THURSDAY, MARCH 30, 2006

Jamie Morris : My New TeeVee Arrives! : Sony KDL-32S2000 TV
Sony KDL-32S2000 TV
My New TeeVee Arrives!

My new boss was nice enough to offer us his Sony family discount, so I decided it was a good opportunity to upgrade my TV. I decided on the Sony KDL-32S2000 - the 32-inch BRAVIA S-Series LCD HDTV. It's quite an upgrade from my old 27-inch Sony Trinitron TV. The HD channels are pretty amazing. The quality is so much better than standard. Right now I get 7 HD channels with Adelphia (CBS, NBC, ABC, FOX, PBS, HBO, SHO). I can also get ESPN, but I'd have to pay extra for it - something I might do for the World Cup. My Adelphia DVR was already HD-capable, but I had to go out and buy a $100 DVI-HDMI cable which was kind of annoying. It's also nice to have a flat screen / flat panel TV. The picture is much better and it takes up less space. It looks like it's going to rain this weekend, so I won't feel bad about staying inside and watching television.

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SATURDAY, MARCH 25, 2006

Planes, Trains, Automobiles, and Hotels

I spent most of the day planning my trip to Germany. We have all of our transportation reserverd which includes 7 flights, 1 train, and an 8 day car rental. We have also booked most of our hotels. BOOKINGS was a great site for hotels in Germany. It looks like they also serve the rest of Europe and other parts of the world. They had the best prices and selection and their website was easy to use. Orbitz was good for finding flights, but I ended up purchasing them directly from the airlines. I did use Orbitz for a hotel in Cologne, but had a bad experience. Orbitz listed the hotel as being 0.4 miles from the city center. It turns out it's really over 50 miles from the city and they are giving me a hard time about refunding my money.

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THURSDAY, MARCH 23, 2006

Jamie Morris : It's All Coming Together : Germany 2006: World Cup Venues
Germany 2006: World Cup Venues
It's All Coming Together

An unbelievable thing happened yesterday. A little java program I wrote to check to see when FIFA releases additional World Cup tickets sent me an email yesterday telling me that three of the matches I wanted to go to were available. I immediately went to the FIFA World Cup ticket website and attempted to buy tickets. Within about a half hour, I had tickets secured for all three matches! Dave and I now have tickets to 7 different matches at 7 different venutes!!! The reason why this is so amazing, is that seven is the maximum number of matches you are allowed to get tickets for and most of the tens of millions of people who attempted to buy tickets ended up with ZERO. These new matches fit pefectly into our itinerary and they're good matches. We're seeing 5 of the top 10 ranked teams in the world and we're seeing all three USA group matches. We even have time to go to Prague for 4 days! Here's our match schedule:

DateCityTeams
Sun June 11CologneAngola vs Portugal
Mon June 12GelsenkirchenUSA vs Czech Republic
Wed June 14LeipzigSpain vs Ukraine
Fri June 16HannoverMexico vs Angola
Sat June 17KaiserslauternItaly vs USA
Thu June 22NurembergGhana vs USA
Fri June 23BerlinUkraine vs Tunisia

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MONDAY, MARCH 20, 2006

Jamie Morris : Belle & Sebastian weekend : Scotland's For Me! - my new tee
Scotland's For Me! - my new tee
Belle & Sebastian weekend

This weekend I got to see my favorite band, Belle & Sebastian, play twice at The Wiltern with The New Pornographers. It was my 5th and 6th time seeing them. Both shows were great especially since B&S mixed up their set and played different songs each night and I got to hear a lot of songs I've never heard live. And The New Pornographers were an opening band worth seeing even though Neko Case was not with them. Also this weekend, Belle & Sebastian announced their next LA show - they're playing at the Hollywood Bowl on July 6th being backed by the LA Philharmonic! This is going to be a very special show. Get your tickets now! And finally, today B&S did an instore appearence at Amoeba during the day, but I was not able to make it because I was at work. :-(

If you'd like to hear what they sound like live, you can download an MP3 of the full show they played in DC from NPR.org.

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FRIDAY, MARCH 17, 2006

St. Patricia's Day

I celebrated St. Patty's Day by seeing a screening of Breakfast On Pluto. No, it's not a cartoon. It's a film about an Irish transvestite prostitute living in London in the 1970s. It was a little long for me (2hrs 15mins) and it was kinda boring. I can't really recommend it.

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MONDAY, MARCH 13, 2006

Jamie Morris : Plane Crashes 500 Yards From My Apartment! : Plane Crash in Santa Monica
Plane Crash in Santa Monica
Plane Crashes 500 Yards From My Apartment!

It's a good thing I went to work today instead of staying home and playing at the beach because some former game show host crashed his plane on the beach right down the street from my apartment building. The Santa Monica Pier appears to be a dangerous place to hang out these days. Just a few weeks ago, a 28,000-pound crane toppled over onto the pier.

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THURSDAY, MARCH 09, 2006

Running Time Error

I saw two movie screenings in the past week. I enjoyed both films, but I had one problem with both of them: the running time. The New World was too long (2 hours 30 minutes) and The Squid and the Whale was too short (88 minutes). Paramount has two movies opening this weekend: Ask The Dust and Failure To Launch. I'm not going to see them but you should!

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SATURDAY, MARCH 04, 2006

Kings Rule

I got some great Los Angeles Kings tickets on eBay from a season ticket holder for todays game against the Columbus Blue Jackets. The seats were in the third row from the glass and only cost $81 for the pair. They were the best seats I've ever had for an NHL game. I noticed that the season ticket holder price for these seats was only $50.50 - quite a bargain considering the non-season ticket holder price for nosebleed seats is almost $40 from Ticketmaster. Since I've been going to so many games, I going to look into getting season tickets for next year. Todays game was a good one. The Kings won 3-2. It was their fourth consecutive win. Playoffs hopes are looking good.

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FRIDAY, MARCH 03, 2006

Dwight, but not Too Tight

Brokeback Mountain has really ruined country music for me. All country musicians now look like gay cowboys. Tonight, I went to see Dwight Yoakam at the Wiltern with Niki. Unfortunately, we got there early enough to see the opening bands. First to play was Sin City All Stars who are basically just a mediocre bar band screwing around on stage playing cover songs and inviting their friends to onstage to play with them. Next was Waylon Payne who is the son of country singer Sammi Smith and Willie Nelson guitarist Jody Payne. You may have seen him in Walk The Line playing Jerry Lee Lewis. His set was kinda boring but he did have a special guest - Lorrie Morgan - who came out and did a song with him. Dwight didn't come onstage for almost an hour after Waylon finished. Our feet were starting to hurt because there are no seats on the floor of the Wiltern and we were starting to get annoyed. He came out wearing a suit rather than his usual too-tight jeans and did a mix of songs from 1986-2006. He was still playing after about 90 minutes when we decided to leave because we had been standing for over five hours and our legs were killing us.

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