Archived News starting from 11-18-2007 and earlier
BlogA trip to Cleveland for Jairds birthday yielded over 130
gamer points on
my Xbox 360 I brought along. I was able to secretly harness the tireless energy of a man known to wreck a car over 50 times on the same track
for pure amusement. After powering through 100 points in "
DiRT" (to wreck the truck on the track 5 times) he moved on to Guitar Hero II for another 30 points. In case you're wondering what gamer points do for you, they are similar to the
vista experience score. Totally useless, but something you just have to have alot of. Eventually he got wise to my plan, but it was too late, my points were granted! Now I've secretly got Lisa working up my points on
Cloning Clyde and
Carcassonne, although now not so secretly.
As the only male on the planet who is
not interested in professional sports, it's ironic I work at a primarily sports-oriented company, and married a
raving mad Pittsburgh Steelers fan. Given these facts, it's not surprising I was coerced into attending a Steelers game with said wife this weekend. The official Steelers experience® was kicked off with an 8am tailgate party including various brands of beer, burgers, dogs, a cornhole game, and crab legs. After 4 hours of working up an alcoholic daze it was game time, which meant
braving the cattle call and security checks while verbally bashing anyone brave enough (dumb enough?) to wear a Browns uniform, or any clothing close to those colors. While Lisa and her brother got horse
yelling at the Browns, and falling into spectators below, I spent my time watching the
Red Zone ketchup bottles
pour virtual ketchup. When the Steelers won, everyone went nuts of course, then slowly filed out of the stadium. I was expecting at least a few celebratory flaming cars but I guess that's exclusively a Detroit thing. I also discovered the ketchup bottles were actually only half-bottles on my way out, I was fooled. Overall it was an enlightening experience, and nice to see Lisa isn't the only person who goes completely insane watching a football game. A light rain cancelled the after-game tailgate party but 8 hours of football was more than enough for me.
A discussion at work prompted memories of early
BBS days, starting with the early 300 baud modems (you could read this text faster than 300 baud could send it). This was before the internet ruined everything and made everyone impatient for instant gratification. Once computers started talking faster than us we got competitive as a society and felt the need to speed up as well. We can only hope that one day a
coronal mass ejection sufficient to wipe out all electronics on earth will allow me to relax in my backyard at a slower pace while zombies steal my bottled water. Enough of me sounding like old man
Leinnintiger, on to the
article I was presented with immediately by Google the second "300 baud" was uttered from my coworkers mouth, and prompted me to publish this rant one minute later.
A few months ago, my work made a
few commercials featuring a
ridiculously large camera. That line of advertisements ran its course and the camera prop made its way back to our office. It's surprisingly light, being constructed of styrofoam, and the shutter button is actually spring loaded and can be pressed down. The only useful thing it does beyond that is make a great prop in some
fabulous shots of John and I.
Late invites for todays
LAN party resulted in a lower-than-usual turnout, but still managed to provide ample entertainment. Beginning with Battlefield 2142, we eventually moved on to the new
Unreal III beta demo, which had the same classic guns, but a controllable robot and naturally much better graphics. Moving to FarCry afterwards made the once mighty game appear very outdated. Once we were down to 4 people we switch to Xbox for quad split-screen multiplayer Halo III followed by extensive amounts of Sega Rally Evo, Forza2, and Guitar Hero II and III. Timelapse video
here.
Waking up to 38° this morning and seeing the frost warning light in my car brought back horrible memories of frozen nose hairs and gray slush, but with the first sign of winter showing up at the end of October I couldn't really complain. By 1pm, it was 60° again showing Michigan really has stopped hating me. A company-sponsored game of bowling at 3pm put the final warm fuzzy on the best winter reality day so far. Now I just need Keith to post the temperature in Mississippi to have it all come crashing down on me.
After my
Canadian girlfriend attended my wedding for my now American wife, the question of a Canadian marriage began to come up more frequently. I decided to take a trip to Canada today and discuss the situation at length. To show her support, Lisa created a salad of gigantic proportion to feed no less than 20 people. Unfortunately only Ron and Jen were able to join Lisa, Melinda and I, so most of the salad was illegally transported back over the border after our meeting. Upon arrival, I learned the meeting was in fact a labour trap (you spell it with a u in Canada) and was forced to put up Halloween decorations while Lisa, Melinda and Jenny discussed the details of the Canadian wedding. Once the details were finalized, we enjoyed a lovely roast beast and vegetables along with the giant salad. Wondering what the details are? So are the neighbours (yes, also with a u).
Tonight was Senator Kelleys
halloween party extravaganza, attended by many of my close friends. Lisa decided to be Supergirl and
look hot, which meant I was required to be Superman and not look hot. Instead, the only available costume had diaper-like pants that did nothing to conceal my lower anatomy. In addition to enduring my pants, party guests also had to witness blatant incest as I later learned Supergirl and Superman are in fact cousins. The logical option in such a situation is to karaoke loudly with Keith and Tim which is exactly what I did.
After their
appearance at the wedding, the gnomes spent the better part of 2 weeks in a box in my basement. Today we finally unpacked them only to discover
Bugsy was missing. His come hither stare apparently caught the eye of a passerby and overwhelmed them with temptation. He will be missed, but not forgotten.
I decided two self absorbed nerd posts were not enough to convey my excitement regarding my new theatre setup, so here is the third and final installment for
your my enjoyment. The addition of an
Xbox 360 and
HD DVD drive finally brought full 1080i content to my HD hungry projector. The built-in
media center extender also supports playback of my HDTV recordings currently served over the
wireless adapter which surprisingly provides sufficient reliable bandwidth. The recent
addition of an HDMI port to the "premium" Xbox 360 package made it an obvious choice, but my projector lacks a digital audio out port, so the digital audio in the HDMI cable had nowhere to go. The included Xbox component cables only offer analog audio, or an
optical digital port, and wouldn't fit with the HDMI cord plugged in. The "official" solution from Microsoft is the
Xbox HDMI AV Cable which magically fits alongside the HDMI cable for an additional fee of $50, but again with only an optical digital audio output. Being a cheap bastard, and lacking an optical digital audio input on my
HTS3555 receiver, I
found this hack to create a
coax digital audio output which was so easy it made me wonder why Microsoft is so against including one in their cables. Maybe they struck a deal with the optical audio cable companies who don't want you to know digital audio is identical over optical or coax cables (ok fine, excluding long distances). My digital audio rant aside, my
new setup is finally complete, aside from some much needed
screen goo.
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