Materialism (a.k..a. Gadget Pr0n, a.k.a. Bring on the HD!)

I admit. I'm very materialistic. Being a boy, I specifically like gadgets (as opposed to material goods such as...oh...clothes or furniture or furnishings and such).

With our tax return in hand, I guess you could say we've gone on a bit of a tear here in the last month or so. It started with the entertainment center. Well, the entertainment center didn't arrive until 7pm one night. Ash was gone, so I had to deal with these nimrods for the next two hours by myself. Needless to say I saw enough plumber's crack to last a lifetime, and their solution to when something doesn't fit right: kick it or push it until it fits ("that's what she said" - Michael Scott). They didn't install the back panel of the left tower right (the cords go up instead of down), and the whole right tower needs to be replaced. Awesome.

But anyway, it's not like you take it down to Target and go up to customer service. It took 2 months just to get it delivered, so I expect it'll be another two before they actually fix what was messed up from the first time. And you better believe Ash'll be there when they come back!

So anyway, once the crack-heads left, I measured the TV opening and went to Circuit City and bought the largest HDTV I could fit into that space. To give you some perspective, we replaced an old standard definition 26" Sony Trinitron that was about 12 or 13 years old. So we went from that old P.O.S. to a 46" Samsung LCD.

The next day, we brought out a DirecTV installer to get a dual-tuner HD DVR. Holy sh'pocky! HD channels rule (girls drool). And being able to record in HD is obviously a must. We have a Tivo and have always been huge Tivo fans, but a) it wasn't dual-tuner because you need a 2nd satellite line coming into the house which DirecTV had to install, and b) we would have had to buy a whole new HD Tivo anyway.

Since we are doing away with the whole receiver/cd player/speaker setup from before (we just never used all that stuff), I did buy Ash a Bose iPod docking station that is the bomb. Not a real bomb, that would suck. Just the bomb. You can see the unit in the top of the left tower in the picture above.

Hearing music stream forth from the iPod out of some real speakers prompted me to purchase a new stereo for my car yesterday, one with an iPod/iPhone connecter built in. So I can control the music from the actual stereo. Anyone with an iPod Touch or an iPhone knows how impossibly and horrifyingly dangerous it is to do anything with the device while you drive. So this will make it more safer and better sound quality. The FM transmitter I was using before was definitely not the bomb. Having to change stations every 5 miles was so idiotarded I can't begin to fathom how people actually use those on a daily basis.

So, you see how this works right. Ash wants an entertainment center...I get a TV. We get a new TV...gotta get an HD DVR. Want to get rid of the receiver and the CD player and the speakers? Well we need a docking station then. You don't want me getting into a wreck do you? Well then I need a new car stereo. It's all justified. Paperwork's all there, look it over...

p.s. Count the parentheses in this post and you can understand why the blog is called Parenthetical. Hell I even get past the title without dropping a pair in there.