National Holiday

That's right folks! Yesterday the 4th was a national holiday in my
book. It was my birthday and I turned the ripe old age of 27. Missy
surprised me by taking me to Schmankerl-Stube Bavarian restaurant down
in Hagerstown. I had been wanting to go there for a while now but just
hadn't gone. The place was really good. I had literally half a pig as
you can see in the picture. I also had a liter of Dopple-Hirch beer.
That is some good stuff right there! It is a slightly sweet tasting
dark beer.

Kissinger, Brad, and Julie came out for my dinner and then we went to
the movies. John met us at the mall. I wanted to see the new Tim
Burton film "Sweeny Todd", but it must be out of the theater already.
We instead watched National Treasure-Book of Secrets. It was pretty
good in an Indiana Jones sort of way, but nothing beats Indiana Jones.
I can't wait until that movie comes out. Those are some of my favorite
movies of all time.

Speaking of movies, today was a disappointing day for me. I woke up,
made some coffee, and sat down to read my morning blogs. What do I see
but an announcement that Warner Bros. Pictures along with their
subsidiary New Line Cinema is going to go exclusively Blu-ray. In
November I jumped on the high-def DVD bandwagon by purchasing a
Toshiba HD-A2 HD-DVD player at a secret Wal-Mart sale. The player was
a $200 player on sale for $98. This was Toshiba's way to get a lot if
players into people's homes and up the ante in the war against Sony
and Blu-ray. It worked and over 90,000 players were sold in a very
short time. Warner Bros. was the last major studio that has been
producing movies on both formats. Now that they just announced their
defection, this only leaves Paramount and Universal as major studios
still making films for HD-DVD. The war isn't over yet, but this is a
major blow. It's just sad because Blu-ray just doesn't have all of the
features of HD-DVD. Sony just has too much clout. Once again the
better technology gets put out to pasture. Damn Sony!

Can you tell I am into technology? Oh well, at least I have one of the
best up-converting DVD players on the market.

Okay, I'm done for now. Later!