Day: March 9, 2004

Saturday night, I enjoyed a fine filet mignon from Bern’s Steak House, in Tampa, Florida. I’m not sure I can do it justice, but this place takes selection — at least with steaks and wines/spirits — to an extreme. You may review the menu [15 page PDF, 200K] if you dare. Page 9 begins the excursion into the steaks section of the menu, where you are given lengthy descriptions of the different cuts and cooking styles, and then asked to choose size and thickness of your piece of meat from a busy grid. That is only the beginning, but I’m too tired even thinking about the experience to write it all down.

I will advise you to make reservations, should you be visiting Tampa. The restaurant is worth one meal in your lifetime, certainly.

Tonight, Gene “the stereo guy” visited us for the third time. While I like Gene, and he does a good job, I hope to never need his services again. (But let me know if you want his number, for San Franscisco-area repairs/installations.)

It wasn’t about the stereo, per se, but just a general frustration with an inability to make all the machinery do what we want it to do. We’ve been in this state for a while now, since the big power outage, when (I think) one of the outputs on the receiver got blown. That caused a problem… which I worked around, but caused another problem… which problem I was unable to work around despite 45 minutes of futzing (the technical term, I believe). So we called Gene once again. Money well spent.

My product-focused colleagues at CNET are moving into what is called Digital Living. I’m living some of that life, but I’ve already reached the point where I want to “dispose” of some of the more sophisticated devices in favor of an easy-to-use single device that handles DVDs, CDs, radio, TV connection, VCR connection (just for legacy purposes), and TiVo functionality and/or great TiVo connection. And it has to be easy-to-use. And I want a TV/display that doesn’t need 7 hookups to connect to this device, and doesn’t have all the connections behind the *#$!*^ heavy CRT. (Did I mention easy-to-use?)

All this, and we have a built-in cabinet which — even were I willing to spend money on a new display that is light/big — won’t readily handle the new rectangular displays of the future. I guess when HDTV is common, instead of possible, we’ll just have to move, since a new TV won’t work in our current configuration.

I joking. I think.