Tag: Phoenix

Cables

I had no idea it would be so tricky to get a component cable for my GameCube.

I started my search at Fry's, where I found overpriced component cables for the PS2 and Xbox (fucking Monster) but didn't see any for the GameCube. On my return home, I went to Amazon to look for component cables. I found first-party Sony cables for $20. I also found a surprisingly low-priced set of GameCube Monster Cables for $25 -- and came dangerously close to paying for them before I realized that the reason they were so cheap was that they were composite cables. My search for component turned up not just component cables but, conveniently, composite cables too, and the words are similar enough that I almost didn't notice before checkout. Thanks Amazon.

So I went looking for some real component cables for my GameCube. Having been thwarted by both Fry's and Amazon, I began to wonder why the hell I couldn't find them, and went straight to the best place for obscure video game hardware, Lik-Sang...which didn't have them either. Finally I just Googled to try and figure out what happened, and discovered that Nintendo discontinued progressive-scan support back in May '04. Consoles manufactured since then don't even have a composite port on the back. Fortunately, I got mine in December '02 (right after the release of Metroid Prime, not coincidentally). Unfortunately, the damn cables now go for $50 on eBay. Less unfortunately, the Nintendo website had them for $35 (limit one per customer). Nearly double what Sony charges for theirs, and they don't even come with audio (which sure contributes to the nastiness of my jungle-o'-cables behind my TV, having to use my composite cable for audio), but I'm sure glad I ordered when I did because a week later, they're not there anymore. I may very well have gotten the last one. (So if you were looking forward to progressive-scan goodness for your GameCube for under $50, you know whose ass to kick.)

Don't even have the damn thing hooked up yet, either, though I hope to finally hook my consoles and Mac Mini this evening, as well as add HDMI and digital audio support to my cable box.

Furniture's built and apartment is starting to look really good (the living room, anyway -- the hall and bedroom are still disaster areas). Maybe this will give me a reason to finally finish Metroid Prime 2 -- although I'm a lot more keen on getting back to Dragon Quest 8 at this point.

Also I got a fish.

The Water Here Tastes Funny

As I near the close of my first week living in north Phoenix, I have made a few observations. The first is that the water here tastes funny.

Now, I must first note that I suspect Phoenix tap water is probably among the worst in the nation. Big, polluted city in the middle of the desert with water being piped in from Colorado and California with questionable clean water regulations. I'd probably be more comfortable drinking tap water in NYC (and I think I did at the drinking fountain in the Times Square Toys R Us), or pretty much any other major American city except LA.

As you might guess from the above presumably silly and useless "rant", I filter my water. But it still tastes funny. I expect I'll get used to it soon.

The other thing I've realized is that I hate going to Fry's. I hate driving there, I hate driving back, and I especially hate shopping there. In fact I think the only satisfying part of the whole experience is walking out the front door with my bag of purchases and taking it to my car.

What was particularly unpleasant about last night's trip to Fry's -- aside from the atrocious drivers I had to fight to get there and back -- was simply trying to find things. I recently got me an HDTV, and I'm trying to set it up with HD connections for my cable and my Mac Mini. My cable box has a DVI port rather than HDMI, so I picked up a DVI-to-HDMI adapter. Of course this only transfers video and not audio, so I needed to hook audio up separately. And apparently the HDMI connections on my TV only have digital coax inputs for separate audio.

There's a Radio Shack nextdoor to my apartment complex, so of course I poked my head in there on the off chance that they'd have a digital coax audio cable for under $30. No such luck, of course. Fucking Monster.

So I went to Fry's. Where they also primarily stock Monster, but at least seem to have a better selection than their Tempe counterpart. Not that I could tell at first, because I couldn't find the audio cable aisle, which is inexplicably in the section with a giant sign that says "VIDEO" above it, rather than the section with the "AUDIO" sign. It took me probably 10 or 15 minutes to determine this, as there were no available employees anywhere to be found and I wouldn't talk to them if there were. (I learned at the Tempe location only to speak with employees as an absolute last resort; it's possible that this location actually hires competent people but I'm not going to bet on it.)

Once I finally found the aisle with the audio cables, I was faced with the even greater difficulty of actually locating the cables I wanted. This was hard enough to do by sight, as composite video, composite audio, component video, and digital audio are only distinguished by the number of connectors, and sometimes not even that. (Color doesn't immediately help anymore, as apparently coloring the entire connector has gone out of style in favor of coloring each and every connector exactly the same but with a thin band of red, white, or whatever for color-coding. And if I'm looking closely enough to see what color the thin band is, I'm looking closely enough just to read the damn label on the packaging.) It took me a close inventory of the entire first wall to find a digital coax audio cable, and it was labeled as a subwoofer cable. I didn't know what the difference is between regular digital audio and subwoofer audio, if there even is one, and that upset me -- I'm not used to being in over my head when it comes to tech, and when I am, I can usually just punch up Google to find an answer. I was not thrilled at the prospect of buying the wrong cable and having to return it later -- Fry's is awesome for returning things, but I still don't like driving there and back.

Fortunately, I finally discovered some that were just labeled "digital audio coaxial cable" at the opposite corner of the aisle. The Monster ones were, obviously, too expensive, but there were some adequate-looking GE cables that were priced very reasonably (6' for $8, 15' for $15). The trouble was that all but one of them had been knocked off their hooks and were lying on the bottom shelf below the hooks at ground level. I almost didn't see them. I'm chalking this up to incompetence rather than malice, but it sure seems convenient that the inexpensive cables were so hard to find compared to the Monsters.

I picked up a copy of Sonic Gems while I was there because it was only $20 for a bunch of games that were released 10-15 years ago and should've been included on Sonic Mega Collection in the first place. It made me feel better about the whole nasty shopping experience, but the way I described it in the previous sentence makes it sound like it shouldn't. Oh well. I never actually had a Sega CD, so the only copy of Sonic CD I ever had was the awful Win95 port (featuring intro and ending movies that look like crap in 256 color but the game refuses to run at any higher color depth, and won't run on XP!), so it's nice to finally have a good working copy. And Sonic the Fighters won't run on MAME so it's nice to finally be able to play it. (I don't know if the game's actually any good, as again, I've never played it, but at least I finally get to check it out.)

Anyway. I'm almost done building furniture and unpacking stuff, so I should be able to turn my attention to getting all my various media devices hooked up any time now, and hopefully figure out how to get my wireless network card working under Gentoo so I don't have to stretch a network cable across the whole apartment.

That and getting used to the funny-tasting water will mean I'm finally home here.

But I still don't know if there's a difference between a digital coax woofer cable and a regular digital coax audio cable, and a quick Google search hasn't helped yet. If you know please feel free to enlighten me.