Chloe Elizabeth Santos

http://www.flickr.com/photos/63832469@N00/sets/72157594586791674/with/420355169/

Three days late but Chloe made it in at the very last hour of March 12th! 6 pounds 9 ounces and 19 inches long. Mom and baby are doing well and will be heading home tonight. Danny says “She’s really cute!” A good observation I’d say.

TV: Still Busted, Best Buy Warranty: Shitty

Quick rundown on the tv situation. It broke on Thursday, March 2nd. I didn’t think it was the lamp that was giving the trouble (DLP HDTV). Called the Best Buy Warranty hotline that night, they got in touch with the repair place in our area that they are hooked up with (Frontier something in Hackensack. Monday the 6th, tech dude comes with a new lamp and I’m right, it’s not the lamp. Said he’s gonna put in the order for a new circuit board, a whole new part for the TV basically. We wait a few days from there and call to see what’s up. Frontier says they will call us when the part comes in.

So what’s happened in the past week since the tech was here? Basically nothing. It’s the 12th today and we haven’t heard a word from anyway, we’re getting very close to 2 weeks of having a busted tv. After getting the run around from Samsung, Frontier and Best Buy (who will all blame each other and say they can’t do shit because it’s the other parties part in the chain that is being slow).

After pulling some teeth we find out that Frontier waited 2 days (Wed. the 8th) to submit a request to best buy to ok payment for the new part (think it’s a few hundred dollars). Best Buy took until Friday (the 10th) to approve the part. Shit head Frontier waited until TODAY to put in an order to Samsung for the part. So it will be 3-5 business days until they get the part. So we’re basically looking at getting the tech here on Friday if we’re lucky. Oh, and Frontier doesn’t send out techs on Saturdays. So if they don’t get the part by Thursday, we’re looking at Monday, the 19th for a repair date.

Money wise it’s not costing us anything to get the tv fixed but the time is totally unacceptable. Frontier doesn’t care with their shit service. I peg them as the worse offender here. Sitting on a work order for 2 days, no communication and lying about what stage they are on. And the woman answering the phone over there is a snooty bitch. Last “big ticket” item we purchase from Best Buy.

Korn Unplugged

11 tracks and it’s an excellent album. Breaths new life into many of their classics and the collaborations with Amy Lee from Evenesance and The Cure are fantastic. It’s really different and there is some brilliant music making all over the album. 3 songs were cut from the live performance, all of which you can find online at korn-locker.net. Thoughtless and No One’s There are both really good while Dirty was left off with good reason. It’s just not good, I’m convinced it’s just a studio song. I really like it on Issues, but all the times I’ve heard it live it doesn’t sound right and saps the energy from the show. The new unplugged version doesn’t improve it all.

I’m really psyched at how well this came out, I think it’ll hit the top 3 in sales for debut week.

I was right, not the light.

TV dude came by on time today and needs to order a new part for the TV. As I thought, it’s not the lamp. So he’s gonna put in the order for a new…thing. Looked like an entire motherboard section that goes in conjunction with the lamp. Hopefully it’s done by Friday…

Man Down!

Our Samsung TV is broken, troubling news indeed. No picture shows up and the tv shuts itself off after about a minute. The lamp is turning on and no warning LEDs stay on so it’s very strange. Hopefully it will be fixed by tomorrow. Maybe the lamp just needs to be reseated.

Also, the Korn Unplugged is fantastic. Airs on TV tonight at 11:30pm (EST) on MTV and the album hits stores on Tuesday.

Crackdown, first impressions.

Crackdown is the type of game that you sit down to play and the next time you look at the clock, you can’t believe that that much time has passed.

It’s a very simple game that has been designed incredibly well. This is it: Pacific City has gone to hell and the Agency (“The Man”) has resorted to making super cops to crackdown on crime. At the start you have better abilities than your average human, when you max your stats, you can make cars transform, you shoot guns like you were born with guns instead of hands, you can throw trucks 200 feet and your vertical leap is 30ft. Basically, you’re the Hulk. I think I’ve put in around 5 hours and the game just gets better and better. The game constantly rewards you by letting you do cooler and cooler shit as you go. The area design just gets better and better. The city (13 miles of land, 1 mile high ceiling) is broken up into 3 islands, with a crime family on each one. 3 mob bosses, with 6 underlings below him. Take out the mini bosses (so to speak) and the thugs lose power, the get weaker, their guns get worse, that sort of thing.

So you basically run around and lay out justice anyway you see fit. The game looks fantastic, basically a comic book GTA that doesn’t look like ass and the sound design is phenominal. And it has online 2 player co-op which just makes the game better.

Another amazing game on the XBOX 360.

Movie rundown

I’ve seen a bunch of movies lately, here’s a quick rundown:

Idiocracy: Mike Judges latest film that was delayed for ages and then pretty much ignored due to a limited release. It’s about a guy (Luke Wilson) who is frozen for an army experiment when some bad things go down and he wakes up 499 years later than he should have. He’s now in a world where this average man is now the smartest man on the planet. It’s definatly no Office Space. There are some funny sections, but the movie is really just average. The story could have done more but what was there (looks good, very good cast) works well, it’s really just not very memoriable. Can’t say I recommend it.

Dead Man’s Shoes: A film from over the pond. With some heavy English/Scottish accents this movie can be hard to understand at times, but it was a quality film. The main character has a retarded (more slow really, not hardcore) brother who he watches over. But when he goes into the service, his brother falls in with the wrong crowd by a case of being in the wrong place in the wrong time. He’s taken advantage of and tortured by these people and when big brother gets back in town and finds out…revenge and personal justice is a painful ordeal. It’s a quality film from start to finish, this is the directors 4th feature film. There’s a few twists and turns and while it takes a bit to get going, it’s a powerful movie. Great acting with solid directing this is a great down to earth revenge film to check out. I even liked the ending.

The Illusionist: What a cool movie. Edward Norton, one of my favorite actors stars with Paul Giamatti and the gorgeous Jessica Biel. A story in the early 1900’s, Ed Norton is the son of a furniture maker, Jessica is a well off Dutchess. They meet in their early teens and fall in love, but as a Dutchess, Jessica is sworn from ever seeing Ed again. Ed has been fascinated with magic and when the two are torn apart, he disappears and travels the world. 15 years later, he comes back and he’s a master Illusionist, learned from the top minds in the world. The two meet again at one of his performances where we meet her boyfriend, the Prince. Two seperated souls meet again later in life, but they’re still not allowed to be together. Much more of a love story than I thought it was going to be, the Illusionist mixes fate, destiny love and magic into a beautiful tale. Awesome acting and a great story combine to make a movie I highly recommend.

The Science of Sleep: Michel Gondry, who last directed Dave Chappelle’s Block Party and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind brings us this bore of a movie. Stephen’s father has died of cancer and he comes back home to his mother who lives in France to work with a calender company that his mom sets him up with. Stephen has a wild mind as we see that Stephen has a hard time keeping his dreams and real life seperate. Brought home on false pretenses by his mother, Stephen hates his new job but falls in love with the girl who lives next door. The movie constantly switches between and merges between Stephens dream world and the real world. I give a lot of credit to Gondry for the visual aspects of the film but it’s the main character that ruined it for me. Stephen is a giant pussy. He’s a 12 year old in the body of a 20 something year old. His social skills are just like an adolescent, he’s awkward, says weird shit and crys like a bitch with a skinned knee. The whole time I was waiting for him to grow a pair and not be such a bitch but that never happens, he likes to analyze shit in his dreams and it gets so bad that stuff he does in his dreams (like write a confession note to Stephanie, the girl he likes) he really does without realizing it. For awhile there I thought he had narcolepsy because he pops in out out of his dream mind so fast it’s ridiculous. He’s really a nut I guess. I really didn’t like it because I couldn’t get on the side of Stephen, he’s too damn irritating to like. Skip this and watch the far superior Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

Snow Day!

East Coast weather in the Tri-state area is shitty today resulting in more ice than snow. So bad that my office closed, which never happens. Good day to clean up some stuff I’ve been putting off for too long.