Star Wars Blue-Ray Announced

Good news, bad news from /Film.  George Lucas announced all six Star Wars movies will be released in a blue-ray box set in Fall 2011.

My first thought:  No way in heck am I going to spend my money on the prequels, even if they are bundled with the original trilogy.  If I'm willing to wait for The Matrix to come out on blue-ray by itself and not bundled in a trilogy, I can wait for the original Star Wars movies. 

My second thought:  I still won't spend my money on anything except the original theatrical releases of Episodes IV - VI.  No special editions.  Heck, I'd even buy unremastered, VCR-quality original versions on blue-ray. No extras required.

Hear that, Mr. Lucas?  I bet you'd make even more wads of cash if you release the original theatrical release versions, too.  I'm patient.  I'm hoping your plan is to make all the money you can with selling the prequels and special editions before offering the original release versions, and make even more gazillions.

Garmin Nuvi 755T

I purchased a Garmin Nuvi 755T two or three years ago and for the most part I've been fairly satisfied.  I even bought a life-time map subscription for it, though recently I've been wondering if that may have been a mistake.  Why is that?  Read on!

First, I have to say that 90-95% of the time the 755T does what I want a portable GPS to do... give me driving directions.  I forget whether the 755T has additional features like playing music or showing pictures, features I could care less about.  I picked up the 755T because it came with both Canada and U.S.A. maps, had a decent screen size (at the time) and had reasonably positive reviews.

Unfortunately, the map updates haven't been entirely successful.  I say that because I know of three different big-chain, international retail store locations in my area that the 755T places on the wrong side of the street.  This despite updating my maps less than a month ago and the locations being there for years.  I know a Sony Style location where my GPS takes me to the completely wrong exit with no Sony Style in sight.  No shopping mall, either.

All of the above I can live with.  What now has me doubting the longevity of the Garmin Nuvi 755T are two incidences which I describe as epic fails.  Actually, perhaps I should say three instances, though the third may be partly my fault, too.

1. Last year sometime I was in Niagara Falls, NY little more than one hour drive from my home in the Land of Tim Hortons.  The 755T had been completely successful guiding me there.  The EPIC FAIL occurred when I tried to get the 755T to guide me back home.  The route calculation stopped at 99% and no further.  I turned the GPS off, waited a couple minutes, turned it back on, and it still wouldn't work, still stuck at 99%.  In disbelief I repeated this process with no improvement in outcome.  It was quite a quandary.  Since I'd followed the GPS directions to get there I hadn't paid particular attention to the roads I'd taken, making back-tracking problematic.  Anywhoo, to cut this particular story short, I eventually managed to find my way back, though along a different and longer route than I'd hoped.  Once I got home I was so frustrated I ignored the 755T for a while, and when there was a firmware update the 755T worked again, so I thought the problem solved.  Not quite.
2. Fast forward many months and full moons.  My 755T FAILED AGAIN in the exact same city.  I was once again in Niagara Falls, NY, and once again when trying to get directions home the 755T route calculation stuck at 99%.  AGAIN.  Something very strange is happening with Niagara Falls, NY.  I purchased the 755T when I was still living in the U.S.A. and it worked (except for a time in the dead of night somewhere in PA where I lost all satellite signal for a critical 5 minutes or so, sending me off in the completely wrong direction).  So... something odd with Niagara Falls, NY.  This incident wasn't quite so stressful because I had a clearer memory of how to get back to Whirlpool Bridge.  This time I managed to "recover" my GPS while on the QEW.  Simply powering off, waiting a couple minutes, powering on again still didn't work.  Here's what did work for me:  My GPS was powered up and plugged in to the 12V outlet.  I pulled out the 12V adapter and let the GPS shut itself off automatically after the 30 second countdown.  I left it off for at least 10 minutes.  I turned it back on and the 755T was back to normal, no longer stuck at 99% and I could now successfully get new directions.
3. This last incident I'm going to relate was partially my fault.  I was on the U.S.A. side of Niagara Falls.  I was 10 minutes away from Whirlpool Bridge, my preferred border crossing.  I asked the 755T for directions to the bridge and was on my way.  This is where blame rests partially on me.  I glanced at the "time to destination" on my GPS and saw "10" so I thought, good, it's correct.  I should have looked more closely but I was on the road for about 20 minutes before I realized the indicator was saying ten HOURS and not ten minutes.  Eh?  What had happened was that the 755T was guiding me to the Canadian side of Whirlpool Bridge without actually taking me across Whirlpool Bridge.  Mind boggling.  As far as I could gather in my stressed out state, it was taking me far, far, far north to cross the border, then all the way back south to reach the Canadian side of Whirlpool Bridge.  Turning off the 'avoid toll roads' feature didn't do anything.  No amount of swearing and re-routing fixed the problem.  Nowadays I have two addresses programmed in for Whirlpool Bridge -- one for the Canadian side and one for the U.S.A. side.  If I'm in NY going to Canada I get directions using the latter, if I'm in Canada heading to the U.S.A I have the 755T use the former address.
4. Oh, yeah.  I updated maps plus firmware several days ago.  Yesterday, in the midst of a single trip the 755T asked me to input my PIN... TWICE.  What's even more odd is that the audio directions apparently still worked; it was just the map/picture that was kaput until I re-input my PIN.  Not the most convenient thing to do while driving at highway speeds.

The 755T works adequately in the Land of Tim Hortons and Toronto,  It worked fine in the Washington DC beltway and surrounding environs.  It worked fine for two round-trips driving from DC to Canada, but as I said something strange is going on with Niagara Falls, NY.  All of this has made me start wondering whether I should get a new portable GPS, and if so whether getting another Garmin (but different model) would just be asking for trouble.

Gas at the Pump, or Not

There's something odd happening with some gasoline stations.  I think it has to do with the pump pressure detector/setting, whatever it is that detects a full tank and makes the nozzle "click" and stop pumping gas.  I've discovered that with certain gas stations the nozzle "clicks" even though I know the tank isn't full.

Example.  I was at a Sunoco with about 1/5 left in the tank.  The first "click" happened after 2 gallons.  A full tank is 14-15 gallons.  From 2 gallons on filling up was torture.  Every couple seconds another click.  It didn't matter how much pressure I applied.  Click click click click....  I took the nozzle out and put it back in again.  Click click click click click click....  More pressure on the lever, click click click click....  Less pressure, click click click click....

At least for Sunoco this only happens at certain locations, and some worse than others.  I completely refuse to go to any Petro Canada these days because this problem happens to me at all their locations in the Land of Tim Hortons.

I lived in the U.S.A. for several years, and this only happened to me at one particular Shell station and at Sunoco a time or two.  In the Land of Tim Hortons I've found one Shell station where this problem never happens.  So I don't believe it's a problem caused by how I pump gas.  It's not rocket science.  At least, I hope not.

Windows 7: Let There Be Sound

A week or so ago I finally got around to clean-installing Windows 7 on to my desktop.  It was fairly painless and seemed to install quicker than previous O/S installations.

All was fine for about a week when my audio abruptly died.  In the morning it was working fine before I shut down my computer.  That evening when I turned on my PC there was no more sound.

This was especially strange since literally nothing had been done between the time I turned the PC off and when I turned it back on to hear only silence.  No plugging or unplugging stuff at all.

Hovering the mouse over the speaker/volume icon on the taskbar gave me the message "No Audio Output device is installed".  My PC came with an Avermedia M780 PCIe NTSC/ATSC Combo sound card and according to both the manufacturer website and Windows Update I had the latest drivers installed (ver 2.5.0.32; date 11JUN2009).  Device Manager said "This device is working properly".

The audio-out/headphone jack wouldn't work, either.

The Windows 7 Playing Audio troubleshooting wizard couldn't identify the problem.  All my web searches basically ended up talking about Windows 7 compatibility and installing the latest driver -- nothing that solved the sound of silence emanating from my PC.

I checked my PC speakers on my Netbook and they worked fine.

I thought perhaps the sound card drivers had been corrupted or something, so I installed an older driver version (which still didn't work), then re-installed the updated drivers.  Reboot.  Nothing.


So... instead of wasting any more time I went to Best Buy to buy the cheapest PCI sound card I could find compatible with my computer and Windows 7.

Opened CPU, 1 minute.  Bemoaned the fact I didn't have an empty PCI slot, 5 seconds.  Wondered what the cable that was attached to the Avermedia sound card was for, 10 seconds.  Removed telephone/fax PCI card, 1 minute.  Installed new sound card, 20 seconds.  Reassembled CPU and reattached plethora of cables, 30 seconds.  Turned on computer, installed drivers from CD, rebooted, 5 minutes.

Sound, sweet sound.

Anywhoo, my Avermedia card is still installed so if I ever get bored maybe I'll continue trying to figure out how to fix it, or perhaps Windows Update will come out with new drivers in the future.  For now, though, I'll let it be.

Happy Canada Day: Pay More Taxes

I wonder if whoever decided to start the HST (in BC and Ontario) on Canada Day noticed the incongruity.  Here we are, celebrating Canada's 143rd birthday by paying more taxes.  Happy, happy day.

The Best Way to Lose Weight

Recently I've re-started exercising regularly to return to a healthier weight.  I've found that the best motivational tool to avoid eating or snacking too much is to weigh myself every day.  Eating that muffin or chowing down on free food at a seminar is suddenly much less appealing when I wonder how much  it would set me back in terms of re-gaining weight I'd worked hard to lose. Is that extra slice really worth wasting the week's effort I spent to lose x kg?

Appaloosa

I watched Appaloosa, the other day, staring Ed Harris and Viggo Mortensen.  I was pleasantly surprised.  Despite renting Appaloosa with reasonable expectations this film was even better.

Appaloosa is a classic Western about two long-time friends and law-men for hire, hired to clean up a town after its marshal was killed while trying to arrest a couple murderers.  Mortensen and Harris play the two main characters and they both performed very well.


I liked this film enough that I'm even considering actually buying Appaloosa for my collection.  My only question right now is whether the character played by Renee Zellweger will survive multiple viewings, given how unappealing I found the character to be.

I give Appaloosa 4 out 5 stars.