Further to my post a couple days ago, about surviving the harsh Canadian winters and getting a surround sound system for our family room to enhance our movie watching experience (and for me to jam my chunes -  say it with a Trini accent) it got worse! It took us over 3hrs , with questions after questions (seems my wife was not only blessed with beauty, but patience when I start my questions) for the understanding salesperson who was helping us. I walked away not only with a new mega surround sound package that he helped me put together, but with tons of knowledge on the topic. BTW, if you shop at Future Shop - ASK FOR A DISCOUNT! We’ve made several big purchases there over the years and always paid the price that the sticker had. NOPE! If you ask, they will try to give you a discount. When we calculated the savings we got (even after then advertised sale price) we saved about $600 on the package.

NOW THE FUN REALLY STARTS!

I have all this new equipment sitting in our basement, waiting for a screwdriver and wire snippers to go to work… but I even more confused than ever. It reminded me when I got off the train in the small German town last year and was asking for directions to my hotel - no one spoke English and I knew not a word of German.

Let’s recap!

- Deciding which TV to purchase - Confusing!

- Deciding what I need for a “killer” surround sound system - More Confsuing!

- Setting up the facking thing - MOST confusing!

Well the sales person promised he would assist me in setting up this beast. Let’s see if this to get the sale or if he was really serious! Time to give him a call.
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On another note… why is it when someone is not supposed to do something or when someone can no longer have something - thats when they want it most or want to do do it most? All the while they could care less about it. Human nature I guess.

What the heezy? We’ve been traveling for 3 months and no freaking land!

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Canadian winters can be long and brutal, especially for someone who much prefers the sun and sand for snow and short days. I’ve learned that to enjoy winter you must either take up winter sports (no thanks) or spend time at home relaxing. Pretty much, make your home fun! It’s been over a year now that we were finally able to afford one of those monster TVs, so I thought it was time to enhance the experience with BIG sound. I had a hard time deciding which tv to get originally, since there were so many terms I had never heard before, plus there were a million and one choices. Confused was an understatement for sure!
So I’m ready to go purchase one of them there surround sound things… choices galore , lingo I don’t understand and a range of prices. This is even more confusing than when I went to get the TV. Honestly, my head is spinning. If you’re in the same situation as me, here’s some info I found online.

Understanding surround sound lingo

For the most part, the entertainment industry boils down a lot of the surround sound terminology into numbers, such as 2.0, 5.1, and 7.1. Sometimes these numbers refer to the playback system’s speaker configuration, and sometimes they refer to the audio signal format. You may find the lingo confusing, especially when the speakers don’t match the audio signals. In these numbers, the first number represents the number of speakers or main audio channels involved, and the 1 or 0 after the decimal point tells you whether or not the system has a subwoofer or supports a low frequency effects channel. Systems that end in 1 have a subwoofer or an effects channel.

Here’s a rundown of the different numbers that you may encounter and what they mean:

* 2.0: Normal stereo, which has a left and a right channel, is 2.0 in surround-sound speak.

* 5.1: This is the primary format for creating and delivering surround sound. Movie theaters, digital television, DVD-Video and Audio, and even the latest game consoles use this format. Source signals have the five main channels and one LFE bass effects channel. Playback systems usually have five main speakers and one subwoofer.

* 5.1-channel ready: Such an audio system has six discrete inputs to accept a 5.1 signal from a signal source such as a 5.1-channel DVD player. These products can’t necessarily decode signals to a 5.1-channel output. You can best ferret out true 5.1 systems by reading reviews of the devices before you buy.

* 6.1: 6.1-channel systems have an additional surround channel called theback surround channel. This channel drives a speaker (or preferably two) situated right behind the viewers, which in essence provides the same smooth flow in the back sound field that the center speaker enables in the front speaker group. Dozens of DVDs are encoded with extra back surround information for this back surround speaker, and these DVDs also play perfectly well on regular 5.1 systems.

* 7.1: Not to be outdone, some technical whizzes have taken the 5.1 or 6.1 channel encoding on a DVD and used some computer horsepower to create two, independent back surround speakers for even more surround sound, making it 7.1. 7.1 isn’t a true surround sound format (there are no DVDs on the market with 7.1 channels of sound).

* 8.1 and beyond: You may hear about even higher designations, 8.1, 9.1, 10.2, and so on. These systems belong in the realm of the home theaterphile, and if you’re evaluating such gear, you probably have a home theater consultant standing next to you, so just follow his or her recommendations.

Bass management

Bass management is how your home theater manages the low frequency sounds. Better A/V receivers and other controller devices have several options for how you want to handle the bass sounds in your system. If you have nice tall speakers that have a very effective bass range of their own (often called full range speakers), you may decide to pass all bass frequencies to them. If you want smaller speakers that can sit on a shelf, then the bass frequencies might fall to the subwoofer (a speaker designed to play low-frequency sounds).

You don’t have to have a subwoofer to take advantage of the LFE (Low Frequency Effect) channel that some DVDs have encoded because many normal left/right speakers can take these cues from your receiver and play the sound accordingly. But having a subwoofer gives you that stomach-rattling, vibrating-room effect at just the right times.

I got an email last week from “J” (Simpson) asking me if I knew about DadLabs. To be quite honest I had never heard of them, so I was a bit curious about who or what this was about. I just hoped this wasn’t just another spam message inviting me to a website where I could get cheap, fast male enhancement. I was pleasantly surprised to learn about the great work the guys at DadLabs are doing. BTW, before I forget, here is their link http://www.dadlabs.com/

According to their website “about” page…

Headquartered in Austin, Texas, DadLabs is an information and entertainment company that fosters the father/child relationship through media, instructional and retail products. The mission of the company is to strengthen families and benefit children by empowering today’s fathers. The company provides resources to expecting, new and veteran fathers that will launch them into a more active and creative role in the lives of their children.

I am very impressed and I know you’ll appreciate the awesome job these fellas are doing at DadLabs. Check out their latest video ” The Lounge - Mother-in-Law.

Thanks for sharing this great website with me/us “J”!

Recently I outsourced a project to a company in India and its not working out as I hoped. Mainly programming work that I didn’t have the skill for and work that would take up a lot of my time. Over the years I’ve outsourced work through Elance and Rent A coder with great success, so I didn’t see this coming.  I hired a company with a supposed staff of programmers who said they could not only complete my task professionally, the price quoted was excellent. After-all, you don’t want to break the bank on one project.

It started off with a contract, a 1/3 payment and a promise that I would be assigned a dedicated project manager. All sounds very professional so far, since I’ve learned that communication is the key element to any outsourced project. If you cannot get it contact with the programmer, it can be hell. Things started to turn a bit sour after this.

- the project manager I was assigned took more than a week to contact me

- when I asked for an action plan, I was sent something a grade 8th student could do. - No real effort.

- I then made an action plan and sent it to the project manager - No response from him for another 4-5 days.

- finally got on the same page with the project manager and the actual programmer (now 2 weeks into the project)

- did a conference chat with everyone, since they had some questions. Gave me a chance to speak directly with the programmer.

- was promised a template to view in 3 days, that was 6 days ago.

Here’s the best part…

After the conference with the programmer and project manager, I got a message from the programmer. Basically he wanted to know about finance..

- how much did you pay for this contract

- did you know that I’m only getting “x” amount of dollars for this?

- my staff is depressed since we’re only getting “x” dollars for this project and it’s worth 1000’s more (Indian rupees).

…. basically it seems that the person who took my contract, then sub-contract it out a a very low rate to someone else. Now I have a programmer sending me messages about being under paid. Non-Stop questions about money! And no work for me to take a look at yet! I hate knowing that people are under paid, but I asked him if before taking th eproject he didn’t know what it was (required work) and how much he/his staff would be paid. So if you knew, why bitch like a facking baby to me?
Are you considering outsourcing your work? Ask yourself the following questions…

* Will outsourcing free up your business to focus on its strengths? This might produce tangible benefits, allowing your staff to concentrate on their main tasks and on the business’ future strategy.
* Will it improve your efficiency or customer service? The outsourcing company you choose should be a specialist in the process or service you ask them to carry out for you.

* Will your business gain a competitive advantage by outsourcing? Outsourcing can bring flexibility to a business, turning fixed costs into variable costs and freeing up capital. It can also give your business the edge when adapting to changing market conditions.

Forget American Idol and all the clones that came after, in this age of crap tv that’s filled with reality shows. Last night I caught episode episode 6 / season 2 of Man vs Wild and I think it was last week I was lucky enough (I never seem to know when it’s on) to catch the ‘Behind the scenes” episode of Survivorman - the one that recaps the entire season’s treks.

Have you been watching? In both shows the main characters Les Stroud and Bear Grylls shows viewers how to cope in different situations if you’re stranded in some remote and hostile location. After last nights episode of Born Survivor it had me thinking… if I had to choose one of these fellas to be with in a situation where I depended on their skills, who would I choose? They both seem to know what they’re doing, although Bear Grylls seem to be more physical due to his military background. However, when you consider that not only does Les survive in his shows… he does all the friggin taping. He carries around a bunch of cameras and is ACTUALLY left stranded.

Tune in to these two shows… you’ll see what I mean.

Man vs. Wild, also called Born Survivor: Bear Grylls, is a survival television series hosted by Bear Grylls, on the Discovery Channel in the United States and Australia, and on Channel 4 in the United Kingdom.

In the show, Grylls both demonstrates and narrates techniques for wilderness survival. Throughout each episode, Bear also tells about successful and failed survivals in the area he is in.

Survivorman is a reality television program broadcast in Canada on the Outdoor Life Network (OLN), and in the United States on The Discovery Channel and The Science Channel. Host Les Stroud must survive for seven days in various remote locales with little or no food, water, or equipment. He is dropped off with his clothes, a pair of cases for his camera equipment, his “trusty” harmonica, and a multi-tool. Usually, he also has random bits of everyday items that a stranded person in the given area might be likely to possess. He also carries a satellite phone for use in an emergency.

In each episode Stroud places himself in a unique survival situation. The show is meant to demonstrate how one might survive alone in a remote location with minimal supplies until being rescued. Finding food, water, and materials to make fire and shelter pose the main challenges of each episode.

Who would I choose? Les Stroud gets my vote!