Well, one of my coworkers talked to a friend of hers who is getting a new place and, to make a long story short, that friend wants the television for her new place. The relief of knowing that a near-perfect television is going to actually be used versus thrown away in the dump made me feel really good. So, at some point next week the friend will come over and grab the television to bring it to the new apartment and I’ll be relieved that the set is getting used and that it is no longer taking up additional space in my house.

There isn’t much of a story here other than that I’m pissed about this whole thing. I bought this television on November 26, 2005 (which happens to be the last Black Friday that I really went out and spent a bunch of money). The television is a 30 inch, 1080p high definition, widescreen Panasonic television with a CRT design (i.e. it has the heavy big back to it and is not a flat screen). About a year and a half ago, the television randomly stopped receiving remote control signals.

That’s my problem with the television and that’s why I’m getting rid of it.

The high definition works fine (it’s actually a wonderfully crisp picture) and there is nothing else wrong with the set. The only problem that I have with it is that it doesn’t receive signals from a remote control. That means that if I want to change a channel, adjust the volume, turn the set off, or do anything that you would normally do with a remote control – I can’t do it. Think of what televisions used to be like before remote controls – that’s what this thing is like.

You may have noticed above that I said the thing stopped working a year and a half ago. That was around December 2008 which was a matter of days after all of the warranties that I had on the set ran out, of course. I used the television as it was for a few months, but when I couldn’t take the drastic changes in volume between the television shows and the commercials and when I got tired of getting out of bed to turn the set off before going to sleep, I purchased a beautiful 48 inch Vizio flat screen, 1080p high definition set (with a three year warranty). Since I purchased the Vizio, the Panasonic has sat all but unused in the corner of my kitchen.

So…after watching it sit there for over a year with no use at all, I think that it’s time to cut the cord and get rid of the monster as a part of this year’s spring cleaning process. If you read this blog regularly, then you know I keep a very strict eye on my finances and that I hate waste. I really believe that bringing this television to the dump is a huge waste of money. I can understand that the television, which I purchased for $649.99 (and another $39.00 in sales tax), is no longer worth the original purchase price. The set is four and a half years old and has an old CRT design (though it does have all of the high definition and widescreen bells and whistles), so after taking into account the problem with the set being unable to receive remote signals I’d put its fair market value at about $250. The local television repair place charges $50 just to look at the set – that doesn’t include what it costs to get the set fixed. Unless the repair is $20 or $30, I can’t see myself spending the money to get it fixed. Further, I can’t see myself essentially giving away another $50 just to know whether or not the set could be fixed.

If anyone out there has a better option than bringing this thing to the dump, let me know. If not, then it’ll be at the dump by the end of this week.

I wish I knew more about the process of delivering a channel to a specific area. I feel like it probably isn’t much more than coming to an agreement with the channel’s ownership (in this case, Viacom) and then flipping a few switches. Makes you wonder what is taking so long to get this otherwise simple process completed.

One of the reasons that I’m a little bit angered over this delay is because Comcast recently added Spike HD to certain markets in New Jersey. Why couldn’t our market be included in that update?! Anyway, if anyone knows when we’re going to receive the Spike HD channel in the Monmouth/Ocean market, please let me know. Thanks!

I’ll put up a more thorough review of the entire series in the next few days, but I wanted to offer some quick comments on the finale itself.

• Endings: It was nice that all of the fans of the show were allowed to see the respective stories of each of the main characters come to a reasonable end. It can be assumed that General Adama spent the rest of his life living near to the grave of President Roslin, who we also saw enjoying her last few minutes of life. The sudden disappearance of Kara “Starbuck” Thrace was a little weird, but it speaks to the nature of her being nothing more than a ghost for the last season. Still weird.
• Connections to Today: I thought the writers added a nice touch by having the planet which the refugees finally landed on be our earth, but 150,000 years ago. And making Hera the “mitochondrial Eve” that made so many headlines a few years back was a nice spin, too. Also, it was a nice touch to have the angel versions of Caprica Six and Gaius Baltar walking around modern day earth with early versions of what could grow to be cylons as part of the backdrop.
• The End of the Cylon/Human War: The final battle between the Battlestar Galactica and the cylon colony base ship was well done and it looked great in high definition. Also, the way the “war” ended between the two civilizations (complete with the cylon leader blowing his head off) was a good way to end the constant conflict.

So that’s the quick and dirty review of tonight’s Battlestar Galactica series finale. All in all, a great show which answered all of the right questions. Sure, some people will want to know more about how the human refugees went from an extremely advanced civilization to essentially nomads and there might be an opportunity in the future to tell some of that story via a made-for-TV movie or maybe through some quick webisodes shorts or something. However, I think that most people will be content with what they saw and will be eager enough to see the coming made-for-TV movie “Battlestar Galactica: The Plan” this summer!

And for those of you who are a little down now that Battlestar Galactica is over, don’t worry. The spin-off series, Caprica, is coming soon!

Nintendo’s sales mark represents the most game systems sold in any month since November 2002, when Sony sold 2.7 million PlayStation 2 systems (priced at $200), Frazier says. The PS2 has gone on to sell about 43.2 million in the U.S.

A quick jump over to VGChartz.com shows us that Wii has sold 18.28 million units in the United States, which is a little less than 4 million more than its nearest competitor, Microsoft’s XBox 360. This number is also about 12 million more than the PlayStation 3, which would have almost certainly been cut as a product if Sony lost the Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD war with Microsoft.

Anyway, the point here is that it is remarkable that the video game industry has only been marginally rocked by the market tumult. And it is even more impressive that Nintendo has managed to build a juggernaut system without the use of an internal hard drive or high definition graphics. Add in that the bulk of the games available for the Wii are family-friendly and generally leave the hardcore gamers out in the cold, and you have a real phenomenon in the video game industry.

As a guy who is financially invested in the successful outcome of at least one video game software company (which has not been mentioned in this post), I hope that the good news keeps coming in!

First, while the stores were filled with shoppers there was still room to move around (except Wal-Mart – more on that later). In previous years I remember going to some stores and being jammed into the shopping areas literally standing shoulder to shoulder with other shoppers. With that memory in mind, I was somewhat relieved that I had room to move around the stores and do some shopping without having to worry about bumping into people or tripping over product.

Second, the roads were less congested for the entire extended weekend starting on Wednesday. I drove everyday from Wednesday through today and I was never caught in anything other than normal traffic. That’s not bad!

Third, retailers did put out some significant deals. A few weeks ago I wrote about how I was gearing up for Black Friday and using a certain website to find out what the big deals would be for the day. That website combined with the various flyers which came in the Thanksgiving Day newspaper showed a retail industry that wanted to attract buyers into their stores this year. The big item this year seemed to be bargain basement prices on high definition LCD and plasma screen televisions. In terms of comparison to previous years…well some four years ago I had a comment or two about the lack of deals at retailers.

Fourth, Circuit City employees tried to overcompensate for the company’s current financial position – to their detriment. I went into Circuit City yesterday and I was amazed at how bad of a shopping experience I had at the store. In almost every aisle that I walked down, an associate asked me if I needed any help. The first two times that someone asks you this, it’s very respectable. The second two times, it becomes a bother. By the fifth and sixth time a different employee asks you if you need any help you wonder what’s going on and why these people won’t let you shop. Frankly, I felt like I was being tracked by one of the employees as though I was going to steal something – it makes for a very unpleasant shopping experience. I was going to buy something at Circuit City, but thanks to the overzealous sales staff I got out of there as quickly as possible.

On top of that, Circuit City had rows and rows of videos games out in buckets (buckets are the traditional sign of “sale on these items”). As I was browsing through the buckets some kid who works at hte store was trailing me and putting the items back as soon as I picked them up (at one point taking the items out of my hands). Then I asked him if any of these games were on sale. He said they were not, but were selling for regular retail prices between $50 and $60. Yeah…that will get people to purchase the product. Dummies…

Finally, the level of common courtesy towards fellow shoppers was somewhat high in all stores except for Wal-Mart (on Black Friday – Wal-Mart was okay on Saturday). I have a million pet peeves about bad shoppers and they were all on display at Wal-Mart on Friday: people standing at the end of the aisles talking to a friend and blocking passage out of the aisle, children running wild through the store with no parental supervision, shoppers putting their cart on one side of the aisle and standing in the other side of the aisle creating a roadblock, and consumers stopping short in the flow of traffic and turning around thus creating the “trout jumping upstream” effect. It was enough for me to get the hell out of Wal-Mart almost as soon as I got in there. But hey – at least I didn’t get trampled by a mad mob (more about that coming up in a future post).

All in all, it was a decent Black Friday and most of the retailers stepped up to the plate in an attempt to get their balance sheets in the black as well as shoppers through their doors. If you have any crazy Black Friday stories, I’d love to hear them in the comments section below.