Archive for November, 2007
A whole lot of nuttin’
Nov 27th
Steelers pull out a win
That was an entertaining football game last night. The field was just horrible after a storm dumped a ton of rain before last night’s game. Well, neither offense could do anything, and the game went scoreless for over 59 minutes. Final score: Pittsburgh 3, Miami 0.
WVU soundly defeats UConn for Big East Title
The Mountaineers beat the Connecticut Huskies after scoring 42 second half points. Final score WVU 66, UConn 21. The win sets up a big “Backyard Brawl” this Saturday with the Mountaineers hosting the Pitt Panthers. A win by #2 West Virginia virtually ensures a trip to the BCS championship.
So the Mountaineer football team is back in the hunt again. I never would have guessed that after the South Florida loss. But with all these other top teams dropping like flies… it’s just unbelievable. It just goes to show you that late season losses hurt you much more than early season losses.
Dancing With the Stars season finale
This is a show that should absolutely not work. In any way, shape, or form. The title itself sounds like a parody of reality TV shows. “It’s Dancing…. but with Stars!” But for some reason, it actually ends up being a very entertaining show. Last night Helio, Mel B, and Marie danced for the final time for the viewers’ votes. Tomorrow a winner will be declared and I’m not sure who that will be. It should be between Helio and Mel B if it’s based strictly on the performances and the ability to dance. But Marie obviously has a lot of fans out there. If it were up to me, I’d vote for Helio to win it all.
I picked up a Zune
I picked up one of the new Zune 80GB media devices last week, right after it was released. I am very happy with this player. Tons of room for storing pictures, songs, videos, and now, podcasts. That was one thing I was looking for. I wanted something that made syncing podcasts very easy, and the Zune Marketplace software does a great job. If anybody has any podcast recommendations, let me know. Lately I’ve been listening to Leo Laporte’s “The Tech Guy” podcast. He does such a great job of talking about technology in an intelligent way, and he makes the n00bs feel welcome too.
Another cool thing about the Zune: I like the Zune card: (Click on it for a larger picture.)
From “the Social” website, you can see your most recently played songs and get recommendations based on what you’ve been listening to. You can also meet people who have similar music tastes and see what else they’ve been listening to. A really neat idea and a great way to potentially discover new music.
Happy… Thanks… Giving!
Nov 22nd
Happy Thanksgiving everybody!
Hope you have a happy holiday!
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Okay. Videos are now Flash.
Nov 20th
I’ve decided to convert all the videos to Flash format. That makes them viewable on just about everything, including the Wii. Also, I eliminated the “squish” problem I would have had by re-running all the videos back through Pinnacle Studio and outputting them in a widescreen format. Then, I ran them through Riva FLV Encoder to get them to Flash format. Whew!
New (well, new to me) vehicle
Nov 18th
Well, we broke down (no pun intended) and bought a “new” vehicle yesterday. I put the “new” in quotes because it is only new to us. We got a 2005 Saturn L300. Our van was really getting rough and we were able to salvage enough out of it to make it worthwhile to get another car.
It seems like a nice vehicle. Only time will tell, I guess.
In other news… The Mountaineers escaped with a victory last night, beating Cincinnati 28 to 23.
Go Mountaineers!
Ryan’s video game adventures
Nov 3rd
Well, this week Ryan beat Starfox 64 that we downloaded a couple of weeks ago from the Wii virtual console.
The boy cracks me up, because he just doesn’t know what he can’t do. He’s only six. He can’t beat Starfox 64. Not at six.
Shoot, it took me and Tina weeks to beat the original Starfox on the SNES back in the early 90’s.
What I find so funny is that he does this with all his games, and it started back in the fall of 2005 with “War of the Monsters” (WotM) for the PS2. We were in the midst of moving and staying with my mom for a few weeks back in ‘05 and we kept the Playstation hooked up to a small TV in the bedroom for entertainment. A lot of the toys were packed away, so the kids spent an unusual amount of time in front of the TV.
Anyway, at the time, Ryan was 3 years old, getting ready to turn 4. We dug out an older PS2 demo disc with WotM on it, and that quickly became his favorite game. He had beaten that demo (even at age 3) in just a week. So, for his fourth birthday we bought him the full game.
Within two weeks, he had beaten the full game.
So, as I say, he just doesn’t know what he can’t do.
Here is a couple of Starfox videos I found on YouTube that show the endings of the two games… The original Starfox, followed by Starfox 64.
