No HDTV? No Problem

So I have been considering purchasing an HDTV and because I am easily influenced by advertising I figured I should get one "Before 'The Big Game'!" as all of the commercials have been telling me to do. Well things came up, mainly some new TVs announced which may be better and if not may drop the price of the existing models. In addition to the new TVs I realized that I am probably going to spend more money than I really want to on this item.

See my parents bought a new TV for somewhere around $1500. and I was thinking to myself cool I can swing that. Well then I start doing the research and I find out that really I want a $4-$5K TV... so I decided to wait until after "The Big Game".

This was compounded by the fact that I really wasn't interested in the game this year. Mainly because I had a deep feeling that the Colts "Horsey Team From Indianapolis" would win, but really didn't want them to. So I watched the game, and I have to say I am very glad I didn't purchase a TV just for this event. Now of course I would be able to use the TV the rest of the year as well and it really wouldn't have been a waste. However, I would have been pretty upset if I went through all the trouble to upgrade my TV just to be able to see the High Definition rain drops on the camera lens. Or the High Definition fog on the wide shots.

I was surprised that the cameras weren't more protected. We noticed from the beginning that the cameras had lots of moisture on the lenses but we figured this was because they were field cameras and hard to protect. It seems that even the fix position cameras had lots of moisture on them. This seemed to be compounded by the fact that it looks like a few camera operators used a dirty rag to wipe the lenses off. The result was a great many shots with huge rain drops on the screen or shots where everything was out of focus.

In short I am still in the market for a new TV. But I am glad I waited. Watching "The Big Game" in HD would have been a real disappointment.

2/13/07
Edited based on Troy's comment

For those unaware of the reference. The NFL"Company that operates professional American football in the United States" sent a letter to a church somewhere informing them they were not allowed to advertise for or hold a Super Bowl"Big Game" party. The church was only requesting that people chip in some money for the snacks provided.

CPK win streak stops a 2

So CPK as officially entered another slump. Well, slump is probably not the right term. We managed to pull off another win during our novice league game just over a week ago (You can read Troy's Blog for the gory details). But the 2 wins in the novice league were just enough to get out confidence up for the Schenectady 100th anniversary Bonspiel we attended list past weekend.

The Bonspiel was great. The team had a good time, we got to visit with family (M's) and see a bit of snow. We even got to curl. The only unfortunate thing about the weekend was the condensed draw times. Since this was the 100 year event they had a very nice party at a near by country club. In order to ensure that every one could attend the last game was at 3:15 on Saturday. This meant that our first game would be at 10 PM Thursday night and if we didn't win any games we would be done curling by 5ish on Friday (less than 24 hours after we had arrived!) Of course that is about how the weekend played out. We lost Thursday night to a very good team from Canada. We played well, but they just played better. Then we dropped our second game to a mixed team from Canada/Schenectady. I will have to say that while I don't think we would have actually won that game either I feel we played well. We lost or final game to an Albany team which also was close (aside from a few bad ends).

The curling weekend also almost ended in tragedy for CPK. During the last end of the last game we almost gave up all 8 points. A feet that I could most closely associate to getting a hole in one in golf or shooting the moon in the card game Hearts. Although I get the feeling that an 8-ender occurs less than either of these 2 events. Fortunately 2 things happened to prevent this. One, the other team missed a double takeout which left us with one stone in the house. All we (and by we I mean Troy) had to do was to draw down to the 4 foot to cut them from 6 or 7 points to 3 or 4. We had already lost the game so giving up the points didn't really matter, but we needed to make this shot so the people viewing the gallery didn't get too rowdy. Our only real danger was being wide off the broom and heavy (something I did 2 stones earlier to promote one of their stones into the house). Fortunately Troy made his shot and we recovered rather well from what could have been a pretty bad end.

More important than whether we won or lost games was the number of people we met and acquaintances we made. Curlers in general are very friendly and welcoming, one of the best things about the sport(at least the non-competitive leagues) is that it is very social. We meet a girl from Colorado who gets to curl a few times a year (she came dressed to the decade party very similarly to M and Christa {80's}). We also had a great time with the teams we did play against.

So this was slated to be our last Bonspiel for the season, but it is possible that we will make an attempt at one or possibly even two more before the ice melts away. We do feel as if we are getting better with each game and it would be ashame to loose forget everything during the summer.

Lets hope we can win a few novice games before the end of the season!

Since we were done curling by Friday afternoon we got a chance to spend some time Saturday with M's family. Troy and Christa got to meet all of M's Uncles as well has her grandparents. I gave Troy and Christa the cold weather (15th street) tour of RPI. And we got to take it easy a bit. The one downside to actually winning games is you have to play more. Not that this wouldn't be fun, because that is what we were in town to do. But, we are getting trough our 3 and out Bonspiels. We will have to work up our stamina to play the 5 to 8 games required to win the 1st event.