You're definitely not alone--I complained about it when I first upgraded my TV to 1080 (and, I think, when I first went to HD) that everything looked like soap operas, and all the corners were lit and depth of field seemed entirely blown to hell, since everything was clearly visible.

The acclimation the first time round wasn't so bad, but for a while this time round I thought quasi-seriously about downgrading back to the TV that was still there, unplugged, in my living room. Things that were meant to be 1080 looked pretty good (excellent, even, maybe), but DVDs of stuff like La Femme Nikita--like I was watching on a computer whose video driver settings were out of whack, and then DVD of Supernatural were popping when they needed to be lurking.

And then, one day, I looked at my screen and I loved my boys and everything was okay. Bon was relegated to the arena of people who were on crack, and all's good with the world.

When I got my HDTV, it took me about six months before I stopped obsessing about everyone’s pores.

I still have waves of "how the fuck do the Winchesters not look even a little bit like ass under this microscope". But I'm battling gallantly through this.

You should also look into making sure that your calibration isn't funky. If you have access to a calibration DVD (or blu-ray, or downloaded video files - this lifehacker article has some options) then that can help. My calibration on purchase was WAY out of wack.

Of course, I calibrated my TV using that article, still thought it was wrong, googled "best calibration settings for [TV model leaving out screen size bit]", found a thread on avsforums where people way dorkier than me posted their calibrations, and took one of them. It was nothing like the one I had made using my videos, but when I checked the calibration images with the new settings, they looked perfect. And nothing looks like a soap opera any more. And everything looks... right.

Then I discovered that my TV doesn't share calibrations across inputs - which I guess is nice if you want a different calibration for games than TV than movies, or something - and had to reenter all 30+ calibration settings two more times for my other two inputs.

Okay, so my MacBook and my work computer are connected to the same wireless network.

My work laptop calls it [SSID] 2 (and says it's public...hmm...), and Windows says there is no Internet access, but it's connected, and the strength is good.

My MacBook says its attached to [SSID] and as evidenced by posting here, is on the Internet just fine.

I'm about to plug the cable into the work box in order to just get shit done, but I'm staring blankly at the Network and Sharing Center--what's wrong? I'm about to change it to a home network, but I'm not even sure when that setting did done got set in the first place.

What kind of router do you have? Could it be an 802.11 n/g and/or 2.4GHz/5GHz thing?

Well, I don't know precisely what the problem was, but forcing the network to Home reconnected it for some reason.

It was initially connected this morning, because I was sending emails and using the soft phone, so I have no idea if it will suddenly and softly go offline again in the future, but your suggestion bears investigation, since that's the difference between {SSID] and [SSID] 2, I think--both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz networks have the same SSID and password for ::handwave:: transparency, and I think the second one Windows hits shows up with the 2.

I have a Linksys E3200. You have no idea how much I love being || this close to that information in Evernote at any moment. It's like I don't need to have my own brain. Which I typed brian. So it's perfect. Which I didn't type prefect, surprisingly.

Some Pixar DVD's have calibration chapters in the extras section. I'm pretty sure Cars and Incredibles did. Not sure of the others. Not as fancy as the test bars and stuff. But helpful. It's more so you can see all the shadows and light in the Pixar movie, but I found it a nice starting point.

And---the wireless internet connectivity went out again on the Windows box. I was in the middle of shit so I didn't have time to fiddle and just plugged in the cable. I will experiment later. But the MacBook is perfectly behaved and on the web just fine.

Should I change the SSID of one of the networks to see if they're connecting to different ones or something?

I'm blank. I can't really see what could be different in a strictly DHCP setup. The client table looks so...innocent.

Okay--this is something I hope is a hugely basic question. I plug in the charger for my Touchpad, which I'm assuming has drained its battery. Normally there's a light next to where the charger cable plugs in that indicates everything's hunky dory. I've checked every connection along the way, nada. I was surfing the web just fine on it three days ago, and I haven't dropped it or poured coffee on it since then....anything obvious I can look at?