Month: July 2005

When I first heard the Yeah Yeah Yeahs “Maps” I thought that Chrissy Hine and the Pretenders made a comeback single. I finally purchased “Fever to Tell” yesterday and the album is, yes, very derivative, but it is an excellent disc. I don’t quite see the “Punk” label placed on this band (even after seeing their live concert DVD), but if you’re a fan of 80s New Wave music, this is a must have collection of songs.

I listened to “Fever to Tell” after forcing myself through eight tracks of the White Stripes new album “Get Behind Me Satan.” Sorry, but I am not hearing the genius I’ve been reading about on the internet. I’ll eventually force myself to listen to the whole CD, but with Green Day and now the YYYs, my dance card is full.

My Weber LP grill arrived yesterday. I must say that other than the slight delay, the overall experience was quite painless. The shipping company, Eagle Global Logistics, called Tuesday evening to schedule a delivery from Houston. I called Wednesday morning around 9:00 AM, they had a truck headed to College Station that afternoon, and the grill was in my garage by 12:30 PM CT.

Not bad for one cent shipping!

Assembly is a breeze so far. I say “so far” because the 100+ degree temperatures in my garage are the biggest obstacle at the moment. I’m at the final two steps after 40 minutes assembling the grill. Everything is easy to understand and Weber even includes a couple of wrenches for use tightening various nuts and bolts. I’ll finish the assembly after I run Thursday’s IOSBL (our online league) OOTP simulation.

I plan to hit the grill hard this weekend. First up – New York Strip Steak with Roasted Garlic Butter. Mmmmm. Steak. Butter.

You can watch all of the performances on demand from AOL. Only problem is that you’ll have to sit through an advertisement each song, but some of the performances are worth the wait.

Furthering my belief that college signing day is really for the birds, Georgia is dropping recruits left and right.

“Two more Georgia football recruits will not be able to enroll this fall for academic reasons, further eroding coach Mark Richt’s highly touted recruiting class.

Corey Moon and Jamar Bryant are the fourth and fifth of Richt’s 19 signees whose academics prevent them from being on the team. Another, safety Antavious Coates, injured a knee last month and is sidelined for the entire season.” [Source: Yahoo! Sports]

Georgia’s class should still be fairly stout, but you really have to wait 2-3 years to see how the classes actually turn out.

…the Reserve games! We checked out the Reserve game between the Crew and the United this morning at the Crew’s training facility in Obetz, Ohio (about 12 minutes from my house). What a fun experience! First off, it’s free (right within my budget). Secondly, although there are a few bleachers, you can bring your own chairs, and set up about 10 feet off of the sideline – just like for my son’s travel games. Talk about feeling close to the action! We were looking straight at the penalty area, and I saw Adu hit a PK, and also serve a corner from about 15′ from where we were sitting. It was surprising to hear the “thwack” of the ball off of the players’ feet and heads, and it was also interesting to hear all of the chatter that takes place on the field (only two curse words, too!). And, just because it was a Reserve game, doesn’t mean the we didn’t know the players. We knew all but about 3 Crew players, and from the United, I knew Troy Perkins, Jamil Walker, and of course, Freddy Adu.

That’s not all… about 20 yards behind us, in another practice field, the Crew players from the night before were doing some running. Szetela was also doing some shooting drills, and my kids even went over and gathered some of his stray shots! Adu, who is good friends with Szetela, came over during the second half and practiced with Szetela. Plus, the players were walking all around us going over to the Crew bench, and back to the practice field. I will make this observation, soccer players are very lean. None of the guys that look fairly big on TV (Szetela, Frazer, Marshall, Buddle), were cut like most professional athletes. The only “built” guy was John Wolyniec, whom the Crew recently acquired. Don’t get me wrong – they’re in great shape, but I expected someone like Frazer to have a little more muscle mass. It just surprised me a bit…

All in all, it was a neat experience for us and the kids. From watching the game up close, to interacting a bit with the Crew mainstays, we all had a great time, for no charge whatsoever! The only downer was that the Reserves suck as bad as the main club, losing 4-1.

I finally purchased and listened to Green Day’s “American Idiot.” I was nearly brought to tears listening to Jesus of Suburbia. What an awesome collection of songs! The only other album that had a similar emotional impact in the post-2000 music era was the White Stripes “Elephant” and that album brought me back to the music scene that I thought was dead and gone. Who knew Green Day had such an effort in them? Seems they aged a bit and became fine wine. One of the few albums where there really isnt a bad song on the disc.

I hope there’s a boxed DVD set of Live 8 available soon. Everyone is chatting about the performances and I didn’t get to see any of it.

Yesterday, after a process of several months, I finally closed on my grandmother’s house. My grandmother passed away a little over two years ago, and while I do not want to go into all the family details, it has been a heck of a process to finally get the house. As of yesterday at 10AM, I am now the owner of two mortgages.

The plan is to start renovations next week; we have a 120-day contract with our construction/remodeling company. Hopefully we can move into sometime in late October or early November. Of course that means we have to time the sale of our current house, which is going to be a not so fun proposition.

The good news is that the house stays in the family – it was built (I think) by my great grandfather in 1902. The house is larger than my current house, and will have great opportunities for entertainment, which my current house certainly does not provide. We are also going to get a deck, a fenced in back yard for the kids (and a much wanted dog), and a garage apartment among other things. The house is a Columbus, GA historic park district casually called Lakebottom. The historic part is another story, but the park is only .3 miles from the house, which is going to be wonderful for the kids. I played there when I was a kid, and now my kids get to experience the same thrills and spills of the neighborhood park.

The bad news, besides needing a lot (and I do mean a lot) of money to fix up the house, is that the garage apartment is in shambles – wood rot, old termite damage, the whole nine yards. I want to keep the garage apartment because it increases the value of the house, and I lived in the upstairs apartment when I was in college. The builders practically have to rebuild the whole damn thing; about 25 percent of it is gone right now, which is also another story for another day. This little project is completely out of pocket, which means pretty soon I will no longer have money in said pocket. Major ouch, and it will certainly cut down on any sort of gaming budget that I think I may have for the next few months.

The good news is that I now own my grandmother’s house. Tonya and I decided that since we are spending so much money to restore the garage apartment that we should somehow get some use out of the damn thing. We are going to convert the bottom area into a game room. Hello pool table and refrigerator full of beer (the beer part was actually Tonya’s idea, bless her).

I just figured I would write/share a little, since I cannot sleep (5AM Saturday morning) – worrying about that second mortgage I guess. Plus this explains why I have not had any free time for gaming – I have been spending most of my free time over at my grandmother’s house sorting out 100+ years of stuff.

Shaun Sullivan is reporting in the PureSim forum that he signed a deal with a publisher. Just who this publisher is remains a mystery since he’s not splilling the beans. As a footnote, let’s all remember that PureSim had a publishing deal with another group before this current arrangement, so no popping the corks quite yet. That deal lasted about as long as a New York minute.

I just noticed that Grey Dog Software posted some new screen shots of its upcoming college football game. So far so good, but we’ll have to see if the code works as pretty as the pictures look.