I sent my guitar to Yuris Zeltins, the master guitar fixer, today woohoo. He is going to give me new super frets and fix my action. Hopefully this will last me a while until I can get a "concert" instrument. He is supposed to make the action identical to my buddies Ramirez which has the best feel of any classical I've used. I guess I'll have to wait for a month or so, but I'm using the Ramirez in the meantime.
I've been practicing my guitar lately taking informal lessons from a friend at work who owns all the following guitars:
1972 Fleta
1973 Romanillos
1974 Ramirez
1980 Rodriguez
Needless to say they are all the most amazing guitars I've ever seen or had the pleasure of playing. I didn't know guitars like those existed and all of them have beautifully refined and pure tones that make other guitars sound like "Mickey Mouse" guitars, as he would call my Alhambra. I'm learning some fun pieces, currently working on some etudes and a bach prelude (I think #999). He has also lent me his "loaner" guitar which is a 1974 Jose Ramirez 1a with a modified neck that plays like butta (thanks to Yuris) and costs more than I would have ever considered spending on a guitar.
He has also introduced me to the music of Ivan Rijos (can you say fast?), Pepe Romero, and the composer Rodrigo. I'm hoping to get my guitar refretted by his friend who works on his concert instruments so hopefully mine will play considerably better until I buy a "real" one.
I bought a Sony HD DVR with TVGOS (tv guide on screen) and it is working great. It works similarly to a tivo, but can record HD at up to 1080i. Being able to pause and rewind live tv is really cool and I've set it to record tons of stuff. I'm hoping I can put in another 250Gb drive, but I'm waiting until someone else tries it first.
CA finally released an updated firmware, but all it claims to do is fix the lip sync and "shimmering" issues, so I'm sticking with the Oppo firmware which has already been updated twice since my last post and provides at least a dozen other features. It is still working great.