Latest Flickr Photos
Stock Quotes
| DIG | 48.09 | ||
| XOM | 84.92 | ||
| PTR | 149.47 | ||
| INDU | 0.00 | ||
| NASDAQ | 2905.66 |
Ollie Baxter
We got a puppy. Wanda had been wanting to get one for awhile. It’s a Yorkshire Terrier named Ollie Baxter. He’s 10 weeks old. He’s quite the handful! He has some severe separation anxiety and cries whenever one of us is not near. He’s also not housebroken yet, but we’re working on that one.
We’re struggling right now to get the puppy and our cat, Josie, to get along. Josie has been an only child for quite some time, and she’s never liked dogs. She’s done some first strikes in the last two days, but today the dog also started provoking her by growling. Right now I’m just trying to keep the separated, helping them get used to each other, and spreading the love.
- Pictures: Ollie Baxter
March 18th, 2008 
Tags: New Jeep
We bought a new vehicle this past weekend. It’s a 2007 Jeep Commander, 4.7L V8, silver. Some time ago, we vowed not to buy new vehicles anymore because they depreciate too quickly. Our Oldsmobile was having troubles starting, and it burned a lot of oil. We had been planning on getting a new vehicle within the next year, so we decided to stop at the Jeep dealer to do a test drive in the snow (to see how it handled). We had no intention of buying a vehicle that day, but being last year’s model, it was an incredible deal. It actually cost us less than our Saturn Vue, which is half the vehicle. I wanted a truck, but Wanda always wanted a Jeep, so we compromised and got a Jeep (just kidding dear!). I’m looking forward to towing the boat with it this summer. The FWD Vue sometimes struggled pulling it out of the water.
Wanda primarily gets to drive it, and she loves it. I had been driving the Oldsmobile, while Wanda had the Vue for awhile. It’s good to have the Vue back. However, the Olds was paid off. It sucks having two car payments again! We had been saving up though, so we were able to put a substantial amount of money toward a down payment. Also, the insurance on it is surprisingly low.
Black Friday 2007
I’m usually more excited for Black Friday deals, but there wasn’t much we were interested in this year. We’ve been wanting to replace the TV downstairs for awhile, and I’ve been wanting a Tivo for the bedroom (much to Wanda’s disapproval). However, we weren’t planning on spending the money just yet, since Wanda had just gotten a new Canon PowerShot G9 for her birthday (which is an awesome camera, by the way).
While paging through the ads, I found an HP 42″ LCD HDTV for a reasonable price. We were a little nervous since HP isn’t well-known for making televisions, however, it turned out to be a great TV. Good picture, easy menu interface, good price. I like the TV better than our 52″ DLP upstairs, which we paid twice as much for two years ago.
It was probably a naughty purchase, but we’ve had the 27″ tube downstairs for quite awhile, and it was difficult to read the Media Center menus on it. We might as well enjoy living while we don’t have kids, right?!
New Media Center, Windows Vista
I decided to build a new Media Center because our old one (Hewlett Packard) was sucking air. I’ve been slowly buying the parts over the last several months as I saw things on sale. The new one is pretty swank – A terabyte of storage (4x250MB SATA2 drives), 2 GB of RAM, three HDTV tuners, dual-core AMD 64 4800+, a sweet Asus motherboard, and Windows Vista Ultimate (yes, we bought a legal copy). It rocks, and we finally get HD channels on it. It’s been awhile since I built a new machine (I’m married with mortgage now), but I had forgotten how fun it is. 
Vista is taking a bit to get used to, and I’m not sure I like the new Media Center interface as much. However, as with any new OS, I’m sure I’ll get used to it and it will be old hat in a couple of months. I’ve found a fair amount of annoyances with it, but again, I’m sure I’ll get used to it. All-in-all, Vista runs very smoothly on the new machine (it really makes our old Media Center look pathetic).
Black Friday 2006
So, was everyone able to get everything on their shopping list today? We didn’t see much in the flyers this year that we were interested in. We did score two 22″ Westinghouse and one 19″ Samsung LCD monitors from Best Buy. Wanda and I both wanted a new monitor. The reason we bought three is because Wanda couldn’t decide between the 19″ (higher quality) and the 22″ (bigger size, more video ports), so we will probably end up returning one.
Let me tell ya’, a 22″ widescreen LCD monitor gives new meaning to the term “desktop”.
My parents also scored a Lenovo (formerly IBM’s PC division) desktop computer with a 19″ widescreen monitor from Office Depot. It has some pretty nice specs, and it was a great deal. I hope it turns out to be a good machine.
No More Printed Maps
We finally joined the ranks of the rest of the world and bought a GPS device (and I remember when I considered myself an early adopter!). I did a lot of research and asked all my friends who have one, and I ended up getting a Garmin iQue M4. I was looking for a device that would be suitable for driving, geocaching, and possibly boating. I also wanted one with voice-prompted directions, which rules out most of the handheld models. Most of the automobile models were clunky to carry. After some solid advice from my friend Kevin Roth, we decided to go for a PDA model. I had been stalking eBay for the last month or so, and I finally found an amazing deal on a used one.
We haven’t gone treasure hunting yet, but it works great in the automobile. It’s a nice little unit. By the way, ignore the MSRP on the web site, we didn’t pay nearly that much for it!
Weekend
Wanda and I had a great weekend. We took our boat out for the first time. On Saturday, we took it out on the Fox River. We were still learning the ropes and are still novices, so we didn’t get far, but we had a good time. Sunday was a blast. We went out on Lake Winnebago with my mom and brother. We stayed out a little too long, though. When we launched, the water was quite calm. By the time we went in, the waves were thrashing around our boat. That was a little nerve-wracking for me being only my second time. We can’t wait to take it out again.
New Boat
We finally bit the bullet and bought a boat. We bought it off of eBay and got a great deal. It’s a 16′ 1989 Sea Ray. The previous owner took very good care of it – it runs quite well and there are nearly no blemishes on it. It’s a smaller boat, but we thought it would be a good starter for us, especially since we can pull it with our Saturn Vue. Too bad we have no clue what we’re doing, but everyone starts somewhere. It should be interesting
Black Friday 2005
Our Black Friday was pretty good. We got up to go shopping around 4:30am. I wasn’t able to get the $149 eMachine from Best Buy because I got there too late. I thought it would be a nice upgrade for my parents. Perhaps next year. We started out at Circuit City because we wanted to get a 19″ Sony LCD monitor for Wanda, priced at $249 after rebates. We got one, but when we got it home we noticed it didn’t support DVI (not a big deal) and it had a pixel out. We might return it and just get a decent Dell LCD off of eBay.
We then went to Best Buy in Grand Chute. That place was chaos. I left very quickly because their setup was a total disaster. We went to the new Best Buy on the East side of Appleton. That store was much better – it had about 10% of the people in it as the Grand Chute location, and most of those people were in line, so you could browse the store at your leisure. I scored a 120GB hard drive for $29.99 AR and Nero 7 Ultra for $20 AR. We got a few other things, too, but they are Christmas presents so I can’t mentioned them here. Overall, we spent much more than we had intended, but we usually do.
After that, we met up with my brother for breakfast at IHOP. The last time I went there I didn’t like it so much (crowded, lousy table, food was sub-par). However, I think the redeemed theirselves today. The food, service, and table was all very good. The prices were a little higher than Country Kitchen, but it is Appleton (we don’t have a CK in the Appleton area anymore).
After breakfast, we went to several furniture stores to look for a stand for our new 50″ projection TV. We didn’t find much, and the stuff we liked was expensive, but we think we found one at American TV & Appliance that we might get. We’ll see.
One thing to note, it’s like people forgot how to drive today. Hello? It’s Black Friday. Speed limit is optional, and every man for himself. There were a lot of cops out too. You’d think they could give one day a year a break. Note to anyone who feels like sight-seeing and pokey driving at the wee hours of the morning on Black Friday – DON’T. Maybe we should have a requirement to get a driver’s license in Wisconsin where everyone has to live and drive in California for a week. Then they’d learn how to drive. The cops can go to hell for patrolling so heavily on such an important day.
New TV
I’ve been wanting to buy a new TV for several years. We finally went out and bought a 50″ Sony Grand Wega DLP HDTV this weekend, as our big Christmas present. It’s simply amazing. I was surprised to find it only weighed 72lbs! When I picked up the box, I thought the TV was missing because it was so light. I’ve had tube units half the size that weighed as much. The picture is quite impressive, and it has a really nice zoom feature that shows 4:3 video in wide-screen, and it actually looks good! We did a channel scan and it even found some local HDTV content. You can actually see the picture well from very acute angles. It’s the first new TV I’ve had in 7 years.
Now all I need to do is hook our DVD into the TV through the component video ports so I can get progressive scan, and maybe invest in some HDTV programming, the wife permitting, of course. For now, we have it in the entertainment center upstairs because we don’t have anything to set it on downstairs. Once we do, I’ll be able to hook it into my receiver and get some media center with Bose speaker goodness.
Powered by WordPress.
