After going to a local Right Start store and playing around with the different models, we chose to go with the Peg Perego Pliko P3 Paloma (leather). We also picked up the matching leather infant car seat, Peg Perego Primo Viaggio. We decided to go leather for durability and I heard that if you spilled milk on the cloth material it’s hard to remove it from the frame so you can wash it - and if you don’t wash it, it will stink. We found both at Bergstroms for a reasonable price. We were also surprised that they were selling both standard and leather models of the stroller for the same price. Another big plus for me is that this stroller fits in my trunk with my Alpine Type R 12″ sub. I sure didn’t want to remove my sub

Below are some pics and video of me unboxing it. Assembly was easy (once you read the manual).

This year I decided to jump in to the Blu-ray world. I’ve been trying to decide between getting a PS3 or a stand-alone player. I ended up getting a Sony BDP-S350 a couple of weeks ago. Spending the extra $ for a PS3 didn’t make sense since I won’t be playing any games. I did however like the wireless connection but it isn’t worth the price difference. This player is great and the quality of Blu-ray is phenomenal. So during the past week I’ve been buying a lot of movies on DVD and BD. Here’s a list of stuff I recently got.

• The Wire: Complete Series (DVD)
• Voltron: Volume 6 (DVD)
• House of Flying Dragon (BD)
• The Road Warrior (BD)
• The Clone Wars (BD)
• Charles In Charge: Season 1 (DVD)
• Eagle Eye (BD) - I picked this up today at Best Buy. It was advertised to be released on December 30th. I don’t know why they had it for sale along with Resident Evil: Degeneration.
• 3:10 To Yuma (BD)
• Rambo (BD) - The newer one
• The Forbidden Kingdom (BD)
• Cloverfield (BD)
• Sleepy Hollow (BD)
• The Italian Job (BD)
• Shooter (BD)
• The Dark Knight (BD)
• Hancock (BD)

If you haven’t seen a good demo of Blu-ray, I highly suggest you look for one. Most of the store demos I’ve seen were using TVs that didn’t have a good Hz. I noticed certain parts of the movie (usually when there’s a lot of rapid movement) speed up and slow down. I asked a store associate at Best Buy about it and they told me it had something to do with the TV’s refresh rate. Not sure if this is true but it sound like it made sense - I mean I’m no HDTV expert. Also, don’t bother with the expensive HDMI (HDTV is worthless if you don’t connect using this) cables. I picked one up from Fry’s - 10ft v1.3B for $20 - elsewhere they’ll run at least $8. It works fine.

I just want to thank my mom and mommy (Abby’s mom) for hooking me up with most of those movies. Abby also got me another pair of Wallabees (brown suede ones) - very nice.

Pictures at Flickr.com

Video Part 1

Video Part 2

• HP dv9999us laptop (17″ laptop) and cables
• Apple MacBook Pro (15″ laptop) and cables
• Canon CanoScan LIDE 500F scanner and cables
• Logitech USB mouse
• Targus PA248U laptop cooler
• Western Digital Passport 250GB (portable HDD)
• other little things

I was curious and weighed the back it was about 23.9 lbs. I still have room to spare and if I wanted, I could carry a book or 2. But it was getting way too heavy.

I started looking at the netbooks. They are very light-weight, ultra portable, no CD/DVD-rom drives. I thought it would be perfect for what I need. I can still carry my MBP and have a netbook too. I waited and waited. Then I saw an ad at Office Depot for a laptop. It was a total opposite of what a netbook is but for the price I had to take a look. I ended up buying the HP dv9999us. Here are the specs:

• AMD Turion-X2 64bit 2.0GHz
• 4GB ram
• 250GB hdd
• 17″ WXGA 1440×900 BrightView LCD
• USB 2.0 (4x)
• Firewire 400 (1x)
• S-Video out
• Built-in web cam
• Media remote control
• 2 audio out headphone jacks and 1 input
• 5-in-1 memory card reader
• Express card slot

You can view the hardware specs here. So after about 2 weeks of use, here’s a list of likes and dislikes.

LIKES:

• 4GB ram
• 64 bit OS and CPU
• numeric keypad is part of the keyboard
• 17″ screen is great
• Vista Home Premium 64bit has been impressively stable (so far)
• memory card reader
• has remote control for media software and can be stored in the extreme card slot
• built-in webcam
• after rebates the laptop costs only $490
• physical on/off switch for WiFi
• no incompatibilities so far being Vista and 64bit (programs that are 64bit are stored in the Program Files folder while the rest are stored in Program Files x86)
• S-Video out support
• light scribe DVDRW drive

DISLIKES:

• media buttons on top of the keyboard are too senstive
• video card is not all that good when it comes to games
• right, Shift button is awkwardly positioned and size is smaller than usual - I sometimes press “/” key to the left of it
• heavy 7.7lbs (but it is a 17″ laptop)
• media software isn’t too responsive, too cluttered - OS X has a more intuitive interface
• lots of pre-installed software (can be removed, but why are they there in the first place - doesn’t exists in any Apple computer)
• took almost an hour to access the desktop during first boot - must be a Vista thing
• no HDMI support, but no biggie
• sometimes I hear buzzing sound when the laptop seems like it’s heating up - I’ve had this happen on several other laptops so it seems normal

Overall the laptop is great for the price. My views towards Vista have changed a little bit. It seems the 64 bit version runs a little more stable than the 32 bit version. I do miss my MacBook Pro and OS X but I don’t miss the overheating. I still have Apple desktops at home and at work so it’s not that bad.

Then I thought, why don’t we have our SQL server do most of the heavy lifting. I created a stored procedure that query the database for the record(s) that need to be duplicated and have them duplicated. Below is a short example to get you started.

First you need to create a stored procedure in SQL Server.

CREATE PROCEDURE stored_procedure_sample
@record_id INT OUTPUT

AS
BEGIN

INSERT INTO table_name (column1, column2, column3)
SELECT column1, column2, column3
FROM table_name
WHERE record_id = @record_id

END;

GO

Next you need to create the ASP page that process the request. You can use form variable or URL query string. For the example, I will use a form variable. Let’s imagine on page1.asp there is a form with a hidden variable that contains the record_id you want to duplicate. You submit this to page2.asp and here’s a sample of what page2.asp should look like.

<%

Dim connString, rsCmd

connString = “your connection string”
Set rsCmd  = Server.CreateObject(”ADODB.Command”)
rsCmd.ActiveConnection = connString
rsCmd.CommandType = 4
rsCmd.CommandText = “stored_procedure_sample”

rsCmd.Parameters.Append rsCmd.CreateParameter(”@record_id”, 200, 1, 4, Request.Form(”record_id”))

rsCmd.Execute

%>

What page2.asp does is it takes the form variable “record_id” from page1.asp and tells the stored procedure to get the values for this record and insert it as a new record. That’s pretty much it. Just a short, simple example on how you can create a stored procedure in MSSQL Server and use it with classic ASP.

Here’s a video from Youtube that I found.

I decided to check out the Clarks store since I was already there. They had a sale, buy one get one at 25% off. I found some black, suede ones that I had my eye on the last time I was there. They feel so comfortable, it’s like walking on a matress. The guy also brought out the last pair of some canvas ones. They were nice and I haven’t seen them before so I bought them too. Abby liked the suede ones too so I bought her a pair too. So for 3 pairs of Clarks Wallabees I spent around $220 - not bad I thought.

I’ve been waiting for this for a long time. The iPhone 3G is an international and supports multiple languages. But what if your country isn’t listed and you want to text or email people in your native language that isn’t supported? Well for months I was faced with this and the auto-correction bugged the crap out of me until I hacked my iPhone just so that I can disable the auto-correction. But now, Apple has finally implented the setting and am back to the original settings.

Why did it take so long Apple?

I’ve played about an hour of it so far earlier. I got my Death Knight made. You must have an available character slot in order to create one. You start off in Eastern Plaguelands at level 55. I’ve done a couple of quests with her already. A mount can be summoned once you complete a chain quest (2).

After messing with that, I changed on to my Paladin toon and did a couple of quests in the new lands. Some of the green gear I saw as rewards will already replace any existing blue gear you have.

So now I’m home and have installed it on my iMac and I come to this…

I captured the image 30 minutes after I logged in… and still waiting. This is worse than when The Burning Crusade expansion came out. Oh well…