This has been a good week so far and it is Wednesday already so that means the majority of it has been good. It has been awhile since I could say that.
Sunday I got a ride to church and hung out with a young friend of mine and his girlfriend as we got his fancy new Onkyo home theater system to play nice with his new PC. A spare optical cable I had lying around turned out to be key in getting the signal out to the receiver. The Phillip's one he bought at Wal-Mart refused to convey a proper signal, so we decided it was probably defective.
Monday I bought an upgrade to the Cyberlink PowerDVD player that came with my Blu-ray drive since I was liking what it was capable of but wanted more features. PowerDVD 11 Ultra is a very nice upgrade and I am currently playing with its TrueTheater HD upscaling versus the capable ATI Avivo of my videocard. Depending on the video, it seams to do a better job when the content is of lower quality. More testing is needed before I can conclusively say more, but it is promising. It is now my go to video player for all formats.
Sorry, VLC – you have really fallen by the wayside of late.
That cheap optical cable I mentioned before? Well, shockingly it turned out to work with the Razer Barracuda soundcard on my living room multimedia center PC I built with leftover parts a couple of years ago. Dolby Digital Live and DTS Interactive sound fantastic coming out of it, which breathes new life into streaming content from Hulu, YouTube, Crackle, and other places on the Web. All I can surmise is that the Barracuda pumps out more light than the Asus Xonar D1.
Tuesday my father and I had lunch with a friend from out neighboring county in Houston at the Crossroads Cafe and caught up on politics. I also encountered an amazing hashbrown omelet that was not only huge but had everything wrapped in the hashbrowns. I am still digesting it a day later.
Today we ate at the same place when we met with our State Representative, Greg Davids. It is going to be a strange election year for many reasons, but redistricting due to the census makes it weirder than usual. We do not know for sure where the districts will be until the courts rule on them. Hopefully, they will be more logical than the last court imposed ones from 2000. Odds are that I will be in the same district as Greg, but the state senate is another question. I will hate to lose Jeremy Miller as my senator if it goes the way I suspect, but that’s life.
Now for something more sobering. I have to agree with Glenn Reynolds last sentence. These are fast becoming perilous times when you cannot trust the election process anymore.
Over in Belgium a mass shooting took place that got next to no attention here in the States. So far it appears the shooter being a drug dealer about to go to prison again is the motivation, despite his Moroccan origins. The fact he was not a practicing Muslim indicates it wasn’t sudden jihad syndrome, but why did he have grenades and 9500 gun parts? It makes me suspect he dealt illegal weapons on the side to other drug dealers and criminals. Even the craziest of gun nuts do not have that many parts lying around.
In my opinion, Europe is slowing losing control to criminals due to their pervasive statism and gun control laws. Look how well those laws worked with a convict having possession of that kind of arsenal. There is always a way for criminals to arm themselves – always.
My prayers go out to those wounded and the loved ones of those killed.
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