Hugo Jonker

Let’s face it, House has its moments :) (Season 4, episode 7).

‘Nuff said.

PS: How to skip the non-skippable contents on a DVD (didn’t try myself).

No Denis, not a “swingers’ party”, a swing party — a party with music from the 1920s and 1930s. Right here in Lux! And it was great fun :)
Well, what else can I add? The YouTube link is not from my party, but it gives a good impression of some of the fun to be had :)

Saturday two weeks ago was busy. I was in NL for Bianca’s birthday, a high school reunion, and… a shopping spree!

I was successful. :)
My old TV was showing its age, and I figured I deserved a nice, shiny, new, flat model. Then I dove into things and discovered LED TVs rock compared to ye olde regular LCD TVs. So I wanted one. Problem: the things were damn expensive.

I had held off on purchasing a new one, but it kept itching, so I gave in and decided to settle for a regular LCD model. Imagine my surprise when I went into the first store and found a model suited to my tastes (80cm), with LED backlighting, for a more-or-less affordable price!

I had to check this out. Went to another store, they offered a similar model for an equally similar price… Hmmms, very, very interesting. But if I was getting a TV with all sorts of modern capabilities, including HDMI, I also wanted decent sound. I had heard Gabriele’s new sound system, and it rocks compared to my meagre speakers (I was using my laptop-speakerset… not a great solution). Hence, let’s check out 2.1 sound systems… le OUCH!! That was some expensive shizzle. Nevertheless, the difference between even above-midrange laptop speakers was staggering.
By the way, why 2.1? Well, the point-one for the big bass — you need that for the sound, obviously. Why not more than two speakers, you ask? Easily answered. I don’t have much space, and a correct placement of the speakers would mean the rear speakers are floating somewhere in the room. I don’t want that clutter.
I listened to various sound systems on offer. The first two sounded indeed good. The third just bass-stunned me into an “I want that”-mode. Oh yes I wanted that fat bass sound (and I can tell you, while writing this, it makes you happy to have it :).

Hence, haggling commenced. Both the telly and the sound systems were sold out except for the store models… for the sound system, I’d say no big issue, for the telly… hmms. I think I drove a reasonably hard bargain, then they popped up with the required cables. Damn. So we haggled back and forth on those a bit, and finally I decided I didn’t need an expensive HDMI cable (it’s digital — get real, with a regular DVD player, the cable is not the limiting factor in quality. Plus, it can’t exactly lose quality — it’s digital!). For the sound I was slightly more anxious. So I got the more expensive optical audio connection. As it turns out: my bad. My very bad even. The speakers of my brand new sound system are connected via ye olde copper wiring to the amplifier (I guess Fahnestock clips. See the image — yes, it is roughly that pathetic.

Sound isn’t any less for it though :)

Le anyway, I struck a deal and got myself the equipment. By now, I have set it up and actually bought some CDs to listen to my new fat bass-sound :)

Incidentally, both the birthday party and the high school reunion were fun too :)

My brother has been diligently following House, MD. As I was visiting him, I watched a few episodes too. Now I find myself on the fence. Is it good? Is it not?

The pro’s:

• The main character is an anti-hero (basically an asshole)
• The infights from the main character to the others are fun
• The medico-babble made me understand why people take exception to the technobabble in the various Star Treks

The con’s:

• Every episode is the same
  • Seriously, just about every episode I’ve seen (but one) starts with a situation, where someone in a normal situation suddenly gets sick, maybe coughs up some blood or so, and falls over. WTF??? Does House only treat patients who were perfectly normal till they suddenly fell over??
  • House is a world-class diagnostician… who is always wrong the first five or so times. Really, whenever he proposes a procedure that needs an okay from higher-up, they can just shoot it down out of hand. Why? The first request isn’t the cause anyway. For a guy who’s supposed to be smart, I still can’t believe he’s going with the first, second, third or even fourth guesses of his team. Take a hint, check your records: they are wrong. (Would really be refreshing to see a situation where they are actually right).
• The medico-babble is boring.
  I don’t speak medico-babble. Throw in a few “pulmonary”‘s, and a few “thorax/cardiac”‘s, combine with “virulent, strain, infection, auto-immune”, shake, tadaaa: medico-babble. Sure, real doctors (the MD type, that is) speak like that. To me, it sounds as if they find the same diagnostics every single time they investigate a patient. It’s like a script: A? no? then B. No? Then C. Every time it sounds like exactly the same script.
• The characters didn’t grow on me.
  I know, my fault, I started following it in season 4 or 5. Still, I so don’t care about the soap opera aspects.

All in all, enough to complain, no? Well, I’m Dutch and I like complaining.
Perhaps that explains why I am still watching… ;-)