Month: May 2007

I wanted to get a quick post in before I head to the sunny beaches of Florida’s Gulf coast because Coach Cox has been congratulated for the last five days!

When I travel I always pack my PSP, so this trip in not an exception.  It will be interesting to see if I get any use out of the system.  I noticed that a PSP version of NCAA Football is not scheduled for release this summer, which is a bummer.  I wonder if EA figured sales sucked last year, so why bother this year.  Then again everyone was pissed off about the running bug, so chicken or the egg I guess.

I am on the bad half of 35, so everything is starting to break down.  Been out of work the last two days due to some, shall we say, issues.  Speaking of breaking, Tonya’s Dell Inspiron 6000 laptop simply sucks.  The display is having all sorts of issues, and we recently had to replace the battery because it would no longer hold a charge.  I will have to write about Dell’s support, because my adventure ordering a battery was a huge ordeal.  Also breaking this week was the transmission on Tonya’s Chrysler Voyager minivan.  We are talking about a 2002 car with just under 60K miles.  And people wonder why Americans are not buying American cars.

I do not think Bobby Cox gets near as much credit as he deserves. During the Atlanta Braves run over the last 16 years (excluding last year), we are all told that the pitchers did all the work. Or maybe it was the pitching coach. Regardless of the changing faces of the Braves (and a certain departed pitching coach), Bobby Cox keeps on winning.

Last night’s 9-2 victory over Pittsburgh was Cox’s 2,195 victory of his 27-year career (23 with the Braves), good for fourth overall on the all time list. Congratulations are certainly in order.

I wanted to take a couple of minutes to wish all our readers that happen to be mothers, a happy Mother’s Day!  Since there are probably not too many mothers that read this blog, you fathers better remember to thank your wives (and your mothers) for all they do.  I know life would be fairly miserable without Tonya to raise my children.

Tonya’s day was extra special because we christianed Joseph, and she gets to go out to lunch in a few minutes.

So on to other stuffs.  Happy Mother’s Day!

I think there was a lot to write about this week, but just not a lot of time to write. Seems like the same song and dance with gaming; OOTPB 2007 and WoW are about all I have played lately. I figured I better post a quick update (being a blog and all), so here are a few things that make me wonder “WTF were they thinking?”

• DEI does not cave to the demands of Dale Earnhardt Jr. Stupid, stupid move by Teresa. Wicked stepmother? You bet.
• Vick has an “extra” house full of dogs. Sure Vick never saw a dog he did not want to kick the living crap out of, but he is being taken advantage of by wayward friends and family. In Vick we trust? Uh, not so much.
• Not to kick a man while he is down, but come on Ricky, lay off the wacky weed. Exhibit A for the dangers of drug addiction and proof that a “little weed is not that big a deal” is just plain wrong.
• My free subscription to ESPN The Magazine comes complete with a free Insiders subscription to ESPN.com. Free if I want to sign up for automatic yearly subscription renewals to The Magazine. No thanks.

This time next Friday I will be on my way for a much needed Gulf coast beach vacation (just west of Panama City, FL). We are also closing in on Memorial Day weekend racing – Monaco, Coca Cola 600, and the Indy 500. Good stuffs!

Happy weekend!

My video card died on me. Thank goodness my Dell laptop can handle most of my gaming needs. The 6800GT has stopped playing 3D games. I get all sorts of graphical artifacts and then the system seizes up and crashes. I think I am going to buy a relatively cheap Saphire X1900XT for about $130. It seems to be more than enough power to run the games I’m playing, since everything was working fine with my 6800GT.

One result of this is that I’m not on AOL as much as before because I don’t turn it on when I’m on the laptop and playing World of Warcraft. Don’t like the screen minimizing right when I am dealing the death blow to an unsuspecting creature. Jonathan was the first with the “where have you been” flood and ten more complaints were filed with the Johnson AOL Better IMing Business Bureau. I’ll be back up 24/7 on AOL once I fix the video card issue.

This means my Lord of the Rings Online purchase was very poorly timed. It plays like a dog on my laptop at 1280 and I don’t want to reduce all of the settings because it’s a new game and I like to drink in a new game’s essence. So I will wait to get in more detailed play after I fix the video card issues.

I was thinking the other day that LoTR is another example of why video gaming press/web sites are pretty useless in 2007. I did not read about LoTR in any “press” area. Many forums were read and it was based on the comments in the places I trust that the purchase was made. While I may give places like FOFC a hard time, they are much more informative on their worst day than any web site/video magazine writing about text sports gaming. You just have to put on your FOFC lens to filter out the good information.

But not all forums were created equal. I haven’t visited Operation Sports in years with one exception. Their much discussed “review” of OOTPB 2006 reminded me why I don’t read the site. So when they give OOTPB 2006 a 9/10 and OOTPB 2007 a 10/10 I say meh, who cares? I’m not visiting their site to read the 2007 review because the 2006 review was completely off target. They may know something about sports gaming, I don’t know, but they know very little about sports text gaming.

Find forums of like-minded people and see what they have to say about a game before purchasing it.

I wonder if Vick is a total dummy, leaving cookie trails and bread crumbs back to his name (and unfortunately the Atlanta Falcons). Since it is too early to fiddle, I figured I would google for some Vick/dog fighting info, and came across some interesting news on the aol sport blog:

According to WVEC.com, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has joined the investigation and made some more questionable discoveries. Along with his own personal website, Vick apparently had a website created (Vick’s K-9 Kennels) that allowed users to purchase pitbulls and other breeds — the same types of dogs that were discovered at his Virginia residence.

I wonder if the Atlanta Falcons’ front office is having second thoughts on the Schaub trade.

Every now and then I make a huge error when it comes to game purchases. This usually happens when I have zero time for additional gaming and I decide to “just take a look” at some new release. Yesterday I made this classic mistake when I headed off to Best Buy to purchase the Lord of the Rings Online. My logic (or lack thereof) was that I could play the game during Blizzard’s Tuesday maintenance to pass the time.

Fool.

I’ll post more about LoTR when I’ve played a bit more, but let’s just say I’m having fun playing with my dwarf minstrel (healer). I won’t give up World of Warcraft. However, I am squeezing in even more gaming time these days. Oh yea, the BM 2008 analysis is officially on hold this month…