We already get our landline through AT&T, but they have assured us that the digital line would be even better and have more services.  Also, the Internet service would be twice as fast as what we currently receive from them.  In addition, they were very excited about how much better the cable services were over those provided by the Dish Network.  This would include on-demand programming and multiple HD feeds to the DVR. We decided to give it a try.

We checked online for U-Verse reviews.  Some people loved the service, some people hated the service.  Apparently, if something goes wrong, everything goes wrong.  However, from what I can tell, the installations are getting much better over time and less problems are appearing due to installation issues.  I guess we’ll see how our experience turns out.

It took a week for the stand to get in stock though, and in that time we just left the new TV on the floor, where the old TV used to be.  We just looked down at it.  When the stand finally arrived, Uncle Glenn went with me to pick it up in his truck.  As I’ve mentioned before, oak furniture is very heavy.  We carried it inside and lifted the new TV onto it (that thing is 140 pounds!).  Everything fit in place, more or less.

I had moved the ends of the entertainment center farther apart so that there is now sixty inches of space between them for the TV.  Even with five feet open, there is very little room for the TV since it’s fifty-six inches wide.  Sadly, the TV stand is only fifty-four inches across, so there is a little gap on either side of it now between it and either side of the entertainment center.  You can barely tell…

But we also found some more room.  Because our old projection TV was three feet deep, we had the entertainment center pushed a foot away from the wall so that the screen would be flush with the front of the enclosure.  Since the new TV takes up much less room, we were able to push the entertainment center against the wall, buying us a foot of space.  Our living room is now a foot bigger!

Once the new TV was set up in the living room, the old projection screen still had to go somewhere.  I wanted to move it downstairs, but there was already a set down there.  We ended up storing that one into a closet.  The large oak cabinet that had served as a TV stand was scooted over and the projection TV was put in its place.  Chrissy’s Dad helped me move everything.

Now we have ridiculously large televisions both upstairs AND downstairs.   But carrying the TVs and furniture around was harder to do than it sounds.  Trust me, projection screen televisions were not meant to roll down stairs.  But it all worked out!

It was decided that we would start looking for a new TV to replace our older 57″ projection screen.  With Black Friday approaching, we knew that our best chance for finding a good deal would mean camping out in the cold at 3 AM.  A few stores advertised the same Samsung 55″ LED HDTV at over $1000 off.  However, we stumbled across a better sale price online while researching our options.

The Sears web site had an LG 60″ Plasma HDTV on sale for $1600 less than list price.  This model was rated #1 by Consumer Reports in its size class.  It included the wi-fi connector in the box as well.  We couldn’t believe the price, but then pulled the trigger when we got free shipping thrown in.  Overall, we only spent $200 more than the Samsung deal and got a bigger set without camping out.

Many of these shows were sadly culled to make room for crap like Ghost Hunters, canceled before their time (Farscape, Stargate Atlantis, Dresden Files) or good only for timely, yet entertaining, filler (Painkiller Jane, Earth: Final Conflict, Sarah Jane Adventures).  But the few still remaining have been moved to Tuesday night.  In only its second season, Stargate Universe has been moved from Friday night, along with Caprica, also in its second season.

I recently saw a video where Brad Wright, the producer of Stargate Universe, alludes to being worried about getting another season now that they have been moved to Tuesdays.  In light of this, I’m surprised that Caprica got another season at all.  It even started two weeks after the Stargate season premiere, so quietly that I didn’t even notice.  Sanctuary will probably end up on Tuesday as well, but I stopped watching that last year even though I dig Amanda Tapping.

Chrissy and I have watched “The Biggest Loser” on Tuesdays (while eating ice cream on our couch) for as long as I can remember, so I have to record Stargate Universe to watch later on.  Because of this, I didn’t even know that Caprica had come back until almost a week later.  Well, that just gives me an excuse not to watch it anymore.  Their first season was dog boring, lacking any of the action of its origin series, Battlestar Galactica.  I really tried to like it though.

And now the insulting part.  Do you know what is replacing the best sci-fi on television on Friday nights?  Professional wrestling.  Just kill me now.  I am being deprived of Sci-Fi Friday, a tradition long held in high regard in my family, for wrestling.  Change is bad, people!  I don’t know how much the WWE paid SyFy for the rights to do this (I’ve heard that it’s a lucrative market), but until they plan on changing their name to the “Wrestling Channel”, it wasn’t worth it.

The concert, if you could call it that, was about a week away.  Chrissy called around to see if others would like tickets too.  Since we had free tickets, several of Chrissy’s friends brought their young children to see the show with us.  In all, we used about thirty-two tickets and filled up three rows at the theater.  We picked up the Choo Choo Soul CD at Borders so that we would know all of the songs ahead of time.

The show wasn’t terrible, but I kind of expected more from Disney.  The television show centers around Genevieve, the shapely conductor on a cartoon train, and DC, who is the engineer.  The show has a train that kind of grooves its way along the track to different locales while Genevieve sings about numbers or letters or colors and DC drives the train.  The stage show was completely different.

The biggest difference was that there was no Choo Choo.  We got to see Genevieve in her conductor outfit.  DC was there as well, and he had a turntable on a podium, the front covered by a Choo Choo Soul banner.  I was wondering what he was going to do, since he had no train to drive on the stage.  He was doing something like performance art that you would see in a public park, with some breakdancing, beat boxing, and doing the robot, complete with voice vocoder.  But no Choo Choo.  As it was, I had seen similar shows on Hollywood Boulevard.  You toss quarters at people doing this type of thing in Grant Park.

Considering that the show is about the Choo Choo, I would have expected to see the train there.  But there were only two people on the stage against a black backdrop.  The Imagination Movers concert had a large projection screen against the back wall where are the Warehouse Mouse made a virtual appearance.  I would have expected to see the same thing with the Choo Choo at the very least.  The train could have made an appearance that way, if not in a real physical way.

The boys loved it.  Aiden was dancing in the aisles along with all the other kids that came along with our group.  The performers actually encouraged this from the stage.  Katie and Felice had come with us, so there was no shortage of people to hold onto Gavin and Aiden when they got tired.  The boys seemed to have a good time and were excited to see Genevieve and DC.  Overall, we were happy that we got to take our kids to the show, but we would have been upset if we had paid for it.  We saw that the tickets were being sold for $20-$30 each online, so we were happy that we saw it for free.

But had something changed since I was younger?  The whole thing seemed to be about the commercialism of the holiday.  Charlie Brown complains about his dog who’s only in it for the money, and his sister who’s only in it for the gifts and the cash (despite not being old enough to write her own Christmas list), and the implication that you can’t have a good Christmas without a gaudy aluminum tree.

I wondered if the Christmas marketing blitz (and subsequent merchandising) started the day after Halloween in 1957 like it does now.  A lot of things were different back when the show first aired.  Maybe I was just too old to get it now?  Aiden liked it, however, and he helped me to remember what I had loved most about the show: Snoopy.

Snoopy, snagging Linus’s blanket on the skating pond and sending Charlie Brown into a tree.  Snoopy, decorating his house with tons of lights and stuff.  Snoopy, dancing at the play with everyone else while they all ignore Charlie Brown’s direction.  Snoopy, laughing at Charlie Brown’s ridiculous tree.  Yes, I still love Snoopy to this day.

Although I’m older now and have a firmer grasp of the anti-capitalist agenda of the show, I still find myself drawn in.  Railing against a cash-driven society is just a means to close with a reminder of the reason for the season.  And that’s a lesson that I’ll gladly pass on to my boys.  So I’ll probably watch Charlie Brown Christmas every year from now on, or at least until my youngest son goes off to college.

Ask not for whom the Naughty Spot tolls; it tolls for thee.

To keep their six toddlers in line, Jon and Kate put them in “time-out” when they act up.  Each child has their own Spot on which they have to sit during time-outs.  Chrissy decided that she had to have one.  We actually ordered two, in anticipation of wearing one out (or just having one on hand for Gavin when he’s old enough to require one). They arrived in the mail about a month ago, but have remained unused.  Generally, Aiden is a very good boy, so we ended up with a circular, decorative rug in the corner of our dining room.

Today, Aiden was sent to the Naughty Spot for the first time. He has picked up hitting people (we think from the older kids at Gymboree), but now concludes with nasty scratches from talon-like nails.  Neither of which makes Chrissy very happy.  Aiden had to spend two minutes in time-out on the Naughty Spot.  He loved it.  Big smiles.  It’s his new favorite place now.  At least he didn’t hit anyone afterward.  We hope that, eventually, he’ll equate the Naughty Spot with punishment.

So my first thought is: how can we tie in the Star Trek universe with the Doctor Who universe so that there are Klingons searching here for the Genesis Device? Wouldn’t it be cool if Birds of Prey showed up above the planet, and we end up with middle-age Kirk joining up with Doctor Who to keep their quarry out of the wrong hands (all of them). I can just see Christopher Lloyd saying: “So, Doctor Who, you won’t give me the Genesis Device?” Zap! Jenny gets the Klingon disruptor and that’s it for her recurring character.  Kirk howls, “You killed my son!” The Doctor cries, “You killed my daughter!” Great stuff. Unfortunately, that’s about as far as my little fanboy brain-wanderings went. Neat idea though.

What I didn’t know is that there was a live-action Death Note movie made in Japan in 2006. This would seem like the kind of thing that would go straight to video here in the States, but it turns out that it is making a limited run at select theaters. I watched the movie trailer online and it looks like they might be able to pull it off. I believe that this one will be a set-up for “Death Note 2″, giving this one a cliffhanger ending, but I’m still interested to see how closely the movie follows the anime. Luckily, the limited run is in English, and it sounds like the voice actors from the American version of the TV show did the dubbing. It will be at the Showplace 12 in Schererville on Tuesday and Wednesday only, so I think that I’ll be going.

I might be assuming that all people inherently know things that I take for granted, but isn’t it common knowledge that the value of an annuity is greater in the long term than in the short term? For example, let’s say that you win the lottery for a million dollars. You don’t actually have a million dollars. You have $300,000 that, if left in an interest-bearing account, will afford you regular payments that will equal a million dollars over the course of twenty years. If you decide to take the lump sum, you only get the original $300,000. Until the government takes their 25% in taxes and you settle your early withdrawal penalty of 10%.

So JG Wentworth wants to buy your annuity from you in exchange for that $300,000 (minus taxes, fees and their cut). If you do this, you now have about $200,000 to blow. Once you buy all your buddies new cars, you’re out of cash again within the year. “It’s my money and I want to spend it now!” Meanwhile, J.G. Wentworth is slowly cashing in your one million dollars worth of annuity payments, because they’re smart enough to be patient and let the power of compound interest work for them. They’re laughing all the way to the bank with your cash!

I might make an exception here for huge medical emergencies or catastrophic loss. If my house burned down with everything I owned inside it, I might have to cash out that annuity. Or if that lottery win was for a hundred million dollars, since I would settle for the lump sum payment of twenty million (how ridiculously rich do you have to be?). But given the status of things the way they are, I find that commercial offensive. It’s obviously targeting stupid people, playing on their greed and short-sightedness.