The “NCAAs”
This past weekend — specifically Thursday through Sunday — kicked off the greatest sporting event of all time — the NCAA Basketball Tournament! In four days, 64 teams (one having already won the “play-in” game) square off to compete for the national championship. Neither conference championships, tournament seedings, nor national rankings matter anymore — you have to win in order to keep moving towards the Final Four and, hopefully, the national championship game.
I had long wanted to take Thursday and Friday off — have some people over — and basically do nothing but watch basketball, hang out, drink beer, and (of course) play poker for the course of the two initial days as 64 teams get whittled down to 32 (and then to 16 on Saturday and Sunday). I had already mentioned this to a few people and several had said that they were in for an all-day NCAA-fest on Friday.
The Madness Begins
Flashback to the previous Saturday… I was over at Tara’s playing in the HLPD game (Harper’s Landing Poker Degenerates) — the original group that I started playing poker with — scary! We hadn’t gotten together in a while — in fact, this was only the second or third time in about the last six months! So, I was settling in for a nice session of Tara, Marty, and others donking their money off to me when I got a call from Carrie.
Carrie needed “Technical Support” for the TV — how to change it to a certain TiVo or something (yes, we have multiple TiVos, doesn’t everybody?) I helped her out and she was set to go — settled in to catch up on some of her shows from the previous week.
Then my phone rang again. Carrie.
This time it wasn’t about a TiVo or anything like that — the picture, “Looked funny”. That does not bode well. And it certainly wasn’t anything that I could fix over the phone or, likely, at all. So, Carrie was resigned to watching the smaller TV in the bedroom.
When I got home that night, I confirmed my worst fears… Carrie had broken my TV!!!!
OK, well, she hadn’t broken it, but I wasn’t going to tell her that … at least until I had convinced her to buy me a new one!
And what timing! The Saturday before the NCAA Tournament starts on Thursday! I had basketball to watch and people were expecting an all-day hoops event later in the week — I couldn’t let them down!
An Underdog Story
I purchased my last TV — a Mitsubishi 55″ big screen about nine years ago. I remember because it was right after I had left Compaq to start consulting — the home theater setup, complete with Denon receiver, B&W speakers, etc., all from the Home Theater Store, was a little reward to myself! The TV had lasted quite a while — needing repair only once (while it was still under a 5-year warranty), but had seemed to run its course. The receiver and speakers are still going strong though! 
Now I faced the proposition of purchasing a new TV within the next couple of days! Not only that, but I needed to get an HD TiVo (you can’t watch sports without TiVo, trust me!), get all that setup, and make sure that it was working before the end of the week! If I could get it done, it would be a true Cinderella story!
A lot has changed in the last nine years too — there’s HDTV, plasmas, LCDs, and all sorts of new technology. So, I did some research and decided that plasma was the way to go. I’d heard all the rumors about burn-in and such on plasmas, but fortunately some reading up on the subject alleviated my fears — those issues have pretty much been solved on all new TVs.
While I was researching up on plasmas I put in a last-second bid on an HD DirecTiVo on eBay — the seller was in Longview, so I hoped that I would be able to get it shipped to me in time for Thursday’s games so that I could enjoy the March Madness package which gives you ALL the games! Sweet! I won the bid, send off the payment via PayPal, and noted to the seller to please ship tomorrow so that I would receive it in time for my hoops!
In the meantime, I had pretty much decided that I was getting the Panasonic 50″ plasma. It had great reviews and its own thread on the AVS Forum exposing its greatness!
The TV was listed on Amazon for a great price — $1759 with free shipping — however, the free shipping wasn’t 2nd day air like a normally get … it was “freight”, which means weeks. So, I had to look elsewhere. Monday I took a quick trip over to Circuit City and checked out the TV — great picture and looked very cool. They had an HD signal hooked up to it, of course, and appropriately enough, all of the televisions were showing basketball highlights from this past season, in preparation for the tournament.
Unfortunately, Circuit City was selling it for $1999 — not exactly a bargain. Plus, I’d have to pay tax and a delivery charge. This is the part of the story where I tell you that I used my master negotiating, Jedi mind trick skills to talk the Circuit City guy into letting me walk out of there with my new plasma for a cool fifteen grand. Oh, and with delivery included. NOT.
Me asking for a discount was similar to Tommy Boy asking Helen the waitress if she would check to see if the kitchen was really closed so that he could get some chicken wings. “Hmm… Let me check. Yeah, it’s closed.”
So, I left the store to consider my options. I stopped by Sam’s to look at what they had to offer as well as Best Buy. Then I went back home and looked up some of the other TVs I had seen — none of them had the reviews that the “Panny” did. Confident that I was making the right choice, I went ahead and placed an order with CircuitCity.com — their website shows free delivery (although the Circuit City guy told me they would charge $50!) AND they would take away your old TV! That was worth the difference in price right there, as I had NO idea how I was going to get the broken behemoth down from the third floor as getting it UP there had taken three movers and me!!
The Game Winner
The delivery guys showed up late Wednesday night — around 5:30pm. I had already ordered a wall mount and had been by Home Depot (yes, Brendan, HOME DEPOT — that makes two trips in a year … I am on course to set a record!) to ensure that I had the proper tools to hang our new plasma on the wall. (Note the subtle change to plural pronouns)
The two delivery guys got the plasma upstairs without a problem — it’s just a tad over 90 pounds. I’m not sure how much the old Mitsubishi weighs, but it is significantly more! It’s also almost five feet tall, four feet wide, and two feet deep!! The delivery guys definitely earned their keep that evening. After they were done — and I say they because I barely helped as I seemed to be more in the way than useful — I made sure to thank them for their extra efforts. Andrew Jackson thanked each of them as well — somewhat out of generosity, but also to assuage my guilt from having watched these guys almost break their backs carrying out that monstrosity!
I worked for the next 3-4 hours getting everything setup — measuring several times before finally drilling holes for the wall mount, just to make sure that it was perfect. I had already hooked up the TV to the new TiVo, phoned DirecTV to get the HD signal working correctly, and shown off our new set to Carrie — she thought it was cool!
After all was said and done it looks awesome hanging on our wall! And gives us more than two feet of room space — really opening up the room! Cool! Here’s how it looks…
That photo doesn’t really do the TV justice (it was hard to get a photo with the room lighting and TV picture showing correctly) … The one below looks a little better. Note that the holes in the wall on the left were from before, when a huge TV was covering them up. The hole for the speaker wires will be plastered over soon and I’ll wire it up a little more cleanly (Brendan has already volunteered to assist with this project — he is quite the handyman, just ask Julia!)
Brendan (and Derek, if you are reading) — you may want to print out this photo as it shows Duke ahead in their first round game against VCU (unfortunately for them, and Duke fans everywhere, they would go on to be upset by VCU). I’ve got to say hi and “Congrats!” to my cousin Melanie who works at VCU — she and her husband are huge fans and I’m sure they enjoyed watching the game!
The “Hoops and Hold ‘Em” was a great success! Neither Carrie, nor I, nor many others could figure out how we ever watched the tournament in standard definition!!! Carrie didn’t think that there would be that much of a difference, but was really wowed when I showed her the HD feed — and could wait to watch Lost and some of our other favorite shows on it!
Thanks to all that came out on Thursday (after prompting from Eric Erickson to get a game going) and Friday (the originally scheduled get-together). Enjoyed it!!!
The Overtime Victory!
I’ve been looking around for some audio shelving to hold my receiver, TiVos, DVD player, etc. Right now it is situated on the counter on the bar that we had installed on the third floor, to eventually finish out and make into a nice popcorn and drinks area. So, I was checking out Best Buy and Circuit City’s websites and noticed that Circuit City had a big ad on their home page about savings on select TVs. No way I could be this lucky.
Sure enough, I checked the page with our new plasma and the price was right there: $1999. Except it wasn’t $1999. It was $1999 — the price was struck out along with a note that said, “See sale price in cart”. This is a little gimmick that some online sites use to get you to add an item to your cart in order to see their “low, low sale price” — I’m sure some marketing genius has figure out that it leads to more sales.
Well, I was happy to add the item to my cart because it meant that the price was going to be lower than the $1999 listed on the product page. I added it to the cart and it showed up instantly … $1799!
Helloooooooooo price guarantee!!!
I printed out my receipt and took the information to my local store (they make you go to the store in order to get the price match — even if you ordered online. Sneaky!). Within five minutes I had my $215 credit ($200 plus tax) — Woohoo!!!!
It’s enough to pay for the bar fridge that’s being delivered later this week, so I’d say that works out perfectly!
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