Post!

I haven't been posting much lately, largely because my free time has been eaten alive by other activities. The has been lots of chatter over at The Blogulution lately, which is awesome, and I've been making a few minor changes to layout and forum structure there. I've also been playing around with trying to make money with a simple website again. It's like a get rich scheme, only instead of wanting to get rich I want to make ten dollars. That'd be awesome, to make ten dollars for playing around with websites... awesome.

Outside of web-nerdery, I've been playing more basketball lately, craming it in before the winter dumps too much snow on the courts for a ball to bounce effectively. The fine folks who keep up our park decided to dump two large piles of landscaping material on the court last week - one of gravel and one of sand. We can't find any places in the park that currently have gravel or sand on them, so it seems clear that they are building a fantastic new basketball facility.

Before I go on, I must say one billion thank-yous to Paal for posting about this trailer for Halo Wars on his blog. It made me very excited, and the rendering is beautiful. This is what cgi movies should look like - I really liked the fabric in the light marine's armor and the look of the Warthogs sliding around. They should make a Halo movie like this. The arrival of 'Spartan Group Omega' at then end made me want to shoot something a lot until it died. FIVE spartans?? They must take place either way in the future or way before the other Halo games with more spartans are/were around. I'll be buying this game.

Anyways, I'm happy that fall is settling in. We're resuming our weekly videogame night tonight after a brief end-of-summer hiatus, and television has returned with several really quailty premiers and a few new shows that seem very worth watching. Work has been going really well too; we've launched a bunch of new sites in the past few weeks, effectively jumping the sites I monitor from three to eight or so, and we're soon to launch another gigantic one. Being busy is good, though. I'm also getting hooked up with new computer toys soon (more ram, better video card, second monitor), which will make my job at a .com all that more .com-ish. We may be moving to a larger office space sometime, which would potentially feature extra space which I will try my damndest to get filled with a Nintendo, an HDTV, a couch and a Foosball table.

I liked Pfeiffer's idea of a fall meet up somewhere in the midwest. Pfeiffer - what ever happened to that? Put it together. I'll be there.

You There! With the $800!

Oh my god, I want this so bad! It hurts, it hurts!! Give it to me!

Haaaay

First, go check this out. Good stuff.

Alright, with that out of the way, it's been quite a while since my last post. Things have been busy, with a weekend in Iowa, new sites being launched at work and other things that keep me from posting my thoughts about what food I ate for lunch and where I lost my keys. But I'm back, so let's do this.

I am having a Love Affair with Fantasy Football
Seriously. It's amazing. Before I started my fantasy footall team I never would have cared if Tiki Barber had a crappy game or if Deion Branch got traded. Now events such as this send me running for an internet connection. Dispite my early 0-2 record, I have high hopes for a newly rennovated lineup, with the return of Roethlisberger (who was battling a 100+ degree temperature last weekend, by the way) and Branch (though he'll be splitting time in the 3rd reciever slot, apparently). You just read two facts I never would have known were it not for fantasy football.

My only regret concerning my first season among fantasy owners is that I didn't do another league. Now that I have a feel for which players generate points and which don't, I really want another go at a draft. Also, it'd be great to have multiple teams with different strategies. Next year...

New Videogames are Coming Soon
Microsoft just announced that the 360 actually can support 1080p, and once they send out the update the signal will start flowing. I don't have a 1080p television, but this is awesome, as 1080p was one of the few feathers left in Sony's cap. Honestly, I can't imagine why anyone would buy a PS3 at launch at this point unless they really REALLY wanted to play the new Crash Bandicoot or Metal Gear.

The Wii, on the other hand, has an offical launch date and price, and while it's a bit more pricy than originally expected, $250 is still extremely low. The one snag to that price is that a controller (remote + nunchuck) is $60, so a Wii with three extra controllers and a game will cost you $480 at launch (before taxes). That's still a great deal, though, I think. I cannot WAIT to buy this thing and play tennis with four people in my den. I have a dream of having to move the couch so we can run around and swing our arms freely. Also, the new Legend of Zelda game may very well be what kills me. How can one find time to eat with they're fencing with Gannon??? Fuck. Seriously, I am so excited for this... I've gone and whipped myself up into a frenzy.

P.S. They announced the Wii will be region-free, so Harry can buy one in London and bring it home with him. The only possible thing is game publishers can still choose to regionalize his games, so he may need a new copy of Duck Hunt, and he'll probably need a new video cable.

The Leon family name is Dead

Goodbye 1998 Plymouth Neon, hello 1999 Toyota Tacoma.

An era has ended and boring, reasonable decisions have been made. I finally said goodbye to my beloved Neon (Leon Jr.), and will be trading up to a vehicle with features like automatic transmission (read: Maria can drive it) and crazy low miles. Also, as I'm buying it from Maria's parents, I know where it's been and I'm getting a fantastic deal. It will be a great little truck which will bridge the gap from the car that got me through school to the my BMW 530i. Or maybe 540i. We'll have to see how the next couple of years go.

It was pretty sad to see the Neon go; Leon Jr. was a great car that I drove for 7 years without ever having to do more than change the oil and take it into a garage once for one repair. In the end, though, I could feel the transmission starting to get loose and the engine started idling pretty rough. I feel certian I would not have made it through another year without putting a significant ammount of money into upkeep. Still, actually deciding to sell Leon Jr. took a long time and made me sad. I've gotten so used to the cozy confines of that car that never sitting in it again means losing a piece of my everyday life. The Neon name has definately earned my respect.

The new truck is small, light, and drives pretty nicely for a pickup. The gas mileage isn't even close to the Neon's astronomical 38 mpg (ish), but it does okay. Having a pickup will certianly come in handy when we have bushes to move, and if we ever get a big dog I can put him in the back and other people will see him and say "Oh no, what if he falls out?". I will also be able to find some straw and chew on it and if I see something cool on the side of the road I will have the option of taking that cool thing home with me. The Tacoma features such wonders of technology as power windows and doors that lock themselves, as well as vents in the dash that blow air that is colder than the air around the car.

So if you're walking around Chicago next week and you see a totally awesome guy with a hat on driving a pickup and using it to "pick up" smoking hot ladies and also a shelf someone else threw away, that person might just be me.

Kevin Rose loves Lala

I have been watching Diggnation (the podcast connected to Digg.com) since episode #1, and they're now on episode #61. I have also been watching another podcast called Tiki Bar TV since episode #1. Kevin Rose, the owner of Digg.com and co-host of Diggnation has had a very public crush on Lala, a girl on Tiki Bar TV. The casts of these two podcasts have been interacting for a while now, with people crossing over to different shows back and forth, but Kevin never met Lala, until today. In the latest Diggnation, they do the show on the set of Tiki Bar TV, and Kevin finally meets Lala (supposedly for the first time) on camera, and the results are fantastically awkward and geniune. Watching Kevin, a guy who typically is pretty confident and funny completely freeze up when Lala is staring at him has instantly made him the most identfiable man on the internet.

There's something about that moment, where he's suddenly confronted by this girl who he's discussed liking for months, and she at least appears interested in him too, that is so much like the moment we've all gone through where you finally admit to liking someone or you finally kiss the girl, or you first ask someone out. For the rest of the episode he even gets the obligatory 'make fun of the guy who's trying so hard to look cool infront of the girl' treatment while he keeps blurting out awkward shit that makes him look like a dork. It's fucking fantastic. I love the internet.

New Bed, New Face, Same Old Run Around

So we bought a new bed (the only thing mentioned in the title that will actually be discussed in this post). It's nice, and very very... tall. I bet that wasn't the adjective you expected, was it? Well it is. I found this picture right here, which I feel does a good job representing our new bed vs. our old bed. The new bed is much taller, like the guys in the background. It is also much softer and fluffier, again much like the guys in the background. It is also much flashier, once again, much like the guys in the background! Unlike the guys in the background, our new bed does not gaurd a palace or anything. That's cool, though. Where our old bed was short, lumpy and sagging, our new bed is tall, firm, and protected by the world's most amazing mattress protector (I'm told its a $80 value!). If anything the new bed may actually be too supportive, as several times throughout last night I caught myself slowly floating up into the air. Clearly the force being applied upwards on me by the bed was greater than the force being applied downward by gravity acting on the mass of my own body. Looks like it's time to bulk up. Also, I expect that once the bed gets worn in a bit it will stop exerting such impossibly high force, and I won't have to wear diving weights to bed anymore. Got all that? Uh-oh, if you did you may be crazy.

Thumbs up thus Far

Quick GameznFlix update; they got both of my discs in two days. That's pretty good, as they don't even have a Chicago distribution center yet. They're scheduled to have on here by the end of the year. 1-day shipping would be awesome. I'm going to send something back on Monday and see how long it takes for them to turn it around and send me something new. So I haven't completed a full cycle yet, but thus far things are looking good!

Also, in case you missed it, Qualler wanted to pitch the Blogulator on here. I wanted to make sure you didn't miss his advert, so I'll repost it here:

"The Blogulator will be starting Season Two after Labor Day with a bigger budget and more guest stars."

He's not a Fire Truck!!

So I know I'm way behind the times here, but I haven't looked in on the development of the Transformers movie for a while now. Last I heard, the word was that Optimus Prime was going to be a fire truck, and I was going to cry a lot. But I just came across a whole bunch of new information and pictures, and he's a Semi! Hooray! He's not a Mack, but it's so much better than I thought it was going to be.

If you're interested in such things, check this site out. Some guy was lucky enough to come across some highway scenes being filmed and was able to snap some shots and take some videos. From this and some other video of a scene being shot in LA, a good number of Autobots are played by massive Hummer-like vehicles. I'm not sure how I feel about that, but I think it'll work out.

I'm so fucking excited for this movie, I really really really really hope it doesn't suck.