I was in San Antonio this last week. On the flight home, the plane out of San Antonio (SAT) turned around and headed back to the airport. Us passengers didn't notice anything until the landing gear came down, only 10 mins after it had been raised. If we'd been paying attention, we might have noticed that we didn't get above about 10,000 feet. But I was deeply engrossed in a book.
We didn't know what the deal was, the pilots and cabin crew didn't announce anything. After landing, and being escorted back to the gate by fire trucks and police cars, they finally told us what the deal was. A false fire alarm on the auxiliary power unit (APU).
They presented it to the passengers as a "false alarm indicator here in the cockpit of a fire in the APU". Now, looking back at it, I would guess the pilots didn't know if the plane was really on fire or not while we were in the air. They probably didn't know one way or another until we landed, and the firemen told them there was no smoke or fire shooting out of the back of the plane. The captain declared an emergency with air traffic control, and we turned around and went back fast. The cabin crew was notified to look for smoke, and if they had seen or smelled any, we'd have left the plane via the slides on a taxiway next to the runway instead of taxiing all the way back to the gate.
The only thing cooler than being on an airplane that might have been on fire, is being on an airplane that wasn't on fire.
This adventure lead to the second exciting experience of the trip home. The TSA. Because the flight would not be leaving SAT until the problem with the fire sensor was fixed, I would miss my connection and end up stuck in Denver. So United put me on Midwest thru Kansas City to get back to NYC. But because I had changed airlines, I got the dreaded 4S on my ticket unless I could show Midwest my ticket and boarding pass from United. I couldn't do that, because United took it when they boarded the doomed flight to Denver.
The dreaded "4S" is when the airline prints "SSSS" on your ticket. It means that in addition to the stuff you normally get going thru the security checkpoint, you get the full pat-down no matter what. So Midwest called the TSA and they send someone down. And he asked me three times how I got thru the security gate. For a second, I wasn't sure they were going to let me fly.
They did though. Midwest held the plane up by a couple of minutes for me. The gate agent walked down the jetway with me, and they closed the door practically on me, to get the flight out on time.
The only other bummer on the flight is that because of the delay, I finished the only book I had with me 10 minutes into the flight to MCI.
When I moved here to DUMBO, I didn't bring my 20-year-old TV with me. Several people noted that with-it dudes don't own clapped-out 20-year-old TVs. Chicks that hang out in bars every night of the week and live in 4 different guy's places own clapped-out 20-year-old TVs that they got from a family member or a boyfriend that they killed and ate somewhere in their past. With-it dudes own 46" LCD or plasma panels. So I left the piece of crap behind.
It is therefore with pride, that I announce that I'm going to re-join the mindless millions of couch potatoes. I used 507,000 American Express membership awards points to secure a SONY Bravia XBR LCD 1080p monitor and stand. It should arrive in the next 4 weeks.
I ordered the TV Sunday, and I've been trying to work out all the assorted things that go with it. I'll probably want cable TV, even though there is no way it's worth as much as they charge for it. I have a bad attitude about satellite, due to the number of times weather has made it not work so well at Al and Diane's when I've stayed there. I need to line up a Blu-Ray Player of some sort. I need to work out how to get video from my computers to the TV. I'm thinking either a Mac Mini, or an Apple TV, but I don't really understand what the Apple TV is all about and how it fits into an entertainment system. I need to pay some attention to the audio part, since my stereo system has fallen about as far behind the times as my old TV had. None of the inputs on my trusty old Marantz AV-500 are named after anything I currently have plugged into it, which isn't a problem, except I'd really prefer to be optical inputs. I need furniture to put the TV on, and need to figure out how to arrange the room.
Yesterday I hadn't really gotten farther than knowing I needed to think about all this, when the delivery company called to say they could deliver the TV any time during the next 4 days.
I must have mis-heard the nice lady I talked to when ordering the TV. I could have sworn she said allow up to 4 weeks for delivery. I ordered the TV Sunday morning-ish. Today is Thursday, and it is now sitting in my living room. Total time to deliver: 4 days.
Who the hell delivers something this big and expensive 4 days later? I am totally unprepared for this, I thought I had another week or two.
Okay, so 5 hours ago the TV arrived here. I spent about an hour figuring out what to do with it.
The executive summary: It looks damn nice, even on standard def sources, once you figure out what some assorted options do. Still no HD sources yet.
I've watched two movies now: Star Trek: First Contact, and Spirited Away. They were what was easy to get to in storage, where ALL my DVDs reside currently.
I played Star Trek first for no reason other than it has real people with real skin-tone. Playing a low-resolution DVD thru a high-resolution TV showed everything bad about DVDs. Video noise, in the form of odd grain patterns in the solid colors. There were all sorts of really obvious MPEG compression artifacts. The scene in the first warp ship where everything is shaking looked particularly, uh, "wobbly" in a bad makes-you-sick-to-your-stomach way.
The TV doesn't claim to do any upsampling, tho it does state it displays everything at 1920x1080 resolution, which is not the same thing.
On Spirited Away, I had read some of the manual, and had discovered assorted processing options, like one for MPEG sources. I discovered "Theater Mode", that lowers the contrast and brightness to conform to the standard that DVD's are built around. That standard more closely matches the way movies are shown on projectors in movie theaters than TV. It is also designed for dark rooms.
Anyway, with those changes made to the DVD player input, Spirited Away looked pretty damn good.
I wiped my Tivo when I packed it, seems like. When i finally found a power cable for it and turned it on it started up at the initial setup. It has no TV shows on it. With no cable cards, it isn't hugely useful, though I did at least get it talking to Tivo so when I do get cable cards it will have a guide and all it's updates.
For now, the TV is standing on the stereo stand. Those of you who know what I've been keeping my stereo on will know that this is maybe not the best choice, but it was either that or the floor. I must say though, it is more stable than I expected it to be. Just not as stable as I'd really like.
The first Blu-Ray disks I own showed up in the mail from Amazon today.
Some day soon, I'll decide on a Blu-Ray player, and be able to watch them on my TV.
My selections pretty much are movies I will probably always own myself, no matter what the current media format is:
I also got a TV setup disk, which should be usefull, since movies on DVD are intended for such different visual environment than TV is. And picture default settings on most TVs are so out of wack with reality, you pretty much have to have something.