I’m currently in the market for a new plasma TV.  Since Imaginary Diva and I are moving into our new place, we decided to break open our piggy banks to justify a purchase.  For those who really know me, it shouldn’t come to a suprise I do most of my shopping on eBay especially for big ticket items.

I’ve seen a lot of weird eBay auctions in my life but this one particular auction is pretty eccentric in terms of originality.  This 13 inch color TV is from the New Hampshire State prison.  Apparently, everything seems to be in perfect working condition.  For security purposes, the TV is made from clear plastic so prison guards can see through it.  

I don’t know about you but this TV would make a great, abeit creepy, conversational piece.  Imagine having wine and cheese with visitors, while conversing about this special TV and how it was viewed by serial killers and scum of the earth.

Unfortunately, I have no choice but to pass up on this opportunity (Imaginary Diva will freak out).   Nevertheless, if you have a fetish for weird things, like this TV, you can head over to eBay to view the auction.  To view this auction right away, click here.

You can dodge a bullet the first time but sooner or later, the next one is going to hit you and strike hard.

Mixed martial arts (MMA) has witnessed enormous growth the past 3 years, thanks to increased media coverage on TV and Pay-Per-View.  In fact, ESPN magazine recently had the UFC’s biggest star, Chuck Liddell, on its cover along with very interesting article focusing on him and MMA.  It didn’t take long for other sporting magazines to follow.  Now Sports Illustrated has finally recognized MMA by placing a rising star on their cover (Roger Huerta), along with an in depth article on how the UFC is changing the sporting landscape.

If you’re a fan of MMA, I would definitely recommend reading the article at SI.com.  Titled “The New Main Event”, L. John Wertheim carefully examines, in a very neutral tone, the growth and prominence MMA has experienced.  Overall, he doesn’t exactly praise MMA but doesn’t look down upon it either (unlike most sport writers who can’t live beyond the big four sporting organizations).

My thoughts on the article are very positive as MMA will live and die based on its leadership and direction.  If the sport continues to ignore mistakes made by boxing, viewers will continue to enjoy this phenomenon for a very long time.

To read the entire article, click here.

For the past week, I’ve been shopping around for a home theatre system for our new place. I found a pretty good deal on a Panasonic and Bose DVD system at Bid4Prizes.com.

As a frequent online shopper, I search all over the Internet to get the best deal possible. With Bid4Prizes you place the lowest unique bid to win a prize. Simply enter your cell number and place your lowest bid in cents. Pretty easy huh? This is a different approach from typical auction sites, like eBay, where you place the highest bid to win an item.

Hmm…Maybe I should try bidding on the BMW 3 series for 50 cents. Who knows? I may end up winning!

It was only a couple days ago I finally upgraded to the latest version of WordPress.  Guess what?  There’s a new (argh!!!) version available for download - WordPress 2.2.  And yes, yours truly has upgraded again to take advantage of all the new features.

Here is a list of new features for WordPress 2.2 (Source: WordPress.org):

• WordPress Widgets allow you to easily rearrange and customize areas of your weblog (usually sidebars) with drag-and-drop simplicity. This functionality was originally available as a plugin Widgets are now included by default in the core code, significantly cleaned up, and enabled for the default themes

• Full Atom support, including updating our Atom feeds to use the 1.0 standard specand including an implementation of the Atom Publishing API to complement our XML-RPC interface

• A new Blogger importer that is able to handle the latest version of Google’s Blogger product and seamlessly import posts and comments without any user interaction beyond entering your login

• Infinite comment stream, meaning that on your Edit Comments page when you delete or spam a comment using the AJAX links under each comment it will bring in another comment in the background so you always have 20 items on the page

• Core plugin and filter speed optimizations should make everything feel a bit more snappy and lighter on your server

• WYSIWYG support in a future version of Safari

If you’re new to the blog world and looking to manage your own domain, I would definitely recommend WordPress over those out-of-the-box services like Blogspot, MySpace, etc.

To learn more about WordPress, click here.