Took the HD plunge

We have a daughter who's a senior this year, and a vacation coming up, so I decided it was time to upgrade the camcorder that I bought last year to tide us over from when the old one broke to when HD was more stable. I really wanted to go HD last year, but at the time all the decent HD camcorders were $1000 and up, so I bought an SD camcorder open box from Amazon for under $200 bucks, fully intending to upgrade in a year or two.

It was in the cards, I knew that once we got a good-sized HD TV, the SD camcorder would really start to bug me. Seeing my daughter's last concert where she appears as 6 or 8 skooshy pixels pushed me over the edge on this; I want us to have something better to keep for the rest of our lives.

( Cut because I do tend to ramble on so )

Ready for winter

My studded tires showed up today. I think these are a better tire for most people's use than the Nokians I have run for the last 3 years. You can pump them up to higher pressures and run mainly on the center ridge, or drop the pressure to run more on the spikes, and they have a 2nd pair of spikes farther up the sidewalls for climbing out of the occasional icy ruts. Also, they have reflective sidewalls which are quite bright, so that's some more extra safety.

They were $65 each, instead of the $50/ea that the Nokians cost, but if they last another 3 years they're worth it. They could easily last even longer; the Nokians didn't really wear out; rather, the studs are starting to poke through the inside and are piercing the tube. Heck, I could probably get a pair of pliers, rip the studs out of the Nokians, and run them as knobbies for another couple of years.