Well, the day started in the office, completing the special service preparation for Lent. Now I just need to finish collecting all of the hymns for our musicians. That shouldn't take too long, but I don't know how much time I can commit to it tomorrow with sermon writing on the slate. As far as that is concerned, I'm borrowing some phrases from a couple of brothers for Sunday's sermon. What I have in mind will echo the Hymn of the Day quite nicely.

However, it didn't take long for me to head into Castle Rock and pick up a new video game console. It was a belated Christmas gift thanks to so monies that were given to us to share among the family. We each have gotten something so far, and there is a little left. My gift is the PlayStation 4. I don't have much to play on it right now other than some free games (either free through being a PlayStation Plus member or because I had purchased them for a previous console and they are "cross-buy" enabled, meaning I essentially bought them for all the consoles, even before those consoles were released).

Setting it up was an adventure. The firmware that the consoles came with didn't work too well with our TV. The audio-video signal was not properly making it's way to our television, probably an issue that it had with the video adapter and HDMI port. In addition to that, the console that I brought home booted up into an error state. The folks at Sony told me to download the reinitialization firmware update to a USB drive and see if that will correct the error state; it will correct the HDMI issue. Well, the update didn't take, so it was back to Castle Rock for an exchange; fortunately, they had one more unit in stock and were able to switch it out for me. The second console works flawlessly following a firmware update–the audio-video issue is corrected.

I connected my phone to the system via the PlayStation app, so now I can use my phone as a second screen for the games that support it. I connected my PS Vita to the system, so now I can control it with the Vita (full functionality, unlike with the PS3) and also use it as a second screen. I played a little Zen Pinball 2 on it, earning a couple of trophies (which you can view via my trophy cards in the appropriate sections on my site: scroll down so that the menu appears on the left side of my site, and hover over the right section title).

Following all these adventures, it was time to get the kids ready for bed and it turned out to be a pretty calm evening.