Jason Taylor: A real class act

Jason Taylor must really want that Defensive Player of the Year award, seeing as how the Dolphins have thrown in the towel on yet another season. Now he’s stooping to a politician’s level: running a smear campaign against Shawne Merriman, the only other player who has a shot at winning the award.

Taylor cites Merriman’s steroid suspension in award race – NFL – Yahoo! Sports

It’s funny listening to a guy who is offside on every freaking snap whine about how someone else is assaulting the integrity of the game.

Wii Internet Channel: first impressions

I got the chance to check out the Opera web browser for the Wii this morning – what Nintendo is calling the Internet Channel, and here are some initial impressions after trying it out for about 10 minutes.

Scrolling is performed by pointing in one direction and holding down B, and how fast it scrolls depends on how close to the edge of the screen you’re pointing. This works pretty well. Most sites are too wide though, forcing you to scroll horizontally as well as veritcally. By default, text is very small and hard to read, at least with standard AV cables; I’m sure S-video or component will sharpen this up greatly, but it’s still very tiny by default. There is a zoom feature, however, which works well. Entering URL’s is easy enough, but the on-screen keyboard should have additional virtual keys for TLD’s: .com, .net, .org. Finally, although you can add/edit/delete favorite websites, I couldn’t seem to find an option to change anything but the display name when editing a favorite; it seems that if a URL changes, you’d have to delete the old one and re-add it, which seems silly to me.

All in all, a promising start. It works well for what it is, although improvements can (and should) be made. I look forward to being able to play Flash-based games within the browser from my couch.

My wallet has been taking a beating lately

Two weeks ago, I finally broke down and bought an Xbox 360. I’d been waiting for a deal, and I finally got a good one. Gamestop offered $80 in trade ($35 more than usual) for an Xbox and $45 for a Gamecube ($20 more), then tossed in an extra one-year warranty and a copy of Call of Duty 2 for no extra charge. I picked up Burnout Revenge and an S-video cable, and ended up paying $345 for a package that would have normally cost about $560. I’d been wanting a 360 for at least six months and just couldn’t say no to that deal. I also found a deal on Phantasy Star Universe and an extra controller through Amazon. The reviews for PSU have been poor, but I’ve always been a Phantasy Star nut so it’s worth a try for $40 off.

Then three days later, I finally managed to score a Wii at Target on Sunday morning. I’d been shut out on launch day at Walmart after waiting for 3.5 hours, turned aside at Gamestop on Black Friday after another hour and a half, and missed out at Nintendo World in NYC the following week by a mere 25 minutes. Along the way I picked up all the games and accessories I needed – three games (Super Monkey Ball, Zelda, and Excite Truck), a Wiimote, Nunchuk, two Classic Controllers, and even 8000 Wii Points from Circuit City (they were $5 off, which is like four free NES games. All I needed was the system – and Target came through for me. I also picked up a copy of Madden that morning.

Finally, we had to replace our digital camera – a Canon Powershot A70 – after I bounced it off my wife’s knee the other night. It wouldn’t focus anymore, and repeatedly tossing the camera to the ground to undo the damage only made things worse. We settled on the Powershot A540, which I just picked up today. This means we’ve gone from 3.1 megapixels to 6, from 3x zoom to 4x, and we can now shoot 640×480 video at 30 frames per second for about 8 minutes. Can’t wait to play around with this.

So… can anyone spare some change so I can get something to eat?

Pro Bowl Ballot

Here are my choices for the Pro Bowl Ballot. I abstained from voting for offensive linemen and special teamers, because I don’t know enough to form an educated opinion.

QB
AFC: Peyton Manning (IND), Carson Palmer (CIN), Philip Rivers (SD)
NFC: Drew Brees (NO), Marc Bulger (STL), Alex Smith (SF)

RB
AFC: Larry Johnson (KC), Willie Parker (PIT), Ladainian Tomlinson (SD)
NFC: Tiki Barber (NYG), Frank Gore (SF), Chester Taylor (MIN)

WR
AFC: Laveranues Coles (NYJ), Chad Johnson (CIN), Andre Johnson (HOU), Javon Walker (DEN)
NFC: Anquan Boldin (ARI), Marques Colston (NO), Torry Holt (STL), Roy Williams (DET)

FB
AFC: Lorenzo Neal (SD)
NFC: Mack Strong (SEA)

TE
AFC: Antonio Gates (SD), Kellen Winslow (CLE)
NFC: Alge Crumpler (ATL), Jeremy Shockey (NYG)

K
AFC: Rian Lindell (BUF)
NFC: Robbie Gould (CHI)

P
AFC: Brian Moorman (BUF)
NFC: Mat McBriar (DAL)

CB
AFC: Champ Bailey (DEN), Rashean Mathis (JAC), Asante Samuel (NE)
NFC: Ronde Barber (TB), Walt Harris (SF), Charles Woodson (GB)

SS
AFC: Chris Hope (TEN)
NFC: Roy Williams (DAL)

FS
AFC: Kerry Rhodes (NYJ)
NFC: Ken Hamlin (SEA)

DE
AFC: Robert Mathis (IND), Aaron Schobel (BUF), Jason Taylor (MIA)
NFC: Aaron Kampman (GB), Leonard Little (STL), Julius Peppers (CAR)

ILB
AFC: London Fletcher (BUF), Zach Thomas (MIA)
NFC: Antonio Pierce (NYG), Brian Urlacher (CHI)

OLB
AFC: Keith Bulluck (TEN), Shawne Merriman (SD)
NFC: Lance Briggs (CHI), AJ Hawk (GB)

DT
AFC: John Henderson (JAC), Warren Sapp (OAK)
NFC: Fred Robbins (NYG), Kevin Williams (MIN)

KR
AFC: BJ Sams (BAL)
NFC: Devin Hester (CHI)

This just in: the Flyers suck

Articles like this bring a smile to my face.

When we destroyed them in the playoffs last year, Philly should have figured out that old and slow won’t cut it in the new NHL – but they did nothing to rectify the situation. Now they’re the worst team in the NHL, and firing the coach and letting the GM walk hasn’t helped either.

Couldn’t happen to a more deserving team.

HD Radio

Lately I’ve been hearing ads for something called HD Radio. It promises to be what HD is to television – amazing detail, improved clarity, etc.

Sounds great! Now I can listen to 15 minutes of commercials every 20 minutes in stunning hi-def!

Seriously people, I don’t need HD Radio – what I really need is for radio to stop sucking. Annoying, obnoxious DJ’s and overly long, too-frequent commercial breaks should be a thing of the past. There isn’t a single radio station in this town that actually plays what I want to hear without trying to sell me something every five minutes. And what’s up with a station that constantly refers to itself as “rock radio” yet has talk shows for nearly a third of the day? Give me a break.

Go to XM or Sirius, you say? No thanks. I have enough monthly bills as it is. I wish I had the money to add a proper iPod kit to my car. If that were the case, this post wouldn’t even exist. I’ve had very little luck with FM transmitters, and the power outlet in my car doesn’t even work anymore anyways.

Wiiiii!

As of a few weeks ago, I wasn’t even sure I was getting one…. but now, I must admit I’m getting Wii-eally excited about getting a Nintendo Wii. I can’t wait to be one of the millions waiting in line when it’s Wii-leased on the 19th. There will be plenty of games, new and old, to choose from; if I don’t feel like swinging the Wii-mote around, I can settle down with a Wii-make of a more traditional game.

I’m sorry, I got carried away there. That was totally uncalled for. I feel like such a Wii-tard now.

Sigh.

Hey look! A new post!

I haven’t written for over a month, so I guess I should put something here, right?

I just got back late last week from a trip to the Oracle Openworld conference in San Francisco. It was my first trip to the Bay Area, and I took a couple hundred pictures, some of which I may even put up later. I also got to visit my godparents, who live in Sacramento and made the 1.5 hour drive to see me. All in all, a fun trip but a tiring one – walking up and down those hills is quite a workout!

I still haven’t gotten around to installing those new hard drives yet. I tried Vista for a little bit, but due to some weirdness I’m going back to XP until I feel a bit braver. Application support, at least for the apps I use, isn’t quite there yet. For example, I can’t even run Firefox unless it’s as admin. So I’ve been researching an unattended Windows install CD that integrates the latest patches and drivers for things like RAID – that way, if I need to attempt the install multiple times, I can save myself some work. I need to hurry up on this, as the wife has been itching to be able to use iTunes and Photoshop again.

Hockey season is upon us, and with the Sabres getting off to a 11-0-1 start, I have nothing to complain about. We picked a good year to get season tickets :) Now if only I could afford a new jersey…

‘Tis all for now – I keep telling myself I need to stay on top of this blogging thing. Who knows if I’ll ever achieve that.