The Twig Of Destiny

I maed a thing with LEGO!!!

2010-03-30T11:15:00.003-05:00

I made a lego thing. I spent a lot of time on it, but I'm pretty happy with the results.

It's a big tank thing. The front has two little detachable gunner ships on skis. There's a spinning radar dish on the front. The missiles spin around and can come off easily. The back has a ramp that folds down, then a garage door that slides up to let a small car out. There are lots of moving parts. The pictures say more than I can. Click images to enlarge.

Dominican Republic

2010-02-28T11:45:00.003-06:00

It was a long week, but finally I have returned. I must say, it was a fantastic week. Where to begin. I shall break it down into some nice little topics for you.

The Resort and the Food

The resort itself was very nice. It was advertised as an eco resort. It lived up to it. The vegetation was amazing. The groundskeepers did a lot of work keeping the place well maintained. The whole place was like a large beautiful garden. Tons of trees and bushes and such were all around and it was overall just amazingly beautiful. Part of this included wildlife. There were cranes, ducks, flamingos, peacocks, and several other birds I couldn't identify just walking around the whole place. The room was very nice. Had a hot tub, fridge, good working bathroom, good TV, a couch and a few other little nice things.

The Food

The best part of the resort was the food. They had two buffets that you could go to for breakfast and lunch, with one of the two staying open for dinner. Plus down by the beach there was a little burger stand that was open most of the day. On top of that there were 6 restaurants that you could go to for dinner. I got myself a nice tasty steak at one called El Gaucho. The best dinner was at a place called Sakura. Full five course meal consisting of spring rolls, soup, sushi, entree and dessert. I ate very well on the trip to say the least.

The Fun

Oh did I have fun. For the most part, it was a weeklong party with friends and family. Most nights were spent drinking at the many bars and just hanging out and having a good time. I spent a good amount of time at the beach, and even made a nice sandcastle. On Wednesday we went out on a party boat that included drinking, dancing, swimming, and best of all, a snorkling spot where we got to swim with sharks and rays. There was a nice pool that I swam in a bunch that had a bar in the water. I was at a bar, and I was in a pool. At the same time! Much of the time relaxing was spent playing games and just enjoying the scenery.

The Wedding

Of course the main purpose of the trip was to attend the wedding of my sister. It was a very nice wedding. We did it in a beautiful little part of the resort. The ceremony was short, but very well done. I got to be a groomsman. I admit I got a little emotional. I'm very happy to have Heath a part of our family now. I could not ask for a better brother-in-law. The reception was great. We were able to get a custom list of music played, and it was easily the best music we heard all week. We danced, we sang, we ate, and we were merry. It was a great night and a very fitting start to Lindsay and Heath's marraige.

All in all, it was a spectacular week. We had a few issues with traveling, but all in all, it was amazing. I'd love to go back some day.

NFL 2009 Season. The finishing.

2010-01-03T10:19:00.002-06:00

This is it people. Week 17. For 20 teams, this will be the last game played all year. For 12 others, the playoffs begin next week to determine who will go to the Superbowl. Exciting stuff.

But, as for me, lets see how badly I did last week.

Chargers to beat the Titans
Saints to beat the Buccaneers
Dolphins to beat the Texans
Packers to beat the Seahawks
Giants to beat the Panthers
Raiders to beat the Browns
Patriots to beat the Jaguars
Bengals to beat the Chiefs
Ravens to beat the Steelers
Falcons to beat the Bills
Cardinals to beat the Rams
49ers to beat the Lions
Eagles to beat the Broncos
Colts to beat the Jets
Cowboys to beat the Redskins
Vikings to beat the Bears

And the result is... that I suck. Never would have thought the Vikings, Colts and Saints would lose. But, that's why they play the games, and don't just award the win to who I pick. 154 - 86 overall.

Now, this is it. The last picks of the regular season. Don't worry though folks, I'll still be picking the playoffs. Picks all around. Picks for all!

49ers to beat the Rams
Colts to beat the Bills
Bears to beat the Lions
Patriots to beat the Texans
Falcons to beat the Buccaneers
Panthers to beat the Saints
Steelers to beat the Dolphins
Jaguars to beat the Browns
Vikings to beat the Giants
Chargers to beat the Redskins
Broncos to beat the Chiefs
Eagles to beat the Cowboys
Ravens to beat the Raiders
Packers to beat the Cardinals
Titans to beat the Seahawks
Bengals to beat the Jets

There you have it. Happy footballing! Go Eagles!

NFL 2009 Season, Week 16 Picks & Week 15 results

2009-12-24T09:52:00.003-06:00

I was wrong a lot last week. Lets see how wrong

Colts to beat the Jaguars
Saints to beat the Cowboys
Texans to beat the Rams
Chiefs to beat the Browns
Patriots to beat the Bills
Dolphins to beat the Titans
Eagles to beat the 49ers
Cardinals to beat the Lions
Ravens to beat the Bears
Jets to beat the Falcons
Broncos to beat the Raiders
Chargers to beat the Bengals
Seahawks to beat the Buccaneers
Packers to beat the Steelers
Vikings to beat the Panthers
Redskins to beat the Giants

Hooray! I set a personal record! Most picks wrong in one week! More wrong than right! I blame the Vikings. And the Raiders. But most of all the Redskins. 7 - 9 this week, 145- 79 overall.

Anyway. I hope to do better this week. Though I think I have no chance of hitting 70% now. On to this week, which has many playoff implications. Which is easy when there are 6 teams in the AFC at 7 - 7.

Chargers to beat the Titans
Saints to beat the Buccaneers
Dolphins to beat the Texans
Packers to beat the Seahawks
Giants to beat the Panthers
Raiders to beat the Browns
Patriots to beat the Jaguars
Bengals to beat the Chiefs
Ravens to beat the Steelers
Falcons to beat the Bills
Cardinals to beat the Rams
49ers to beat the Lions
Eagles to beat the Broncos
Colts to beat the Jets
Cowboys to beat the Redskins
Vikings to beat the Bears

There be my picks. Lets hope to fix last weeks damage a bit.

NFL 2009 Season, Week 15 Picks & Week 14 results

2009-12-16T18:02:00.002-06:00

Another week with some mystifying upsets. Lets see what happened.

Steelers to beat the Browns
Saints to beat the Falcons
Jets to beat the Buccaneers
Jaguars to beat the Dolphins
Vikings to beat the Bengals
Texans to beat the Seahawks
Chiefs to beat the Bills
Packers to beat the Bears
Ravens to beat the Lions
Patriots to beat the Panthers
Colts to beat the Broncos
Redskins to beat the Raiders
Titans to beat the Rams
Chargers to beat the Cowboys
Eagles to beat the Giants
Cardinals to beat the 49ers

All in all, a good week of picking. 12 - 4. 138 - 70 overall. Just barely short of that 2/3 marker.

We're heading into the final stretch, and the playoff pictures are amazingly complicated. Only the Saints, Vikings and Colts have secured a spot in the playoffs, and few teams are completely eliminated from contention. Here are the games this week, and what I think will happen.

Colts to beat the Jaguars
Saints to beat the Cowboys
Chiefs to beat the Browns
Patriots to beat the Bills
Dolphins to beat the Texans
Eagles to beat the 49ers
Cardinals to beat the Lions
Ravens to beat the Bears
Jets to beat the Falcons
Broncos to beat the Ravens
Chargers to beat the Bengals
Seahawks to beat the Buccaneers
Packers to beat the Steelers
Vikings to beat the Panthers
Redskins to beat the Giants

There's my picks. Go Vikings and Eagles!

NFL 2009 Season, Week 14 Picks & Week 13 results

2009-12-09T19:48:00.003-06:00

Holy upsets Batman! That was a crazy week. Lets see how crazy.

Jets to beat the Bills
Eagles to beat the Falcons
Panthers to beat the Buccaneers
Bears to beat the Rams
Bengals to beat the Lions
Colts to beat the Texans
Patriots to beat the Dolphins
Texans to beat the Jaguars
Broncos to beat the Chiefs
Steelers to beat the Raiders
Saints to beat the Redskins
Chargers to beat the Browns
Giants to beat the Cowboys
49ers to beat the Seahawks
Vikings to beat the Cardinals
Packers to beat the Ravens

11 - 5 again. 126 - 66 overall. It was a great week for the Eagles. Not so much for the Vikings. There are a lot of close match-ups this week. Here's what I think will happen.

Steelers to beat the Browns
Saints to beat the Falcons
Jets to beat the Buccaneers
Jaguars to beat the Dolphins
Vikings to beat the Bengals
Texans to beat the Seahawks
Chiefs to beat the Bills
Packers to beat the Bears
Ravens to beat the Lions
Patriots to beat the Panthers
Colts to beat the Broncos
Redskins to beat the Raiders
Titans to beat the Rams
Chargers to beat the Cowboys
Eagles to beat the Giants
Cardinals to beat the 49ers

Well there we go. See you next week.

NFL 2009 Season, Week 13 Picks & Week 12 results

2009-12-03T10:36:00.003-06:00

Well, Thanksgiving has come and gone. We are heading into the home stretch. The Vikings, Saints and Colts have shown themselves to be the dominant forces in the NFL, with many teams left fighting fiercely for a playoff berth. The AFC north and NFC east being especially heated.

Packers to beat the Lions
Cowboys to beat the Raiders
Broncos to beat the Giants
Falcons to beat the Buccaneers
Dolphins to beat the Bills
Panthers to beat the Jets
Rams to beat the Seahawks
Eagles to beat the Redskins
Bengals to beat the Browns
Colts to beat the Texans
Chargers to beat the Chiefs
49ers to beat the Jaguars
Vikings to beat the Bears
Cardinals to beat the Titans
Ravens to beat the Steelers
Patriots to beat the Saints

Well, 11- 5 aint too bad. 115 - 61 overall.

Well, now we head straight on to week 13. Vikings and Saints can clinch their divisions. The Eagles could make big progress and take the lead of the division with a win and Cowboys loss. There are a lot of big games. It will be an exciting week of football. Here is who I think will win.

Jets to beat the Bills
Eagles to beat the Falcons
Panthers to beat the Buccaneers
Bears to beat the Rams
Bengals to beat the Lions
Colts to beat the Texans
Patriots to beat the Dolphins
Texans to beat the Jaguars
Broncos to beat the Chiefs
Steelers to beat the Raiders
Saints to beat the Redskins
Chargers to beat the Browns
Giants to beat the Cowboys
49ers to beat the Seahawks
Vikings to beat the Cardinals
Packers to beat the Ravens

There's my picks. Have a good week everyone.

NFL 2009 Season, Week 12 Picks & Week 11 results

2009-11-24T22:43:00.002-06:00

Vikings win, Eagles win, Cincinnati loses. I picked Cincinnati to win in the last man standing pool my father is running. I am out of it now. Damn you Bengals. Anyway, here's the picks in full.

Colts to beat the Ravens
Cowboys to beat the Redskins
Lions to beat the Browns
Packers to beat the 49ers
Jaguars to beat the Bills
Steelers to beat the Chiefs
Vikings to beat the Seahawks
Falcons to beat the Giants
Saints to beat the Buccaneers
Cardinals to beat the Rams
Broncos to beat the Chargers
Patriots to beat the Jets
Bengals to beat the Raiders
Eagles to beat the Bears
Texans to beat the Titans

10 - 5. Which seems to be my average this year. 104 - 56. Bunch of games this Thursday, gonna get em picked now. Here we go.

Packers to beat the Lions
Cowboys to beat the Raiders
Broncos to beat the Giants
Falcons to beat the Buccaneers
Dolphins to beat the Bills
Panthers to beat the Jets
Rams to beat the Seahawks
Eagles to beat the Redskins
Bengals to beat the Browns
Colts to beat the Texans
Chargers to beat the Chiefs
49ers to beat the Jaguars
Vikings to beat the Bears
Cardinals to beat the Titans
Ravens to beat the Steelers
Patriots to beat the Saints

Should be a good week of football. Happy Thanksgiving everyone.

NFL 2009 Season, Week 11 Picks & Week 10 results

2009-11-21T23:55:00.002-06:00

Well, I missed a game. I was working so much this week I didn't have time to post before the Miami vs Carolina game. I hadn't really thought about the game, and really, I can't say with certainty who I would have picked. I know now Miami won, so saying I for sure would have picked them would be dishonest. Oh well, there's 15 more games to pick. But first, last week.

49ers to beat the Bears
Vikings to beat the Lions
Broncos to beat the Redskins
Falcons to beat the Panthers
Dolphins to beat the Buccaneers
Jets to beat the Jaguars
Saints to beat the Rams
Titans to beat the Bills
Bengals to beat the Steelers
Raiders to beat the Cheifs
Cowboys to beat the Packers
Cardinals to beat the Seahawks
Eagles to beat the Chargers
Patriots to beat the Colts
Ravens to beat the Browns

Well, percentage-wise, that was the worst week I've ever had. I'd have done better just picking nothing but the home teams. 8 -7 on the week, 94 - 51 overall. Well, it's a new week, with new games, time for some picks.

Colts to beat the Ravens
Cowboys to beat the Redskins
Lions to beat the Browns
Packers to beat the 49ers
Jaguars to beat the Bills
Steelers to beat the Chiefs
Vikings to beat the Seahawks
Falcons to beat the Giants
Saints to beat the Buccaneers
Cardinals to beat the Rams
Broncos to beat the Chargers
Patriots to beat the Jets
Bengals to beat the Raiders
Eagles to beat the Bears
Texans to beat the Titans

There are my picks. Have a good week.

NFL 2009 Season, Week 10 Picks & Week 9 results

2009-11-12T11:17:00.002-06:00

Time for week 10. Finally hitting those double digits. This last week was a great week for the Vikings, as every other NFC North team lost. Not so good for the Eagles who were robbed of a victory. But, they're only one game down. Still time for victory. Lets see how my picking was last week.

Bengals to beat the Ravens
Bears to beat the Cardinals
Packers to beat the Buccaneers
Falcons to beat the Redskins
Colts to beat the Texans
Patriots to beat the Dolphins
Jaguars to beat the Cheifs
Saints to massacre the Panthers
Seahawks to beat the Lions
49ers to beat the Titans
Chargers to beat the Giants
Eagles to beat the Cowboys
Steelers to beat the Broncos

9 - 4 last week. 86 - 44 overall. Can't really blame me for two of those bad picks. I don't think anyone seriously predicted the Titans or Buccaneers to win. Any given Sunday I guess.

Well, this week starts off early. Bears play the 49ers TONIGHT. So, gotta get them picks in now. And here they are.

49ers to beat the Bears
Vikings to beat the Lions
Broncos to beat the Redskins
Falcons to beat the Panthers
Dolphins to beat the Buccaneers
Jets to beat the Jaguars
Saints to beat the Rams
Titans to beat the Bills
Bengals to beat the Steelers
Raiders to beat the Cheifs
Cowboys to beat the Packers
Cardinals to beat the Seahawks
Eagles to beat the Chargers
Patriots to beat the Colts
Ravens to beat the Browns

I picked a few upsets in there. Colts are on top of the AFC, but i think they'll lose their first game this week. I'd love to see the Saints lose, but they're playing the Rams. Go Eagles, go Vikings.

Windows 7: First impressions

2009-11-09T11:13:00.002-06:00

Microsoft has released the newest version of their Windows Operating System, titled Windows 7. This makes it the first Windows in quite a while to be named after the version number rather than the year it was named or with some other weird name.

At a first glance, Windows 7 looks very similar to windows Vista. In my opinion, this is a good thing. It looks nice. It's not cluttered or clashy. Simple and contemporary. Of course you can change the look quite a bit quite easily.

The most important question is how does it perform? I've found that from powering up the computer, to being fully functional takes about one minute. I've installed a new hard drive with no hassle. Every keyboard, mouse, and printer I've plugged in through USB has loaded up and worked almost instantly. It comes with Microsoft Security Essentials which is a free anti-virus software that runs almost unnoticed. According to the system monitor running, sitting idle it uses far less of my RAM than Vista did, while still pre-caching my most used programs for super fast loading, and programs start up quite fast.

It has full compatibility with every piece of software that I had on my old system. Some games that took a while to load, and sometimes crashed in Vista now load up with no issue. I had issues with flash that would cause the player to crash if I refreshed it. That's gone, plus the flash seems to run slightly better.

In Vista there was a sidebar with gadgets such as weather, calendar, CPU monitor and feed tickers. Now the gadgets are free flowing and can be docked anywhere on your desktop.

The only thing I don't like so far is the taskbar. It's mostly the same, but there are just some subtle things that are a little different that will take getting used to.

Overall, seems like it will be pretty good. Glad I upgraded.

NFL 2009 Season, Mid Season Predictions, Week 9 Picks & Week 8 results

2009-11-04T13:51:00.003-06:00

Well folks, the NFL season is just about half over and what a season it has been. There are more terrible teams this year than ever before, and a few teams that are standing out as real competitors.

In the AFC, the Broncos and Colts are showing themselves to be the top competitors. The AFC North is showing to be the toughest division in football with the Bengals, Steelers and Ravens all showing themselves to be competitors for the playoffs. The Patriots will likely take the AFC East. The wildcard battle in the AFC will be fierce.

I predict the division winners to be the Patriots, the Bengals, the Colts and the Broncos. The wild card teams will be the Texans and the Steelers.

The NFC has two teams that are standing well above the others. The strongest team in the NFC, and I would say the NFL as a whole is the New Orleans saints. They are 7 - 0 and are seemingly unstoppable, especially in the NFC south, which only has the Falcons as competitors. The other team is our very own Minnesota Vikings at 7 - 1. The Bears and Packers are decent teams, but the Vikings have swept the Packers and should have no problem with the Bears.

The NFC West is the worst conference in football right now. The Cardinals are in the lead with a record of 4 - 3. The 49ers have almost won some games against really tough opponents, and have a lot of potential.

The NFC East is a heated battle. The Eagles, Giants and Cowboys all have 5 wins. Each team has won some decisive games, but lost games they shouldn't have. If any of the teams can put together some consistency, they'll be not just conference leaders, but have a shot at the superbowl.

I predict the conference winners to be the Eagles, Vikings, Saints and 49ers, with the Giants and Falcons as the wildcards.

Round 1 of the playoffs. Eagles beat Falcons, Giants beat 49ers, Patriots beat the Texans, Steelers beat the Bengals.

Round 2 of the playoffs. Saints beat Eagles, Vikings beat Giants, Colts beat Patriots, Steelers beat Broncos.

Round 3 of the playoffs. Vikings beat Saints, Colts beat Steelers.

I predict the Colts will defeat the Vikings in the Superbowl.

Here's hoping for a great rest of the season. Hope the Vikings can hold up to my predictions, then slightly exceed them. Anyway, that's some big future picks. Now for stuff more recent.

Here are my results from last week.

Cowboys to beat the Seahawks
Ravens to beat the Broncos
Dolphins to beat the Jets
Colts to beat the 49ers
Bears to beat the Browns
Lions to beat the Rams
Giants to beat the Eagles
Texans to beat the Bills
Titans to beat the Jaguars
Chargers to beat the Raiders
Vikings to beat the Packers
Cardinals to beat the Panthers
Saints to beat the Falcons

Only three wrong last week. Not bad. I'll take a 10 - 3. Im happy the Eagles beat the Giants. Heck, they CRUSHED the Gaints. That places me 77 - 40. Now for week 9.

Bengals to beat the Ravens
Bears to beat the Cardinals
Packers to beat the Buccaneers
Falcons to beat the Redskins
Colts to beat the Texans
Patriots to beat the Dolphins
Jaguars to beat the Cheifs
Saints to massacre the Panthers
Seahawks to beat the Lions
49ers to beat the Titans
Chargers to beat the Giants
Eagles to beat the Cowboys
Steelers to beat the Broncos

Bills, Brown, Vikings, Jets, Raider and Rams have the week off.

See you next week!

NFL 2009 Season, Week 8 Picks & Week 7 results

2009-11-01T10:26:00.002-06:00

Another last minute pick week. Been busy. Here's last week.

Packers to beat the Browns
49ers to beat the Texans
Chargers to beat the Chiefs
Colts to beat the Rams
Patriots to beat the Buccaneers
Steelers to beat the Vikings
Panthers to beat the Bills
Raiders to beat the Jets
Bears to beat the Bengals
Falcons to beat the Cowboys
Saints to beat the Dolphins
Giants to beat the Cardinals
Eagles to beat the Redskins

7 and 6. Not good. Not good at all. TERRIBLE. But, that's why I'm just some schmuck with a blog and not a professional sports predictor. 67 - 37 overall.

Now for today's games.

Cowboys to beat the Seahawks
Ravens to beat the Broncos
Dolphins to beat the Jets
Colts to beat the 49ers
Bears to beat the Browns
Lions to beat the Rams
Giants to beat the Eagles
Texans to beat the Bills
Titans to beat the Jaguars
Chargers to beat the Raiders
Vikings to beat the Packers
Cardinals to beat the Panthers
Saints to beat the Falcons

There we go. Go Vikings.

NFL 2009 Season, Week 7 Picks & Week 6 results

2009-10-23T15:26:00.002-05:00

Well, that wasn't a very good week. Let's see how not good.

Bengals to beat the Texans
Packers to beat the Lions
Jaguars to beat the Rams
Vikings to beat the Ravens
Saints to beat the Giants
Steelers to beat the Browns
Panthers to beat the Buccaneers
Chiefs to beat the Redskins
Eagles to beat the Raiders
Cardinals to beat the Seahawks
Patriots to beat the Titans
Jets to beat the Bills
Falcons to beat the Bears
Chargers to beat the Broncos

Well, went 10 - 4. Not terrible I guess. Just felt bad with the Eagles losing. 60 - 30 overall. Stuck at 66.66%. Going to attempt to break 70% this week. Here be the picks for this week!

Packers to beat the Browns
49ers to beat the Texans
Chargers to beat the Chiefs
Colts to beat the Rams
Patriots to beat the Buccaneers
Steelers to beat the Vikings
Panthers to beat the Bills
Raiders to beat the Jets
Bears to beat the Bengals
Falcons to beat the Cowboys
Saints to beat the Dolphins
Giants to beat the Cardinals
Eagles to beat the Redskins

Ravens, Broncos, Lions, Jaguars, Seahawks and Titans have the week off, so only 13 games this week. I kind of hope I'm wrong on some of the games. I hope the Vikings, Cardinals, Browns and Bengals win. But I just dont think they will.

Car woes

2009-10-20T13:35:00.002-05:00

My car was making a strange noise. On top of that, my elecrical systems were acting as if they were only getting small surges of power, and not full input from the battery. I was hoping it was not my alternator, as the alternator is only a year old.

So I took the car in to the shop. They call me today and tell me that the compressor on my Air Conditioning unit is broken. But not only that, for some reason the compressor works on the same belt as the alternator, and even if not in use, if the compressor is broken, the alternator cannot function properly. Without the alternator, my car cannot function.

They attempted to find a way to bypass the compressor, but found that to be impossible. The compressor must be replaced or I have no car. Cost to fix, $680.

I wish it was just the alternator now.

NFL 2009 Season, Week 6 Picks & Week 5 results

2009-10-18T09:47:00.003-05:00

Well, I sure waited til the last minute on this one. No BS this week, just results and picks. Here's last week.

Ravens to beat the Bengals
Vikings to beat the Rams
Eagles to beat the Buccaneers
Panthers to beat the Redskins
Steelers to beat the Lions
Giants to beat the Raiders
Cowboys to beat the Cheifs
Bills to beat the Browns
49ers to beat the Falcons
Texans to beat the Cardinals
Jaguars to beat the Seahawks
Patriots to beat the Broncos
Colts to beat the Titans
Jets to beat the Dolphins

Not so good last week. 8 - 6. Oh well, that puts me 50 - 26 overall. Now for today's games.

Bengals to beat the Texans
Packers to beat the Lions
Jaguars to beat the Rams
Vikings to beat the Ravens
Saints to beat the Giants
Steelers to beat the Browns
Panthers to beat the Buccaneers
Chiefs to beat the Redskins
Eagles to beat the Raiders
Cardinals to beat the Seahawks
Patriots to beat the Titans
Jets to beat the Bills
Falcons to beat the Bears
Chargers to beat the Broncos

There's my picks, enjoy the games!

NFL 2009 Season, Week 5 Picks & Week 4 results

2009-10-07T21:55:00.002-05:00

Well, that was a good week of football. The vikings won, putting them to 4 - 0. There are five undefeated teams left. The Giants, the Saints, the Broncos, the Colts and the Vikings. Lets see how my predictions went this last week.

Redskins to beat the Buccaneers
Ravens to beat the Patriots
Bears to beat the Lions
Titans to beat the Jaguars
Texans to beat the Raiders
Bengals to beat the Browns
Colts to beat the Seahawks
Giants to beat the Chiefs
Bills to beat the Dolphins
Saints to beat the Jets
49ers to beat the Rams
Broncos to beat the Cowboys
Steelers to beat the Chargers
Vikings to beat the Packers

Not bad. Only 3 wrong out of 14. This weeks 11 - 3 puts me to 42 - 20 overall. A bit short of my 70% goal, but I can do it. So, lets do it for next week.

Ravens to beat the Bengals
Vikings to beat the Rams
Eagles to beat the Buccaneers
Panthers to beat the Redskins
Steelers to beat the Lions
Giants to beat the Raiders
Cowboys to beat the Cheifs
Bills to beat the Browns
49ers to beat the Falcons
Texans to beat the Cardinals
Jaguars to beat the Seahawks
Patriots to beat the Broncos
Colts to beat the Titans
Jets to beat the Dolphins

I also predict the Bears, Packers, Saints and Chargers will neither win nor lose. I'm pretty confident about that.

NFL 2009 Season, Week 4 Picks

2009-10-04T00:02:00.003-05:00

Almost forgot to make picks this week. Alright, here we go.

Redskins to beat the Buccaneers
Ravens to beat the Patriots
Bears to beat the Lions
Titans to beat the Jaguars
Texans to beat the Raiders
Bengals to beat the Browns
Colts to beat the Seahawks
Giants to beat the Chiefs
Bills to beat the Dolphins
Saints to beat the Jets
49ers to beat the Rams
Broncos to beat the Cowboys
Steelers to beat the Chargers
Vikings to beat the Packers

Only 14 games this week. Eagles, Falcons, Panthers and Cardinals have a bye week. Monday night should be an amazing game. Go Vikings!

Week 3 results

2009-09-29T12:26:00.004-05:00

Here are the results of my picks this week.

Eagles to beat the Cheifs
Ravens to beat the Browns
Giants to beat the Buccaneers
Patriots to beat the Falcons
Jets to beat the Titans
Packers to beat the Rams
Vikings to beat the 49ers
Texans to beat the Jaguars
Redskins to beat the Lions
Bears to beat the Seahawks
Saints to beat the Bills
Chargers to beat the Dolphins
Raiders to beat the Broncos
Steelers to beat the Bengals
Colts to beat the Cardinals
Cowboys to beat the Panthers

Much better than last week. 12 correct, 4 wrong. Never would have seen the Bengals beating the Steelers. And how bout that, the Lions ended their 19 game losing streak. Vikings go to 3 - 0, Eagles move to 2 - 1. Shaping up to be an exciting season.

31 - 17 overall.

NFL 2009 Season, Week 3 Picks & week 2 results

2009-09-23T17:32:00.002-05:00

Well, it was a bad week last week. Lots of upsets that I just didn't see coming. Lets see how I did.

Titans to beat the Texans
Eagles to beat the Saints
Jaguars to beat the Cardinals
Raiders to beat the Cheifs
Packers to beat the Bengals
Vikings to beat the Lions
Redskins to beat the Rams
Patriots to beat the Jets
Falcons to beat the Panthers
Bills to beat the Buccaneers
Seahawks to beat the 49ers
Chargers to beat the Ravens
Steelers to beat the Bears
Broncos to beat the Browns
Giants to beat the Cowboys
Colts to beat the Dolphins

I went 8 - 8. That's pretty terrible. I blame Chris. That brings me to 19 - 13. Lets hope I do better this week. Speaking off...

WEEK 3

Here are my week 3 picks. Some tough games to pick this week. Not really any one game I would say is a lock.

Eagles to beat the Cheifs
Ravens to beat the Browns
Giants to beat the Buccaneers
Patriots to beat the Falcons
Jets to beat the Titans
Packers to beat the Rams
Vikings to beat the 49ers
Texans to beat the Jaguars
Redskins to beat the Lions
Bears to beat the Seahawks
Saints to beat the Bills
Chargers to beat the Dolphins
Raiders to beat the Broncos
Steelers to beat the Bengals
Colts to beat the Cardinals
Cowboys to beat the Panthers

So there ya go. I might post something non-football related before my next NFL post for those of you who read this blog but don't care about football (everyone but Chris).

NFL 2009 Season, Week 2 Picks

2009-09-16T18:51:00.002-05:00

Here be me picks for week 2, the two-ist of all the weeks.

Titans to beat the Texans
Eagles to beat the Saints
Jaguars to beat the Cardinals
Raiders to beat the Cheifs
Packers to beat the Bengals
Vikings to beat the Lions
Redskins to beat the Rams
Patriots to beat the Jets
Falcons to beat the Panthers
Bills to beat the Buccaneers
Seahawks to beat the 49ers
Chargers to beat the Ravens
Steelers to beat the Bears
Broncos to beat the Browns
Giants to beat the Cowboys
Colts to beat the Dolphins

So there ya go. Hope I do better this week than last.

Week 1 results

2009-09-15T10:53:00.002-05:00

Going with a new new format for showing my results. Bold green means I was correct, red means I was wrong.

Steelers to beat the Titans
Colts to beat the Jaguars
Saints to beat the Lions
Panthers to beat the Eagles
Buccaneers to beat the Cowboys
Texans to beat the Jets
Ravens to beat the Chiefs
Broncos to beat the Bengals
Vikings to beat the Browns
Falcons to beat the Dolphins
Giants to beat the Redskins
Cardinals to beat the 49ers
Seahawks to beat the Rams
Bears to beat the Packers
Patriots to beat the Bills
Chargers to beat the Raiders

Seems I was 11 - 5 this week. Glad to be wrong about the Eagles. Though McNabb got himself hurt. That didn't take long.

The Beatles: Rock Band

2009-09-09T14:37:00.004-05:00

It is 09-09-09, and today the world was given The Beatles: Rock Band.

The Beatles: Rock Band is just what the title says it is. It's a game about the Beatles done in the style of Rock Band. However, The Beatles: Rock Band is far more than just a Rock Band game that happens to have songs by the Beatles in it. The Beatles: Rock Band is a full and complete Beatles experience.

The main core of the game is story mode. Story mode takes you though the entire Beatles career starting from their first shows at the Cavern, to the Ed Sullivan show, to big stadiums, to playing in the studio on Abbey Road, finishing with the rooftop concert on top of Apple Records.

Playing through plays almost exactly like Rock Band 2. Gems fall from the top of the screen and you must play them by holding the corresponding button and strumming on guitar or bass, or by hitting the proper drum pad. Singing works the same too, however, they've added in the ability to do harmonies. If you have extra microphones, you can have 1 or 2 people do backup vocals.

Unlike Rock Band 2, you do not have the option to make your own character and have it perform. This is a good thing because the background animations are probably the best thing about this game. The early performances consist of the Beatles playing at the venues and shows. The animations and detail put into these scenes makes them very accurate to their actual performances at these shows. The crowds are full of screaming girls, and it will often cut to them, really making it look like a video of a live show.

The real beauty of the backgrounds is in the Abbey Road studio recording sessions. Each song in these sessions has what they call a "dreamscape." The dreamscapes consist of wild animations and psychedelic light shows that fit perfectly into the theme of the Beatles. Here Comes the Sun has background animations that are especially beautiful.

There are so many little details that make the game so special. Things such as recordings of the Beatles studio chatter play during loading times (which are much shorter than in previous Rock Band games). The outfits the Beatles wore, the instruments the Beatles played, and the artwork that went with their music are all a perfect fit. This was due mostly to Yoko Ono and Olivia Harrison having a huge roll in the direction of the game.

Playing through the game unlocks pictures, sound bytes and videos of the Beatles. There's a lot to unlock and see. Every bit of trivia about the Beatles seems to have made its way into this game.

The tracklist itself (seen here) covers the entire span of when the Beatles were a band. Almost every big hit is in the game. The only notable exceptions being Let it Be, Eleanor Rigby and Yesterday. There is planned DLC in the future, of which we will get the entire albums Abbey Road, Seargeant Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band and Rubber Soul, as well as many other singles. It's been hinted that at some point the entire Beatles Catelog will be available for this game.

Playing this game is a very different experience than playing other Rock Band games. You really get a feel for the Beatles and it's just so well executed and put together that you can't help but smile in pure joy while playing it.

Yes it is quite easy compared to other music games. Yes it is much shorter than other music games. But the amount of detail and polish that was put into this game casts those aside. The Beatles Rock Band is just plain fun. If you like the Beatles, Rock Band, or just music in general, then this game is a must buy.

NFL 2009 Season, Week 1 Picks

2009-09-08T23:50:00.003-05:00

Well, here we go. First week. Time to make some picks. Here is who I think will win week 1 of the 2009 NFL season.

Steelers to beat the Titans
Colts to beat the Jaguars
Saints to beat the Lions
Panthers to beat the Eagles
Buccaneers to beat the Cowboys
Texans to beat the Jets
Ravens to beat the Cheifs
Broncos to beat the Bengals
Vikings to beat the Browns
Falcons to beat the Dolphins
Giants to beat the Redskins
Cardinals to beat the 49ers
Seahawks to beat the Rams
Bears to beat the Packers
Patriots to beat the Bills
Chargers to beat the Raiders

So there you go, there's my picks. You can use them to gamble if you want, but doing so would be incredibly stupid.

That IS a tasty burger

2009-08-26T18:24:00.004-05:00

Today I am debuting a new feature on the blog entitled "That is a tasty burger"

It will be restaurant reviews of places that are known for one thing: BURGERS! I will give each place a score based on these categories.

Taste of burger: How tasty are their burgers? Rated from 1 - 10
Choice of condiments: What can you put on your burger? Veggies, sauces, bacon. Rated from 1 - 5
French Fries: How good are the fries that come with the burger? Rated from 1 - 5
Price: How expensive will the meal be? Rated from 1 - 5
Restaurant experience: How does being in the restaurant feel? How is the service? Rated from 1 - 10
Other options on menu: What else do they have? Onion rings? Chicken sandwiches? Salads? Rated 1 - 5

I will then add up the score and give a total out of 40.
33 - 40 is an A
25 - 32 is a B
17 - 24 is a C
9 - 16 is a D
0 - 8 is an F

To kick off this segment, I will review a place I went to today, Smash Burger

The first thing you will notice is that their logo looks exactly like Gamestops.

The Smashburger opened up today. As expected, the staff was still learning how things work, and the place was perfectly clean. The decoration was pretty simple. Nothing fancy. You walk up to a counter and place your order with a cashier. They give you a cup and a number tag. You fill up your own drink and have a seat. They bring out your food when it's ready. So in that aspect, it works just like a Culvers. They check in on you every so often to see how you're doing, and they clear your stuff for you when you're done. You're on your own for drinks.

The burger itself was pretty good. Quality beef, good bun. The bacon was thick and tasty. It was a good burger. A step above fast food. But, still far from the best burger I've had in a restaurant. You can get french fries, a side salad, haystack onions, veggie frites, chili, or smashfries with your food. I got the regular french fries. They were shoestring fries. Pretty good. Nothing special.

You have lots of options for your burger, three kinds of buns, five kinds of cheese, six kinds of sauces, six kinds of veggies, and of course, bacon. You can build your own, or have a combination of stuff for a trademark burger. If you dont want a burger, they have salads, chicken sandwiches, brats and dogs too.

My problem with SmashBurger is it's trying to present itself as better than it really is. They have a slogan that says "The BEST BURGERS you've ever tasted." The burger was good, but far from the best. There's a big fancy jar for tips, and when you pay with credit card there's the normal place for tip on the receipt. Im usually a good tipper, but Smashburger doesn't do anything more than Culvers does in terms of service, and Culvers doesn't beg for tips. They're trying to position themselves as a high-class burger place it seems, but really, they're just fast food (they offer everything to go). They're also more expensive than fast food. A burger, fries and a drink cost me 10 dollars.

Burger Taste: 6
Choice of Condiments: 5
French Fries: 3
Price: 2
Restaurant Experience: 5
Other Options on Menu: 3

Total score: 24 : C+

Worth going to, but nothing special.

Rising from the ashes...

2009-08-23T12:49:00.003-05:00

It has been many months since I have blogged. With my readership consisting only of James, Draz, and Draz's mother, it has been hard to become motivated to write anything.

But, I am back. But what brings me back? Why the main reason I blog from September to January.

That's right. It's FOOTBALL time!

Now, i know that nobody who reads my blog cares about football, but I enjoy making predictions on the games and this is the best way I know how to record my picks and compare how I did.

The regular season starts on September 10th, and I will be ready to rock. I'll give you all my picks the week before the starting weekend. My goal this year is to have a 70% pick success.

See you soon!

a post

2009-07-29T22:56:00.002-05:00

VICTORY!

2009-04-12T09:54:00.004-05:00

I did it! I made it from Ash wednesday to Easter without having any soda at all!

Of course i ended up just replacing soda with beer, so no weight lost and I spent more than I would have if I had just had pop. Oh well.

The banishment of the invader

2009-03-24T12:33:00.004-05:00

Last night was a typical night. I headed to Draz and Mike's place for some Monday stuffs. Stayed out late. Got home around 12:45.

I head to bed shortly after 1:00 am. I drift to sleep. Suddenly I wake up. Not sure what time it is. I look up at the clock. 1:45. Wasn't out for long. I try to fall back asleep. But I hear something across the room. A little scratching noise. It's coming from the mini fridge. I figure it's just the workings of the machine messing with me. But then I hear a rustle. I hat a cub foods plastic bag by the fridge. Did I really hear it rustle?

I lay there awake. Motionless, just listening to the sounds of the night. I lay there for at least five minutes. Nothing. No sound at all. Just my mind playing tricks with me. I close my eyes. Time to go back to sleep. Just before I'm about to doze off, there it is again. Clearly hearing the bag rustling. I then hear a little scratching noise. So I sit there again. Now wide awake. I keep a sharp ear. A skittering noise follows. At this point I'm sure of it. I am not alone in my room.

I sit up. It's dark, but the blue LED of my computer illuminates the room enough. Then I see something. A small black blur bolts across the room. I am up and out of bed and across the room to the light switch in seconds. The lights are on. I am next to me dresser. On top of my dresser is a collection of swords. I grab the katana. I wish to take no chances with this intruder. Suddenly, across the room, I see my nemesis.

I'm not gonna wait for him to strike first. I dash at him. I strike with my sword. I have it sheathed. I wish to bludgeon him to death, as the last thing I need on my carpet is mouse blood. I strike. But he is too fast. He dodges to my right. He goes under my bed. I have lost sight of him.

I open the door to my room. I turn on the family room light. I have plans for this mouse. Plans that will ensure his demise by taking advantage of his insatiable craving for peanut butter. I run to our utility room. There on the ground is a mouse trap. It's been triggered. He's gotten peanut butter from us, but managed to evade the mouse trap's deadly snap. I reset the trap. Ready to head back into my room and leave it by my bed. To wait for the little guy to get hungry. I had him now.

Or so I thought. As I leave the utility room, i see him again. He has escaped my room. He's making a break for the couch. I had left the sword in the room. I had only a trap. I had no way to strike. I set down the trap and go into my room. I come back out just in time to see the mouse climb under the couch. I wont let him get away with this. I slide the sword under the couch. He runs out the other side. I've got him running scared now.

I watch as he runs to the fireplace. He runs over to the wall from there. I watch as he slides along the wall. I move slowly. Carefully. Keeping an eye on the furry devil. He moves towards the sliding door. I move. He's right by the edge of it. Thinking quickly, I reach over and slide open the door. The mouse sees his chance. He goes for the outside. He is gone. Out into the rainy night. I close the door. Lock it. He's gone.

I could have slammed the door on him as he rush through. i could have ended his miserable existence. But I did not. Why? Perhaps I was too tired and could not act in time. Perhaps the thought just didn't cross my mind. Or maybe, in that split second, I felt a bit of compassion. Either way, he is gone. My room was safe... for now.

But he is alive. He's out there. He got into my room once. He can do it again. Perhaps he has learned his lesson and we can live separately. Or perhaps he will come in again. When I am fully asleep. And strike. Only time will tell...

Happy Caturday and Pi day and Steak & BJ day!

2009-03-14T11:30:00.003-05:00

So many holidays on one day. It is of course Caturday. But 3/14 also marks Pi day. So go out there and get some pie. Also, for you guys who didn't screw up on Valentines day, it's one month later, so it's also steak and BJ day. Good luck with that fellas.

Merry Tuesday

2009-03-10T15:22:00.001-05:00

Day 12 without soda.

2009-03-09T21:55:00.001-05:00

I have not had soda in 12 days. At times I'm fine, but at other times the cravings hit. The soda, it mocks me. Taunts me. I will not let it win.

day 8

2009-03-05T12:12:00.002-06:00

Over a week with no soda now. Mind fading. Crave soda. Delicious soda.

No soda

2009-03-02T18:03:00.001-06:00

5 days without soda. Going strong. Been hard so far, as I've been craving it a lot. But so far my will has stood strong. No caffeine withdrawal yet. Which is surprising. Anyway, onward to more soda-free days.

A difficult personal challenge.

2009-02-26T12:37:00.002-06:00

I am about to test my willpower. I will do a difficult task that personally, I'm not sure if I can do it.

Yesterday was Ash Wednesday, and though I'm not much for religious rituals, I do like the idea of giving something up for Lent. I'm not in good shape. And I'm getting worse. So I'm going to do the ultimate challenge for me.

I am going to not drink soda for 40 days.

I can cut thousands of calories a week doing this. I hope to also get a tad of weight loss, and feel better about myself. Once it gets nicer out i hope to get outside more and exercise. Sure, I do this every now and then, but dammit, I need to make it stick this time.

Wish me luck.

Picture

2009-02-23T10:30:00.002-06:00

It are my Birthday

2009-02-21T10:24:00.002-06:00

Years have passed. Finally, I am 24 years old.

It's been a good 24 years. I hope to have at least 24 more! Also, it's Caturday.

Cave Story

2009-02-18T10:57:00.003-06:00

Huzzah!

Over a year ago, Draz told me to play a little game called Cave Story. I got the files, but never bothered to really play it. Turns out I was stupid. I finally got around to playing it, and I must say, it's insanely fun.

Cave Story is the story of a robot named Quote who wakes up with no memories and travels across an island. On his travels he meets up with the Mimigas, a race a bunny-like creatures. The Mimigas are being killed and captured by a man known as the Doctor. It's up to Quote to help the mimigas and stop the doctor. The plot is simple, but the characters are awesome and the game does a fantastic job of drawing you in and making you really care for the characters and what happens to them. Even some of the villains are quite lovable.

The gameplay is very old school. It's all 2d and you hop around like a platformer. Your robot has weapons. As you travel you pick up more weapons that each function differently. Killed enemies often drop experience crystals, which when picked up enough, will upgrade your weapons. Each weapon has 3 levels of power. But beware, if you're hit, you lose experience and your weapons can downgrade.

The levels are fun. Each has a nice feel to it and they're all masterfully designed. There are tons of little nooks to explore, usually with nice bonuses. There are so many hidden things in this game that getting them all on your first playthrough is near impossible. The game starts easy, but it becomes a real challenge near the end. The game can become incredibly hard, but it's never cheap. Every path has a safe route, every enemy a pattern and weakness. The bosses can all be beaten without taking a single hit if you do it right.

The graphics are simple. Like, stuck between the NES and SNES simple. But they work perfectly for the game. The music is catchy and rarely annoying, and fits the themes of the levels perfectly. The game is decent length too. Any shorter and it would feel too short, and it doesn't need to be any longer.

The most amazing things about Cave Story though? For starters, it's free. The game is out there at www.cavestory.org for all to play. It's small, simple, and should run on even old computers with crappy graphics cards. The most amazing thing about Cave Story is that it was made by one single person. All the music, art, level design and programming were done by one developer who goes by the name Pixel.

If you haven't played Cave Story yet, do it. Do it now. I'm looking at you James.

Happy Caturday!

2009-02-14T17:07:00.002-06:00

This is an awesome picture

2009-02-11T10:22:00.002-06:00

New Webcomic

2009-02-09T09:44:00.004-06:00

Someone on Fark posted a link to a webcomic I had never heard of. It is called Amazing Super Powers. Here is an example. You'll have to click it to see it fully.

It has good art and is usually at least worth a heh. I've often let out a hearty laugh. Check it out.

Also, if you hover your mouse over the comics, it gives a supplemental punch line for after the comic. Be sure to do that.

Oh yeah, this is the URL. http://www.amazingsuperpowers.com/home.htm

Just posting

2009-02-09T01:21:00.001-06:00

Caturday!

2009-02-07T00:14:00.002-06:00

It's caturday and I am posting a cat. I'm not sure why.

Blog has changed

2009-02-06T11:29:00.002-06:00

Yes, you are in the right place.

I decided to change the layout. I think this one is a little cleaner, and the main field is wider. That way things don't look so wall-of-textish. Also allows for wider pictures.

I edited my links list on the right. Some new things. Some things no longer there.

I also changed the name. I'd rather not be so much of a failure.

Anyway, not too much changed. Luckily I don't have any readers or I'd be getting tons of people raging over the changes.

Hatryl's Journal, entry 1

2009-02-05T16:08:00.002-06:00

I've decided, as a fun little thing to do, have my kobold wizard Hatryl from Draz's current D&D campaign keep a journal. I will post his thoughts in here. It will give people the perspective of his character and keep those not playing updated on the events of Draz's campaign.

Journal,

What a miserable day. I'm sleeping soundly in my bed when I'm woken up by Myrendi. As it turns out, our cave had been sealed shut by those basardly green kobolds from the other side of the valley.

Luckily we were able to get out, but it turns out we had been trapped and raided so that they could more easily steal the eggs of our unborn brothers and sisters. What's even worse is that the cheiftain suspected me of having something to do with the eggs getting stolen. The nerve!

Luckily, with the help of Yereck, Kasquick and Myrendi, I was able to convince him we had nothing to do with it. However, it meant we had to go out and get the eggs back ourselves.

Getting the eggs back was easy. We ran into the green kobolds and the few we saw we slaughtered. Kasquick may not be the strongest in our clan, but he's swift and skilled. I trust him and I feel safer in battle with him around. Yereck is a quiet fellow, but something happens to him in battle. He suddenly becomes a presence and I think the rest of us just work better with him around. Myrendi isn't too bad either. Though that wolf of hers gives me bad vibes.

Anyway, after slaughtering several of the green bastards, we managed to get to their town. Sneaking in was pretty tough, but we managed it. Thanks to my clever spellcrafting we were ablt to walk right in, get all of our eggs back, and steal some of theirs! That'll show em.

It wasn't even a great disguise, I'll admit, but those green kobolds are so dumb that getting past was easy as could be. So we headed back to town, ready to be the town heros. Or so we thought.

If there's one thing i hate more than green kobolds, it's goblins. They had the audacity to raid our village. Me and the three companions who raided the green village were gone, so we weren't able to stop the attack. Our brothers fought well, but the battle was lost by the time we got there. We turned the eggs over to our caretaker and headed off to help.

Turns out they took our cheiftain. We're loyal to him, so we did what we had to and went to help. Myrendi was able to track them down to a weird vessel of some sort. Inside we found the cheiftain, being beaten by some goblin thugs. One of which I think was their boss. We made short work of them and the cheiftain was saved.

Just as we got back up and out of the vessel, a dragon flies by. A dragon! I was too struck with awe to notice that he was there to destroy a dam. A dam which burst and sent all of us down river in that vessel. Somehow it floated and carried us a long ways.

By the time it stopped, we had no idea where it had taken us. We followed the river back up stream, but it came to a dead end. We searched around and found a tall tower. There were these strange beings there. Slightly taller than us, pale colored skin, and hair all over their faces. A lot of it. We tried to ask them for help, but they attacked us. We had no choice but to defend ourselves.

This whole time the cheiftain has been quiet. Not helping to fight. Indecisive. Relying on us. I've trused him my whole life, but I'm starting to have doubts. We're here at the tower now, resting and trying to decide what to do next. We're far from home and not even sure where home is. I feel I've learned a lot in this last day, and I'm optimistic, but I just have a bad feeling about all of this.

Madden 08, first thoughts

2009-02-04T13:05:00.003-06:00

Well, the superbowl is over. No football until August. I felt i needed to fill the void somehow. Perhaps with... a video game.

Lucky for me, I dont care about the newest and greatest. More lucky, Gamestop has about a dozen copies of every older version of the Madden games. So I headed to Gamestop and picked up Madden NFL 08 for ten bucks.

It says right there on the cover that it's the #1 selling pro football franchise. That's pretty easy when you have an exclusivity contract with the NFL. The Madden series is one of the top franchises in the world. It sells tons of copies every year. Why? Because they release a new version every single year.

This has always bothered me because each new year ads very little content. Updated rosters and maybe one or two new features. Plus the graphics get a little bit of a tweak. But really, they've conned people into buying essentially the same game every year. (insert comment about Rock Band/Guitar Hero here)

Well, I haven't played a Madden game since 03. Plus for 10 bucks, I figured getting 08 would be a pretty nice update. I played it for a while last night and I really must say...

It's a good game.

You can start franchises and take teams from preseason to the superbowl. They have stats for every single player in the NFL. Even down to third string. And it shows. In a preseason game when I switched to my second string in the second half, my runners weren't as good, my passes weren't as accurate. It felt good. I tried it on easy just to get a hang of the controls. I won my first two games 67 - 3 and 52 - 0. In the second game I scored more points returning interceptions than scoring normally.

The controls are solid and work really well. Running plays work really well and handoffs go smoothly. Passing is as simple as pressing the button that cooresponds to the reciever. You can do it simply by just pressing the buttons, but you can increase your chances of success by pressing buttons at just the right time.

All the aspects of the NFL are in the game. It's a full complete NFL experience. It's easy to slam it for being a shallow EA franchise, and buying it every single year at 60 bucks a pop is pretty ridiculous. Still, I'm enjoying it and it definitely seems worth the 10 bucks.

Monday!

2009-02-02T14:39:00.002-06:00

Well, football season is over. The preseason doesn't start for another 6 months. Almost all of my posts in the last few months have had to do with football. Odd because nobody who reads this blog cares about football. The steelers won. I won the superbowl pool that my father ran. My picking percentage was awful. Good times.

So what's up next for the Ultimate Failure? Do I bring back Thursday Thoughts? Will cats once again grace the pages of this blog on Saturdays? Do I keep talking more about Rock Band?

It's hard to say where I may take this thing. Let me know what you want. I'll try to do more of that.

Superbowl Bowl Mega Post!

2009-02-01T11:45:00.003-06:00

The day has finally come. The superbowl! The clash between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Arizona not-Philadelphia Eagles.

Here are my predictions for the big game!

The Steelers will win.

Enjoy your commercials and hot wings.

One sentence updates

2009-01-28T14:51:00.002-06:00

Here are several updates for my life, one sentence at a time.

Lindsay and Heath went to Jamaica and thus Maggie is at our house for a week.

Heath proposed to Lindsay in Jamaica, and they are now engaged.

AC/DC was awesome and easily the best show I've ever been to.

The Eagles still lost.

I plan to start my superbowl party at 3:30 on Sunday.

Rock Band is still fun.

This is a post

2009-01-27T23:13:00.002-06:00

NFL update

2009-01-19T11:01:00.004-06:00

Eagles lost. Cardinals and Steelers go to the superbowl.

Sad Andy is sad.

On the other hand...

LET THERE BE ROCK!

Going to see AC/DC tonight. Hopefully they will rock.

Championship Sunday

2009-01-16T11:20:00.005-06:00

28 teams down, 4 left. Two in the NFC, two in the AFC. The games on Sunday will determine which two teams play each other in the Superbowl. So which four teams? Lets take a look at last week.

Well, hot damn, I love it when I'm wrong. The Eagles are on fire and they defeated the Giants. I was also quite wrong about the other bird in the NFC. Seems the Panthers fell apart and the Cardinals are on fire as well. Cardinals crushed the Panthers.

The AFC games however, I got right. Steelers beat the Chargers and the Ravens beat the Titans. Lets go to the chart!

This week of picks will be very difficult. Cardinals vs Eagles. Ravens vs Steelers. This could go either way for both games.

First off, lets do the AFC championship game. Ravens at Steelers. The Ravens are the hottest team in the NFL right now. They're strong defensively and they can put points on the board. On the other hand, the Steelers are even stronger defensively. Number one defense in the NFL stronger. My big prediction for this game? Low score. I say with very little confidence that the Steelers will pull out the win. It could really go either way. I say Steelers beat Ravens, 10 - 9

Now, how can I really predict this next game? I'm obviously biased. The Eagles played the Cardinals earlier in the year, and they crushed them. But this is a new Cardinals team. They've adjusted. They've reworked their playbook. And it's worked. They didn't just win two tough games, they dominated. However, one could say the Dolphins weren't that good and the Panthers were overrated. Sure helped the Cardinals that Delhome threw 5 interceptions. The Eagles just beat the Giants, who were rated as the best team in the NFL by some. The Eagles are playing solid football. They have a strong defense and their ultimate offensive weapon Brian Westbrook. My prediction. A damn good game. As for the winner, I do have to pick the Eagles. I think they're just a better team. Eagles to beat the Cardinals, 33 - 20

Two weeks til the superbowl. I guess I just have one last thing to say.

GO EAGLES!

Playoffs, week 2.

2009-01-06T18:56:00.004-06:00

What a week last week. Lots of upsets. Somehow the Chargers, Cardinals, and Ravens pulled out a win and proved me wrong. Only my prediction of the Eagles winning was correct. Oh well. We've got us some great games this week.

First off we've got the Cardinals heading to Carolina to play the Panthers. I think this could be a decent game. However, I think the Panthers are a better team, and the Cardinals don't do nearly as well on the road as at home. I gotta pick the Panthers. 27 - 17

Next we have the Chargers playing the Steelers. Again, like the Cardinals, I don't see the Chargers doing well on the road. The Steelers are a great team this year. They lost a few games, but overall they're a more solid team with even more solid defense. I pick the Steelers, 17 - 6.

Next we have the Ravens at the Titans. The Titans have a better record, more talent, and are at home. They're the top seed in the AFC. That said, I pick the Ravens. The Ravens defense is too solid and the Titans have barely won most of their games. It's an upset, but I think the Ravens are gonna do it. Ravens win, 17 - 10.

The last game i think is the hardest to predict. We have the Eagles against the Giants. The Giants are the top seeded NFC team. They're a good team and have won a lot of tough games. They've also lost a lot of easy games. The Eagles on the other hand are on a great streak. In the end, the Eagles probably will not be able to put up enough points to win the game. I pick the Giants, 33 - 27.

Here's hoping for a great week of football.

Regular season out, playoffs in.

2009-01-03T01:39:00.003-06:00

It's playoffs time! The whole year has been building up to this. But first, lets see how I did. Overall. This is the big total folks.

Falcons to beat the Rams
Corrct
Buccaneers to beat the Raiders
Wrong. Thank the lord, I was wrong!
Steelers to beat the Browns.
Correct
Panthers to beat the Saints
Correct
Giants to beat the Vikings
Wrong
Colts to beat the Titans
Correct
Texans to beat the Bears
Correct
Packers to beat the Lions
Correct
Cheifs to beat the Bengals
Wrong
Patriots to beat the Bills
Correct
Ravens to beat the Jaguars
Correct
Cardinals to beat the Seahawks
Correct
Redskins to beat the 49ers
Wrong
Dolphins to beat the Jets
Correct
Eagles to beat the Cowboys
Correct
Chargers to beat the Broncos.
Correct

12 - 4 this week. Total opposite of last week. Happy to finish on a strong note. It was an amazing week of football. The Vikings and the Eagles both made it into the playoffs. The Raiders really pulled out a miracle for Philadelphia. 146 - 99 overall. Didn't break 100 wrong games! Woo!

Thats 59.59% of the games picked correctly. Not too good this year. Oh well. There's always next year. But before that. PLAYOFFS! Just 11 games left. 4 this week, 4 next week, 2 championship games, then the Superbowl.

The first game is the Falcons at the Cardinals. The cardinals aren't a very good team. But, their division sucks, so they won it. The falcons have been pretty good this year. I predict the Falcons win 24 - 10.

The second game should be a little more interesting. The Chargers made a surprise win over the Broncos to take their division. The Colts however, have been on a hot streak. 9 straight wins leading up to the playoffs. I just can't see the chargers winning. I pick the colts, 33 - 17.

Next we have the Ravens at the Dolphins. Both teams have played pretty well this year. The Dolphins went from 1 - 15 last year to the division champs this year. Still, I think the Ravens are a slightly better team. However, the game is in Miami. This is a tough one to pick. I'm gonna go with the Dolphins. 16 - 14.

The last game is my favorite. The Vikings vs the Eagles. Both are my favorite NFL teams. Honestly, I dont know who to root for. The Eagles have had a rough season with an even rougher schedule. Despite an embarrassing tie to the Bengals and several lost games that they should have won, they somehow backed into the playoffs. The Vikings on the other hand have huge amounts of talent, but very poor coaching. Adrian Peterson has done well for them and was the leagues leading rusher. I think this is gonna be a great game. However, in the end, I think the good McNabb will show up, and the combined advantage of better coaching and a better QB, I think the Eagles will win. I put the final score at 27 - 23.

As for my superbowl predictions. I really think it could go to any team. Well, no, not the Cardinals. Baltimore will also likely not make it. My official prediction for the superbowl, at this point in time... I say the Steelers will beat the Panthers.

Anyway, see you around, happy caturday.

Super Mega Ultimate Holiday Blog Update

2008-12-28T22:16:00.003-06:00

It's been a while since I made a real update. Time to fill you all in on the life and times of Andrew Tiegs. Sit back, because this is gonna be a long one.

So, as you all already know, Seasonal Concepts has laid me off. But, I've bounced back and I have a temporary job working with my mother at a Christmas tree manufacturer. It's taken me to Atlanta and Chicago, and I've been doing a lot of work around here with a new laptop and doing fun spreadsheets. I'm not too happy with it, but it's good enough. I'll get by. Life moves on.

Christmas was great. Festivities started the day before Christmas Eve. We have a little cocktail party. Good sushi, good crabcakes, good family, good times. My parents are having another party for his work this Tuesday. One of the people from that party thought that the party was the night of our pre-christmas party, and he showed up. To the wrong party. A week early. Good times.

Christmas eve was great. Did church in the early afternoon, then headed back home. We had a big dinner of delicious meat. A lot of great food. After that we watched some movies and opened gifts. Lindsay, Heath and Maggie joined us. Good times.

Christmas day we spent with my fathers side of the family. Namely my grandmother on that side and her siblings and their kids. Day after we headed up north and spent time with my mothers side of the family. More good times. Did some snowmobiling, played some pool, drank some drinks. Good times.

Today was the best day. My father's side again. This time his parents and all my fathers siblings and my cousins. I brought Rock Band and got a lot of family members to play it. We exchanged gifts. At the end of the day, I had all but two items left on my christmas list, those two items being D&D books that I have borrowed from Draz anyway. Things were great. It's always one of the best parts of Christmas. Good times.

But the best gift of the day? Football. The Vikings needed to either win, or have the Bears lose to get into the playoffs. Well, both of those things happened. So they like, doubly got in. The Eagles needed to have the Bears lose too, they also needed the Buccaneers to lose, and the Bucs, a good team, was playing the Raiders, a terrible team, at home. They also needed to beat Dallas. All three things had to happen. Well, the Bears lost. Part one done with. Easy part. At the same time, the Raiders pulled a miracle victory and defeated the Buccaneers. Part two done. The really hard part. Finally, in the later game, the Eagles played the Cowboys. A lot of people picked the Cowboys. The Eagles crushed em. 44-6. Now the Eagles and the Vikings are in the playoffs. And... it turns out they have to play each other next week. So I have no idea who to root for. Good times.

Anyway, things are good. Check out my facebook soon for some xmas photos. Have a happy new year.

Week 17: The Finish

2008-12-28T01:22:00.002-06:00

This is it folks. The last week of the regular season. It all comes down to this. Our playoff picture is mostly complete. Giants and Titans have secured homefield throughout the playoffs. The divisions are mostly locked. The wild cards are wild. But first, lets see how I did last week. I think I did really bad.

The Colts to beat the Jaguars
Correct
The Cowboys to beat the Ravens
Correct
The Browns to beat the Bengals
Wrong
The Steelers to beat the Titans.
Wrong
The Bucs to beat the Chargers
Wrong
The Saints to beat the Lions
Correct
The Patriots to beat the Cardinals
Correct
The Dolphins to beat the Chiefs
Correct
The Rams to beat the 49ers.
Wrong
The Broncos to beat the Bills
Wrong
The Jets to beat the Seahawks
Wrong
The Texans to beat the Raiders
Wrong
The Vikings to beat the Falcons
Wrong
The Eagles to beat the Redskins
Wrong
The Panthers to beat the Giants.
Wrong
The Packers to beat the Bears.
Wrong

4 - 12.

4... and 12.

Four right... twelve wrong.

That's just pathetic. I suck. I suck bad. 132 - 95 overall. Here's hoping I don't break 100 wrong games, but with how I did this week, it's probably gonna happen.

Anyway, onto this weeks picks.

Falcons to beat the Rams
Buccaneers to beat the Raiders
Steelers to beat the Browns.
Panthers to beat the Saints
Giants to beat the Vikings
Colts to beat the Titans. My upset special of the week.
Texans to beat the Bears
Packers to beat the Lions
Cheifs to beat the Bengals
Patriots to beat the Bills
Ravens to beat the Jaguars
Cardinals to beat the Seahawks
Redskins to beat the 49ers
Dolphins to beat the Jets
Eagles to beat the Cowboys
Chargers to beat the Broncos.

For the Vikings to get in, they just need to win, OR if they lose and the bears lose they're in. If the Vikings lose and the bears win, the bears are in. The bears can win a wildcard if they win, the Vikings win, the cowboys lose and the Buccaneers lose.

The Eagles just need to beat Dallas, have the bears lose, and have the Buccaneers lose.

The buccaneers are not going to lose.

Caturday!

2008-12-20T01:24:00.000-06:00

Look out, it's Caturday!

Week 16 Picks

2008-12-18T11:03:00.003-06:00

Just two weeks to go til the playoffs. What a season it's been. Things are very open ended this year. Predicting who will go to the superbowl, much less win it, will be damn near impossible. My overall pick percentage this year has been about 60%. Slightly better than if I had randomly guessed, but not nearly as good as I was picking them last year. Funny thing is, I'm still doing just as well as most of the professional sports pickers. This year has had that many upsets and been that unpredictable. Anyway, lets see how I did last week.

Bears to beat the Saints
Correct
Titans to beat the Texans
Wrong
Colts to beat the Lions
Correct
Seahawks to beat the Rams
Correct
Packers to beat the Jaguars
Wrong
Jets to beat the Bills
Correct
Dolphins to beat the 49ers
Correct
Buccaneers to beat the Falcons
Wrong
Chargers to beat the Chiefs
Correct
Redskins to beat the Bengals
Wrong.
Vikings to beat the Cardinals
Correct
Steelers to beat the Ravens
Correct
Patriots to beat the Raiders
Correct
Panthers to beat the Broncos
Correct
Cowboys to beat the Giants
Correct
Eagles to beat the Browns
Correct

12 - 4 this week. That's the best I've done the entire year! 128 - 83 overall. Onto my picks for week 16.

The Colts to beat the Jaguars
The Cowboys to beat the Ravens
The Browns to beat the Bengals
The Steelers to beat the Titans. Upset #1 of the week.
The Bucs to beat the Chargers
The Saints to beat the Lions. Lions to be the first 0 - 15 team ever. Go lions!
The Patriots to beat the Cardinals
The Dolphins to beat the Chiefs
The Rams to beat the 49ers. Upset #2 of the week.
The Broncos to beat the Bills
The Jets to beat the Seahawks
The Texans to beat the Raiders
The Vikings to beat the Falcons
The Eagles to beat the Redskins
The Panthers to beat the Giants. Upset #3 of the week
The Packers to beat the Bears. Upset #4 of the week.

The playoffs are two weeks away. Two games left. 12 slots open. Only the Steelers, Titans, Giants and Cardinals have guaranteed themselves a spot in the playoffs. The rest is wide open. Who will win the NFC north? The Vikings or the Bears? The AFC east has the Jets, the Patriots and the Dolphins all tied for first at 9 - 5. The Eagles can still make the playoffs. All they need to do is win this week and next week and have either the Buccaneers or the Falcons lose a game. I love football.

Happy Caturday!

2008-12-13T10:55:00.004-06:00

So we're back to this. Nothing but cat pics and NFL picks.

Nfl Week 15 picks

2008-12-10T11:56:00.003-06:00

14 down, 3 to go. Lets see how week 14 went.

Chargers to beat the Raiders
Correct
Bears to beat the Jaguars
Correct
Packers to beat the Texans
Wrong
Falcons to beat the Saints
Wrong
Titans to beat the Browns
Correct
Giants to beat the Eagles
Wrong. Yay!
Colts to beat the Bengals
Correct
Vikings to beat the Lions
Correct
Bills to beat the Dolphins
Wrong
Jets to beat the 49ers
Wrong
Chiefs to beat the Broncos. This is my upset special.
Wrong
Patriots to beat the Seahawks
Correct
Cardinals to beat the Rams
Correct
Steelers to beat the Cowboys
Correct
Redskins to beat the Redskins
Uh... I must have been really tired when I wrote this. Seeing as the Redskins lost to the Ravens so... I'm just gonna toss this one out.
Panthers to beat the Buccaneers
Correct

So that's 9 right, 6 wrong, and one that wasn't really a pick. 116 to 79 overall. My percentage sucks this year. Alright, onto this week.

Bears to beat the Saints
Titans to beat the Texans
Colts to beat the Lions
Seahawks to beat the Rams
Packers to beat the Jaguars
Jets to beat the Bills
Dolphins to beat the 49ers
Buccaneers to beat the Falcons
Chargers to beat the Chiefs
Redskins to beat the Bengals
Vikings to beat the Cardinals
Steelers to beat the Ravens
Patriots to beat the Raiders
Panthers to beat the Broncos
Cowboys to beat the Giants. This is my upset special.
Eagles to beat the Browns

Alright! Philly in the Monday night game! I get to watch it!

Happy Caturday!

2008-12-06T09:39:00.002-06:00

Could it be? Why yes it is! It's Caturday!

Week 14 picks.

2008-12-03T22:10:00.002-06:00

The Titans to beat the Lions
Correct
The Cowboys to beat the Seahawks
Correct
The Cardinals to beat the Eagles
Wrong. Yay!
The Bills to beat the 49ers
Wrong
The Ravens to beat the Bengals
Correct
The Saints to beat the Buccaneers
Wrong
The Giants to beat the Redskins
Correct
The Dolphins to beat the Rams
Correct
The Colts to beat the Browns
Correct
The Packers to beat the Panthers
Wrong
The Falcons to beat the Chargers
Correct
The Jets to beat the Broncos
Wrong
The Steelers to beat the Patriots
Correct
The Chiefs to beat the Raiders
Correct
The Bears to beat the Vikings
Wrong. Yay!
The Texans to beat the Jaguars
Correct

10 - 6 this week. Seems to be my average. I picked my two favorite teams to lose and they won. Maybe I should keep picking them to lose. Well this week I will pick the eagles to lose, but if the Vikings lose to the Lions, there is no hope for us. 107 - 73 overall.

Chargers to beat the Raiders
Bears to beat the Jaguars
Packers to beat the Texans
Falcons to beat the Saints
Titans to beat the Browns
Giants to beat the Eagles
Colts to beat the Bengals
Vikings to beat the Lions
Bills to beat the Dolphins
Jets to beat the 49ers
Chiefs to beat the Broncos. This is my upset special.
Patriots to beat the Seahawks
Cardinals to beat the Rams
Steelers to beat the Cowboys
Redskins to beat the Redskins
Panthers to beat the Buccaneers

Happy Caturday!

2008-11-29T10:20:00.001-06:00

It's Caturday! Post cats!

D&D Figurines, round 3

2008-11-27T21:52:00.008-06:00

I know I promised this a few weeks ago, but I only finished painting them a few days ago, and only got around to photographing them today. Anywhere, here are my newest awesome D&D figures. Click to enlarge.

Thanksgiving picks!

2008-11-27T11:12:00.002-06:00

A bad week methinks...

Eagles to beat the Ravens
Wrong
Patriots to beat the Dolphins
Correct
Titans to beat the Jets
Wrong
Bears to beat the Rams
Correct
Bills to beat the Chiefs
Correct
Texans to beat the Browns
Correct
Cowboys to beat the 49ers
Correct
Jaguars to beat the Vikings
Wrong
Buccaneers to beat the Lions
Correct
Broncos to beat the Raiders
Wrong
Panthers to beat the Falcons
Wrong
Giants to beat the Cardinals
Correct
Redskins to beat the Seahawks
Correct
Chargers to beat the Colts
Wrong
Saints to beat the Packers.
Correct

9 Right, 6 wrong. Meh. Puts me to 97 to 67 overall.

But hey! It's thanksgiving! Three games today! Hooray football! Hooray Turkey! Hooray gorging! Hope everyone has a good day today and enjoys the day off work. Take care everyone. Here are my picks.

The Titans to beat the Lions
The Cowboys to beat the Seahawks
The Cardinals to beat the Eagles
The Bills to beat the 49ers
The Ravens to beat the Bengals
The Saints to beat the Buccaneers
The Giants to beat the Redskins
The Dolphins to beat the Rams
The Colts to beat the Browns
The Packers to beat the Panthers
The Falcons to beat the Chargers
The Jets to beat the Broncos
The Steelers to beat the Patriots
The Chiefs to beat the Raiders
The Bears to beat the Vikings
The Texans to beat the Jaguars

There are my picks. Have a happy Thanksgiving.

Week 12 Picks

2008-11-22T23:56:00.002-06:00

Late picks are late. Missed the Thursday night game again. Whatever, don't care. It's been a rough week. Anyway, here's last weeks results.

Patriots to beat the Jets.
Wrong
Eagles to beat the Bengals. Lock of the week
Um... kind of wrong? It was a tie. But since the Eagles did not win, I must say it's a wrong.
Panthers to beat the Lions
Correct
Giants to beat the Ravens
Correct
Packers to beat the Bears. Upset special of the week.
Correct
Saints to beat the Chiefs
Correct
Dolphins to beat the Raiders
Correct
Falcons to beat the Broncos
Wrong
Colts to beat the Texans
Correct
Buccaneers to beat the Vikings
Correct
49ers to beat the Rams
Correct
Cardinals to beat the Seahawks
Correct
Titans to beat the Jaguars
Correct
Steelers to beat the Chargers
Correct
Redskins to beat the Cowboys
Wrong
Bills to beat the Browns.
Wrong

11-5, 88 - 61 overall. Meh. Here's this weeks.

Eagles to beat the Ravens
Patriots to beat the Dolphins
Titans to beat the Jets
Bears to beat the Rams
Bills to beat the Cheifs
Texans to beat the Browns
Cowboys to beat the 49ers
Jaguars to beat the Vikings
Buccaneers to beat the Lions
Broncos to beat the Raiders
Panthers to beat the Falcons
Giants to beat the Cardinals
Redskins to beat the Seahawks
Chargers to beat the Colts
Saints to beat the Packers.

There ya go...

Weekend update

2008-11-17T10:06:00.001-06:00

Salutations my friends.

The weekend has passed. It was a good weekend though. Not too eventful, but fun nonetheless. Not a whole lot happened Saturday. Just relaxed, played some video games. Went over to the Drazkowski's place and played some card games with Draz and his folks. Also with Claire, who I am now almost completely convinced exists. I approve of her dating Draz. I hope things work out well between them.

Sunday was quite good. Well, not for the NFL side of things... Vikings lost, as I predicted, but the Eagles... well the Eagles did not lose. But they did not win. They tied. They tied one of the worst teams in the NFL. I think it's time the Eagles got a new coaching staff. I'm thinking at this point they need to pull off a miracle to make it to the playoffs.

The rest of Sunday though, very good. Met at Draz's condo and we played us some Dungeons and Dragons. The players in my campaign have decided to go above and beyond their duties and rather than just kill the bad guy, they're slowly taking over his properties. And his secretary. They've finally corned the guy in charge of the whole evil syndicate. How will it turn out? Probably with lots of violence.

I had purchased a bunch of new figurines for the game. Lots of dwarves, lots of kobolds, some wolves, a warrior. I'll be painting them this week. Should have pics for you soon.

Anyway, that's all I've got for you now. I shall see you later.

Thursday Thoughts: DLC

2008-11-13T11:15:00.001-06:00

It's Thursday, and you know what I think? Well I'll tell you.

What's been on my mind recently is the topic of Downloadable Content (or DLC) in video games. With the advent of hard drives in consoles and internet connections capable of fast download speeds, many companies have decided to provide extra content for their games. A gamer may pay an extra fee to get a big of extra content in their game. Is this a good thing or is it a bad thing?

In many cases, this is definitely a good thing. Lets look at what I think the best example of DLC is. If you know me at all, or have read this blog even a little bit in the past, you already know that I consider Rock Band to have the best downloadable content. The game comes with 84 songs, but with downloadable content you can purchase over 250 additional songs for the game, and that number goes up every week (at least 3, as many as 20).

The standard cost is two dollars per song. Many songs are released for only one dollar, and purchasing songs in a pack will get you a deal as well. For example a 3-pack is 5 dollars instead of 6, and an album that consists of 14 songs would cost you 20 dollars. You can pick and choose and only get the songs you want, and they've done a great job of covering every style of music that fits the game. The price is reasonable considering they have to pay the artists loyalty fees and a bit of work is involved in charting the songs and lining up the animations to fit with the music, not to mention Microsoft takes a cut of the money as well.

Halo also does it well. They release a pack of multiplayer maps, charge for them initially, but after 6 months or so they get integrated into all Xbox live games and become free to download. It's good content, at a reasonable price, that eventually becomes free anyway.

Unfortunately, Rock Band and Halo are in the minority for what is considered good DLC. Many games charge as much as 5 dollars for extra costumes for the characters in game. It adds no gameplay. It's simply a new costume for the character. In some cases this means simply changing the colors of the already existing clothing models. In the game Rumble Roses, purchasing all the new outfits would cost the player over $1,000, and all it does is add cosmetic changes. In Ace Combat 4, you can pay 10 bucks to get an anime skin on one of your planes. However, in multiplayer, only you and anyone else who purchased this skin will be able to see it. Mind you, this is nothing more than a retexture of the skin on the plane.

There are also cases where you can get better weapons in the game by paying for them. This in and of itself isn't so bad, however, there are games where this includes online multiplayer. Thus giving an edge to players who spend more money.

There are also cases of where you can purchase things that you would be able to obtain regularly in the game anyway. In Soul Caliber 4 you can pay 5 bucks to unlock all the weapons in the game. A feat that can be accomplished with about 5 hours of gameplay. In the new RPG Tales of Vesperia, you can pay money to level up your characters, rather than level them up yourselves. Essentially meaning your paying them so that you don't have to play the game that you payed them to play.

Most of this is relatively harmless. I don't really care about extra costumes and stuff as it doesn't affect gameplay. If people want to drop money, that's their own right, and i'm not missing out on something by not paying for it. I also get a sense of satisfaction out of unlocking things in a game, but if someone wants to pay to get it all right away and skip the grind, I see no problem with that. Don't buy it if you don't want it right?

My problem is when companies take content that would have been part of the game, remove it, then sell it as DLC. A good example of this is the game Beautiful Katamari. There are three levels in the game that are locked out. They're on the disc, they're already there, but in order to play them, you must pay an additional fee. You don't even download anything. It just unlocks content you already have. I can see it happening with several other games in the future. A trend can easily form where the disc is essentially an incomplete game, and you have to pay even more to get the full experience. Content that should have been part of the original purchased gets stripped so they can charge us more.

Some developers are even deciding to charge for content they didn't even create. For example, the president of Activision wants to charge people to download custom songs that other users created in Guitar Hero World Tour.

An interesting thing is that some content that you pay for on the console version is essentially free on the PC version. For example, in Oblivion you can pay two bucks to get armor for your horse. However, in the PC version, this armor is free. Heck, in the PC version you can make your horse into a dragon if you want to, thanks to the ability to mod the code (which the developers encourage. Bethesda even released a mod kit for Oblivion.)

Downloadable content is a good idea in theory. It can revitalize a game that interest had been lost in. It can expand the game modes to be more interesting.

But it needs to be real content. Not things stripped out of the game so they can make more money. Not simple reskins of characters that took a programmer a couple hours to do. There will always be people who will buy every little thing they can for their games, and as people continue to do this, developers will put out more and more ridiculous DLC for higher and higher prices. The idea that DLC will make the core game a lesser product is a reality. It has happened and I fear it will only get worse.

Week 11 picks

2008-11-11T09:51:00.000-06:00

Whew... that was a bad week. Lets see the damage

Saints to beat the Falcons
Wrong
Titans to beat the Bears
Correct
Detroit to beat the Jaguars
Wrong
Texans to beat the Ravens
Wrong
Dolphins to beat the Seahawks
Correct
Vikings to beat the Packers
Correct
Patriots to beat the Bills
Correct
Jets to beat the Rams
Correct
Panthers to beat the Raiders
Correct
Steelers to beat the Colts
Wrong
Chargers to beat the Cheifs
Correct
Eagles to beat the Giants
Wrong
Cardinals to beat the 49ers
Correct

Well, every single one of my upset specials ended up not being an upset. I'm quite upset by that fact. It might upset my ability to pick games. Still, 5 wrong, 8 right, 77 - 56 overall. Better than I thought I guess. I'm just too depressed over the loss of the Eagles. They're a great team, but they have a very very hard schedule and they're gonna need to win the rest of their games if they want to guarantee a playoff spot. Luckily, they play the Bengals this weekend. Should be an easy win. Perhaps... a lock.

Patriots to beat the Jets.
Eagles to beat the Bengals. Lock of the week
Panthers to beat the Lions
Giants to beat the Ravens
Packers to beat the Bears. Upset special of the week.
Saints to beat the Chiefs
Dolphins to beat the Raiders
Falcons to beat the Broncos
Colts to beat the Texans
Buccaneers to beat the Vikings
49ers to beat the Rams
Cardinals to beat the Seahawks
Titans to beat the Jaguars
Steelers to beat the Chargers
Redskins to beat the Cowboys
Bills to beat the Browns.

Them's my picks and I'm stuck with em. See you Thursday for some thoughts on video games and downloadable content.

Weekend update

2008-11-10T10:33:00.000-06:00

Another weekend, come and gone.

Saturday was a good day. Went to James' and hung out with him and Draz. Played some Little Big Planet, which was quite fun. Simple gameplay inside of an incredibly complex game. I'd love to own the game, but I can't quite justify getting a Playstation 3 just for it. Some Rock Band was also played. Draz got the portable drum kit, which he mounted onto my regular drum kit. It somehow worked... We then went to Beijing for dinner. It was delicious. Got home around 8, despite it feeling much later than that.

Sunday was alright. Picked up my mother from the airport, watched the Vikings beat the Packers, then had dinner with the family. Lindsay, Heath and Maggey came over. We had seafood chowder, which was delicious. I got Heath to play Portal. He played the whole game, start to finish. He much enjoyed it. He now understands the whole premise of the phrase "The cake is a lie."

Then the Eagles lost to the Giants. Sad night.

No D&D over the weekend. I hope we can get the gang together and play again this upcoming weekend. I may take a little extra effort to get everyone on the same page. Anyway, see you later this week for football stuff. I even have a topic in mind for Thursday Thoughts. Catch you later my friends.

Little update for you all

2008-11-07T10:45:00.002-06:00

Not a whole lot of content on my blog recently. No posts this week for one main reason. I had a cold. Colds suck. You want a thursday thoughts? Well there it was. I think colds suck.

As for what else has been going on... well, Halloween was kind of boring. Went to the casino, which was fun, but I lost moneys, so that kind of sucks. But that's just the way it is.

I recently hit a milestone in Rock Band. My copy of Rock Band 2 as of a week ago was at 285 songs. As of today it is at 323. That's right folks! I broke the 300 song barrier! The pack that did it was an 18-song best of AC/DC pack, which is all around an excellent group of songs. Then, they finally released the 20 free songs that was promised at launch. I've yet to play them, but they're on the hard drive, waiting for my return from work. There's 323 songs that I have, of an available 456. That's pretty impressive that they've managed to accumulate that many songs for the game, and with much more on the horizon. (for example, the Foo Fighters full album the Colour and the Shape is coming on Tuesday.)

In other video game related stuff, I am hearing from James and Draz (as well as from the internet) that Little Big Planet is a ton of fun. I hope to be able to play it soon. Though it doesn't appeal to me quite enough for me to warrant getting a PS3.

Anyway, that's aboot all I gots to say today. Have a good one.

Week 10 picks

2008-11-07T10:45:00.001-06:00

FOOTBALL! PICKS! LAST WEEK! RAAAAWR

Bills to beat the Jets
Wrong
Bears to beat the Lions
Correct
Bengals to beat the Jaguars
Correct! Yay picking upsets.
Browns to beat the Ravens
Wrong
Bucs to beat the Chiefs
Correct
Vikings to beat the Texans
Correct
Cardinals to beat the Rams
Correct
Titans to beat the Packers
Correct
Broncos to beat the Dolphins
Wrong
Giants to beat the Cowboys
Correct
Falcons to beat the Raiders
Correct
Eagles to beat the Seahawks
Correct
Patriots to beat the Colts
Wrong
Steelers to beat the Redskins
Correct

Only 4 wrong last week. Not bad. 10 - 4 on the week, bringing me to 69 - 51 overall. Onwards to week 10!

...what? There was a game last night? I didn't pick it in time? Browns vs Broncos? Broncos won huh... well I would have picked them...

ok, fine, here's the other 13 games. I'll get them in time at least.

Saints to beat the Falcons. Upset special of the week.
Titans to beat the Bears
Detroit to beat the Jaguars. My second upset special of this week.
Texans to beat the Ravens
Dolphins to beat the Seahawks
Vikings to beat the Packers
Patriots to beat the Bills
Jets to beat the Rams
Panthers to beat the Raiders. Lock of the week!
Steelers to beat the Colts
Chargers to beat the Cheifs
Eagles to beat the Giants. My third upset special. Go Eagles!
Cardinals to beat the 49ers

There are my picks. Onward we go. Should be some good games.

Week 9 picks

2008-10-31T10:27:00.001-05:00

Ravens to beat the Raiders
Correct
Cardinals to beat the Panthers
Wrong
Dallas to beat the Buccaneers
Correct
Redskins to beat the Lions
Correct
Bills to beat the dolphins
Wrong
Patriots to beat the Rams
Correct
Saints to beat the Chargers
Correct
Jets to beat the Chiefs
Correct
Eagles to beat the Falcons
Correct
Jaguars to beat the Browns
Wrong
Texans to beat the Bengals
Correct
Steelers to beat the Giants
Wrong
49ers to beat the Seahawks
Wrong
Titans to beat the Colts
Correct

9 - 5 last week. Not bad, but dangit, I just can't pick that well this year. It's a tough year for picks. 59 - 47 overall.

Onto week 9.

Bills to beat the Jets
Bears to beat the Lions
Bengals to beat the Jaguars. This is my upset special
Browns to beat the Ravens
Bucs to beat the Chiefs
Vikings to beat the Texans
Cardinals to beat the Rams
Titans to beat the Packers. Lock of the week.
Broncos to beat the Dolphins
Giants to beat the Cowboys
Falcons to beat the Raiders
Eagles to beat the Seahawks
Patriots to beat the Colts
Steelers to beat the Redskins

Some good match-ups this week. Should be some good football. Go Eagles.

Halloween Thoughts

2008-10-31T09:54:00.001-05:00

I feel like doing a day late Thursday Thoughts. Think of it as a Halloween thoughts.

Today will be another segment of things that bother me. Namely all things that I have encountered this morning.

Firstly, the political season is damn near intolerable. I'm listening to the KQRS morning show right now and it went to commercial. 6 of the 8 commercials were political ads and every single one of them was an attack ad. An ad saying why Norm Coleman sucks followed by an ad about why Al Franken sucks followed by an ad about how Obama will destroy the economy, then an ad about how Al Tinklinburg is a criminal, then another ad about why Norm Coleman sucks. Every break. It's maddening. I bet a good number of people don't vote because they just get so sick of the whole political season.

Secondly, over protective parents. I drive by a few bus stops on the way to work each morning. These are elementary school children at the stops. However, it's not just the kids, but their parents as well. Each kid has their parent with them. Not just the kids in kindergarten to second grade, but kids who are clearly a bit older. On top of that, on rainy days I see a line of cars so the kids dont have to be in the rain.

Now, I remember being at the bus stop in elementary school. I never had parents at the stop. Our parents sent us out and that was that. The bus picked us up and we went on our merry way. No problems. I understand these parents want to make sure their kids are safe, but that's taking it a little too far. Give your kids a little bit of independence. They have to learn to take care of themselves.

Next is the recent string of ghost related TV shows and such. It being Halloween, the KQ morning show had on several people who were ghost hunters or claimed to be psychics. Or as I call them, pseudo scientists and scam artists. I find the topic of ghosts and hauntings to be quite fascinating, but I really hate when these shows have people go around claiming to be scientists, but then their methods are so far from scientific method that it's just pathetic.

It's a textbook example of confirmation bias. They have a set conclusion and they're looking for anything that could point towards that conclusion. If they see anything they can't explain they immediately say "it must be a ghost". They just leave it at that instead of researching it and examining every possibility. If someone could prove the existence of ghosts they would win a nobel prize. There's lots of things we can't explain, but instantly saying it was a ghost and leaving it at that is just dumb. I love unexplained stuff, but I'd rather we investigate these occurrences than just give it a supernatural explanation and move on. The world is already a very interesting place. We don't need to make stuff up.

So that's it for today. Well, football picks later, but nobody cares about that but me.

Week 8 Picks

2008-10-23T09:46:00.000-05:00

I think I got a lot wrong last week. Lets take a look and see.

The Dolphins to beat the Ravens
Wrong
The Steelers to beat the Bengals
Correct
The Saints to beat the Panthers
Wrong
The Giants to beat the 49ers
Correct
The Vikings to beat the Bears
Wrong
The Titans to beat the Cheifs
Correct
The Chargers to beat the Bills
Wrong
The Cowboys to beat the Rams
Wrong
The Texans to beat the Lions
Correct
The Packers to beat the Colts
Correct
The Redskins to beat the Browns
Correct
The Jets to beat the Raiders
Wrong
The Buccaneers to beat the Seahawks
Correct
The Broncos to beat the Patriots
Wrong

7 - 7. Just as many right as wrong. That's quite terrible. I suck. Brings me to 50-42 overall. If this were a class I'd have an F. But I don't give up! Onto next week!

Ravens to beat the Raiders
Cardinals to beat the Panthers
Dallas to beat the Buccaneers
Redskins to beat the Lions. This is my lock of the week.
Bills to beat the dolphins.
Patriots to beat the Rams
Saints to beat the Chargers
Jets to beat the Chiefs
Eagles to beat the Falcons
Jaguars to beat the Browns
Texans to beat the Bengals
Steelers to beat the Giants. This is my upset special
49ers to beat the Seahawks
Titans to beat the Colts

Thems my picks and I'm sticking to them.

Weekend update

2008-10-20T10:06:00.001-05:00

Howdy folks. Sorry I haven't updated much recently. Work has been very hectic, and will continue to be throughout this week. Seasonal Concepts is having a cocktail party on Friday night to show off their new Christmas collection (you should go Mrs Drazkowski. Free catering and drinks and you get to see all the cool new stuff!). However, setting it up has been a real challenge and there will likely be much overtime this week. Which is good. I like extra moneys. But bad because it means I'll be working late both Thursday and Friday nights.

The weekend was pretty good. We've had a guest over the weekend. My sister's dog Maggey. Maggey has taken a liking to my bed and is often curled up on it. Unfortunately she also peed on it. Oh well, my sheets were in need of washing anyway.

Saturday I was joined by Chris and his brother Tony. We played lots of Rock Band. Good times were had. I spent most of the morning before they showed up getting D&D ready. Due to last minute changes we were doing my campaign so I had to hurry up and get it ready.

So Sunday rolls around. I get a message from James saying he's not coming. Well crap. On Thursday, Mike talked to me and told me we were starting D&D on Sunday at 3:00 as soon as he got off work. So on Friday I talked to Draz to tell him D&D was at my place at 3:00. He told me he already knew because James had told him. So I assume things are good. Well it turns out James only thought it was at 3:00, but wasn't sure because he had never actually gotten confirmation from me.

Well, Draz, Chris and Mike all showed up anyway. We played more Rock Band, took Maggey on a walk, played some bocce ball, then played more Rock Band and finally ate some delicious chili.

Anyway, don't expect too many updates this week. I shall see you for football picks.

NFL Week 7 picks

2008-10-17T20:12:00.003-05:00

Sorry bout the lack of updates. Been a hectic week. But I must make the picks. Here's last weeks results.

The Falcons to beat the Bears
Correct
The Texans to beat the Dolphins
Correct
The Colts to beat the Ravens
Correct
The Vikings to beat the Lions
Correct
The Saints to beat the Raiders
Correct
The Jets to beat the Bengals
Correct
The Panthers to beat the Buccaneers
Wrong
The Redskins to beat the Rams.
Wrong
The Jaguars to beat the Broncos
Correct
The Cowboys to beat the Cardinals
Wrong
The Eagles to beat the 49ers
Correct
The Seahawks to beat the Packers.
Wrong
The Chargers to beat the Patriots
Correct
The Giants to beat the Browns
Wrong

That's 9 right and 5 wrong. Not bad, not great. 43-35 overall. I thinks I can do better. On the plus side, 3 of my wrong picks were every team other than the Eagles in the NFC east losing. So, that's awesome. Well, here's week 7 picks.

The Dolphins to beat the Ravens
The Steelers to beat the Bengals
The Saints to beat the Panthers
The Giants to beat the 49ers
The Vikings to beat the Bears
The Titans to beat the Cheifs
The Chargers to beat the Bills
The Cowboys to beat the Rams. This is my lock of the week.
The Texans to beat the Lions
The Packers to beat the Colts. This is my upset special.
The Redskins to beat the Browns.
The Jets to beat the Raiders
The Buccaneers to beat the Seahawks.
The Broncos to beat the Patriots

I also predict the Eagles will not lose this week. I can 100% guarantee this to be true. Same with the Cardinals, Falcons and Jaguars.

Week 6 Picks

2008-10-10T20:08:00.003-05:00

It's another week. I don't think I did too well last week. Lets take a look.

Titans to beat the Ravens
Correct
Panthers to beat the Chiefs
Correct
Bears to beat the Lions
Correct
Packers to beat the Falcons
Wrong
Colts to beat the Texans
Correct
Chargers to beat the Dolphins
Wrong
Giants to beat the Seahawks
Correct
Eagles to beat the Redskins
Wrong
Broncos to beat the Buccaneers
Correct
Bills to beat the Cardinals
Wrong
Cowboys to beat the Bengals
Correct
Patriots to beat the 49ers
Correct
The Jaguars to beat the Steelers
Wrong
The Saints to beat the Vikings.
Wrong.

8 right, 6 wrong. Not nearly as good as I wanna be. Brings me to 44 - 30 overall. So, onto week six. I'm hoping for at least 10 games right this week.

The Falcons to beat the Bears
The Texans to beat the Dolphins
The Colts to beat the Ravens
The Vikings to beat the Lions
The Saints to beat the Raiders
The Jets to beat the Bengals
The Panthers to beat the Buccaneers
The Redskins to beat the Rams. This is my lock of the week
The Jaguars to beat the Broncos
The Cowboys to beat the Cardinals
The Eagles to beat the 49ers
The Seahawks to beat the Packers. This is my upset special
The Chargers to beat the Patriots
The Giants to beat the Browns

Those are my picks. I hope I have picked well.

Thursday Thoughts: Dating

2008-10-09T14:45:00.003-05:00

As you may have heard, I've been dating a girl by the name of Heather. She's smart, has a good sense of humor, is very hard working, is cute, and lives quite conveniantly close to me. She has much of what I'm looking for in a girl. Things are great when the two of us hang out.

Unfortunately, things aren't going that well now. She's been working a lot lately and we rarely get to see each other. She has had to cancel our plans several times. I've not cared that much though. She's fun to hang around and I'm willing to be patient.

This last Sunday, we managed to hang out for a while. She told me she was really sorry she was always so busy and couldn't hang out. She said it wasn't fair to me and that because of that things maybe can't work out. I told her I didn't care. I told her I wanted her to be my girlfriend and that I don't care if she's busy as long as I can see her at least a little. This seemed to make her happy. We kissed and it seemed things were good. We would take it slow, but things would work out.

That is until today, when I got an email from her saying that she didn't want to be in a relationship right now. That she wants to be friends. That it was nothing I did, but that she was the problem and can't handle dating right now. So essentially I got the "it's not you it's me. Lets just be friends."

So I don't really know what to do. Her email made it sound like maybe there was a chance in the future when she's not working so hard. She also said she didn't have the time or energy to work on a relationship right now. Having never really been in a relationship, I don't know how much work it can really be. I don't demand all of her time. I don't care if she spends a lot of time with her friends and family. I just want to be able to be with her. I don't know if I can just be friends with her. I don't know anyone else in her circle of friends and I feel it would be awkward when it's clear that I want more than just friendship.

I don't really know what to do and it sucks that once again things have fallen apart with a girl and me. I don't know if I should just leave it be and try to move onto another girl, or if I should be patient and try again later, of if I should try to convince her that things can work now, but we should just take it slow and give her all the space she needs. Hell I don't know. I don't understand women at all.

Weekend update

2008-10-06T12:21:00.000-05:00

Weekend weekend, oh what a weekend.

Work after Friday was kind of fun. Went to the auto-place and got my oil changed. Then I went home. Then I played some Rock Band 2. Then I got hungry and went to chipotle. Then, I got a call from Draz and Clair who wanted to come over and play Rock Band 2, but I was on my way to James' house. So that kind of sucked. Oh well.

So I get to James' with my computer so that we can reinstall windows on it. It's been a while since I've given my computer a clean install and cleared out all the extra crap on it. Especially since the Spore creature creator I installed put Securom onto my computer, and I happen to not like malicious spyware.

So, around 9:30 I get an IM from Arne asking if I wanted to go to Mystic Lake. I'm always up for gambling, so I of course agreed. So, the reinstall starts. And... a few things don't go as planned, and two hours and a floppy drive installation later, we finally get the install going. Finally, around 12:30, we finally head out for the casino.

The casino was fun. First I made 10 bucks playing blackjack. Then I lost 10 bucks playing Roulette. Then I made 50 bucks playing blackjack. So it was a profitable night. I think Mike ended up down a bit. James finished like... 1.50 up. Anyway, we didn't leave until about 4:15, so it was after 5:00 am that I finally got to sleep.

Saturday I slept in late, then Mike, James, Draz and I headed up to St Cloud. We arrived at James McConnel's house and was joined by Chris. We got right down to some good D&D. It was a fun session and my character got to be stuffed into a barrel.

Sunday was filled with not much. Watched some football. Hung out with Heather. Had some delicious meatloaf.

All in all, a good weekend, though a tiring one due to the lack of sleep. Anyway, that's all I have to say about that.

Thursday Thoughts: D&D

2008-10-02T12:49:00.001-05:00

Yes, you already got football picks today, and technically they are my thoughts on the NFL, that hardly counts as a fitting Thursday Thoughts segment. I would never deprive you of knowing whats on my mind (except for all those times that I have.)

So what's been on my mind this week? Well, the archetypal game of nerdiness of course; Dungeons and Dragons.

After an extended break of play in the late summer, we have finally gotten back into the swing of things and are playing D&D again. A few weeks ago we started a campaign with Mike Nicchetta as Dungeon Master (or DM). For the first time ever, we played a campaign using the new D&D 4.0 rules. Things are simplified, but still quite intuitive and fun to use.

This campaign is larger and we've had player characters from Draz, James, Jordan, Maria and myself. We also played a session with Jordan's friend James McConnel, who is a very awesome lad and is having us over Saturday to play yet another session.

However, this last weekend we started a second session. This one I am the Dungeon Master. The group is smaller and includes only James, Mike and Draz. It's off to a good start and I'm really looking forward to how it will turn out.

It's the third campaign I've ever DMed. I did one back in college. It had a decent story, but the dungeons were kind of lame, the battles were too easy, and it was very cliche. The second campaign I did had good dungeons and encounters, but I got way overzealous with the story. I had the guy who hired the characters betray them, made the characters have differing goals, and as a whole, the group dynamic just fell apart. They had no motivation to do anything I had set up and it just failed.

This time, I think I've got it right. I've designed some pretty interesting dungeons. The first one was pretty standard, but not too boring. The second one I'm very proud of and will provide some good challenge for our players. The third is just awesome. I can't wait for them to go into it.

Another nice feature of D&D 4.0 is that it makes creating appropriate encounters for the players. It gives each monster an XP value, you figure the XP total for your party, then add monsters until you reach that value. Quite simple.

I think I've got a pretty good storyline so far too. The only issue is that Draz is evil, Mike is good, and James is neutral. Could make things fall apart rather quickly. I'm slowly introducing story elements. Trying to give our characters motivation beyond just money. I think it will be a damn good campaign.

It's interesting to see how the DMing varies between the campaigns. When it comes to storylines, Draz is the best I've played by far. Mike on the other hand seems to have the strongest grasp of the rules and is able to really use the tools in the book to make great encounters. He's also done a really good job with the NPC characters. I like to think my strength is good dungeon design. I do a lot of prep work and I really try to flesh out my worlds to be believable, though I often get things messed up and have lapses of continuity and logic. Oh well.

Anyway, it's been fun, and I can't wait to see how the two current campaigns turn out.

Week 5 Picks

2008-10-02T09:30:00.001-05:00

The Panthers to beat the Falcons
Correct
The Bengals to beat the Browns
Wrong
The Jaguars to beat the Texans
Correct
The Broncos to beat the Chiefs
Wrong
The Saints to beat the 49ers
Correct
The Jets to beat the Cardinals
Correct
The Packers to beat the Buccaneers
Wrong
The Vikings to beat the Titans
Wrong
The Chargers to beat the Raiders
Correct. Finally got a lock of the week right.
The Bills to beat the Rams
Correct
The Cowboys to beat the Redskins
Wrong
The Eagles to beat the Bears
Wrong
The Steelers to beat the Ravens
Correct

Lots of upsets last week. Few would have thought the Redskins could beat the Cowboys or the Bears to beat the Eagles. I was only 7 - 6, bringing me to 36 - 24. I'm doing okay, 60% at the moment, but I really need to kick things into gear. I'd like to finish the season at 70% at the very least.

So here are my picks for week 5.
Titans to beat the Ravens
Panthers to beat the Chiefs
Bears to beat the Lions
Packers to beat the Falcons
Colts to beat the Texans
Chargers to beat the Dolphins
Giants to beat the Seahawks
Eagles to beat the Redskins
Broncos to beat the Buccaneers
Bills to beat the Cardinals
Cowboys to beat the Bengals. My Lock of the week!
Patriots to beat the 49ers
The Jaguars to beat the Steelers
As much as I hate to say it, the Saints to beat the Vikings.

Thems my picks and I'm sticking to them.

Trouble with the law

2008-10-01T08:57:00.003-05:00

Up until now I've had a clean record. I've been an upstanding and law abiding citizen. But now that's all over. I've had a run in with the law. Yes that's right. For the first time ever, I have been pulled over by a police officer.

I had just gotten off of 394 onto Ridgedale drive to get to work. A police car was right behind me. Suddenly, it's lights go on and he motions for me to pull over. So I did. I get out my license and registration. He walks up to me. He tells me my tabs are expired. Doh. I hadn't even noticed. He ran my license, came back to the car, told me to get it taken care of today, gave me a warning and told me to have a nice day.

He was a very nice officer. We even exchanged a few pleasantries. I was calm, curtious, had everything else in order, and I think I handled it well. Luckily the officer was a nice man and the very first thing I will do after work today is go over to the DMV which is about a half mile from here, and get it fixed.

So yeah, I can now no longer say I have never been pulled over. Though I CAN still say I've never been pulled over for a traffic infraction. I'm just a dumbass who forgets to get his tabs updated. So to you Mr. Minnetonka Police Officer, I say thank you.

Weekend update

2008-09-29T16:27:00.002-05:00

Oi. What an odd few days it's been. The weekend started off with a bang in that I got to go to work and pull a half day. A very stressful and work-packed half day. Luckily, I got home and the rest of the day kicked ass.

Chris came over and we played some Rock Band 2. Then Draz came over and we played some more Rock Band 2. Then James came over and we made characters for Draz and James for my D&D campaign. Then Mike came over and we played D&D whilst Chris sculpted a dragon zombie for me. Then we had some delicious lasagna. Then we finished playing D&D. It was a great afternoon after a shitty morning.

Then came Sunday. I had a lot of optimism going into Sunday, but I ended up being very disappointed. For starters, the Vikings and the Eagles both lost. The Vikings I expected to lose, the Eagles lost a game they should have won. The Eagles have a long uphill battle this season.

The real disappointment was that Heather and I were supposed to hang out all day, but she got called into work. We were then going to hang out after her shift finished, but she was dead tired at that point and her roommate left the house totally trashed. So she canceled on me. Of the last 5 times we've tried to hang out, she's had to cancel 4 of those times. I wonder if this is ever going to go anywhere. I like her, and she does seem to have legit excuses for why she cant hang out, but this is just getting concerning and I'm wondering if it's worth pursuing any more.

Today I got to get up early and go shape a tree for a photo shoot. That kind of sucked. But wasn't really that bad. Got back to the office. Checked my email and went to my confirmation email for my hard drive rails for my new hard drive to fit into my case. It tells me it was delivered. On Saturday. To my old apartment in St Cloud.

Well, as it just so happens, my good friend Chris lives about a block away from there and was online to chat at the time. So he ran over to see if they have it. Well, as it turns out, nobody lives in that apartment right now. However, the mail lady was nearby, so he went and talked to her. She told him that if nobody lives there, the item would have been returned to sender. The only problem is that if it HAD been returned to the sender, the tracking would say so. So my hard drive rails are more than likely sitting in a little locked box in the entry way of the apartment I used to live in, and nobody can get to them.

Luckily, Gigabyte finally got back to me and I have ordered new rails, but sadly at a bit of a higher cost. I will have spent about 40% of the cost of the 500GB hard drive just on getting rails to mount it. Oh well, thems the breaks. Onward to Tuesday

Thursday Stuffs

2008-09-26T10:42:00.002-05:00

Last night was fun. Jordan made a trip down, James got off work early, and good times happened. Mike Arne, Draz, Jordan, James and I all headed to Mt Fuji to have some delicious Japanese food.

I got my usual small order of fried rice, which is really good at Mt Fuji. I then got a tiger roll, which is a super delicious sushi. There was some plate sharing. Mike got tempura chicken with tempura vegetables. Call it what you will, I still say it was just chicken tenders and onion rings.

Mt Fuji is awesome.

Thursday Thoughts: Rock Band 2

2008-09-25T10:34:00.002-05:00

Happy Thursday!

I was going to write a review of Rock Band 2 last week, but I had been playing it too much, plus I hadn't really given the game a full playing. So now you will hear my thoughts on Rock Band 2.

As you all know, Rock Band 2 is probably the most anticipated video game in my life. I had considered Rock Band to be the best music game ever made. Could Rock Band 2 live up to the first one? Is it worth the money? Well, lets take a look at Rock Band 2.

The basic gameplay is pretty much identical to Rock Band 1. You get colored notes thrown at you on a chart, you have to hit those notes as they reach the bottom, which ends up playing the instrumental part of song you've chosen. This is the same for drums, bass, and guitar. You then can also sing along with the songs and are graded on your accuracy to the pitch.

There are two minor additions to gameplay. One is drum solos. The drummer will get a blue background for part of their chart. They are then graded and how well they hit just that part, and depending on how well they did, they will get an extra score bonus. Just like guitar solos. The second is the addition of hammeron-pulloff chords. This allows you to play a chord simply by tapping the buttons required to hit it, granted you hit the note before it.

So if the main gameplay hasn't changed, what has? There aren't really any significant differences from Rock Band 1 to 2. However, there are about a million little ones.

For one, the instruments are a lot better. See my review of them here.

World tour has gotten an overhaul. You can now make a band and swap out players as you like. There's no longer a band leader that must always be present. You can also play world tour solo. So you can go through and play each set on different instruments while sticking with the same band. Single player is much more fun. There's lots of stuff to unlock. New outfits, different managers, setlists, challenges... just lots. In these two weeks with tons of play I've still only gotten about 30% through world tour.

On top of world tour, there are challenges to complete. Challenges include going through tiers of songs, playing an album, playing all songs by an artist, playing songs from a decade. These are the fastest way to unlock all the songs. They seamlessly add in songs from Rock Band 1 and downloaded songs. There are always new ones popping up too it seems.

Character customization works much the same as it did in Rock Band 1, but there's now about 70% more options, with all the old ones still available. You can really go all out with making sweet looking characters. And thanks to a new option, you can have your characters always appear when you play in a band. No more random pregenerated characters.

They've made several improvements to make it more fun for parties. The song selection screen scrolls much faster, you can hop from section to section by pressing a button, you can resort them easily, and it displays how hard the song is on each instrument. This will make picking songs in groups 100x nicer than before.

There are a few other little additions such as breakneck speed, which makes the notes scroll faster. Makes it harder for some, easier for others. You can now unlock all songs so you can play them all right from the get go if you want to have a party or something (this disables saving though). There's also no fail mode, for those parties where someone drunk wants to play, but would still like to play the whole song.

The biggest edition is the battle of the bands. There are band challenges that get thrown into world tour mode. These only last a few days. You get to see how your band ranks with all the other bands that have taken this challenge. It even ranks you among your friends. Sometimes it's based on score, sometimes it's based on total stars, sometimes it's based on longest streak. Harmonix is constantly adding new ones. You can replay challenges as much as you want to try and get a better score. This is possibly the best addition to Rock Band 2.

The songlist is pretty good too. 84 songs. It's a very good mix of old and new music, with pretty much ever workable genre present (except country, which for some reason has been absent in the Rock Band series.)

There are a few negatives that are keeping it from being a perfect game. For one, there's no mode where you can just pick a song, play it, get cash for that one songs, and see what your top score and star score is. This was the bare bones version of play in Rock Band 1, and though I do like the ability to do world tour solo, I wish that had been in addition to the old mode.

Secondly, some of the songs are just awful to play. Namely the song Visions by Abnormality. It's a screamy metal song that's insanely hard to play on all instruments. The song is horrible and it's so hard it's work to play and is just no fun at all. And you'll have to play it many times to get through world tour.

So, you may be thinking "I have Rock Band 1. Is it really worth it for a new version?" I say a resounding yes. It's about 60% cheaper than if you bought all of the songs as downloadable content, and the extra features and tweaks are a huge improvement. You wont find a better party game, and with the promise of over 500 songs available by years end, you'll have no problem finding something you like in it.

If you have any interest in music games, this is THE one to get. I've played DDR, Pump it Up, Beatmania, Guitar Hero, Parappa the Rapper, and not a one of them even compares to the fun factor and overall awesomeness of Rock Band 2. Get it!

NFL update and picks

2008-09-24T21:49:00.002-05:00

Well it was great weekend. Both the Vikings and the Eagles won (despite my picking against one of them). There were some good games. Lets see how accurate my picks were.

The Falcons to beat the Chiefs
Correct
The Bills to beat the Raiders
Correct
The Bears to beat the Bucs
Wrong
The Panthers to beat the Vikings
Wrong
The Patriots to beat the Dolphins. My obvious lock of the week.
Wrong. Apparently lock of the week means I'm an idiot and can't pick games at all.
The Giants to beat the Bengals
Correct
The Titans to beat the Texans
Correct
The Redskins to beat the Cardinals
Correct
The Broncos to beat the Saints
Correct
The Lions to beat the 49ers
Wrong
The Seahawks to beat the Rams
Correct
The Ravens to beat the Browns
Correct
The Jaguars to beat the Colts. My upset special of the week.
Correct
The Eagles to beat the Steelers. My second upset special of the week.
Correct
The Cowboys to beat the Packers
Correct
The Chargers to beat the Jets
Correct

Well now, 12 - 4 this week. That's pretty darn good. Of course with my poor picking in the last two weeks I needed it. Brings me to 29 - 18. Lets see if these picks are any better.

The Panthers to beat the Falcons
The Bengals to beat the Browns
The Jaguars to beat the Texans
The Broncos to beat the Chiefs
The Saints to beat the 49ers
The Jets to beat the Cardinals
The Packers to beat the Buccaneers
The Vikings to beat the Titans. This is my upset special of the week.
The Chargers to beat the Raiders. This is my lock of the week.
The Bills to beat the Rams
The Cowboys to beat the Redskins
The Eagles to beat the Bears
The Steelers to beat the Ravens

Those are my picks and I'm stickin to them.

Weekend update

2008-09-23T09:45:00.000-05:00

I haven't been blogging much lately it seems. Missed both Thursday Thoughts AND Caturday. I am ashamed. Thursday I was going to write a review of Rock Band 2, but I was too busy playing Rock Band 2 to write it. Caturday I just blame on laziness and lack of motivation.

Speaking of Caturday, it was a good day. My sister had her annual golf tournament, of which Draz, James and I all participated. It was a fun gathering of many of my sister's friends. I was paired with my sister's friend Steph and Heath's friend Cory.

Turns out we were a good mix. We used a pretty even distribution of everyone's shots and our team ended up even par. Which as it turned out was good enough to win. This includes a 45 or so foot putt I made from the fringe for birdie.

After the golf we headed to my sister's place and had burgers, brats, chips and beer. The party went on into the night and good times were had by all.

Sunday I had a family gathering at a farm owned by my father's uncle. THere was softball, football, that beanbag tossing game, lawn darts and more good food. The Vikings and the Eagles both won. Good times all around.

Anyway, see you tomorrow for picks. Have a good Tuesday.

Results and picks!

2008-09-17T22:23:00.003-05:00

Another week, another day of picks. Lets see how I did this last week.

Panthers to beat the Bears
Correct
Titans to beat the Bengals
Correct
Lions to beat the Packers
Wrong
Jaguars to beat the Bills
Wrong
Chiefs to beat the Raiders
Wrong
Colts to beat the Vikings
Correct
Giants to beat the Rams
Correct
Saints to beat the Redskins
Wrong
Seahawks to beat the 49ers
Wrong
Falcons to beat the Bucs
Wrong
Cardinals to beat the Dolphins
Correct
Broncos to beat the Chargers
Correct
Ravens to beat the Texans
Never happened due to hurricane.
Patriots to beat the Jets
Correct
Steelers to beat the Browns
Correct
Eagles to beat the Cowboys
Wrong

So I was 8 - 7. Pretty bad again. I suck. Well, lets see if these picks are any better.

The Falcons to beat the Chiefs
The Bills to beat the Raiders
The Bears to beat the Bucs
The Panthers to beat the Vikings
The Patriots to beat the Dolphins. My obvious lock of the week.
The Giants to beat the Bengals
The Titans to beat the Texans
The Redskins to beat the Cardinals
The Broncos to beat the Saints
The Lions to beat the 49ers
The Seahawks to beat the Rams
The Ravens to beat the Browns
The Jaguars to beat the Colts. My upset special of the week.
The Eagles to beat the Steelers. My second upset special of the week.
The Cowboys to beat the Packers
The Chargers to beat the Jets

There ya go. Wish me luck. Go Eagles!

Rock Band 2, the instruments.

2008-09-16T23:20:00.004-05:00

Rock Band 2 is out. You may be interested in this game. But perhaps you own Rock Band 1 and you just want the game. Perhaps you're not sure if you want to invest a lot of money in new instruments (and each are more expensive than the game itself). Well below I have written a guide for you that details the new Rock Band 2 instruments so you may decide for yourself whether or not you wish to purchase them.

Bass

The Bass is pretty nice. It's big though. Much bigger than any plastic instrument so far. Probably around 85-90% the size of a real one. It's comfortable to hold and the strap is a nicer material that's oh so wonderfully soft. It looks cool too. They did a great job of designing it.

The double strum bar is a cool concept, but I've found that doing fast alternations doesn't seem to register. I went into practice mode and in a section with repeating notes of the same color that come at a fast rate, it doesn't seem to work. For most normal sections it's slow enough that it works fine, but those really fast sections it just doesn't work. This sucks because that's the main reason I got it. I wanted to nail those really fast sections using only upstrums, and it seems I can't really do that.

Forget whammying to its full potential. There's a knob you can twist that works as a whammy bar, but unless it's a pretty long sustained note, you're not going to use it at all, and even then you wont be whammying as much as possible since you have to move your hand off of the strum bar to reach it.

I do really like that the effects toggle is a knob, not a switch. It never gets accidentally moved. Start/Select is simply twisting a knob counter clockwise for select, and clockwise for start. Kinda nifty. Also, there's a nice thumb rest for upstrumming. It's not wireless, but hey, it's still good.

If you play for fun, definitely use the bass. If you play for score, avoid it. Price $69.99.

Guitar

The new guitar is definitely an improvement. It's the same size and feel as the last one. The strum bar isn't as mushy and feels a lot better. The buttons are definitely quieter. The fact that it's wireless is really handy. It looks awesome. The auto-calibration is really easy to do and it works perfectly. My calibration was a tad off and I was doing poorly on easy songs. Now I can breeze through them like I should.

The guitar is nice and an improvement. I recommend it highly. Price $69.99.

Drums

The drums are awesome, but not without their faults.

The pads are rubbery now. This provides two benefits. One, they're a lot quieter than the old ones. Still a tad noisy, but not nearly as bad. Two, they get much better bounce. This alone has improved my scores. It feels much more natural to play. The pedal is now metal and thus should prevent it from breaking. We'll see about that, but I have faith it will hold together. The pedal also seems a tad more responsive. They're also wireless, which is awesome.

However, the structure of the drums seems of a lower quality. My set seems to wobble around a little bit more. As if it's not firmly holding itself together. I double and triple checked to make sure all the poles were firmly inserted in their slots, and still it just seems a little bit flimsy.

Then there's the issue of it being defective. I have a problem known as crosstalking. When I hit the yellow pad, it registers a hit on the blue pad. After some use and breaking-in on freeplay, the problem got a little bit better. But still persisted. The solution I found was to tape down the pads with duct tape. This eliminated the problem 99 times out of 100 which still can mess me up during songs. I'm not willing to pop my pads off. I tried, but I was not willing to apply any more force than I already had been. I do not want to void my RMA.

Assuming you have a perfectly working set, I cannot recommend the Rock Band 2 drums enough. The Ion kit is probably better, but the RB2 drums are leaps and bounds above the RB1 drums. Price $79.99.

If you're looking to get the game and the instruments, you can get the full bundle on October 19th for $189.99. This includes the game itself, the guitar, the drums, and a microphone. The bass is a 3rd party instrument that has been licensed by Harmonix for use in Rock Band. As a side note, if you prefer Guitar Hero, every one of these instruments will work with Guitar Hero World Tour.

Rock Band 2!

2008-09-14T21:09:00.002-05:00

I finally have it!

ANd it's everything I hoped it would be. I played a bunch last night after getting it at midnight, then a lot today. Unfortunately my drums broke again, oddly enough while Draz was using them. Hmm...

Anyway, it's good so far. I will give a full review on Thursday. I've managed to hit a few high score boards. My best so far is More Than a Feeling, which I currently rank at #2 overall.

I'm also ranked #7 on My Sharona and #3 on Flirtin With Disaster. I shall cherish my high scores, as they will not last long.

Happy Caturday

2008-09-13T09:26:00.002-05:00

Meow.

Meow meow meow. Meow meow meow meow.

Thursday Thoughts: Guitar Solos

2008-09-11T11:06:00.001-05:00

As you all know, I am a big fan of music. Almost everyone likes music. Everyone likes music for different reasons. Some love to sing along with music and be able to belt out a catchy tune. Some love the poetry involved in strong lyrical writing. Some love the beat of music and the ability to dance to it. For me the best part of music is the instrumentals.

In particular, I love good guitar playing. I'm simply amazed by some of the guitarists out there and the melodies they're able to produce by simply holding and plucking strings. Especially after borrowing Jordan's guitar and learning how hard it really is.

In particular, one of my favorite parts of a song is the guitar solo. A really good guitar solo can turn a good song into a fantastic one. At the same time, a guitar solo that doesn't fit the rest of the song that is arbitrarily thrown in can ruin an otherwise good song.

It's hard to define what makes a good guitar solo. Just playing a ton of notes in complicated strings really fast does not make a good guitar solo. Yngwie Malmsteen and Dragonforce are good examples of this. Their guitar work is fast, complicated and extremely difficult to play. However, it just seems to be fast guitar playing for the sake of fast guitar playing. There is little emotion in the guitar work.

Sometimes guitar solos just seem to be thrown in randomly. Not every song needs a guitar solo to be a great song. The biggest violators of this that I have noticed is anime songs. For example, the full version of the opening of Evangelion is a great song. However, there's a guitar solo thrown in that is kind of sloppy and doesn't fit the rest of the song at all. A lot of anime has good songs where the instrumentals consist mostly of synthesizer, then they throw in a guitar solo when the rest of the song has no guitar at all. It just seems so out of place. A lot of 80s metal bands did this. Good rocking songs, seemingly random and tacked on solo for the sake of having a solo.

So what makes a GOOD guitar solo? Is it length? I'd say no. Weezer has some great guitar solos that only last five seconds. Lynyrd Skynyrd also has great guitar solos, and they can last five minutes. Is it technical ability? Metallica has some very tough and difficult solos that are fantastic. Pink Floyd on the other hand has guitar solos that a rookie could play, but still stand as some of the best solos ever written. Defining what makes a good guitar solo is kind of pointless. Especially in something as subjective as music.

To best define what I think is a good guitar solo, I will give you examples of what I think are the best guitar solos out there.

Boston - More Than a Feeling. One of my favorite songs of all time. It builds up nicely to the solo, then just rocks out. The guitar sings to you and without words is able to elicit emotion. It's not too long or too short. Fits perfectly with the rest of the song. Transitions into the rest of the song so well. I love it.

Pink Floyd - Comfortably Numb. This is a great example of simplicity being better than complexity. It's a slow solo, but the feeling that comes out of the notes is astounding.

Red Hot Chili Peppers - Dani California. The solo is a great conclusion to the song. RHCP isn't really known for great guitar work, but they really outdid themselves in this song. The rest of the song just builds up to the great finale. It just rocks and concludes the song so well.

Lynyrd Skynyrd - Freebird. Probably the most famous guitar solo of all time. And for good reason. It's five minutes of pure guitar bliss.

The Eagles - Hotel California. Hotel California is one of my favorite songs as well. The solo that concludes the song continues to maintain the haunting feeling that the lyrics instill in the listener.

Other bands that do guitar solos well, but I dont really have specific song examples are Iron Maiden, Metallica, Tom Petty, Stevie Ray Vaughn, and Eric Johnson. Oddly enough, though Eddie Van Halen has some amazing guitar skills, I've never though the solos in their songs were that great. Like their solos in their songs are almost interchangeable.

So there you have it. Hopefully this will allow you to see a little more clearly what I like about music and why I like certain bands and songs. See you later.

Week 2 picks

2008-09-10T12:05:00.001-05:00

Giants over Redskins Correct
Lions over Falcons. Wrong
Ravens over Bengals Correct
Seahawks over Bills Wrong
Jets over Dolphins Correct
Patriots over Chiefs Correct
Saints over Buccaneers Correct
Eagles over Rams Correct
Steelers over Texans by 20 points. Steelers won by 21 points. :D
Jaguars over Titans Wrong
Cowboys over Browns Correct
Chargers over Panthers Wrong
49ers over Cardinals Wrong
Colts over Bears Wrong. Thus eliminating me from my last man standing pool. Damn you Peyton Manning
Vikings over Packers Wrong. Dammit.
Broncos over Raiders Correct

Not a good start. Lots of upsets. But that’s week 1 for ya. My record stands at 9 – 7

But hey! We got us a brand new week! Wont go into depth with the games like last week. Here are my picks.

Panthers to beat the Bears
Titans to beat the Bengals
Lions to beat the Packers
Jaguars to beat the Bills
Chiefs to beat the Raiders
Colts to beat the Vikings
Giants to beat the Rams. This is my LOCK OF THE WEEK
Saints to beat the Redskins
Seahawks to beat the 49ers
Falcons to beat the Bucs
Cardinals to beat the Dolphins
Broncos to beat the Chargers
Ravens to beat the Texans
Patriots to beat the Jets
Steelers to beat the Browns
And my upset special of the week is that the Eagles will beat the Cowboys.

Gonna make up for last week! Come on teams!

More D&D Figurines!

2008-09-09T19:40:00.011-05:00

I have become addicted to a new and expensive hobby. So after the last time of ordering figures, painting them, and finding out I liked it, I ordered 9 more! I've spent the last few days painting them. Here are my results. Click each image to enlarge it to see the details.

Weekend update

2008-09-08T09:00:00.002-05:00

The weekend is over, and thus you, my loyal readers, get to hear about it.

Well, amazingly, the LAN party happened. Chris and James showed up early and we got everything nice and set up. Then Draz showed up. Then several hours later the rest of the party showed up. So it was a tad late, but we got things going!

Well not a whole lot of LAN gaming happened unfortunately, mainly due to my video card having exploded. Well okay, maybe just half the capacitors on my video card blew. Either way it became worthless. Luckily Diablo 2 can be played in software mode and we were able to do that for a while. It got a little crowded with six of us, a mercenary, and lots of friendly skeletons. Still, good times were had. Also, some Rock Band was played. Always a good time.

So Sunday I knew I had to get the video card issue fixed. I just can't function without a good computer. So James, Tom and I headed off to Microcenter. I was able to find a 9600 GT card for $150. Not too expensive, and bounds better than my old card. I headed home, got it installed, and booted up Unreal Tournament 3 for the first time. It runs smooth and looks beautiful. I had it set at my native resolution with the graphics turned up to one notch below the best possible and it still ran smoothly. It made me quite happy.

So after that I headed to my Sister's place and watched some football and had some food. Got to see Maggie. Good times. Unfortunately I was knocked out of my last man standing pool because the Bears miraculously beat the Colts in Indianapolis. God dammit. You have failed me for the last time Peyton Manning!

This morning kind of sucked. My alarm is set for 7:30. The construction crew on the house started hammering at 6:30. It sounded like they were hammering on the wall next to my room. So I got to get up an hour early today, feeling groggy and tired. But it seems Mike left a can of Cocaine energy drink in my fridge. So upon getting to work I drank it down. Now I'm a nice mix of tired and wired at the same time. Time to be super efficient!

Happy Caturday

2008-09-06T11:02:00.001-05:00

It's Caturday! And my LAN party is today! Happy day for all!

It's Friday!

2008-09-05T14:47:00.002-05:00

Happy Friday everyone. I hope the day is treating you well.

Last night was a very good time. Got to see the whole core of my good friends. Actually, do I really need to talk about Lewis Black? I'm pretty sure everyone who reads this was there. Tom and Chris know about my blog, but I'm not sure they actually check it unless I tell them to. Well if there's a slight chance anyone out there who wasn't there last night is reading, I will tell you about going to see Lewis Black.

He was really funny.

So anyway, tomorrow is my LAN party. Three months in the making, and two reschedules later, it's finally happening! Still not to the capacity that I was hoping, but hey, should be a kickin rad good time.

Anyway, that's about it for today. Happy Birthday again Draz's Mom.

Thursday Thoughts: The Creative Zen

2008-09-04T10:38:00.003-05:00

My iPod was a good companion. I was able to take 2 Gigabytes worth of my music wherever I wanted. It was easy to use and held up pretty well. However, three years into the life of it, the battery was starting to go and would drain itself even when not in use. Also, 2 gigs of music just isn't enough considering my music collection is well over 40 gigs.

So I decided it was time to get a new MP3 player. There were two I was looking at, the iPod touch, and the Zune. However, based upon a suggestion by our good friend Mike Arne, I investigated the Zen by Creative Labs. After some research, I decided this was the MP3 player I wanted. It has the following features.

16 Gigabytes of storage
SD card slot for added memory.
Mp3, AAC, WMA, Mpeg, and wmv support
30 hour battery life
Software with easy sorting options

Quite nifty. I also like that it recharges with a standard mini USB port. Meaning i can use my phone charger or any standard usb cord to recharge it. No need for a specific cord like with the iPod. I also love that I can just put in an SD card with the files on it and it will read them just fine. There's no need for computer software to load songs. Just plug it in, drop your files and you're good to go. I also like its price tag. The 16 gig model is $179.99. Which is about $50 less than the same storage space models of the Zune and iPod. (iPod touch 16gig is $400, though it also does a hell of a lot more) The battery life is quite nice. It does seem to last about 30 hours playing just music. Though the backlight stays on for video, so video will drain the battery much faster. Though based on my tests, it still lasted about 12 hours playing video. Not bad at all.

There are a few cons. The software does take a little getting used to, and it's hard to scroll though songs really quickly. You can jump right to the letter, but if you have 1,000 songs starting with the letter S, it can take a while to get to the one you want. Also, it does not support .avi files, which about 90% of my video files are coded as. Luckily the software it comes with (which is handy, small, easy to use and not even necessary for use of the zen) is able to convert files into the right format. Takes a while, but that's to be expected for recoding video.

The Zen is great, but it has also given me quite a chore with my music. You see, the Zen makes organizing very easy, IF your mp3s are properly tagged. It relies on ID3 tags to sort. So if your mp3 files aren't tagged correctly, it wont be able to sort properly. Well, many of my songs were tagged correctly, but many more were not.

Almost every song had artist and song correct. Which is the most important of course. However very few had album and year correct. THere's also the issue of different spellings of artist names, so it would label Bare Naked Ladies different than Barenaked ladies. Even worse, I had "Weird Al" Yankovic, Weird Al Yankovic, Weird-Al Yankovic, Al Yankovic, etc... But, thanks to a handy ID3 tag editor, I have made great progress on unifying my mp3s. I'm going through every folder of music and making sure everything is properly labeled. Luckily it has the feature to say "Make every file in this folder have ___ for ___ tag." So I can take my whole Weird Al folder and label every song as having the same artist, with the same genre. Makes things a lot faster.

The big process though is looking up year and album for songs that are not labeled. Wikipedia is my friend in this endeavor. I'm just about done with the whole process. Most of the music I have left is already labeled correctly and just requires a few more tweaks. Soon I will be in a calm, relaxed state of music harmony. An odd state of mind where everything is perfect... if only I could think of a word to describe it.

FOOOOTBALL!

2008-09-03T09:39:00.001-05:00

Is it that time of year already? It is! FOOTBALL! Screw baseball, Football is our national pastime. 32 teams, 17 weeks of regular season, 3 weeks of playoffs, then the superbowl. Does it get any better? I decree that does not. I was never much of a fantasy football kind of guy. I follow teams more than players. I love to track how each time is doing and try to guess who will win.

So I decided to put my picks on this here blog. These are just the guesses of a football fan with no real in depth analysis or experience in picking teams. Using my picks for the purposes of gambling is fooling and you will probably lose. That being said, I GUARANTEE THAT THESE PICKS ARE 100% CORRECT AND WILL WIN YOU MILLIONS!

I will track my results through the year. If I finish the season with over 80% of my picks correct, I will throw a superbowl party and buy all of my readers free pizza. That’s a promise. It will be a little tough this week as many of the teams have new rosters. But I shall do my best! With that said, onto the picks!

Washington Redskins at New York Giants
A moderate team heading to play the reigning superbowl champs at home. Yeah, I pick the Giants.

Detroit Lions at Atlanta Falcons
A pretty bad team heading to Atlanta to play a really bad team. I pick the Lions.

Cincinnati Bengals at Baltimore Ravens
I pick the Ravens on the basis that it’s in Baltimore

Seattle Seahawks at Buffalo Bills
The Seahawks are a better team. Or, at least were last year. The Bills were the opposite. I pick the Seahawks.

New York Jets at Miami Dolphins
Ah Brett Favre. With a new team, ready to show the world what he can do outside of Green Bay. Luckily they’re playing an even more awful team. I pick the Jets.

Kansas City Chiefs at New England Patriots.
There’s no reason to believe the Patriots are any worse than last season. The Chiefs are an average team. This is my LOCK OF THE WEEK. I pick the the Patriots.

Tampa Bay Buccaneer at New Orleans Saints
Well, if this game even happens… that is if New Orleans is still around by Sunday, I will pick the Saints to win.

St Louis Rams at Philadelphia Eagles
Sadly, I think this will be a close game. The Eagles have not been doing well lately. God dammit I still love em, but they’re just not as good as they used to be. Still, they’re at home and playing the Rams. I pick the Eagles.

Houston Texans at Pittsburgh Steelers
Steelers by 20 points.

Jacksonville Jaguars at Tennessee Titans.
I predict a good game. In the end I think the Jaguars will squeeze out a victory.

Dallas Cowboys at Cleveland Browns.
Cowboys are good. Ohio is a state full of suck. No Drew Carrey, Cleveland does not rock. I pick the Cowboys.

Carolina Panthers at San Diego Chargers
If this were in Carolina, I’d pick the Panthers. But it’s not, so I pick the Chargers.

Arizona Cardinals at San Francisco 49ers.
Two more sucky teams facing each other, and once more I pick based on home-field advantage. I pick the 49ers.

Chicago Bears at Indianapolis Colts
Haha… maybe this should be my lock of the week. The Colts will destroy the Bears.

Minnesota Vikings at Green Bay Packers
I couldn’t think of a better way to start the season. The Vikings have some good new talent, their rookies from last year are starting to hit their stride, and they’re heading to Green Bay to play a team that is playing with a new starting quarterback for the first time in many many years. I pick the Vikings. Go Vikings!

Denver Broncos at Oakland Raiders
Hmm… I don’t remember how these teams did last year. I think I remember the Raiders being really bad and the Broncos being pretty decent. I pick the Broncos.