I took delivery of a Samsung LN40D630, a model that’s liked by both LCDTVBuyinguide.com and Consumer Reports. When I powered it up there was a bright, solid, vertical red line on the left side of the screen, as simulated on the picture. So back it went to Best Buy. *Sigh* I’ll wait for the credit card activity to clear before deciding what to do next.
Amazon is dumping its Easter candy! You can get 44 ounces of mini Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups for only five bucks!
Follow-up: Too late! They’re already sold out.
After sixteen years of sitting in the same spot at work, I have to move to another floor in the building, at least temporarily, because of remodeling. The building has a lot of original art, and some of it is very good, but I won’t be appreciating what I will see every time I look up from my desk. I’ve heard several different interpretations of this picture and a similar one next to it, and none of them are very positive, including my own.
I’m not terribly big on Broadway shows, but there are two musicals that stand out as favorites. The older I get, the more I appreciate Robert Preston’s thoroughly winning performance in Meredith Willson’s The Music Man. Like Rex Harrison in my other favorite musical, My Fair Lady, Preston wasn’t a singer, but what he brought to the stage has, in my admittedly limited exposure, never been equaled.
One of my earliest blog posts was of Preston singing that Baby Boomer gym class favorite, Chicken Fat. I have Carol’s permission to make this song the alarm clock sound… “for a while.”
I don’t consider myself to be a particularly good gift giver, but a couple of my sisters can have a knack for finding fun and/or unusual presents. For Christmas my sister Jean gave me a Peanuts wall clock that plays the “Linus and Lucy” theme on the hour, but not when it’s dark. It’s hanging in my office now.
My sister Marianne found some cool things this Christmas. 3D Holiday Specs look like 3D glasses, but when you look at Christmas tree lights with them you see them transformed into Santa’s face, or snowflakes, or stars, etc. It’s fun seeing which patterns give the best effects.
Something else Marianne found, that’s both fun and practical, is a type of wallet I’d never seen before, made of a folded sheet of Tyvek. Mighty Wallets come in all sorts of designs, including some with Star Trek themes. Highly recommended!
One of the Christmas gifts for my son this year is a Norelco rechargeable razor. Norelco is a unit of Philips in Holland, the company that introduced Compact Cassettes, LaserDisc video, and co-developed Compact Discs with Sony.
In the 1960’s Norelco started to advertise using a stop-motion animated Santa in their holiday TV commercials. When I was a kid I looked forward to seeing the Norelco Santa. Here’s a video survey of his appearances through the years. The first voice you’ll hear is one the all-time great announcers, Peter Thomas, born in 1924 and, from what I can tell, still working.
Norelco’s Santa disappeared in the 1990’s, but this year he made a digital comeback.
