Assign a photographer

Taking a look at our web traffic today, I started thinking about how many Chronicle readers are living all over the world. Last month, we had visitors to Chroniclet.com from 122 countries and territories -- how ya doing Wake Island!

I imagine you miss this area enough to keep in touch, and that sparked an idea.

If you could assign members of the Chronicle photo department, where would you send them for a photograph? Let me know what area you would like to see and we will do our best to get the shot. Have you wondered what the mall area looks like these days? Do you miss the playground where you used to play? Did you have a favorite place to go for ice cream when you were a kid?

I’ll pick some of the good suggestions and post shots online for you to see.

HDTV calibration..who knew

So you just shelled out $3,500 for that new plasma TV only to get it home and find yourself under whelmed by the picture. Provided you aren’t already twitching from the discovery that the best cable to hook up that new TV with your cable box costs well over $100, you could call Best Buy and add another $300 for HDTV calibration.

It would be cool to have the Geek Squad van parked in the driveway for an hour or two but that sure is a lot of money. For the price of a Toy Story DVD or one of several hundred other THX certified DVDs, you can get the basic calibration tools free. (They even give you a super geeky pair of glasses that look like old school 3-D glasses to use while you calibrate.)

There probably is a difference between what you get from the Geek guys’ and the out-of-the-box freebie, but my bet is the average consumer you won’t see any real difference. From my experience, save the money on the calibration but let the pros handle the installation of your new television. I realized too late that the big holes I drilled into my fireplace were a little high. It took some prying and fairly brutal adjustments to get the TV hung on the wall. It hasn’t fallen off yet but the first few days I was a little stressed.