There Were Three in the Bed and the Little One Said…..

It’s happened again.

I’m sure I’ve bored you previously with some of my wife’s dream tales, but I don’t know whether I’ve mentioned that I also wind up in her dream dog house.

Most guys’ lives are tense enough with their better half’s incessant suspicions as to whatever particular reason they have for being particularly suspicious without coming a cropper during her sleep.

The other morning, I was sat checking my emails waiting for Steph to hurry up with my caffeine explosion, when she sidled over, scowled at me and plainly accused me of cheating on her in one of dreams during the night.

No “Good Morning, sweetheart” or anything remotely friendly beforehand, just a straight out accusation of sleep-induced witnessed adultery. I didn’t help matters by grinning smugly as she divulged certain details – especially considering I obviously had it going on in her dream due to me exiting a ‘van full of girls’ (or would that be exciting?).

Oh yes. Call me foxy potato.

Hi, Mr. Foxy Potatohead

Anyway, do you see what I’m up against?

But I’m sure some of this leftover anger and resentment was still festering as she abandoned me in Target’s car park for having just purchased an HDMI cable. In fact, she’d been sniping at me all weekend for dropping very little money on a now defunct HD DVD player.

One particular snipe had a Circuit City rep bobbing and a weaving like your average President’s wife on a trip to Bosnia. You see, they’d had a fire sale on their remaining HD DVD film stock this past couple of weeks, so I had to go to see what they had. Unfortunately, their 50% HD DVD box had disappeared, but was kindly found again by a particular rep who my dear wife had asked if they had any HD DVD movies left.

He wheeled the box from behind the counter (not that he had to), and I was having a decent rummage, until I noticed they were no longer selling them half price. I was just at the peak of dismay when I pulled Superman Returns out of the stack only for Steph to chide me that we weren’t paying $34.99 for it. She was right, of course, but I had no intention of paying $34.99 for it. Normally, I would’ve fired straight back at her, but I was just as miffed at Circuit City for now flogging a dead format at full price, and they received whatever wrath I could summon up.

I thought I was being relatively civil as I asked a simple enquiry of the fella as to whether all their movies were now full price. But, according to Steph, who thought I was going to swing for him, and the trembling facial ticks on the fella’s face, I must’ve come across as a touch aggressive. Anyway, I harrumphed off with a “No thanks,” and stormed off up to Walmart to buy a full price HD DVD from there……that’ll show ’em.

With my personal wife acceptance factor at an all-time low, I didn’t need any further gaffes. She was starting to pile on like George Snufalupagus and Chuck Gibbon in an ABC Presidential debate. So how stupid was I looking when the thing packed up during its first play after 23 minutes? And how much compounded misery did I suffer every 23 minutes on subsequent plays?

I had no other choice than sidestep the issue and snag another HDMI cable and a DVD cleaning contraption. I wasn’t so much in Steph’s bad books as her own personal doomsday book. I’d wasted cash on a discontinued piece of crap that didn’t even work and I wanted to blow more money on it to prove whether or not it still didn’t work.

As I picked the HDMI cable off the shelf at Target, Steph told me I’d be walking home if I bought it. Let’s just say it was twenty minutes and outside Cheddars before she came back for me after zooming off in a huff and leaving me to look like a bit of a lemon – albeit a lemon with an HDMI cable so I could listen to full-ish TRUE HD soundtracks.

The method in my madness of buying a redundant HD format was that I could try out all the bits of my home theater to its fullest extent for a mere fraction of what it would’ve cost a couple of months ago and for infinitely less than Blu-Ray. Still, you can hardly make that as a reasoned argument as your wife drives off into the distance.

It’s not like I’m blowing our entire savings on being an early adopter, and I’m not the type of husband who goes missing for a full weekend and blows his entire wage on a trip to the dogs after being asked to go get a bottle of milk and getting wasted on the way.

So, after I started to play around connecting everything and she lovingly apologized for giving me a hard time, I got the whole kit and kaboodle to work and it was so visually and aurally stunning that even Steph had to concede its brilliance.

And then it spewed an error at 23:42. The Swine.

If this is anything to go by (and the forums I read regarding the error indicate that it is), then it’s hardly surprising HD DVD rolled over and died.

And I’m pretty sure Microsoft is wishing Yahoo! would roll over and have its belly tickled in response to Microsoft’s takeover bid in pretty much the same way.

Who can’t feel for Microsoft as they honorably ask for Yahoo’s hand in merger only for Yahoo! to get slightly tipsy then let Google have a fondle behind the bike sheds knowing full well Microsoft is watching?

Talk to the hand….

Throwing $42 billion at Yahoo! to receive a public rebuttal in the form of a secret PPC deal where Google serves ads across sections of Yahoo’s ad network, for them to pull an invented increased revenue figure out of their buttocks is quite entertaining.

And how this pans out with regards to search engine market share and SEO is anybody’s guess. On one level, the idea of Microsoft and its software business model is diametrically opposed to Yahoo’s recent announcement that it will start indexing semantic content. How quickly can Microsoft move from a desktop software vendor to a future web player that pioneers a fully semantic browser accessible office suite? Can they go from desktop behemoth to Web behemoth?

Because there is a way to give Google a run for its money, but it requires a complete sea change in the way search works. The Google business model of remotely useful organic search results (arguably the best currently) with Adwords PPC complimenting them is not only the reason Google is God but also its achilles heel. They aren’t interested in the perfect search engine but the perfect pay per click advertisement supported search engine.

Microsoft and Yahoo! have no chance challenging on Google’s terms – it also makes very little sense for Yahoo! to flash a bit of thigh at Google other than to make Microsoft stump up for a bigger engagement ring.

Then we can stop all the dirty looks, double-talk and dubious dealings.