed with the smaller role given to the woman in charge of the main character's magazine. The bridge to the island was way too big & long compared to the way I had envisioned it (the book gave me the impression people on the island side of the bridge could see people on the mainland town side). And the old lady was taken almost completely out of the picture. It was well cast, the cinematography was better than average, audio mixing was done well. Personally I thought they showed more blood and gore than the story called for, which took it down a notch in my ratings. I rate it as worth matinee, but it is best to see it streamed or on DVD because there are spots where the subtitles go by too quickly and a REW button is a big help.

At 1:30 I wanted to call the freight company to find out what the trouble was (the web site said the truck left SF at 11:30, and it's less than an hour's drive to my place) but the last time I was on hold for 35 minutes, so forget that. The guy knocked on my door at 2 pm, he had no excuse for being late. I parked the box in the livingroom, and packed up and went to work, where I was half an hour late for our weekly team meeting, which meant missing a presentation from someone from another group I had wanted to hear. Harrumph.

My lead had me run some double-check tests, and the machine kept forgetting it had a network connection and locking up, so it was a while before I could run the rest of my tests, but I did get them done by 7.

Home, followed the plan, with some dusting added:

Unhooked the small (22") bedroom TV and parked it in a corner
dusted off the table it was on
Unhooked the (32" LCD) livingroom  TV and hooked it up in the bedroom.
dusted off the media rack it was on. Dusted off the TV too.
Unboxed the new 42" LED TV, installed the base, put it on the stand and saw the base was on backwards, fixed that and moved two speakers to accommodate the wider TV.
Unboxed the Blu-ray player
Hooked up the TV to all the peripherals
Took the programmable remotes from the livingroom and bedroom and re-programmed them
Tested everything except the Wii

All worthwhile. The new TV is brilliant with a vivid picture. I watched a streamed episode of Lie To Me, and scrolled through the TiVo HD stations. It handles high-motion beautifully. And having a 32-inch screen in the bedroom is a bonus.

After all that was done I made a microwave dinner, and watched some more TV.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work (a new DTV to test)
Home, maybe set up the Wii
I may park myself at the unpopular Starbucks until traffic lightens up.