Feeling Like An Idiot
December 28, 2008
As a pretty technical savvy guy, I am feeling like quite an idiot tonight. For the last year or two since we replaced our last HDTV with our current model, we have struggled with an issue on the TV that I have been unable to resolve. But, that’s not where the problem really lies.
This Samsung DLP TV has been a really good TV. I have set up a movie mode that is a series of settings optimized for TV viewing at night. However, whenever I would select this movie mode I had created and calibrated, the setting would revert back to default or dynamic mode after about 30 minutes.
It was really aggravating while watching a movie to have to change the settings back every 30 minutes during the movie. It definitely interrupted the flow of the movie.
I had scoured the manual and settings on the TV looking for a way to rid the TV of this cursed devil, but to no avail. Tonight, while watching Indiana Jone IV, it reached a breaking point. After the movie I vowed to find a solution to this problem. I searched the net once again for other folks with the same problem and came up pretty empty.
I sadly marched back into the room where Suzanne and Sean were watching special features and announced that “I was unsuccessful in finding a solution to the Toshiba TV switching modes automatically”. To which Suzanne calmly responded “That’s nice, but our TV is a Samsung”.
Have you ever had one of those “Oh Sh*t!” moments? Well, that was one of those moments Big Time. I promptly went back to the computer and searched again with the right brand of TV and instantly found thousands of hits with other folks having the same problem.
Turns out there is a Shop Mode on Samsung TVs for display in the showroom of stores. It reverts the TV settings back to default every 30 minutes to account for potential customers messing with the settings. Great for the store, but not great for the consumer. Luckily, armed with info from the net, I was able to get it out of shop mode in about 30 seconds and I am a happy camper now – except for still feeling pretty stupid over the whole internet searching deal.
Smoking and Super Heroes
December 27, 2008
Yesterday I put my new Christmas present, a smoker to the test. We also decided to have a Super Hero movie marathon to watch three relatively new movies that we hadn’t yet seen.
I spent a fair amount of time yesterday getting the meats ready to smoke. I had decided to smoke a top loin pork roast, some boneless, skinless chicken breasts and some pork baby back ribs. I prepared a cure or a marinade for all of them and let them sit over night.
I decided to smoke the meats with apple wood. After warming up the smoker, in went the pork. I had planned to smoke the pork roast for 6 or 7 hours. A couple of hours later, the ribs went in, followed by the chicken a couple of hours later. All three were smoked at a temperature between 200 and 220 degrees F.
A fair amount of smoke was thrown up throughout the day and it sure smelled good. We had a mixture of rain and snow throughout the afternoon and the smoker did fine holding the temperature of the inside. And the taste of the food???
The food tasted wonderful. The pork was just absolutely perfect. It came cooked to a very nice white with a nice smoke ring around it. The taste was my favorite of the three. The ribs and chicken were also very good. We now have enough food to eat for a week. Everyone, except for Sean, really liked the flavor of the meats. He was a bit less enthusiastic. I now look forward to using my new smoker to try a bunch of other things.
During the evening and night, we enjoyed three recent super hero movies. The movies were Batman – Dark Knight, Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk. Of course, all three were Blu Ray versions of the movie. The hands down winner for our family was Iron Man.
All three movies make you suspend belief and reality. While the Academy Awards are likely to disagree with us, Batman was the least enjoyable of the three. Also, the movie just seemed too long and could have ended at several points along the way. Heath Ledger was very good as the Joker, but the movie was not quite as good and seem fixated on him. Iron Man was just more enjoyable and kept you fixated on the storyline the whole way through the movie.
It was kind of funny to see The Hulk feature a few moments of Iron Man in it. I think the two movies may have set themselves up to do a combined follow on movie that features the two super heroes from it.
We had a forth “super hero” move, Hancock, but ran out of energy before we could get to it. So, we will view it later this weekend.
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