Your LED Television is not

A friend excitedly announced that he had bought an new LED HDTV and I promptly informed him that his new TV did not have an LED display, it just used LEDs instead of fluorescent backlighting. My friend liked the picture and was convinced by a salesman that the LED television was "much better than a TV with an LCD display".

I'm pretty sure I've bought plenty of stuff over the years and was perfectly satisfied with my purchase until someone enlightened me to the fact it was not exactly what I thought it was. My satisfaction was diminished only by the new information.

My friend likes his new television and it's not my place to reduce his satisfaction with technical details. His TV has a great picture and he likes it. And the LED backlighting has real advantages even though the marketing is technically misleading.

Sorry Dan. I should have kept my mouth shut.

The Social Network

On our son's recommendation we watched The Social Network this past weekend and , suprisingly to me, my wife enjoyed the movie. I thought she would drift off to a book while the movie played - especially after the first couple minutes because the opening dialog was rapid-fire geek and I kinda expected the geek to dominate the show throughout. But, she hung in there and said she really liked the movie once that opening scene was behind us. After watching the movie I had a difficult time figuring out why I liked the movie so much myself. I didn't really find the storyline all that exciting and, besides, I'm not much of a Facebook fan. I eventually decided two things made the movie enjoyable. Someone making a huge amount of money from a relatively simple idea is pretty neat. And I thought the acting and dialog were very good in the movie. I was particularly impressed with Justin Timberlake as Sean Parker (the founder of Napster). I knew JT was a teeny-bopper(?) idol in the group 'N Sync but that was the limit of my familiarity with him. I didn't (and still don't) know if the guy can sing or not but would never have guessed he could act based on that background. I learned after seeing the movie that it was nominated for an Oscar or two and did win several other awards so I guess we're not the only people who found the movie entertaining. Check it out - even if you're not a nerd. It's available from Netflix.

At the time my son recommended The Social Network I retaliated with the recommendation that he watch Inglourious Basterds. He enjoys war flicks so I figured he'd already seen it. He had not, but did. A few days later when he called, my wife asked how he liked "Despicable Bastards".