It was mostly dry today and there were even a few sunny moments while we were out walking!

I spent most of the day inside anyway, first at the gym, then making lunch, then ripping DVDs, then going to the allergist, then ripping more DVDs, and finally watching a little TV (including an episode of “Fawlty Towers” which I’d just ripped earlier today). I kept the computer busy ripping DVDs while we were watching TV, too.

Not a particularly interesting day to write about, but I feel productive!

We followed our usual Sunday morning routine, more or less, with a trip to the Farmers’ Market and a walk through Los Gatos. Los Gatos parks and trails were closed due to the threat of falling trees, but the streets were open and not very busy.

I did a lot more DVD ripping and converting today. So far, I’ve only found two DVDs still in their shrink wrap (The Blob and Citizen Kane), but I’m sure there will be more before I’m finished.

Embrace the Moon is a short (one-hour) Tai Chi instructional video; we’d watched it a couple of times, so I didn’t expect to have any problems ripping it. But it took well over an hour to transfer the data from the DVD, which surprised me – most DVDs transfer at about 3-times normal speed. I looked at the transferred file and found that the publisher had taken the original VHS version of the video and played it into a DVD recorder to create their master copy. But they didn’t stop recording when the tape ended – they kept recording until the DVD was completely full. The last two-and-a-half hours were just an almost blank screen and a little hum; I was able to remove that before sending the video to the Plex server.

The rain has been pretty steady all day; it didn’t stop us from taking our walks, but it did discourage us from doing more than the bare minimum. It’s supposed to clear up this week; I’m ready for a break. If only I knew where I could learn some Tai Chi….

It was too rainy to go out for a walk this morning, so we went to the JCC and exercised there instead, though we did manage a couple of walks later in the day during relatively dry intervals. Ross Creek was noticeably higher than it had been a couple of days ago, but still well below a worrisome level (and it’s gone down again since we came home).

We’d stopped watching Wednesday’s The Late Show with Stephen Colbert when he and Janelle Monáe started talking about Glass Onion; he suggested stopping the show and watching the movie to avoid spoilers. So we did that today, and I really enjoyed it. It might have been even better if I’d upgraded Netflix to premium to let us see the movie in HDR, but I doubt I missed anything significant. And after we watched the movie, we went back and watched the rest of the interview; I’m glad we waited.

I decided I didn’t have enough projects going on, so I’ve gotten back to ripping DVDs so I can put them on Plex and possibly watch them some day. It will take a while.

The phone rang at 7:30am; it was Best Buy, telling me that they’d be here to install the new TV by 1pm and asking if it would be OK if they came earlier, maybe 11am. I said “yes”, and we went out for a walk in the rain.

The phone rang again at 10:30am; it was Best Buy, asking if they could come in 10 minutes. I said “yes”.

They had a little trouble removing the old TV – it had been sitting in one place for years, and the weight of the TV made the rubber feet on the stand adhere VERY firmly to the glass table. But they got the stand to loosen its death grip and took the old TV away, giving me just enough time to clean the glass thoroughly (Bosch cooktop cleaner does a great job!) before they assembled the new TV to its stand and put it on the table.

The picture was spectacular, as I’d expected; it was set to full brightness and contrast, so it almost popped out of the screen; I’ve toned it down a little bit, and I’ll try Consumer Reports’ recommended settings tomorrow.

I don’t particularly like the Samsung remote – it is VERY minimal (it doesn’t even have a mute button – you have to press down on the volume switch), so I expect to stick with the Harmony as the main remote.

I hooked up the Apple TV, Mac mini, and Raspberry Pi directly to the TV, since they’re all 4K-capable; I left the TiVo and Blu-Ray player attached to the A/V receiver. It’s awkward, though I was able to program my Harmony remote to handle everything. I’m looking forward to getting a new 4K-capable A/V receiver soon – Best Buy will have the one I want (Denon AVR-X1700H) in stock locally again next weekend, and I have built up some credit in the Best Buy rewards program in the last few months.

Shabbat Shalom!

My cousin Darryl offered some advice after I posted about making frozen latkes: “Get a real mixer instead of the crappy one you have now!” He even sent a link to a discounted KitchenAid 5-quart bowl-lift mixer at Best Buy so I wouldn’t have to do my own research.

So I did some research and decided that I didn’t want to get that mixer. Instead, I got a discounted KitchenAid 5-quart tilt-head mixer at Best Buy. It’s a little smaller than the mixer Darryl recommended and can only knead 4 pounds of bread dough instead of 7, but I think I can live with that limitation.

We used it for the first time today to make pretzels, and I was impressed. I didn’t have to hold on to the mixer to keep it from wandering; I didn’t have to scrape dough off the walls of the bowl to get it into the dough ball; I didn’t have to add more water to get all of the flour incorporated into the dough after the initial three-minute mix; it took less time to get the dough completely developed.

Thanks for the advice, Darryl!