Two or three times since my lamp was replaced on my DLP HDTV I’ve heard that same beeping/buzzing when turning my TV on. From what I understand, that’s the early stages of the lamp going bad. The manufacturer’s warranty is good for one year past purchase date, which ends for me in mid January, 2008. It’s so far been only a VERY minor inconvenience, but it could become something more serious.

So I sent an online request to have it repaired, and the Samsung guy came out the next business day. They told me they’d call me 20 minutes before they arrived, which was good — I wanted to take pictures in case I had to replace the lamp myself in the future. Unfortunately they did not give me 20 minutes notice, I got a call from the wife saying that the repairman was already here replacing it. Come to think of it, this same thing happened last time, and I remember thinking afterwards, “Gee that’s a convenient ‘mistake’, I wonder if he even replaced it…”. Odd that it happened again.

I was reminded to get the lamp replaced by a warranty extension renewal I received in the mail… something like $500 for 3 years. Are you kidding me?!? I guess next time it goes bad, I’ll need to replace it myself.

I bought my Wii back in August. What I neglected to mention is that I got it for free. No, I didn’t do the BS “sign up for these 5 programs and refer 5 friends who do the same and get a free Wii” gimmick (not that I haven’t tried that before). I got a slick deal on it.

So in mid to late July I applied for an American Express Bank of America Rewards Card, which promised $250 in rewards for $250 of purchases. I was a little skeptical at first, but it looked legit, so I went through with it. I received my card on August 6th, and purchased my Wii (the first thing I could think of that was $250) on August 7th. A few weeks later I applied for the reward — to be shipped to me via a check in “1-2 billing cycles.” A few weeks ago I wondered what was taking so long — I went to their site and had to confirm I was ready to accept the check.

Today I received the $250 check. That makes the Wii free, after 3 months. Worth it, I’d say.

One of the coolest things about using a Mac Mini as my HTPC is that I get to use the Apple Remote to control the content on it, and I don’t have to worry about any buggy or inexistent drivers for it. I’m not entirely sure why an Apple Remote is included in almost all Macs, it seems like it only works well as a remote for when the system is hooked to a TV.

No, the Apple Remote isn’t a universal remote — it can’t control my TV or stereo receiver. It only has 6 buttons, how could it? This thing is as small as a remote could comfortably be, 4.5″ x 3″ x 0.25″; unfortunately small enough to fit in a dog’s mouth, and in every crevasse in the living room.

We lost our Apple Remote the other day, scoured the entire house looking for it. I was not looking forward to fronting $29.99 $29.97 on a brand new one. In the interim, I’d been using VNC to navigate through video files (what a pain!).

After two days of looking, it was in between our couch cushions; where we’d looked many times already. Man I’m glad it’s back.

My buddy Dave plays on my 360 pretty often. He recently purchased his own, and found that if he signs onto his gamertag, it invalidates all other gamertag subscriptions. So, he signed in on his at home, then comes to my house, and receives this message:

Your XBox Live membership information is not valid. Please use a profile that contains a valid membership or recover you profile from XBox Live.

How dumb is that? You can’t just re-type in your password to revalidate it, you have to fill in every tiny detail — a 10+ minute procedure. Why did they make it so hard to have one account work on two 360s?