I love my TV. Love it. I bought it two years ago and haven't looked back.

Until, of course, this weekend, when, as I was sitting there having a great time watching movies, I noticed that the bottom corners of the picture look distorted, like there's some magnetic interference or something going on there. Very slight, but once I noticed it, it stuck out like a sore thumb and I couldn't not look at it.

I went looking for my receipt, which should accompany my warranty information. I found the user manual and the factory warranty, but no receipt. I mean, I found every receipt to almost everything I own, but no TV receipt. I'm sure I put it in some secure place I wouldn't forget. So secure, it's safe even from me.

This put me into panic mode. See, the TV is just out of factory warranty. For the life of me, I couldn't remember if I had bought the extended warranty or not, and not having the receipt, I couldn't say.

I called the place I bought the TV this morning and, sure enough, I was smart enough to go for the extended warranty. (I think I worked it in for free because the TV was such a high-ticket item.) Awesome. A huge load off my chest, because I was thinking I was going to end up with a $3000, 300-pound lump in the middle of my living room.

Today has seen a flurry of phone calls. To the store I bought the TV at, to the repair shop, to the electronics warranty firm... and I think it's worked out now so a guy will call me on Wednesday to schedule the time to come in and check it out.

Here's hoping for goodness. I barely slept last night between that and work stressing me out. Sometimes I'm thinking that life is just downs with a small series of ups. I really hope I'm just being pessimistic.

I bought my first house this year and it sorta drained the funds a bit. We've recovered (financially speaking) for the most part, but I've still got stuff like the "no interest/no payments" thing on our washer and dryer hanging over me and that has to be paid... we're not quite back to where we were.

And then I did my taxes.

I've had to pay for the last three years. I mean, just bend me over. This year, I'm getting a refund. A refund. Enough to pay off that washer and dryer and maybe get a new dishwasher because the one we have sucks donkey.

A refund, I tell you! I'm stoked.

Remember my request for a suicide pill last Friday? How we spent a day and a half (all of Friday and first half of Monday) coming up with a new schedule?

Yesterday at 9:30a we got to do it all again, this time in some attempt to move the project structure around to some nefarious end I have yet to fully grasp, all by 3:00p.

Well, I didn't make that deadline (I made a SWAG at it by 5:00p and that was the end of my patience with it), because it involved - once again - re-assessing all of the requirements (there are six different requirements documents we have to look at and triage through), this time looking at different things than before due to the structure upheaval. I'm anticipating not making several other deadlines on that schedule, too, because of the lack of time allocated to developing it.

I expressed some discomfort at the process and was told "that's what it's like working in a product organization." I was offended by that for two reasons: First, it implies I've never "worked in a product organization," which is blatantly incorrect and further implies a lack of respect for my expertise. Second, I should dearly hope that not every product organization goes through this many reschedules on a project.

Anyway, I'm bitter today, and have been since yesterday. I barely got any sleep, I'm so pissed off. Hopefully that will pass by, I dunno, Sunday. So that I can "bitter-up" for work bright and early Monday morning.

I do know that I'm tired of trying to go the "extra mile." I come in at 7:00a and leave at 6:00p, even if it's not "crunch time," helping others solve their problems and working toward a more holistic solution for problems rather than just slapping a bunch of haphazard code together. Everyone else punches in at 9 and leaves at 5. I'm thinking 7 - 3 sounds mighty fine right about now.

DXCore, the core engine behind CodeRush for Visual Studio .NET, has been released to the public as a free download.

This is a great thing for anyone interested in extending the Visual Studio environment. DXCore is everything that the Visual Studio extensibility team should have implemented to begin with. It's easy to make Visual Studio add-ins, it's easy to create graphic assistance within the Visual Studio editor, it's easy to do great things to enhance your productivity.

Plus, that's what my CR_Documentor add-in is based on, and you all want that, right?

Go get your free copy of DXCore!

(And once you fall in love with that, get CodeRush and Refactor! - you'll never look back.)

I got JHymn set up and running to perform almost exactly the same action as my M4P Backup script. The difference is that my backup script created the unlocked M4A file in the same folder as the original M4P, then copied both the M4A and M4P into the backup location; the configuration of JHymn that I'm using just creates the M4A in the backup location - it doesn't back up the M4P, nor does it place a copy of the M4A alongside the original M4P. Other configurations of JHymn can do things like replace the original M4P with the decoded M4A... but I didn't want to go that route.

Anyway, here's my JHymn configuration. I've upgraded to iTunes 4.7.1 and everything works fine. Click the screen shots to get a larger view.

It looks as though JHymn is the only supported version of hymn left, at least, according to the hymn forums.

JHymn has a lot more flexibility than hymn did, but doesn't seem to have a command line interface, which makes it difficult to integrate into a script. That said, it does have functionality to back up your protected music to a new location once it's scrubbed of DRM, so it sort of does what my M4P Backup script did anyway.

I'll have to get this thing running, then I'll share my settings with the rest of you.

I am sitting in what has to be the most boring meeting ever conceived by man.

Born of the devil, bred to destroy, this meeting has set upon me like a deadly tsunami, enveloping me in the most horrid embodiment of ennui I've encountered in a long, long time.

Supposedly this is a planning meeting that is supposed to get the developers involved in setting up the schedule for the project I'm on. The idea is that if the developers are involved in the planning, they may be more likely to meet they dates they commit to.

That's a lie.

In reality, this is an open forum for discussing anything that even peripherally relates to the project, all simultaneously, none of which impacts my portion of the project. A massive amount of discussion has gone on simply to determine "how do we call something 'done?'" That was one of the multithreaded conversations flowing about the room, bombarding my senses.

There is no order, only chaos.

And I have to be honest: this thing was meant to engender a sense of ownership and commitment, but I've passed the point of caring. My 15 minute meeting attention span was over four hours and 45 minutes ago. There's no sign of this stopping.

I've tried to actually get something done in here, but the ergonomics of working in a bad chair at a conference room table are beyond description. My back is killing me, my nerves are wracked, my concentration is totally shot. I can't get anything done, but I can't concentrate on anything going on here.

At this point all I can do is pray for death. If I had a secret agent suicide pill I'd use it. I can't take this anymore. It's killing me.

Just read an article over at harriyott.com: Looks like there are JavaScript functions built into IE that not only allow a site to set the contents of your clipboard but retrieve them as well.

IE users, try this one on for size (this only works with Internet Explorer, to my knowledge):

First, click this link to copy the phrase "My Dog Has Fleas" to your clipboard. Now open up a Notepad window (or whatever your favorite text editor is) and paste it in - sure enough, it adds info to your clipboard.

Now copy some arbitrary text to your clipboard. Doesn't matter what it is - type something in that Notepad window, or highlight something on this page, and copy it. Now click this link to show your clipboard contents.

Pretty freaky, huh?

For the curious... the "insert data into clipboard" code is:
window.clipboardData.setData('Text', 'My Dog Has Fleas');

...and the "retrieve data from clipboard" code is:
window.clipboardData.getData('Text');

Jack Black can't write.

I borrowed a couple of episodes of Tenacious D from a friend of mine to watch. He was telling me that it was hysterical. I was excited to check them out.

Hoo boy.

See, I love Jack Black. I think he's hilarious in stuff I've seen him in. But this just wasn't funny, and I can chalk it up to one of two things: Either he's one of those people who is either "hot or not" (and I got two "not" episodes) or Jack Black can't write.

The key here is that when I've seen him being funny, it's him acting out someone else's writing. The Tenacious D stuff is his. And it's not funny. Or maybe I just "don't get it." There were a couple of funny parts, but by and large... well, let's say I'm not going to run out and rent the DVDs any time soon.

I completed my headlight quest yesterday and as a final step took the newly purchased bulb to the local Oil Can Henry's to get it put into the car. They did it last time, too, and cost me $10 for the job. I figure, it's $10 worth of headache they're saving me, and it's worth every penny.

They serviced the car right there in the parking lot - I didn't even have to drive into the garage. That said, it did take about half an hour to finish. (Which I expected; it's a real pain to get into my headlights. You have to take, like, half the engine out to get there.)

When all was said and done, the guy went in to run my debit card and came back, saying all of the registers were being used and to just forget it - it was on the house. He just said, "Come in for your next oil change, eh?"

I actually felt bad - the guy had worked his ass off for that $10 and he didn't even take it. He just wanted the repeat business for later.

That's customer service. Sort of the way Les Schwab will fix flat tires for free. I'll definitely be hitting Oil Can Henry's in the future, and if you get the opportunity, I recommend it (at least, the one in Tanasbourne, Hillsboro, OR). They're good people.

Three months ago I went on this ridiculous mission to replace my headlights. The driver's side had gone out.

Well, it's out again.

I considered that this is pretty quick to lose a headlight, but if you think of the law of averages, I gotta chalk this one up to bad luck. So, I'm after another new headlight. This time I won't be replacing both, though.

That said, I've been to almost every auto parts store in the area and none of them have the kind of headlight I want in stock (Sylvania H1ST). I was going to go out searching some more today (the quest started last night) but the roads are all iced over, so I'm staying home, watching movies.

I will return to the quest on the morrow. And rest well knowing that I will prevail.

I got the Bose Acoustimass 16 setup running and let me tell you:

It is absolutely fucking amazing.

I had the Acoustimass 6 series running before - passive subwoofer, five single-cube satellite speakers. Loved it. This new set has an active sub and six double-cube satellite speakers.

I thought my old system was great, but this blows it out of the water. It's like gold plating the gold I already had. I've been watching movies and stuff all day and I don't think I'm going to leave the living room ever again.

The only downside is that my amp doesn't do 6.1 surround, only 5.1, so the center-rear channel isn't hooked up. Guess it's time to upgrade that amplifier, eh?

Anyone looking for a gift for me can hook me up with the new Star Wars Mr. Potato Head, "Darth Tater," or the Jawa sandcrawler-esque JL421 Badonkadonk Land Cruiser/Tank.

While waiting for CSI to come on last night, Jenn and I were flipping channels and came across The Surreal Life. I'd never watched the show before so I didn't know what to expect, other than folks said it was pretty funny. This was the season four opener, so I figured it'd be a good intro to what's what.

Holy

Shit.

Honestly, I could not stop laughing. The ridiculousness of the whole thing was overwhelming. See, they've got a couple of halfway normal folks on there (Christopher Knight and Da Brat seem to have things reasonably together), and then you've got Verne Troyer and Joanie Laurer on the other side of that logic boundary.

Let's just say this: The show ended with Verne Troyer - Mini-Me - drunk, naked, sitting on a scooter peeing in the corner of the living room. Seriously. There's video of it on VH1's site. Check it out.

My driver's side headlight is out again, so that's some more car maintenance I didn't want to deal with. I'm kind of irritated about it, but what are you going to do?

Jenn handed me a yogurt for breakfast this morning. I got to work and saw it was way expired. That and the headlight are shaping my day up nicely.

My Bose Acoustimass 16's are going to be in at the store tonight, so I've got to go pick those up. I have to look at that as the bright spot in my day, even if it is costing me a bit.

My M4P Backup script has problems now that iTunes 4.7.1 has come out (because hymn, which I use for automated unlocking of the protected files, doesn't support stripping of individual tags), but I don't see any releases of hymn approaching to fix the issue, so that may mean switching to JHymn and just using a proper combination of options there to get the job done. I kinda wish there was a command-line interface to JHymn, or that hymn itself would be updated with some additional switches, but I'm not prepared to put in the work myself to get that to happen.

And I thought Legos were cool. Check this out: Create your own corporate labyrinth with The Cubes. Read about 'em, then buy 'em.

The holiday season has come and gone, and while the money's still a little tight, I decided to commit to buy a few things with some money I'd saved up for the purpose combined with some gift certificates and other money I got for Christmas.

First on the list, I special ordered (from Magnolia Audio/Video) the Bose Acoustimass 16 series 6.1 speaker system. They said it'd take a couple of weeks to get here, so it's not in place yet, but I'm very anxious. It's on the way.

Then I took an iTunes gift card I got from my mom and I've been getting songs and stuff. That's fun, and I can see where it would become addictive. Like, it's "only a dollar" for a song, but I could easily nickel-and-dime myself to death. The only downside is the stupid 128kbps sample rate; all of my stuff is 256kbps AAC, and if I'm buying songs where I'll never have the original CD to resample, I'd at least like a really high quality digital file.

Of course, in the purchasing of songs I realized that there were a couple of CDs I wanted, and I haven't bought a CD in a long time, so I ordered Bobby Brown's Greatest Hits and the new Avril Lavigne album, Under My Skin. Both are excellent and have been rocking my iPod since.

I had bought a shirt for Jenn for Christmas but I got her the wrong size, so I gave that one to my sister and Jenn decided she wanted a The Cheat shirt instead, so I got her that. While I was there, I got myself a copy of the first 100 Strong Bad Emails DVD set. How could I pass?

And, of course, I got a GameCube for Christmas, and it came with a gift certificate for $15 off a game, so I went to the local Target and picked up Pac Man Fever and Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour. Both are fun, and Jenn and I regularly compete at golf. Neither of us are all that good, but it's a lot of fun.

In other news, it was my friend Stuart's birthday yesterday, so we took him out to lunch at work, and tonight we're going Cosmic Bowling. Should be fun.

The new version, which requires CodeRush 1.1.8 / DXCore 1.1.10, has been released and provides the following updates:

Added support for ECMA "block" tag.

Added support for "obsolete" tag.

Added support for use of "style" and "align" attribute on "para" and "note" tags.

Fixed issue where code and other text containing encoded XML entities would not properly render.

Fixed placeholder support for "include" tag at top level of documentation.

Added language word expansions when using "<see langword="*" />" tags.

Fixed issue where empty tags might potentially render twice ("<br />" would become "<br><br>").

Go get it!

Saw The Aviator this weekend, the movie about Howard Hughes.

The story takes you from Hughes's childhood through the flight of the Spruce Goose (which now resides in my home state of Oregon). I won't get too much into the story, since it is a biopic, but it is a fascinating trip.

I wasn't too hopeful considering I'm not a big Leo DiCaprio fan, but Howard Hughes is a very intriguing figure to me. By the end of the movie, DiCaprio was Howard Hughes. Not to mention Cate Blanchett does a great job as Katharine Hepburn, and how can you deny the draw of Kate Beckinsale as Ava Gardner?

The cool thing is, this movie was good from any standpoint you take: historian, aviation fan, or drama lover. There's something for everyone here. A great historic story, some wonderful airplane history and information, and a beautiful story.

The effects were also well done; seeing them build and fly the Spruce Goose was almost like being there. I've never actually seen it in real life; seeing as how it's local, I am now absolutely convinced I need to visit.

Check it out; this one's well worth the money to see, and with the size of the plane Hughes built, how can you not see it on the big screen?

All email has been read and action is now being taken to control all damage done in my absence. I should know better than to leave for longer than two days.

I'm back at work today. 109 unread emails and untold number of crises to avert. Here we go.