You have GOT to be kidding me...

Today will go down in history as the SECOND time in my naval career where the detailer has dropped a bomb in my lap and made a run for it. (Aside: The "detailer" is the guy sitting at a desk at Navy Personnel Command in Millington, Tennessee who decides where you are going for your next tour of duty.)

The first time this happened was just after we moved to the DC suburbs for my last shore duty. We had JUST bought a house in Ashburn, VA, about 20 miles outside the beltway to the WEST of DC. Our household goods had JUST been delivered. I hadn't even reported to my new command yet. Then I received a voicemail from the detailer that went something like this: "Yeah, hi, Kevin, congratulations! You're the submarine force's nomination for the flag secretary position at the Naval Academy. The USNA offices will be contacting you to set up an interview with the admiral. Oh, and I'm going on leave for the next two weeks, so I'll talk to you when I get back. Hope it goes well, bye!" Nice. Input from the service member neither required nor desired. There was a week or two there we were really stressed out and wondering if we were going to have to pack our stuff up again and move to the OTHER side of the beltway so I wouldn't have a two hour commute to work at Annapolis. Luckily, I didn't get that job. The detailer dropping that in my lap without even asking what I thought and then taking off on leave just really drove me nuts.

Fast forward a couple of years to this very afternoon. Remember the detailer has recently told me I'm staying in Hawaii. Although we didn't really want to stay in Hawaii, we have come to terms with this and were moving on. We stopped shopping for houses on Realtor.com. LW started working on reservations for our timeshare vacation in January here in Hawaii. LW started making a long honey-do list for things she wanted to change around the house since we were staying for a few more years. I started working on some of those tasks over the last couple of days - like moving furniture around two nights ago. Last night, I cancelled our reservations in the Navy Lodge. I had made reservations for us as a placeholder for the last couple of weeks I expected us to be on the island before transferring, but I didn't need them anymore since we were staying.

So I get this email from the detailer this afternoon...

In essence, it said something to the effect of, "Yyyyyeah, hi, about that job in Hawaii I was going to send you to? Yyyyyyeah, not so much. Admiral ___________ called and picked someone else by name he wants to take that job, so that's off the table. Well, I'm going on leave now through next week, so give me a call the week after next and we'll see what we can work out for your next set of orders."

Um...

AHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!

I think I must really be a pessimist at heart.

Case in Point #1: All the past week I've been trying to focus on the positive aspects of staying in Hawaii, but I was still grimacing over the fact that I really didn't want to stay in Hawaii. For example, I was really annoyed the other day when I was drooling over all the HD channels available now on Dish Network, only to find out that you can't get most of them in Hawaii.

Case in Point #2: Now, again, am I trying to focus on the positive aspects of NOT staying in Hawaii. We didn't WANT to stay in Hawaii in the first place. Still, my thoughts are in turmoil right now not knowing where we're going next. At least when we thought we were staying in Hawaii, the path ahead was clear and we could plan accordingly. Although the path wasn't the optimum path / not the path we had chosen, at least we knew which path we were taking and where we were headed. Now, that's all out the window. It's like we've discovered that previous path was washed out by a landslide and there's a heavy fog set in for the next week, so we just have to sit and wait until the fog lifts (when the detailer gets back from leave and I get some orders) to start evaluating the new path we're going to take and making appropriate plans.

Keep in mind, we're about 2 months from wanting to have our household goods and our car packed out and shipped off the island if we're heading back to the mainland, so it would be NICE to have ORDERS so we could reserve the move dates we want. Summer is a big time for PCS (Permanent Change of Station) transfers with a lot of people moving, so a lot of the move dates are already reserved at this point - there are only just so many moving companies on the island.

Argh this is frustrating. I know the Lord has a plan for us... I just wish we knew what it was.

I'm going to go make those Navy Lodge reservations again...

HD vs. Blu-Ray DVD

I went by the NEX on Monday and picked up a high-speed HDMI cable to connect our HD DVD player to the new TV. To test it out, I put in The Italian Job. ...WOW... The Italian Job in 1080p High Def is... wait for it... LEGENDARY. I went right to the chase scene at the end with the three Mini-Coopers, the armored cars, the motor cycles, and the helicopter. It was just simply amazing. I mean, you could see the slightest glimmer or reflection in the windows of the Mini-Coopers. It was stunning.

I can hear a couple of you asking yourselves, "Self, why did he choose an HD DVD player over a Blu-Ray?" Well, that's an excellent question. I actually knew very little about the formats before my mom found a Toshiba HD DVD player for sale and asked if I wanted it. I did some quick checking around, and found that (a) the user reviews for the Toshiba HD DVD player were excellent, and (b) the price my mom found it for was fantastic. So I told my mom we'd take it. (She actually gave us the HD DVD player for Christmas - thanks, Mom!).

VS

Since then, I've been reading up a little more on the differences between the formats. The two formats are actually very similar. I expect that like the battle of VHS versus Beta, one of the two formats will eventually "win," and the winner may defy the conventional wisdom on which format should win.

Quality-wise, the two formats are the same. Watching The Italian Job on a Blu-Ray disk would have been just as fantastic as watching it on an HD DVD - they're both 1080p. The key difference between the two formats (besides which big-name corporate label is supporting it) is how much data one disk can hold - 30 GB for the HD DVD versus 50 GB for the Blu-Ray (there are other minor differences here and there, but they seemed pretty inconsequential to me). According to this CNET article comparing the formats, the Blu-Ray players are more expensive than the HD DVD players. I don't know if the price difference is driven by an actual functional capability difference or if it's just because the name brand "SONY." Given that the quality is the same and one is more expensive than the other, my logical self tells me, "$elf, economics dictate that the HD DVD format will prevail over the Blu-Ray format." I mean, who cares about the extra space on the disk? They both hold an entire movie, and I rarely watch all those "bonus features" they put on DVDs anyway, so why pay more money for more storage space that you don't need?

However (comma), if I had to wager a cash-bet on which format would win the Blu-Ray versus HD DVD battle today, then I would put my money on Blu-Ray. Why am I defying my own logic, you ask? I would put my money on the Blu-Ray just based on the number of Blu-Ray disks I see for sale at Best Buy... at the NEX... on Amazon.com... and the obviously huge amount of money Sony is investing in pushing the Blu-Ray format. In fact, this afternoon we went to Blockbuster to rent a movie for family movie night, and they had an entire row of Blu-Ray DVDs for rent, but not a SINGLE HD DVD. Curious, I just googled it and found out that Blockbuster made the decision in favor of Blu-Ray way back in June 2007 - long before I ever developed any awareness or interest in the battle between the two formats. And for the coup de grace: I wanted to get one of my favorite movies, The Fifth Element, in HD... but it's a Sony Pictures Entertainment (SPE) movie, so it's only available in Blu-Ray. Thbbbbbt! :-P

I won't get upset either way. I'd just like SOMEONE to declare a "winner" so we can get on with it. Even if we eventually have to buy a Blu-Ray DVD player, I've got a big enough collection of regular DVDs that I can continue to use the HD DVD player we have to play the HD DVDs we've bought so far along with our old standard format DVDs.


P.S. I can't WAIT for The Brazilian Job to come out!

Update 2/15/08: See follow-up post for more news on this topic.