Roberto Machorro

After a while of having the XACT Visor (read my review about it), I was ready for something more. Since I liked the Visor’s quality, I went back to XACT’s website and took a look. I found the Replay (XTR8CK) and when I saw the features and the price I was happy as can be. I bought a package at Costco that for $119.00 got you the radio with the home and car kit.
The major deal about the Replay is that you can pause, rewind and forward (once you have something in memory) a live broadcast. Kind of like a TiVo / DVR. This is great when you are listening to a cool song and want to hear it again, or when you get interrupted in the middle of a show and don’t want to miss a thing. And since the title/artist of a song/show are stored, you can actually pick from a menu the last 45 mins worth of programming. On the downside (and this applies to live programming with a TiVo as well), when you flip a channel, you loose the recorded stuff.
A feature that isn’t mentioned much - but I thought it was also pretty awesome - was that you can store the name of your favourite artists, songs or sports team. When one of those favourites come on (or a game is about to start), then you are notified about it and have the option to change channel and listen to it. You can store up to 20 songs/artists and 1 favourite sports team (if they increase this number to 2 NFL, 2 college football, 2 MLB and 2 NBA we are rockin’!).
The screen is clean and clear, it has a blue back-light LCD display that you can adjust brightness and contrast to. It’s big enough to hold the current channel number, name, artist/song, category, time, band and signal strength. All without crowding the area.
I found it pretty interesting that you can view the signal strength of the satellite and terrestrial reception. Usually if you are at less than 30% for both, you are out of coverage.
There are 30 slots for memory presets, divided into 3 bands. But I found that I rarely use that, since it’s easier to enter the channel number directly or search by broadcast category.
On the downside (and this may not affect everybody), the buttons are a bit small. My clunky fat fingers have issues with the buttons on the actual device, but the remote saves the day, it’s so well done and comfortable that I use it all the time, in the car, office and home.
Since I got the home kit, I have to throw in that the desk stand is very stylish and actually looks nice on a desk with the radio. So far I’m happy with the purchase and it’ll probably stay that way until the Stiletto comes out.

Maybe I’ve been spoiled and I have no longer eaten fast food in a long time. Just home cooking and sit down when out for me. And yesterday I decided to get frugal and go to McDonald’s. One (menu) number one later I’m in pain. Stomach pain. That stuff just dropped like bowling ball in my stomach. By the way, before I hear the calls for sissy, let me tell you that I can down some pork chops, eggs, bacon, french toast and beans for breakfast without a sweat. Then I started feeling lethargic. What’s in that stuff?! It’s just food right? right!?

My son Diego spent his summer in Mexico with my parents, that’s close to two months! He missed us for a few minutes here and there, but for the most part he was having so much fun he considered “staying there, because maybe he forgot how to get back home”. Funny little guy. Since he is still too little to fly by himself, my mom made two trips (pick him up and drop him off). Both where kind of quick, specially the last leg (three days ). So I just came back from dropping her off at the airport. I love my parents, they are great .