This pic shows the new door between the theater and the game room (also being remodeled a bit).  You can also see the floor and crown molding that hides all of the wires.  In the corner is a floor-to-ceiling bass trap that I made out of 1×4 lumber, insulation, chicken wire, and fabric.  The lights on the front speakers are connect to a remote control switch.  The center console will eventually be replaced with something nicer.  For now, it holds the center speaker and the remote/game controller chargers.

You can see the riser here along with rope lighting.  These lights are on a remote control as well.  The side TV-trays will be replaced with end tables as soon as we find some we like.  You can also see the other bass trap in the corner.

You can see the new media wall in this pic.  The very left is the server cabinet that houses all of my gear.  You can see the new door that goes in between the kids play room and the theater as well.  Hanging a 36″ door was fairly difficult, but worth it!  The media shelves are lit with remote-dimmable track lighting.

Here’s a view of the front row and riser.

There’s still some work to be done though.  I want to get new end tables, a sectional sofa for the riser, mic and guitar stands (for rock band), and posters and lighting along the back wall.  I might add more bass traps as well, but the sound is pretty tight right now so I may not.

If you’re curious, here’s my equipment list:

• Samsung PN63A650 63″ Plasma
• Denon 3808CI Audio Video Receiver
• Front Speakers: Boston Acoustics VR-3
• Center Speaker: Boston Acoustics VR-C
• Rear Speakers: Boston Acoustics VR-1
• Sub: Definitive Technology Supercube III
• Sony BDP-S350 Blu-Ray Disc Player
• Denon 2910 DVD/SACD player
• Logitech Harmony One Remote Control
• Microsmith Hot Link XL IR Remote Control Extender
• Xbox 360

So I watched this video:

In the video, she answers some questions (from fans presumably).  One of the questions is “John McCain or Barack Obama?”  She answers with some cheesy, but funny, songs that clearly indicate her preference for Barack.  I agree Molly.  Now, here’s where things get real.  I scroll through her comments and notice that three people, accounting for 100% of the comments on that page, uniquely misspelled Barack Obama’s name.

How hard is it to know how to spell the President of the United States name?  Further, how hard is it to google how to spell his name if you aren’t sure.  Sigh.

Anyhow, despite the fact that her fans are lazy and can’t spell, Molly’s a great musician and pretty funny vlogger.  Check her out.

What started out as a trip for just me and my friend Kevin turned into a mega-trip of 10 people.  As most of us were on a budget, we decided to share two hotel rooms.  The only ones we could find were about six miles from the convention center, but right on an express bus route. 

Thursday – The Day Before PAX
Kevin, Val, and I drove up on Thursday morning so we could tour around Seattle for a day.  We went to the Seattle Experience Music Project and Science Fiction Museum.

The Science fiction part of the museum was awesome, including some amazing collections of movie memorabilia.  Unfortunately they don’t allow pictures inside the museum, so you’ll have to take my word for it that it’s worth a visit.

The Experience Music Project (the majority of the same complex) was also most excellent.  Aside from the great exhibits, they had lots of places where you could learn, play, and otherwise interact with musical instruments.  We even got to into a sound booth and play real instruments together as a band.  We sucked… but it was fun!

When we were done, we used the Garmin Nuvi GPS that Val had to find a german pub.  Bingo… one just a couple of miles away!

In the evening, Adam, Justin, Mike, and Judy arrived.

Friday – PAX Day One
Day one started fairly early with us arriving in line a little after 8am.  We waited in a huge line of several thousand people.  This being PAX and not some other crappy convention meant that there was geeky entertainment while we waited in line.  Internet videos, text message trivia games, gameboys, magic the gathering, and countless other things were happening.  It was pretty much the best time I’ve ever had waiting in line.

We were finally let into the Expo hall at 10 am.  Upon entering, I was smacked with an explosion of awesome.  One minute there are seven of us, jaws on the floor, and the next we all fell victim to “Oooh!  Shiny!” and departed in many directions.  I think we managed to stay together in the expo hall for about 45 seconds.

Blizzard was there in full force with Warcraft Cataclysm, Starcraft II, and Diablo III playable demos.  I only played Diablo III and it was awesome.  It probably won’t be for sale until 2010, but it was fun even in it’s current state of development.

There were a lot of costumed folks running around and I stopped to take pics of a few of my favorites.

Megan, Kelly, and Kyle arrived Friday evening and we all went back to the hotel fairly late Friday night, too tired to stick around for the MC Frontalot concert.  We wanted to be well rested for our Ultimate Dungeon Delve in the morning.

Saturday - PAX Day Two
Most of us arrived a little after 8am.  We went to the queue room, grabbed our concert bracelets and departed to discuss last minute plans for our Ultimate Dungeon Delve attempt at 10:30am.  We won the delve after about four hours of nervous gameplay!  The full details are on Dragon Avenue.

After our major win, we hung around the expo a bit, played a few games, and eventually basked in the glow of our awesome accomplishment.  We went to dinner at the pub in the Red Lion Hotel.   We ate good food and did some more basking in our own glow.

Afterward, we returned to PAX and went to the concerts.  Wil Wheaton opened the event with an excellent dedication to Jonathan Coulton (JoCo) and an introduction to Paul and Storm, the opening act.  I had never heard to them, but they were awesome!

After Paul and Storm melted our faces off, JoCo took the stage and proceed to do the same.  He even brought up Paul and Storm for most of his set as backup singers.  My favorite highlight of the JoCo set was when he changed the lyrics of “My Monkey” to “Wil Wheaton”!

He did three encores, including Sweet Caroline by Neil Diamond and Birdhouse for my Soul by They Might Be Giants!

Sunday - PAX Day Three
We were wiped at this point as the concerts lasted until 2:30am!  We hit the pillows around 3:20am and woke up at 7:30am for more PAX fun!  Our first stop was the Star Wars: The Old Republic demo which was decent, but not as awesome as I was hoping.  The presenters were too marketing-like and should have been developers (geeks like us).  Nonetheless, the game looks great!

One highlight was meeting Sandeep Parikh (The Guild, Legend of Neil) and Tony Janning (The Legend of Neil).  I got autographed DVDs and pictures to add to my Home Theater decorations.

Adam and I attended the Wil Wheaton Awesome Hour and it was indeed awesome.  Afterward, we headed home completely drained of energy, but filled with awesome.

I scanned it and sent a copy to Don via email for kicks – he was, after all, the first Christian concert I attended and remains one of my favorite Christian artists.

Hi Don,

I’m sure you won’t remember me, but my friend Chris and I saw you at a concert in Long Beach, CA in the early 90′s at a small church.  I can’t recall the year exactly, but we were probably 15 or 16 years old when we saw you.  I had never heard your songs before the concert, but I was so moved by your music that we spent all the money we had to buy 2 CDs and two T-shirts.

We sat right next to a woman who claimed to be your sister.  After the concert, she invited us “back stage” to meet you.  You were kind enough to autograph our T-Shirts and CD’s.  We wore those shirts at school (which raised some eyebrows).  I attached a picture of me and my friend Chris from our yearbook where you can see Chris wearing your T-shirt.

Anyhow, I stumbled across my yearbook recently and I thought you might get a kick out of the picture.  Chris and I have grown up and have families now, but we still listen to your music.  I’ve met several “celebrities” in my life, but none quite compared to the humble Christian singer I met when I was a teenager.  You are a true celebrity to me (and Chris I’m sure).

Thanks Don.  Your music has inspired us both in ways we cannot express.

God Bless,

Jim

Three days later, Don sent a reply:

Jim,
Thank you very much.  That photo is just wonderful!  Wow, we’ve been around awhile.
What a great God we have.
In Him,
Don

In case you’re interested in Don’s awesome Christian folk music, please check out his web site.  You can download pretty much his entire library as MP3′s on an honor system, but you can also buy CD’s if you prefer.

Our first view of KITT is in his “attack mode” configuration.  This means that he has ground effects, spoilers, and some ridiculous looking blowers on the hood.  So much for subtle.

KITT is now a mustang… or a F150 truck, or probably anything Ford makes.  I expect next episode KITT will go into “stealth mode” by turning into a Ford Taurus.

In one scene, the two heroes jump into the bed of KITT truck and it transforms into a car while they are shifted to the front seats somehow.  It looked as ridiculous as it sounds.

KITT is struck by a missle that has some chemically enhanced napalm or something on it that prevents the flames from going out.

Despite the fact that KITT is now going 377 miles per hour in CITY STREETS, the flames continue to heat up the car, threatening the lives of Michael and Sarah.  Oh noes!

What do they do?  TAKE THEIR CLOTHES OFF.  Sarah tells Michael to not get excited and that it’s “just the heat of the moment”.  Ugh.  KITT confirms that taking their clothes off is a good idea. (it’s a bad idea to remove the insulation between your body and the heat)  Fireman don’t go into fires in speedos for a reason.

Meanwhile, back at the Knight Industries command center, there are literally tons of people moving around, pushing carts, sitting at computers, and generally looking very busy and concerned that Michael and Sarah are about to die.  It all looked ridiculous.

When KITT makes it back to the command center (after a ridiculous scene involving oxygen removal to put the flames out), our two heroes are unconscious and need to be revived with special blue glowing gun things.  They awake instantly and are back in action.

We are introduced to two new characters, a tech geek who portrays every geek stereotype and valley girl hottie Smith Cho who speaks 9 languages and enjoys taunting the geek with her body and saying things like “we should make babies” and then laughing at him.  Ugh.

KITT spent too much time analyzing hormone levels and discussing the love relationship between Michael and Sarah (his sidekick apparently).

There were several driving scenes where the green screen was poorly done.  Also, Michael spent a bunch of time driving while looking everywhere else but the road.  I suspose KITT could have been driving, but why were Michael’s hands on the steering wheel then?

The cliche lines were over the top.  Here are a few choice ones:

“We can do this the easy way or the hard way” (villain says to Sarah while threatening her with a syringe of glowing green liquid)

“KITT, we’re bringing you in hot!” (referring to the fact that KITT was on fire at the time)

“Mike, you have to get his thumb back at all costs!” (referring to a severed thumb that contained DNA they needed to unlock an encryption algorithm)

Oh, the good points about the show

Val Kilmer as KITT is pretty sweet actually.  His performance as KITT is panned online by most reviewers, but I actually liked it.

The CGI on the transformations wasn’t as good as the Transformers movie, but darn good for a TV show.

Sonata Arctica was fairly new to me – I’d only heard a couple of their songs before.  Their keytar player had me jonsing to go though!  That guy rocks!  The lead singer has a great voice and knew how to work the crowd.  Excellent songs (for the genre) and good stage presence overall.  A+ (just as good as Nightwish’s show)

Nightwish entered with the same epic fanfare as the last show (a few months ago iirc), but it still worked like a charm.  These guys are some of the best musicians in the business – they have perfected their craft and just have fun on stage.  I love the new singer, but wow did she choose a poor wardrobe and hair style for this show.  She wore some sort of spandex that had a really low crotch which just looked weird and was quite distracting.  Her hair went from long and black to short, feathered, combed back, and dyed two or three colors.  Blech.  She’s a great singer though and a wonderful replacement for Tarja.  A+

The roseland is a venue with a mixed review.  One one hand, it’s small and offers a very intimate experience with the performers.  On the other hand, the sound system is crap.  It’s usually too loud – to the point of being distorted.  The mix is usually crap, with drum bass overpowering everything else.  Vocals are often hard to understand and guitar solos are often drowned out.  The best venue in the NW that I’ve been too is the Clark County Ampitheater which had awesome sound quality.  The roseland however does not.  Boo.  D+

On the way back, we stopped at Home Depot to get a much needed sprinkler for the front lawn.  After I mowed the lawn, the kids played for a bit.

My muxtape has some tunes that I think are interesting and worth a listen.

However, in my two hours or so of goofing with it off and on, I have found several major mistakes in their database. For example, Scala, a European girls choir is listed under techno with a bio that clearly belongs to a different group. A search for “disney” takes me to Christian praise and worship songs. I found countless other small issues that really take the glean off of an otherwise terrific idea. There were also a lot of web site bugs (links that don’t work, things that should be links that aren’t, etc). Overall, I give it a 8/10.