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Joined 11 months ago
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Cake day: August 16th, 2023

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  • I got bit by this earlier in the year. I needed a smaller TV for the bedroom. I narrowed down the line I wanted. Target and Best Buy were the only two local stores to carry it. BB had the 2023 model, Target had a 2022 model with a sub-designation that was $50 cheaper. I went with Target because I didn’t care if it was an older model, just needed something good enough. Well, it wasn’t good enough, not even close. The color accuracy was so bad that the tint adjustment was useless — it was both too pink and too green no matter what. I dug out my old calibration disk and tried to adjust the color by isolating red/green/blue channels. The best-effort adjustments made it better, but still awful. I even connected it to the network (hardwire only, fuck “smart” appliances) just in case a firmware update helped. It did not, so back it went. Had to wait, multiple times in line and for someone to pull from the back, for like 45 minutes because they “don’t do exchanges” so I needed to do a song and dance to get the sale price on a replacement purchase. Got the replacement home, same deal. At that point I suspected it was leftover Black Friday junk.

    Took it back and went to Best Buy. Spent the extra $50. Perfect color out of the box. Lesson(s) learned.






  • Breath of the Wild on Switch. It had been a long long time since a game felt that immersive. I’d start a session, say to myself, “I’m gonna head towards this objective,” and four hours later I’d be in a completely different direction yet still entirely satisfied. Even the tutorial felt huge and weighty… at least until I was dumped into the wider world with only a suggestion and a general direction in which to go. I loved the hands-off approach. Everything felt organic. I remember being giddy playing Wind Waker at release, excited to get to explore the map once it opened… only to find that the first few far-off places I visited were locked behind items I didn’t have yet. With BotW, it felt like that decades-old disappointment was finally righted.