January 2009 – The Recycle Bin

Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona (Last Hour Fun)

The last hour of this year’s 24 Hours of Daytona was absolutely phenomenal. Talking about balls to the wall racing; I really thought Montoya was going to somehow, someway, retake Donohue for first place. Instead, JMP and his Lexus Chip Ganassi Racing prototype had to settle for second place.

The last hour of the race was about the best racing I have seen in recent memory. Four cars were on the lead lap, and while JMP was holding the fort for a while, he just did not have enough car to win the race. This was serious fun and great racing action right until the last lap.

The day gaming died.

I think today is the day that I finally realized that gaming has died. Well, maybe not died, but it is truly on life support. As long as I was on a roll with some blog updates, I figured I would check out the latest videogame action to see what I wanted to write about. I cruised on over to n4g, and looked around. First I took a glance at the general news page, then the PS3 section, and finally the PSP section. Nothing of interest. Nothing to get excited about. Nothing to make me turn on my PS3.

It has been a while since I played anything. My PSP lives in a drawer waiting for me to recharge its batteries; hoping and praying for a business trip that will let it strut its stuff. My PS3 sits idle, waiting for me to put in something other than a Blu-ray movie. And so it goes.

At some point I have to ask myself WTF is wrong with me? Am I defective? OK, don’t answer that one, but right now I am not sure when I will get close to being enthusiastic about gaming. It has been months since I wanted to play anything. Come to think of it, Madden was the last game I purchased and played (and certainly not $90 collection edition enough to get value for my purchase). I wonder if playing Madden is the gaming equivalent of a cock block.

It may be time to switch gears and pick up something PC oriented. A return to text based simulations such as Football Manager or Out of the Park Baseball. Or maybe check out Spore, Civilization, or some other addictive simulation. Maybe even give World of Warcraft another go. As it stands right now, gaming is on life support. Hopefully sooner or later, it will come back alive and kicking.

The truth about repentance.

In what has to be the best steroid story yet, Jay McGwire, brother of that other famous baseball McGwire, said the following:

“My bringing the truth to surface about Mark is out of love. I want Mark to live in truth to see the light, to come to repentance so he can live in freedom – which is the only way to live.” [source – Columbus Ledger-Enquirer]

Sure. That and a bunch of duckets. Anything to sell a book.

In other news …

Even Doves have pride – so says Prince.

The duck is down.
If I were a betting man, now would be the time to buy some Columbus, GA based Aflac stock. Showing the volatility in the current topsy-turvy market, two days ago Aflac shares plummeted 36% on news that Morgan Stanley recommended investors avoid buying Aflac stock before its fourth quarter earnings report is released February 2. Yesterday the duck quacked back:

Aflac’s shares soared 16.3%, or $3.74, to $26.64, in afternoon trading. But they remained below the Wednesday closing level of $36.27.

So buy now and gamble that the European hybrid securities fears are over blown. If you are right, shares will jump like a bunny in heat, but if you are wrong, you need to stop playing with matches.

What was he thinking?
Our new President believes it will be a good idea to release Guantanamo detainees. Who the hell wants them? Maybe Iran? Or do we just drop them off in Miami and hope for the best. I can understand that Democrats disagree with the previous administration’s tactics on getting information (i.e. torture policies) from terrorist suspects, but how can anyone agree that releasing these SOBs is going to end well for America? The Guantanamo detainees are hell-bent on murder and destroying the American way.

Flight Simulator takes one on the chin.
I am not sure I thought I would ever see the day when Microsoft would cut 5000 positions. It looks like the gaming world will also take a hit; the Flight Simulator franchise is now in limbo.

Microsoft confirmed Friday that the software giant has shuttered ACES Studios, the developer of the Flight Simulator series of games, whose latest incarnation is Flight Simulator X. The simulation is considered Microsoft’s oldest product, whose original version first shipped in 1982.

This economy serious sucks.

Pass me the chips. Eye candy is back!
If you read this blog, chances are that you smoked a lefty last night. So says some folks at BYU that produced this brilliant observation:

“those who play video games daily smoke pot twice as much as other players and three times more than those who never play”

Tori Praver © SI

Tori should help set the mood

for some kissing – © SI

Speaking of BYU; need some help kissing? Don’t ask me how I found this one, but I figured if you spend all your time in front of a gaming PC or console, you probably could use a little advice.

All for now. Happy Saturday!

Who the hell is Amy?

Chasing Amy. Fun movie, but I guess my wife thought it was a little too vulgar for her tastes. Plus it had the whole gay thing going against it (or for it, depending on your perspective). I remember that my wife walked out of the living room when I threw Amy into the VCR (damn that was a long time ago) way back when. Too many f’ing f-bombs, but I digress.

So ho the hell is Amy? And why is Britney seeking her?

Every once in a while something so stupidly bizarre comes along I have to post it here. Seriously, it is kind of like watching a train wreck. You see it coming, but you cannot turn away. At least that everyone says; I have never actually seen a train wreck, so I am not really sure what I am saying.

OK, back to Amy. Apparently Britney is stirring up a storm of controversy (what else is new) with her catchy new song – If You Seek Amy.

“So, she’s really saying F U C K me, F(If), U (You), C (see-), K (k-a)-ME(my)”

Seems reasonable too me, but who is Amy?

Alyssa: So, for you, to f*^k is to penetrate. You’re used to the more traditional definition. You inside some girl you duped, jackhammering away, not noticing that bored look in her eyes.
Banky Edwards: Hey, I always notice that bored look in their eyes, alright?

Hotness Appollonia style …

Well said, and I only wish I was bored right now …

Oh well. At least Purple Rain is on, and Apollonia is hot, but I am digressing again.

“Let’s have some asses wiggling. I want some perfection” – Morris Day

What a great move. I keep getting distracted. WTF happened to Amy?

Reeves OC in San Fran?

Can this end well? I have tremendous respect for Dan Reeves, as a football player and a coach. His character is beyond reproach. But making him the offensive coordinator for the 49ers is f’ing ridiculous.

I like old school, conservative, smash mouth football as much as anyone, but this is just not going to work. I could almost (almost) see Reeves coming back as a head coach, but as an offensive coordinator?

You have to wonder WTF Singletary is thinking. I know Singletary is conservative, but good grief. There is conservative and then there is Reeves.

Frank Gore is going to be in heaven. Gore left; Gore right; Gore up the center. And you know Reeves is going to pull for drafting a blocking TE three out of the next five years, so Gore is going to rack up a boat load of yards. Hell, hiring Reeves is so damn out there that it just may work. If the 49ers can get some decent QB play, then Singletary is going to look like an f’ing genius until the next time he decides to drop his pants.

Nah, who am I kidding? There is no way this can end well, can it? I bet the 49ers fan base is groaning with the possibilities of Reeves at the helm of the offense. Of course I wish Reeves well, but this one is completely in left field.

Random bird watching observations …

A couple of weekends’ worth of observations. Looks like for the most part there are plenty of mourning doves (they come every day) 2-3 pairs of cardinals (they are at the feeders every day), house finches and of course house sparrows. Nothing too uncommon.
Most of these observations are just quick glances out of the kitchen windows. If birds are at the feeders, I jot the names down and maybe grab some binoculars. When it is not so cold I like sitting on the deck with a cold one (and binoculars), and maybe with some meat on the grill.

01-19-09
Cardinal (male and female)
Carolina Chickadee
Carolina Wren
House Sparrow (male)
Mourning Dove
White-throated sparrow

01-18-09
Carolina Wren
House Sparrow (male)
Mourning Dove
Tufted Titmice

01-17-09
Carolina Wren
House Sparrow (male)
Mourning Dove

01-11-09
Cardinal (male)
House Finch (male and female)
House Sparrow (male)
Mourning Dove

While I was out and about, I noticed the following, all typical, but figured since I was putting pen to paper (so to speak) I would capture these as well.
House Sparrow ~15-20 – at a local Wal-Mart parking lot
Mockingbird – at the local library
Rock pigeon (2 flocks: 7-10 and 10-15) – at two different major intersections

01-10-09
These observations were only for a 5-10 minute span around 11:30AM.

Cardinal (male and female)
House Finch (male and female)
House Sparrow (male)
Mourning Dove
*Unidentified: Some type of woodpecker; it was a few yards over and I did not have my binoculars to properly identify.

Red Birds and the Eaglets

14-3 Cardinals early in the second quarter. Man, they are already playing lights out. I did not have time earlier today to throw up a prediction, but the truth is that I just could not make up my mind. On one hand I just do not see how Arizona can continue to play so well. In other words, I do not believe in them, but on the other hand, they are peaking at the right time. Plus they are at home.

I think an Arizona match up against either the Ravens or Steelers makes more much more compelling football than Eagles vs. Ravens/Steelers Super Bowl. Of course I think Pittsburgh winning is a no brainer, so I suppose that I am going to chalk the NFC Championship up to the Red Birds.

Words to live by.

I read this quote from Arthur Blank, owner of the Atlanta Falcons, in the January 19, 2009 SportingNews:

“Support your values (and) all the right solutions will come out of them.”

Seems like a very reasonable philosophy; words to live by.

Now Drinking …

Back by popular demand (at least the demand for me to drink beer), another edition of “now drinking” – because you know you want another cold one.
Guinness Draught in the 14.9 oz can; best served extra cold. Everyone knows this is the original great stout, perfect for a cold winter day. And does it get any freaking colder than it has been lately? A former boss (way back when in the early 90’s) always likened the “black stuff” to mother’s milk. I would not go that far, but Guinness is damn good.
Terrapin Rye Pale Ale is a personal favorite. I have written about it before, but man is it good. Some colleagues from the UK liken this one to a proper beer (meaning a bitter or ale). I suppose that is worth something.

Mmmm … delicious Terrapin

Right now I am freezing my ass off cooking some ribs on the grill, writing this entry, and of course sipping on a cole one. The honors goes to Samuel Adams Winter Lager. This “seasonal” specialty beer is a nice robust wheat lager. Best described as yummy for the tummy. Not bad for the price at $1.02/per beer ($12.29 for a 12 pack).

Until next time, a lift up a cold one and thank your lucky stars that beer is a wholesome liquid diet.

Saturday Inspiron and Vista Ramblings

No thanks to FedEx, after three delivery attempts the SOBs finally delivered my new Dell Inspiron 1525. In this day and age of a struggling economy, I cannot believe the piss poor service offered up by FedEx. But I am starting to digress …

Dell Inspiron 1525
My first Inspiron 1525 impressions is that it is a decent laptop for the price (a shade under $900). I have spent some time over the last couple of days transferring files, programs, and data from the old Dell Inspiron 6000.

I have everything almost sorted except for email. I did not realize that the Home and Student edition of Office 2007 does not include Outlook. I probably use gmail more than Outlook, but my wife is comfortable with Outlook. I guess for that matter I am as well, but I’m not sure that Outlook 2007 is really worth $90 or so dollars.

When the Inspiron 6000 started going south (IE was crashing the computer, causing Blue Screen of Death, go figure) I got my wife to switch to Opera, which could be dangerous. I have always used Opera for the naughty searches … sure my wife (probably) knows, but she never really bothered to use anything else other than IE. So switching email clients is probably not going to be a problem. Damn progressive wives make naughty searches difficult.

OK, back to the new Inspiron, it seems fast enough and plenty capable. I was a little worried if only getting 3GB of memory would be enough to keep Vista happy, but everything seems to be running smoothly. The 15″ screen is nice, crisp, displays pretty pictures, and everything is running pretty quickly. At least I have no reasons to complain yet about loading browsers, iTunes, Word, Excel, etc.

My only real complaint is that I do not like the “touch” pad style buttons for volume control. The Inspiron 6000 has real buttons on the front edge, but I guess I can learn to adapt.

Vista
I really did not know what to expect, but my first impressions are that Vista is not too shitty. If the OS does not crash then I will have no real complaints. I am sure there will be things that cheese me off, but we are still in our honeymoon period.

I have been happy playing iTunes Party Shuffle with the album covers displaying. Sounds stupid, but the Inspiron 6000 struggled pushing graphics, so I after three years we were probably missing out on some of the newer, cooler stuff. I did slog through World of Warcraft and Out of the Park Baseball, but playing sessions were often more of a choppy slideshow than a real gaming experience.

I have become completely addicted to “tagging” images in Windows Photo Gallery. Good grief! I am trying to get everything pushed to this computer just so I can sort through what is what. Bet I fill up the 250GB HDD fairly quickly.

I have never played around with Google Widgets, but I like the little slideshow widget. Of course it got me in a little hot water when a body painting of Tori Praver displayed. Oops!

Enough Vista for now. Back to tagging images. Happy Saturday!

Dale Murphy for Hall of Fame?

Maybe I should start some sort of petition. Kind of something useful instead of my usual crap. How the heck is Dale Murphy not even being considered for the baseball Hall of Fame?

Two Most Valuable Player Awards. Five Gold Gloves. Four Silver Sluggers. Seven All-Star Games. Seven seasons with 30-plus home runs, and 398 homers in his career (which ranks 46th all-time). A six-season span (1982-87) in which he averaged 36 home runs and 105 RBI.

In this day and age of over inflated stats, you know that Murph was about as wholesome as milk and apple pie. Call it the end of the age of innocence. The virgin slugger; no steroids here. It is a f’ing shame and disgrace that the great Dale Murphy is not anywhere near 75% of “worthiness” needed to get into the Hall of Fame.

Shame on the Hall voters. They need to get a f’ing clue!

FedEx. Service that sucks.

My new Dell Inspiron 1525 was due to arrive today, but unfortunately, no one was home when the FedEx person stopped by the house. I decided to call FedEx and ask if they could try to deliver again today or if I could pickup the laptop from the main FedEx delivery/shipping station.

What does the FedEx customer service rep tell me? First, I would have to put a “hold” on the package in order to be able to pick it up from the local delivery/shipping office. The kicker is that this requires two business days. Second, the CSR could not tell me when FedEx would attempt to delivery tomorrow. I explained that I needed to know to ensure that someone was at the house to accept delivery of the package. I was basically told so out of luck; delivery times were not defined.

Next I explained that I actually paid for second day shipping, not for three to five days service. I was told that there was really nothing else that could be done to solve my problem. You have to be kidding me, right? When I explained that this approach was not very customer service friendly, I was told that was just the way it is.

Un-f’ing believable. You would think in times of poor economic conditions that every company would do everything they could in order to maintain high customer satisfaction and in order to retain customers. Not FedEx.

Doing the Dell thing.

My wife’s Dell Inspiron 6000 has been on the fritz lately, but then again it is a little over 3 years-old. The DVD/CD burner unit will no longer play CDs, much less burn anything. The system is having more frequent blue screen of death messages, but it is not like I can fdisk and start over since the CD player is not working. It has been a decent laptop. As documented here, Dell had to replace the keyboard and lcd/screen, power supply, and I am now on battery number two; typically stuff for a heavily used family computer.

Last weekend I ordered a Dell Inspiron 1525 (Pentium Dual Core T3200 2.0GHz 667Mhz, 1M L2 Cache) with minimal extras – 3MB memory, 250MB HDD, and 8X DVD+/-RW dual layer drive. I also had to pony up a little extra to get MS Office 2007 Home and Student Edition in order to get Word, Excel, and Outlook. This Inspiron 1525 has nice 15.4 ince WXGA LCD TrueLife (whatever that means) screen. I pretty much scrimped on everything, even opting to not include the $25 built-in 2.0 megapixel camera in order to keep thing puppy under $900 (including taxes and second day shipping).

Did I mention this Dell comes with Vista (SP1 Home Premium Edition)? I am not too excited about that, but I did not want to spend the extra $150 to go the XP route. Man, I hope Vista is not a total train wreck.

I really wanted to go with a Mac laptop, but for now, I figured it would be better to get my wife a decent computer for everyday use. One she could use for email, web surfing, and the like. I will also use it for budgets and web surfing, and maintaining this site. The Dell Inspiron 1525 seems like a decent deal, unless the Vista monstrosity requires more horse power. I could have gone with bigger and better for a few hundred dollars, but I really did not want to spend the extra cash right now.

The new laptop should be here Tuesday (maybe Wednesday). More to come later.

Get your facts straight.

espn.com has an article about the Panthers’ screwing the pooch against the Cardinals. One problem is one of perspective and facts. They include the Falcons’ 34-19 loss to Denver in Super Bowl XXXIII as a “home” game for the Falcons.

Give me a f’ing break. Is Miami, which hosted Super Bowl XXXIII, in any way, shape, form, or fashion, remotely Atlanta? Way to start off a Sunday morning with some bad memories. F^*k Eugene Robinson! Thanks for that!

BTW, interesting site with some decent info. Most of this can be found on nfl.com, but kudos for the effort.