Category: Archive

Lingering like a stale fart? Pretty funny stuff from Bill Simmons

The Falcons are like the new Barbaro. Just tell me when they’re officially alive or dead.

The Falcons have a realistic chance at the wildcard, but I figure they have to win three of four against Tampa Bay, Dallas, Carolina, and Philadelphia. I can see them pulling off wins vs. Tampa Bay (maybe, but it is a road game and the Bucs always play ATL strong), and maybe the Eagles. After that, I do not see them beating Dallas, and Carolina is going to take it to the Falcons after their opening season debacle.

Keeping my fingers crossed, but I do not have a lot of hope for the remainder of this season. Once again it comes down to the receivers ability to catch the ball, and a banged up defense’s ability to stop the run.

I love it! Rodriguez tells Alabama “Ah … no thanks. And don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out.” Beautiful!

The only thing that will satisfy Tide fans is for Bryant to return from on high and he would probably get fired after three years. Mike Shula may not have had much in the way of a vision, but there was no point in dismissing him if a backup was not fully in the AD Mal Moore’s pocket. I think this coaching search will be the fifth one since Stallings left the once proud school 10 years ago. Mike DuBose, Mike Price, and Mike Shula were all dismissed. Then there was Dennis Franchione who decided to jilt ‘Bama for Texas A&M; could not have happened to a better school.

No, I do not care much for Alabama, and the funny thing is that all the Tide faithful cannot imagine why no one wants the job. But really, why would anyone want a job where you are constantly compared to the standards of a man long dead? A man who the alumni would rip to shreds if he dared make the same mistake as Shula, which was a 6-6 record following up a brilliant 10-2 record the previous season. Bear once had back-to-back 6-win seasons, but that bit of Tide history has long since been forgotten.

Will be fun to watch how much more this can unravel.

I hate to admit this, but I’ve been trying to find a Nintendo Wii for the past four days. What a sad, sad tale I must tell. May of you know me as the anti-console guy. No denying that. My defense is that my youngest daughter and I started playing Legos Star Wars II and Open Season on our old Xbox. Since she (unlike my oldest daughter) seems to be hooked, I figured a nice Nintendo Wii this Christmas would cement our father/daughter relationship forever.

If only the damned college students here in College Station, Texas would give me a break!

I decided to try and find a Wii on Monday – when they physically sold out at Toys R Us on Sunday (I found this out Monday morning). Ok, no problem, the kid can hang. So I start visiting every retail store I know of that sells the game. Nothing available, so on to Tuesday.

Walmart decided to let the world know they will have Wii’s on December 6^th. Every college/high school age kid in College Station is in line the evening of December 5^th at both our Walmart and Super Walmart stores. The store let everyone know that they would go on sale at 8:00 AM. I thought I was being smart by heading out of the door at 6:00 AM and driving to the Super Walmart. I arrive at 6:30 AM and another bleary eyed older person (another dad) was in the electronics department. I asked one of the sales clerks about the Wii and she informed us that a line had already formed. Ten boxes were arriving and 13 college/high school students were in line. Crap!

Wednesday – I am so disgusted with Walmart I decide not to buy a Wii.

Thursday – I decide to give it one more shot. I visit all of the retailers again, and nothing is available. I walk into Best Buy and there must be 20 PlayStation 3’s in a stack. Not many people are buying them. The floor sales person seems insulted when I ask him if any Wii’s have come in. I don’t know who is buying PS3’s, but if they are available in my town, then that is not a very good sign.

Friday – one last shot. Ok, technically I am going to Houston tomorrow (where there is a larger non student to civilian ratio) and will look. But I have little hope. Gamestop had three come in and, you guessed it, eight scruffy college/high school students in line to get them. One of my store clerk buddies at Toys R Us (I’m a regular visitor at this point) tells me that he thinks some are coming in today, but not sure when during the day. I hang out for an hour (man, toys have changed since the 1970s) and decide to give up.

There you have it. I hate Circuit City. If you have a friend working there, you will know exactly when the Wiis are coming. Same with Gamestop, although they claim not to know when they are coming in when you chat with the floor clerks. I have no friends working at Circuit City or Gamestop. Toys R Us seemed to be the only store that non-college/high school have any hope finding a Wii during a random visit.

You know the main reason I want a Wii? Nintendo understands that for a certain demographic, we just want a few fun games to play with our children. That’s it. Take a look at the “family” games offered by Xbox 360 or PS3. Not very many, if any at all. I will stay with the PS2 and Xbox for now and wait for a Wii to magically appear at this point.

But, you never know!

I listened to the first part of last week’s Falcons game on the radio as I was driving to the airport.  I then watched the second half in an airport bar.  What I saw continued to disappoint me – the Falcons’ WRs basically suck.

Sure, Vick throws too many balls high, low, off center, in the ground, you name it, Vick is just not that accurate.  With that said, the receivers get paid to catch the ball.  If it hits their hands, they should catch the damn ball.  Except for the bird thing at the end of the game, I think Vick did everything he needed to do to win.  Too bad they did not pull it off.

Now what?  If the Falcons win today, and somehow manage to run the table, which let’s be honest, this is not likely.  Then maybe the Falcons have a chance at the playoffs.  It has to start today with a win over the Redskins.

Florida or Michigan?  Auburn was frozen out of the title game a couple of years ago.  Will the same play out for Florida today?  While Michigan played Ohio State great, I would rather see the SEC Champ (yes, I am biased) go up against Ohio State instead of watching Michigan do it again.

It is always nice to get back home.  Not that London is all that bad, but there is something special about coming home again.

The lesion of the week was that you never, ever (and I was told repeatedly about the never ever part) have this fine scotch over ice.  Oops.

I typically have various bourbons over ice, but I am not a scotch connoisseur, so I had no idea that I was going about it all wrong.  I did try it again later in the week, without ice, and I think maybe (just maybe) it does taste better without ice.  When I got home last night I had a Makers sans ice, so maybe I am onto the next phase of my life.  Still, summers are hot in Columbus, so the ice habit may be hard to break.  If I want a warming drink, I typically think brandy, not bourbon (or scotch), but I think I now see the point (and maybe the light).

I did not have a lot of time for gaming, but I did have a few minutes to check out the UK gaming scene at a music/gaming store in the airport.  It was interesting to such a large selection of PSP games (I did not check out the other sections) including many sports titles that I have not seen in the US.  There was a snookers games, Pro Evolution Soccer 5 (discounted to 19 UK pounds) and Pro Evolution Soccer 6.  In addition to usual suspects such as Tiger Woods and FIFA, they had something called ProStroke Golf, which looked interesting because the game lets you design your own courses.  I did not see Madden or MLB, but they did have several NBA titles and NASCAR.  I was going to pick up Race Driver (was jonesing for a racing game), but did not see it on the shelf.

As far as gaming goes, on the return trip I spent several hours with Madden 2007; I will post more later, but for now it is enough to say that it is an excellent portable football game.  I also spent some time with Lumines, Pinball Hall of Fame, and the NAMCO collection title.  Lumines is a wonderful way to “get into a zone” and kill some time.  The same can be said for Pinball Hall of Fame.  I am at the point where I think I no longer have the patience for the poorly implement analog control in NAMCO, which makes the maze games and complete miss.

Good to be back, and happy birthday to me.  Today is number 36, which makes me feel like an extremely old fart.

An actual exchange between a 44 year-old WoW player and his 42 year-old wife.

My wife came into the den as I was waiting for our 40-man raid to start in Molten Core.

“What are you and your ‘people’ getting ready to do?” she asked.

“There are 40 of us getting ready to start a raid,” I explained. “We’re looking for another warlock.”

“What is that thing with the long tail that is hopping around?”

“That’s an imp.”

She paused for effect before asking her next question. “You must be 20 years older than any of your ‘people’.”

“No, in fact, I’ve played with people in their fifties.”

“Well, who are you?”

I hit the space bar and my dwarf priest did his little dwarf hop. “That’s me.”

Another pause for effect. “You do understand that I will never hear the words ‘you should act your age’ cross your lips in reference to anything I do, don’t you?”

Apparently it is very uncouth to drink a 16-year old single malt scotch over the rocks.  Who would have known?  I drink bourbon over the rocks; let it melt … delicious.  Very much a no-no with a quality whisky; or so I was lectured last night.

Live and learn.

Vick revives the dirty bird tradition in ATL. Vick flipped off some booing fans as he left the field. Click here for the story, and click here for the image. Courtesy of the AJC.

Several people told me that traveling on the Sunday after Thanksgiving would suck; no parking, long lines to check in, even longer lines for security, and of course delays.  With much trepidation I decided that I would allow myself four hours for an international flight, which of course meant that I breezed in and out of check in and security in a matter of minutes; quickest ever for a flight.

Of course hanging around an airport, especially the ATL airport, is not much fun.  With a ton of time on my hands, I found a beer (or two) with a TV playing the Falcons game, and proceeded to waste the afternoon away.  The beer was OK (colds and beer do not go hand-in-hand), but the Falcons game sucked.  Man, the Falcons look bad.

Onto the flight.  Once we boarded, we sat and sat and sat.  I guess that was to make up for the less than two minute security lines.  Apparently the crew had to ‘shift’ around some luggage to ‘balance’ the plane; not something you want to hear before a flight.  After we made it in the air, I actually slept.  That was a first for me, I never sleep on planes.  I doubt it was the beer, must have been the cold.

As for PSP time, I really didn’t have any, considering I slept off and on the majority of the flight.  Prior to landing, I did fire up Madden and while the game did not freeze on me, it did some super squirrelly thing where the players went into warp drive and I resumed from a brief pause/freeze period.  This happened twice, resulting in me starting over the game twice.  Hmmm … not good.

Speaking of not good, it is not even 4:30PM in London, and it is already night.  Started getting dark around 3:45PM or so.  Not sure if I could ever get use to night so early.

About to take off for London for a week of business fun.  Joy.  Been a flurry of posting activity the past few days, which has been good, clean fun.  I hope to get some quality time with my PSP on this trip, but trouble may be looming.  Yesterday WipeOut froze twice.  To make matters worse, I attempted to play Madden, and it also froze.  This makes me wonder if there is something wrong with my PSP, which would really suck since I have not gotten much use out of it; not $250 + 15 or so games worth.  I pulled out some compressed air and attempted to clean the UMD try good; hope that helps.

See you from the UK tomorrow.

Another year, another victory for the Bulldogs over the Yellow Jackets. I am not going to go into any detail, but suffice it to say that I am a happy Dawg!

Not sure what this will mean for UGA’s bowl prospects, but one would have to assume that they are going to be significantly improved after beating a Top 5 Auburn, followed by a Top 20 Georgia Tech team. The extra practice that comes with a bowl bid will do the Dawgs some good. I just hope that no matter where they land, they get a good match-up that will (A) be attractive (B) give them a better than average change to win, thus gaining some valuable momentum going into the 2007 season (C) something fairly close to here, in case I can actually make the game.

Here’s a player that every manager dreams of coaching someday:

04-30-2006	Injured (Strained Thigh Muscle), day-to-day for one week.
05-02-2006	Injured (Torn Groin Muscle), day-to-day for 6 weeks.
05-25-2006	Injured (Back Spasms), day-to-day for 4 weeks.
05-30-2006	Injured (Fractured Cheekbone), day-to-day for 5 weeks.
06-03-2006	Injured (Inguinal Hernia), day-to-day for 6 weeks.
06-14-2006	Injured (Fractured Eye Socket), day-to-day for 2 months.
06-26-2006	Wins the IOSBL AL Player of the Week Award.
07-04-2006	Injured (Fractured Jaw), day-to-day for 8-9 weeks.

This is the kind of player that plays through pain baby! He’s currently hitting .326 with a .404 OBP and .558 SLG. Hasn’t missed many games either. Too bad he can’t use the toilet without injuring himself. More fun brought to you by the Sports Interactive Out of the Park Baseball 2006 crew…

Two videos in one day? Believe it or not, this one may be more interesting than the boobie thing posted below. I ran across this video on TechEBlog, which shows how games have matured from the days of pong. Certainly worth a look; nostalgia for older gamers, and educational for young whippersnappers.

PSExtreme just posted a report card of sorts for the PS3 launch, system as a whole, and future potential. While the article was somewhat biased (as to be expected from a PlayStation site) and generally supportive of the system, I found a few interesting nuggets for comment.

Overall, it’s difficult to say if Blu-Ray will give the PS3 the edge in games; it’s just too early. But as for the Blu-Ray/DVD player in the PS3, it’s certainly fantastic, and clearly a better option than those uber-expensive Blu-Ray players. Finally, if there’s one thing the PS3 will excel at down the road, it’s producing sweet-looking games in high-def. That much, we know for sure.

The PS2 was my first DVD player, and I am sure it is the first Blu-Ray player for many PS3 gamers. I am just not enough of a movie buff to understand or appreciate the need for a Blu-Ray system (of HD-DVD for that matter). Is there value in replacing my DVD collection with Blu-Ray versions? There clearly was with the jump from VHS to DVD.

In comparison, the PS2 had a much better assortment of launch titles. SSX and Madden NFL 2001 landed some of the highest scores in gaming history, and Tekken Tag Tournament, TimeSplitters, Summoner, Ridge Racer V, Shadow of Destiny, and Summoner were all solid and diverse games. All we really have from the PS3, beyond the glory that is Resistance: Fall of Man is a good Ridge Racer 7 game, several very mediocre exclusive titles, and a bunch of multiplats, which are all essentially identical to their Xbox 360 counterparts.

No RPGs (unless you count Untold Legends: Dark Kingdom, and I don’t wanna), no fighting games, no cool little adventure-like or unique games like Kameo or Shadow of Destiny, and no top-notch action title. If it weren’t for Resistance, it would’ve been a borderline failure. But thankfully, if you don’t have a 360, there are plenty of good games worth buying, and RR7 is quite fun. So it’s not a total loss.

This is rather damning because the PS2 launch was not that great. Sure there were a few solid titles from the get-go, but it was not that great. More than anything else, I did not go after a PS3 because I did not see anything that I just had to play.

What with all the hype surrounding the powerful Cell processor, the PS3 certainly had a lot to prove. But we believe this is a five or six-year process, so we’re reluctant to actually grade this category at launch. When we examine the history of the PlayStation consoles, we see a very large visual difference in first-year and fifth-year games; the likes of Smugglers Run, X-Squad, and Evergrace hardly compare to Gran Turismo 4, Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, and Final Fantasy XII.

The point here is probably valid and fair, but it almost sounds like the author is apologizing that the PS3 launch library’s graphics do not overmatch current Xbox 360 games.

If you are sitting on the PS3 ‘to buy or not to buy’ fence, I do not think this article is going to persuade you one way or the other.