Michael Gross in HD!

So today Alison and I went to swap out the old digital cable box for a new HD TV cable box, something we've been meaning to do since January. It took all of five minutes and now we've got the HD-TV action rockin' which is pretty neat even if a lot of the channels cost extra. Still, there are enough channels already included in our package that I'm kinda geeking out of over it. The first thing I watched? Tremors II on the HD-Net channel. That's right, Michael Gross and giant worms in 1080i (no 1080p for broadcast HD...yet).

It looks good. Not as good as an HD-DVD or a Blu-ray disc but it does look pretty sharp despite more obvious mpeg compression. X-Men III is on right now and it looks better than the standard definition DVD does.

In other completely unrelated and fairly insignificant news, the job hunt has been fruitful this week. I've had a few genuine nibbles and have an interview set up for Friday afternoon that could be interesting. We'll see how that goes. While I'd rather someone pay me to write about trashy movies from home than commute into Manhattan on the subway, it could certainly be a lot worse and at least the office is right on a main line that comes into our area of Queens. The idea of another office job doesn't thrill me, but the money would be good as would the benefits, the hours, and the paid vacation time. The headhunters I have talked to recently have either flaked out of just flat out stopped responding to emails or phone calls so I figure I'm better off finding something on my own than depending on someone who doesn't really know me, or what I can do, save for what's on my resume. I make a much better impression in person than I do on paper anyway, what with my sexy sideburns and imposing height.

Oh yeah, the website. We decided last week to take the forum down on DVD Maniacs so that we could clean up some corrupt files and get it ready for the vBulletin upgrade and launch it with the new main site at the same time. Well, the main site is 99.9% ready, we just have to fix a couple of typos and links. We haven't (and won't for some time) have all the archived reviews ported over - that's going to take months - but the functionality is there and the news and review posting templates work really, really well. So it was all looking great until our programmer said that there were too many corrupt files in the SQL database on the forum to work with. He asked for a back up. Eddie went to the host, who told him that they didn't have one despite the fact that they're supposed to do two a week. We both paniced, figuring we were going to lose roughly seven years worth of history. That was resolved this morning when the host did come through and found a back up for us that they'd stored on a different server for some reason. Sounds kind of flaky, but whatever works. Long story short, we're behind on our projected 'go live' date (we were hoping for today) but by this time next week or very possibly a couple of days sooner, we should be 100% done. We'll probably lose some of the more impatient board members, as people don't like waiting anymore, but the relaunch should be a beautiful thing. I even talked Paramount into giving us some awesome prizes to giveaway once the big day comes.

So yeah, life is good, things are happening, and I'm keeping busy. And now I can watch Michael Gross in high definition at no extra cost. Huzzah!