The Dilbert Blog: “I’m good at spotting trends. For example, yesterday I was at a hotel pool and saw an older guy with a ponytail and a hairy chest. He was a generally hairy guy. But his back was evidently shaved. Except for. . . Wait for it. . .”

A couple of months ago, I was able to take advantage of a mistake by Circuit City and purchase a new home theater-in-a-box system by Denon. The Denon DHT-487 is an outstanding setup for a reasonable price–in my case $269. Here’s the story:

It’s a typical Sunday morning in the Kirks household. We’re drinking coffee, eating breakfast and reading the newspaper. Typically, I’ll pull all of the ads out of the paper first, then the pull and toss the “chaff” (classified ads, sports, TV guide), and finally sort the paper for Tammy. I let her read the comics and other sections first while I pour over the ads looking for unique deals.

This particular Sunday morning I breezed through the CC ad until I saw the Denon kit. Knowing it was too good to be true, I grabbed the savings checkbook and went downstairs to talk to Tammy, already working on a project that morning. She confirmed that I was not seeing things nor crazy so I was off.

After a brief discussion with the chagrined CC staff, I walked away with the Denon equipment and a $30 CC gift card. Wow! I spent about four hours that afternoon setting it up and it was time well spent. It’s amazing at full price, let alone the bargain I got. The sound quality is stunning for this type of setup. Combine the good sound with the HDTV I bought in November of 2006 and I have the home theater setup I’ve always dreamed about.

I’ll try to take some pictures this weekend and write some detailed posts on the components. My brother-in-law was down in Springfield for the Easter holiday and we watched Die Hard at full volume. The upconverted picture was amazingly clear, ensuring that I won’t be buying HD-DVD for quite some time. The sounds of bullets, crashing glass and more were crystal clear even at the high volume.

Amazing!

I treated myself to a couple of new Xbox 360 games back in March–Crackdown and Splinter Cell: Double Agent. I played Crackdown for about three hours that first night, addicted to the rich environment of the game. You can pick up and move quite a lot of the in-game objects like propane cylinders, cars, dead bodies, live bodies and more.

Now that I’ve had some time to excel in the game’s three island neighborhoods, my character has some really ridiculous abilities like lifting semi-trucks over my head and throwing them 100 feet or so.

What a way to end the day…

Matt Mower: “Diffly is designed to make it easy to browse a Subversion working copy and see all the changes, across all the files. You can filter out files you don’t care about (e.g. externals) and sticky-select files for checking in. When it comes time to check in it’s easy to review the changes for the files you are working with and assemble a detailed commit message and check-in.”

Eric Zachrison, owner and creative driver behind Agrario, Patton Alley Pub and Hickok’s, let loyal patrons and regular folks taste his Spring 2007 menu last night. A reservation only affair, Eric treated us to four small courses with portions of his signature dishes. The appetizer course was garlic shrimp, spanekopita (sp) and a Moroccan chicken skewer–all good ways to get started. The salads were perfect for spring with just enough spice and flavor to wake up the taste-buds but not spoil you for the main course.

This tasting, the main course was a generous sample of three dishes–chef’s choice. Tammy and I got lucky and scored a portion of the new halibut dish. It was amazing! I am ready to move steak down on the list and this halibut at the top. It was so good that I asked for another portion–offering to pay, of course–and it was out in a flash.

The halibut will go for $26.00 and it’s well worth it. The spice combination is beyond what most semi-pro chefs could pull of and the quality of the fish far surpasses anything us mere mortals can access.

I can’t leave off desert. An orange citrus crème brulee was Tammy’s lucky draw and she loved every bite.

Stop by Agrario today in it’s original downtown location before it heads south later this year. The atmosphere and service make the drive well worth it.