Apology to that Colt

You know the Madden commercial where the Colts TE gets crushed, right? Here's the delightful response from the guys who made that commercial (apparently the commercial was made by the same guys that made Red vs. Blue).


Read the reply and watch the video here.

Ups and Downs

Ups
This is that video where Danny Devito came on The View drunk. I guess he spent the entire night drinking and was still pretty f'd up the next morning. Good for him. I watched it to see some good drunk Devito action, but what I came away with are some big ups to Rosie O'Donnell. She's the only person who seems capable of interacting with a guy who isn't being professional and did a good job smoothing over a potentially awkward-as-h moment.

Last night I used both my Wii and my Xbox 360 and had a giddy little nerd moment. They're still releasing content and updates for the Wii through the online service, and I'm excited to see what good stuff shows up. I just discovered that the disc drive glows blue when someone leaves you a message. Once a few of you guys get one we'll have a grand time sending hilarious Miis back and forth. Word on the street is that Dan will have one within days...

Videogame Night returns tonight after a three week dry spell.

Somebody over at NBC must have realized that they've managed to reinvigorate the sitcom, and currently have four legitimately funny shows on the air right now because Must-See-TV is back. A two-hour block of My Name is Earl, The Office, Scrubs and 30 Rock is pretty impressive. They've managed to put together four half-hour programs that I actually want to watch.

Downs
I was planning on getting a cover for the truck before it snowed, but apparently I waited too long. Reports are it's supposed to snow as much as a foot tonight.

I've cooled significantly on the Dilbert blog after recommending it a couple of weeks ago. That guy's pretty damn smug.

I haven't gotten Qdoba for like two weeks or something. F that noise!

Wii-pressions

I've had my Wii for less than a day, but I think it's safe to say it's going to be a great system. Some people have been asking what I think, so I put together a massive rundown of what I've found thus far. I have a ton of great things to say about it, and a few not-so-great, which I will get out of the way first so we can get on to the raving.

The Bad
I feel like the system doesn't come with the proper goodies. Specifically, I should not have to go out and hunt for component cables in 2006; those should be snuggled inside the box, right next to my RCA adaptor. I'm actually pleasantly surprised how good the Wii looks through those RCA cables on a big TV, though. I will grab a component cable when I see it but for now it's alright. Also, the Wii only connects to your home network via Wi-Fi. There is no network plug on the system, which I would rather use. Wi-Fi is fine, but I've found Wi-Fi to be unstable and something of a pain. I prefer the rock-solid, unrelenting reliability of a hardwired cable connection for videogames. One of the first things the Wii does is update itself, and the system got hung up during this process because it lost it's wireless connection; a sign of things to come, I think. There will be a USB Ethernet adaptor (the Wii has two USB plugs), but that should have been included as well.

Another complaint I have is that there are no fewer than four (!) types of controllers you'll want on-hand if you own a Wii. We're talking about the Wiimote, the Nun Chuck, the Retro-Controller and the Game Cube controller. All four of these are needed for some game or other, and that sucks. One of my favorite things about the Xbox 360 is that I can put a controller on the table and just grab that any time I want to play. With the Wii I'll need a big bucket of controllers somewhere, and even the main one (Wiimote + Nun Chuck) is a rather ugly thing to have sitting out, with the three-foot cable and wrist band. I'd much prefer one clean controller that does it all. A full four-man set for any game would be 16 controllers.

The Good
Aside from those little complaints, everything else is pretty great. I'm going to walk through the various pieces, and tell you what's so awesome about them. Above these individual items is a general sense that this thing is just plain quality and well thought out. Everything incorporates the motion-capture seamlessly, and I've yet to feel like it's a gimmick. The "channel" system is cool, and gives that same "more than a videogame" feeling that the 360 does so well. (The menu of the Wii is organized into "channels" which give you access to things like the online store, news, weather, Miis, and the game currently in the system.)

The Console
Starting with the Wii itself, its smaller than you expect (at least before you read that). This thing is tiny; like the size of an external hard drive or a Harry Potter novel. It has a nice little stand, and generally looks very clean standing next to my 360. I do wish they had come up with a better way to hide the Wave Bird and memory card slots on top, but whatever. The CD slot is very smooth, and it lights up blue when you feed it a disc. The whole design is very minimal and good looking; very web 2.0 or Apple in flavor.

The Controller
This thing works great. I had my doubts, and some games don't seem to use it the way I'd like, but you can just feel the potential. For example, in the boxing game the controller just registers a full punch if you make enough of a punch movement, which seems sorta dumb, but the tennis game actually reads what you do and swings like that (though it doesn't fully show it on-screen). The Wiimote is much more sensitive than the Nun Chuck (in Zelda shaking either one triggers an attack, and you have to give the Nun Chuck an extra shake sometimes), but having that two-handed control is sweet. Also, I love turning the system off with the controller. It sounds dumb, but you just push that button for a second and the screen instantly slides to black and the whole thing goes to sleep. No "are you sure" popup, no shut-down screen, just black. Nice.

Mii
The Mii system is sort of weird, and not very easy to understand until you see it. Basically, you make a little person who is your profile. You give them a face and a color, and they live in your system, storing your settings and stats. In Wii sports you actually play as them, while in Zelda they just remember your controller preferences. The cool thing about the Miis is that they travel. Your friends can send their Miis to visit your Miis, and your Miis can go off and explore the world, making new friends. When you play Tennis in Wii Sports, you play against other people's Miis. They basically remember how good their owner is, and the AI adjusts to make them reflect that. It's really not all that useful, but I think it's neat as hell, and it's awesome that Nintendo put such effort into a little thing like that. As more Miis visit your system they eventually do things like hold a Mii parade. MII PARADE!

Wii Sports
This is the game that comes with the system, and is basically just to show off your new toy. Bowling, Tennis, Golf, Baseball and Boxing are included (and listed in order of how much I want to go home and play them again, highest to lowest). Some of the sports make better use of the motion sensors than other. As mentioned, boxing is just like pushing a button, and baseball seems to just swing if you move fast enough, but others really have a feel to them. In bowling you put spin on the ball, in tennis you hit lobs or slices or cross-court or whatever just by doing it, and in golf you slice and hook the ball if you twist your hands (this game perfectly captures my massive slice that I hit in real life). It's a good time, and an excellent display of the Mii system.

Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
Just awesome. This thing is epic in scope; I believe I'm four hours in and I just got to the first real dungeon. A friend who got a Wii on launch day tells me he hit the title screen six hours in. Every Zelda game basically starts at home, and you see a sword and shield somewhere in town. Shit goes down, you grab that shield and sword, and bam - you're Link. In Twilight Princess you get the sword and shield after about two and a half hours. Yowza.

In most games I'd be bored if I didn't get to the meat until several hours in, but everything about the mechanics of the game is so cool and so fun that it felt perfect. I can't say enough about how well built this game feels. I love games where you keep moving forward, keep discovering, keep moving the story, but never feel like its too short or easy.

The game goes back and forth between standard Hyrule, where Link is Link, and a shadow Hyrule where link is a wolf. The two sides play quite differently, and have distinct feels, but both are so well done that each time you change you're happy to go back to either side. Just running around in this game is a joy - I didn't want to stop after four hours, but it was after 2 in the morning, and I had to pull myself away. Exploring, fighting, riding Epona, shooting and targeting all work great. Thus far Twilight Princess is an excellently balanced and produced game, and it makes the entire purchase worth the price.

My Wii

I'm shaking I'm so excited. I just bought my Wii. I'll let you guys know how it is once I've played Zelda for a million billion hours.

Things to get Excited About

Paperwork Finale
The truck is officially titled, registered and license. Hooray, I say! And it even runs.

Wii Launch
No, I don't have one. But they exist. They're out there, and they're being sold. The hunt is part of the fun, folks. I've gotten the lowdown from some luckier friends, and it sounds even cooler than I was expecting. Sounds like I should be able to score one by Christmas at the latest.

Xbox 360 HD Downloads
The video section of the marketplace officially launches tomorrow, November 22nd. I've already watched a few of the early releases, and it seems promising. The big problem continues to be the hard drive size, and I'll be greatly influenced by price. But, if I can buy a TV show on the 360 for a buck or two and it's in HD and it WORKS (don't worry, the Comcast bitching is up next), I would probably watch some stuff. I'm really hoping I can download Showtime or HBO shows, as I don't get those already.

Comcast Fails Again
Regular readers may remember how last Friday I had scheduled an appointment for a tech to come out for no reason but to bring me a cable box with the proper output? Remember that? Well, I don't want to get into a whole thing here, but a tech came. He did not bring a new cable box. But hey, he was there, so I showed him the signal loss problems on our HD channels and he, like so many before him, foolishly thought he could fix the problem. I haven't seen any network (ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, WB) HD channels work since he "fixed" things.

I've ordered a converter so I can just use the box I do have. It was ten bucks, and that is worth not having to call Comcast again.

I want to build a DVR
Of course, even with that converter, my HD cable still doesn't work. It's gone from being an occasional problem to basically never, ever working. Ever. My baseless theory is that this is a neighborhood problem, and not something that will ever be fixed in our current house. I've begun recording all shows in standard def, and I'll only bother recording in HD if I happen to see channels are actually working that night. We've also started watching some stuff over the air in HD when we happen to be there when a show starts.

Standard def cable + HD over the air would a fine combo if I could record everything; the only thing I'd miss is HD ESPN. What I need is a DVR that can combine the two signals (antenna and cable). The Comcast box won't take an antenna signal, and an HD TiVO is $800, so building a DVR would be the way to go. Building my own DVR would also let me cancel our DVR and HD service, lowering our cable bill a bit.

Unfortunately, I don't have a desktop sitting around that I could Frankenstein up, so the first step would be buying a computer, which means I won't be seriously playing around with this idea until some money frees up. If anybody out there has a quiet box that they'd part with for cheap you should let me know. (I'd need at least a decent p4 as a base, I think.) It'd also be fun to build a new box, it's been quite a while.

Another Video from the Drum Beat Guy

Remember that guy that made the Drum Beat thing on You Tube? He did another one sort of like it.

HD Video on the 360

(Nerd Alert!)
I tried downloading some of the first HDTV content from the Xbox Live Marketplace last night, and it looks good - really good. And it should at 500+ gigs for an 11 minute episode of, what else, Viva Pinata! (Ole!) The colors were vibrant, the picture was crisp and clear, and the compression was very clean (no tiles or artifacts that I noticed). Good looking video, but the file size is too big for the 20 gig hard drive in the Xbox. An episode of anything else (22 minutes) would be a full gig, and that'd fill up the hard drive quick. We need huge hard drives!

If they get a comprehensive library of TV shows on the Marketplace and a much larger hard drive, that'd take care of any shows I want to download (iTunes never felt right - low resolution, and on my computer. I want HD and with the 360 already plugged into my HD and my surround sound it's a great solution). Ideally I'd like to see external USB2 hard drive support so we could backup the files, and maybe even play them on other 360's or on computers. I don't want to buy tons of TV shows on the 360 over the next few years only to lose that library if/when my 360 gets replaced.

The other big thing coming out is the HD DVD drive. The Marketplace would be awesome for TV shows, but for movies I still want the disc. First of all, an HD DVD is 15 gigs - even if there was an option to download the full, uncompressed movie + all the extras that's just too large a file. I'm interested to see how the picture from the drive looks and how smoothly it runs. The Marketplace controls fine, though the fast-forward and rewind ran very choppy (weird for a file on the hard drive). In my opinion the 360 plays DVDs very well, and the player has even received some upgrades through software updates, making me very hopeful that the HD DVD drive will be great. If the picture looks significantly better than a standard DVD I may look to pick one up next year.

Making Progress

The Truck
The Secretary of State finally cashed the check to title my truck. Hopefully I will receive a brand new piece of paper saying I own the truck next week. I also got the license plate sticker and outside of a couple of nagging issues, the truck has been driving just fine. The little things I still want to get fixed are the breaks (they letup sometimes when you're fully stopped - annoying, and potentially dangerous), and the gas pedal (which just needs a little extra push to get depressed sometimes - annoying but not dangerous). I'm really hoping those two problems just need a break fluid flush and a linkage fix - if that is the case it shouldn't be too pricey. I'll probably have it checked at my next oil change. Also, I'm still looking to get a cover for the bed before the first snowfall, but that's on my terms, as they say.

Comcast Sucks
Comcast still sucks. Oh goodness do they suck. The latest Comcast fiasco happened on Saturday. After putting up with the uber-loud cable box for a week, I took it in to one of their service centers and exchanged it. When exchanging I tried to make sure they gave me the right thing, just asking to double-check that it was the same HD DVR box as the one I was exchanging, and the woman behind the bullet-proof glass almost bit my head off, "I know the boxes, alright!?!" So I apologized, took the box, and went home. Once there, I plugged in cables only to find... it's THE WRONG CABLE BOX. Fucking fuck, Comcast. Jeez.

By that time their little walk in location was closed (who has a walk in center that's only open during business hours and a few hours Saturday morning?), so I called to have a tech bring out yet another box (the fourth one in two weeks), and what do I learn? Apparently there's an outage in my neighborhood (despite the TV in my bedroom being on, and my internet working fine), so the phone agent is unable to schedule any service appointments, and I have to call back tomorrow. (Honestly, I was almost smashing things during this whole process.) I called back on Sunday and was told that they had no more appointments that day, so I'll have to wait until Friday when they can come replace the box. Until then I'm running HD through component cables, which works okay, but is all dark and cloudy looking.

One thing this has shown me, though, is the wonders of over the air (OTA) television. I'd never tried out the HD receiver in my TV, and it's pretty damn cool. I even have a TV Guide system built-in which somehow (magic) goes and gets listing information over the air and can control a VCR / Tivo to record stuff. It's pretty amazing to see Comcast's HD signal all choppy and unwatchable, then switch to the free signal from a cheap pair of rabbit ears and see that working perfectly. Truly a powerful demonstration of how much Comcast sucks. (Comcast:Suck::The Sun:Hot)

I Want a Hobby
I'd like to learn how to do something. I realized that I don't produce anything right now, and I'm trying to think of something I can do around the house. I like my job, and don't mind the fact that I don't actually make anything, and I'm not looking to take a class or joint a club, but rather find some activity I can do at home that'll yield some sort of tangible product. I've considered music, but past attempts (saxophone, drums, bass guitar) have always ended due to a lack of interest. I'd love to take up wood working, but I don't have the space or money to setup any sort of shop area. So I'm not sure what's going to fit the bill. If anyone has any good ideas you should leave a comment.

Steals of Deals

For some reason I've been really into looking at great deals online. Deals on anything, it doesn't really matter. Sometimes I consider actually buying things, but mostly I just enjoy knowing that if I needed that food processor I could get it on the cheap. I thought I'd share what has become my usual bevy of somewhat-regularly visited sites.

DealHack - Basically a blog with random sales and deals and crap.
Spoofee - A lot like DealHack, but with a rating system for deals and more stuff.
RetailMeNot - This one is pretty new, and from the makers of BugMeNot (in case you know what that is). The site is a repository for various online coupon codes; usually good for 10 or 20% off, maybe free shipping, whatever.
The Dilbert Blog - Not a deal site at all, but Scott Adam's personal blog is always a good read. He manages to produce something at least once a day about random junk.


So if you're like me (nuts), and like looking at things, there ya go. Or maybe you're just looking to buy a new set of golf clubs or some pants, and one of these places could save you a few bucks.

My Two Cents

Ben
Ben just posted one of the most delightful things I've seen in a long time. It's right here.

Disgaea 2
This is one of the games I was really excited to play, and having put a couple hours into it thus far I am shocked. Shocked how it is exactly like Disgaea 1. All the way down to the menus to the attacks you can perform to the animations; everything is EXACTLY the same. Now, I liked Disgaea 1, but I feel sort of gyped (no offense, gypsies!).

The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker
I started playing through this in anticipation of Twilight Princess. It's such a great game, so good looking, so well crafted, and the puzzles are awesome. The couple of annoying bits I had somewhat forgotten are that the controls can be a pain (it's really hard to make small adjustments when you're trying to open a trunk or climb a ladder), and there are so many things to collect! I think you have to collect three pearls before you can collect the four crystals before you can collect the eight keys before you can collect the five whatever before you can get to the last level (that's an exaggeration, but there really are a lot). The story carries the whole thing, though; I can't waaaait for the new one!

World War Z
This book is by the same guy who wrote the Zombie Survival Guide. This thing is awesome; it's written as an oral history of a huge, world-wide zombie outbreak that almost wipes out humanity. All of the stories are creative and they all interconnect in a way that you always have an idea what the interviewees are talking about. If you like zombies (Wipert, cough, cough) you should read this.

Another Reason to Love the 360

This could be pretty cool. Microsoft is going to create a section of the Live Marketplace where you can download HD movies and tv shows. That could be really cool, especially if they get a great selection and release a new, gigantic hard drive. This could render iTunes obsolete in my world for everything except music and podcasts.

Yet Another Comcast Rant

So remember yesterday when I wrote that our Comcast HD signal was working, the only problem was that the cable box is too loud? Well, I was wrong. Upon sitting down to watch Heroes last night the same old tiling issues arose, with plenty of sound cutting out to boot. I'm done having techs come out to my place and systematically replace every piece of the cable installation, then promise everything will work in a few hours and leave. Now it's time for me to get back into the jungle of cords and start tinkering with something I know very little about.

Here's the plan: at the moment we have our cable box (HD dual-tuner DVR) and our cable modem split off of the same cable. My suspicion is that, despite their continued good signal strength readings, there's not enough bandwidth to go around. This makes sense in my head because you can yell as loud as you like, but you can still only say one thing at a time. My guess is that while they're boosting the signal right after the split, there isn't enough bandwidth on that pipe to begin with, so all they're doing is repeating an inadequate signal. At the moment the setup is this:

Cable in from wall -> Splitter -> Signal Repeater -> Cable Box
(With the other cable from that splitter going into the cable modem)

What I'm wondering is if the signal is being too heavily degraded at that split, and that the signal repeater is just boosting garbage. What I want to try is first simply removing the splitter entirely. I'm going to try running just television off of this cable and see if that resolves things. If it does, I'm going to pump my fists in the air and take a victory lap. I may also listen to 'Boom' by P.O.D.

Assuming that fixes the problem, I'm then faced with a logistical issue; I want my wireless router behind my TV so that my various videogames can plug into it. I don't want to have to go buy wireless adapters for my 360 and my future Wii. So I'm going to try putting the splitter after the amplifier and just see what that does. I have my doubts if that configuration will show any improvement over the original, though.

If this works, and if I can actually watch our HD channels, I'm going to head down to the local Comcast location and exchange our box for one that is quieter, and roll with the Comcast punches for a few more months. If this does not fix the problem then I'm afraid I'm going to have to accept that the wiring for Comcast sucks somewhere in our neighborhood or in our house, and clearly will not be getting replaced. (This possibility seems to be supported by the fact that our HD signal degrades during prime-time, when the network assuredly sees the highest draw from the neighborhood.) If that's what it comes down to, I've started doing some research into other TV providers.

The big pain in the ass is that we're moving this spring. We're not sure where yet, but our landlord has made his plans to sell this property clear, so we know we're not staying here. That makes me not particularly want to get into something like Dish Network which has great channels but instillation fees, and lots of equipment. Direct TV gets around those setup costs, but requires a year commitment, which I'd like to avoid. Also, any dish-based TV would mean I'd need to also keep our cable internet. So I'm left looking at RCN, which is a competing cable provider here in Chicago, who has less offerings in terms of HD and DVR, but their services may actually work. Finally, I'd have to consider keeping Comcast and just losing the HD for now. I really hope that I'm able to figure out some way to wire up our whatnots so that everything can limp along for a few more months, then I will be saying goodbye to Comcast forever, and probably joining the ranks of satellite subscribers (at least if something breaks then I can blame it on solar flares).

'Twas a Long Week

So I haven't blogged for a week. This was mostly because I was dealing with two headaches; the first in the form of a truck eating my wallet and the second in the form of Comcast sucking it hard.

The truck's check engine light came on right around the same time its license plates needed a new sticker and it is finally getting titled (hopefully). Between new air sensors, plate updating and getting the truck titled, I lost several hundred dollars and several hours of my time. The on-going kick in the pants is that I have yet to see them cash my 'please title this truck' check, so there's a chance that things still aren't going right (I've been trying to title that truck for over a month). But my desire to punch a wall was far from it's peak.

After the truck fiasco settled down,our HD channels broke again, so I called Comcast and yelled at some poor kid answering phones and got somebody out at our place on Thursday. Maria was kind enough to be at home while some idiot showed up two hours late, then bumbled around our house for two hours and left much of my entertainment center unplugged and our TV signal in worse shape than when he'd arrived. Rather angry once again, I yelled at Comcast some more and got another tech out at our place on Friday (and got hung up on). While this guy seemed to know what was going on, he did not have the proper cable box to replace ours with, so he came back (third Comcast visit in three days) on Saturday morning. Everything works now, and I'd be happy, if I was okay with a cable box whose hard drive is so loud that I can hear it over my TV while sitting on my couch. I'm going to Comcast this time, in hopes of making things quick and easy (yeah, right). After that realization my desire to punch a wall rose so high I almost wanted to actually punched a wall.

But I'm back. And now, here's the thing I intended to post - a list of videogames you should play over the next couple of months:

Okami
Guitar Hero 2
Zelda: Wind Waker
Gears of War
Disgaea 2
Final Fantasy XII