Archive for October, 2007

it’s about ‘effin time

October 31, 2007 at 3:39 pm · Filed under life, sports, tv, work

stacks-of-money.jpg “they call me dibiase, ted dibiase”

today, eight weeks into the nfl season, i have finally won the weekly office pool. in my newsroom, someone prints out a sheet of all the nfl games, collects a $1 from all the people who’d like to play along, and then that following tuesday or wednesday, a winner is crowned.

today that winner was me. funny thing is, the past couple of weeks the lady who normally distributes the slips and determines the winner has been busy, so she asked if i could help her out and weed out the losers in finding each weeks winner. i said, “hell yes.”

watching mnf, i had a hunch i might win this week. i was 10-2 going into that game and i picked the broncos. the game was at mile high stadium, where the broncos lassoed the steelers the week before. well, apparently it was brett favre night in denver on monday and i didn’t know it. kornheiser and jaws likened favre to god, as is standard practice at bspn. then he went on to win the stupid game in overtime, thus widening the floodgates for an all-out brett favre lovefest. blech.

i hate him. go pop some pills farve, ha, farve. spell it farve damnit.

but i came into work today, corrected the slips nervously and found out i had won. another guy and i both went 10-3 but for a tiebreaker each week, we guess the total number of points to be scored in the game. i picked 41, which was 9 points off. the other guy picked 52, 20 points off.

so what was the big prize you ask?

a fat $10. all in ones baby. yea, i’ll say it, i guess, i’m gonna make it rain.

no, really, i just like the satisfaction of finally winning. don’t worry, i plan on another 2-3 posts similar to this by the end of the season.

my losing picks were: vikings over eagles; buccaneers over jaguars; and broncs over team wonderboy. farrrrve should be getting my care package full of vicodin and hgh any day now.

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in rainbows

October 24, 2007 at 4:08 pm · Filed under music, news

thomyorke.jpg

‘thommy boy’

radiohead digitally released their latest effort “in rainbows” on oct. 10. digitally, meaning it is available to download, in it’s entirety here. i’m a big radiohead fan, i have all their albums (and a poster!), but i don’t do the whole downloading shit. the site also offers a discbox. for non-british speaking wanks, this includes the album in vinyl and compact disc, lyrics, digital photos and some other stuff wrapped in a hardback book and slipcase. sounds pretty cool to me. how much? oh, 40 pounds? let me consult google on translating that to dollars … dum de dum dum … $81!!! uhhh, yeaaaa, i’ll pass. and what’s better? the discboxes will only be released and shipped, at the earliest, december 3. if you don’t have a calendar nearby, that’s not soon at all.

i understand radiohead’s long-term deal with their record label emi has expired. they’re currently shopping around for a new label, rumored to be finalized this month (only one week left). probably a lot more profit to be made when you don’t have a giant record label constantly sweeping the rug out from under you, but what are my options here? would it be so hard just to release the cd after you’ve found a new record label? why should i have to buy the vinyl, a couple compact discs, a lyrics book and some digital photos? i understand that there are plenty of people who will just blindly buy the whole discbox asap, but good sir or madam, i am not one of those people. i don’t just throw $80 out the window willy-nilly like, besides everyone knows $60 can be thrown much easier.

a standard cd is actually rumored to be released sometime in january.

now, i’ll have to try and forget that i ever learned about this new radiohead cd. truly, that won’t be hard. until today i hadn’t even known that radiohead was working on an album. you see, when i have to go to work, i dig my head out of this big bucket of sand that i keep at my house. then, when i get home, i put my head back in the sand.

the end.

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/sigh/

October 19, 2007 at 1:36 pm · Filed under life, pet peeves, work

george-costanza.jpg

i generally like almost everyone i work with. i just have an ever-updating list of minor pet peeves. i know, blogging about pet peeves? surely, that never gets old.

why don’t you cry about it, saddlebags?

seeing how it’s possible that someone i work with could stumble across this widely-popular blog, i won’t name names or be overly descriptive. i think i mentioned before how a co-worker who sits adjacent to me, gnoshes on his lunch so loudly that i can actually describe the consistency of what he’s eating without turning around to see it. think of a horse eating an apple.

now enter new guy. we’ll call him fred. fred’s desk is a good distance away from mine. but fred is a writer of sorts, and most writers get your typical dusty old dell equipped with a hard drive that could race a dead turtle. so in light of this fact, that writers get crappy computers, we have this area called the pit, where we have a few newer, more muscular dells where section editors can paginate their pages much quicker. the pit is much, much closer to me than fred’s desk. fred is a relatively new employee and probably isn’t all too familiar with our programs and whatever else. so fred spends more time in the pit than the typical person. here enlies my peeve. the pit is behind me, upon doing a little head turn, i’d say about roughly eight feet away. he’s there now. fred lets out these long, loud sighs. like deep breathing, only much more audible. it probably seems like i’m a nit-picker, but i actually find it quite annoying. if you have to constantly sigh, due to some strange medical condition, i can deal, but fred is fine.

dude, are you having a problem breathing? if so, let me know, so i can find someone who might care.

are you just sighing out of frustration? that couldn’t be either. he can’t possibly be that frustrated, that often.

is he looking at something naughty? nah, not where he’s sitting. hopefully it’s not me.

what’s the deal fred? people can sigh inwardly you know, i do it all the damn time. like right here, right now. i think he just did it again. that bastard. keep your sighs to your self! or to put a twist on a classic seinfeld line “you can stuff your sighs in a sack mister!” … what does that mean?

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ps3 still costs too much

October 18, 2007 at 3:09 pm · Filed under life, news, video games

 300_ps3b0.jpg   shiny

sony is cutting the prices on its playstation 3s. it made the announcement thursday, and as far as i’m concerned, it’s still way too high. anyone remember chris rock in the 80s classic “i’m gunna git you sucka”? fo’ hundid dollas! goddamn, that’s a lot of money! from the linked article:

The top-line PlayStation model, with an 80 gigabyte hard drive, now costs $499, down from $599. That effectively eliminates the lower-end model, which has a 60-gigabyte drive and has sold for $499.

A new low-end model with a 40-gigabyte drive will go on sale Nov. 2 for $399.

apparently sony still hasn’t gotten the memo. your typical video gamer probably doesn’t have an extra $400-$500 to throw around. and really, it’s not just the initial sticker shock, its things like this, essentially a hi-def audio/video cable, that costs an extra $70. and if you have a hi-def tv and you buy a sony ps3, you know damn well you’re gonna shell out that extra $70. plus, an extra controller, that’ll be $40. and unless you want to play motorstorm, you’re probably gonna shell out another $50 for that game you have to have. the game that probably caused you to buy the ps3 in the first place. so, using my trusty windows calculator, we’ll add this up:

$400 (ps3) + $70 (a/v hd cable) + $40 (2nd controller) + $50 (game) + $33 (sales tax at 6%) … and your total comes to …$593.60 … i hope you don’t have to buy a memory card as well at that price.

and that’s taking into account that one would buy the “low-end 40 gigabyte” version. tack on another hundo for the 80 gigabyte version, that is, if you can afford to buy enough games/media in the future to store on those 80 gigs. i think i’d still buy an xbox 360 before that. i’ve played “resistance: call of man” on a 65 inch hi-def mitsubishi and i wasn’t impressed. as for now, i’ll go back to mlb power pros.

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halo trois

October 18, 2007 at 2:22 pm · Filed under life, tv, video games

h3mongoose.jpg

i played halo 3 yesterday after work at my friend’s house. my friend has a rather large, flat-screen, hi-def, television with an xbox live subscription, so right off the bat i was pretty impressed. as i said yesterday, i don’t own an xbox or xbox360 and this friend of mine is really the only immediate friend that i can think of that plays/owns xbox360. i’m somewhat familiar with the xbox controls, but it always takes me about 10-15 minutes to somewhat re-learn them again. my friend and i played against each other for a little bit, so i could get accustomed to the controls. then we jumped into some online team play. we only played for maybe an hour and a half but i must say, this was the most fun and impressive part of the game that i got to see. i got my ass shot off a few hundred times before i started to pick up the controls a little bit, as was expected. but once i started to find some different and more impressive weaponry, i started to “pwn,” as they say. it seems that the common trick for halo 3 or maybe all halo’s for all i know, is jumping. the player jumps in the air, making him/her harder to train the gun-sight on. also, players commonly just run up to you and wax you in the face with the butt of the gun. it kills you and it’s annoying, unless of course, you’re the one doing the face-mashing.

i play/own a lot of shooters for the ps2 and resident evil 4 for the wii, but they don’t prepare you for halo 3. obviously, the different controls really throw a monkey wrench into that, but halo 3 seems a bit more technical than your run-of-the-mill shooter. its definitely got me very interested, but nowhere near forking out the dough for an xbox 360, new hd tv, games, controllers and all that other bullshit. overall, i thoroughly enjoyed it and definitely look forward to playing again.

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mlb power pros

October 17, 2007 at 3:16 pm · Filed under life, sports, video games

power-pros.jpg

i bought a new game for the nintendo wii this weekend. judging from the title of the post, you may already be able to guess what it’s called. throughout a few previous video game related posts on this here blog, i have called for the nintendo wii virtual console to please, please make the old nintendo game baseball simulator 1.000 available to download. well, it appears that i no longer have to plead and consistently check the new “old” games that nintendo makes available every monday (oh, i’ll still check anyway). mlb power pros is like baseball simulator 1.000 on steroids. i didn’t play rbi baseball very often, i thought that sucked in comparison to baseball simulator. power pros is licensed by the mlb players association, so it has complete rosters and player statistics from the 2006 season. you can create a season and track all sorts of statistics. create a player, create a team, start a season, start a season with a created team, just about anything and everything i could have desired in a baseball game. upon playing mlb power pros for the first time, i joked to my friend, “this game is going to be horrible for me, this game will take over my life.” and it has. i created a season with the mariners, so far we’re 11-0, i think. we’re like the new england patriots on steroids. what? i already used that analogy?. ok, we’re like the new england patriots on crack … and steroids. just about every setting can be tweaked to keep it competitive and most things like fielding, can be switched from manual to automatic with settings in between like “semi-auto” and also skill levels associated with the setting. so you could set the fielding to “semi-auto, novice or expert” while the hitting could be on a different setting altogether. the characters are cartoony, they don’t have legs, just bodies and feet, and somewhat resemble the mii characters that you can create. their faces are designed to look like the actual player and just about every distinguishable player has their own batting stance similar to their real-life counterpart. oh, i almost forgot the one part that makes this game soooo much fun for the wii. you can use the classic controller for the entire game and you don’t have to swing the wii remote around at all. essentially, the controls are similar to a regular game for a regular system. no churning wii-motions to make your guy run the bases, no swinging the wii-mote like swinging a baseball bat, no overhand throwing motion simulating a thrown pitch, no-fucking-nothing. seriously, the wii needs to make more games with controller options like this. don’t feel like slinging the wii-mote around and having a sore arm/shoulder the next day? then don’t. just attach the classic controller and never get off your ass again, assuming you keep a bucket next to your couch like i do. this game is phenomenal. i could go on for a couple hundred more words about how much fun the gameplay is, how in-depth the statistics and detail go, and just how refreshing a game like this is to play.

after work, i’m going over to play some halo 3 at my friend’s house. i haven’t played it yet, don’t own an xbox, and surprisingly, i think i’ve only ever played halo once. so, i give it about 15 minutes before i’m sick of getting “pwned” and chuck the wireless at my friends leg-humping pooch. i’ll let you know how much i suck tomorrow, but in the meantime, go find mlb power pros.

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come on down to south park

October 12, 2007 at 9:05 am · Filed under life, tv

1010_hall_monitor_cartman.jpg  - cartman as “dog the bounty hunter”

in my previous post about television shows i won’t be watching, i forgot to mention the fact that i absolutely love this little show called south park, maybe you’ve heard of it? the thing that captivates me about south park is the way they can take just about any topic and turn it on its head. the creativity of trey parker and matt stone never ceases to amaze me. two recent examples being the two new episodes from this, their eleventh season. in the first episode, cartman “comes down” with tourrette’s syndrome to take advantage of the ability to swear at people without possible repercussion. only later in the episode, he comes to find out that through his abuse, he no longer can control what comes out of his mouth. he starts to actually say things that he doesn’t mean to say. if you haven’t seen it, i won’t ruin some “instant classic” cartman lines.

this past week’s episode was on the same level of hilarity. stan’s dad is constipated and after taking laxatives, believes he has taken the world’s largest poop. just as a fecal matter committee is about to award him, the previous record holder claims to have stan’s dad beaten. the previous record holder just happens to be u2’s bono. throughout the episode, bono shreiks stupid lyrics from his song “vertigo,” making just about every scene downright uproarious. yes, uproarious. it’s about time someone made fun of bono. oh, i almost forgot to mention, the “poop” committee measures fecal matter in courics, as in katie couric. as in, one couric equals 2 ½ pounds of feces.

i don’t want to act as a spoiler and if you’ve seen both episodes, you’d realize my descriptions are lacking. i really couldn’t begin to do either episode justice here, so if you’re a fan of south park, do yourself a favor and tune in. new episodes air at 10 p.m., wednesdays on comedy central and are repeated at the same time on thursday night.

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i refuse to watch new tv shows

October 10, 2007 at 6:55 pm · Filed under life, news, tv

geico-cavemen-restaurant.jpg — i hope once this show fails, the commercials disappear along with it

try as those mighty advertising “gurus” might, i won’t be watching bionic woman, journeyman, life, cavemen, carpoolers or any other ooze that nbc, abc, cw and whatever other network squeezes out of its collective butt. there really isn’t a whole lot on tv that i’m even remotely interested in, other than sports of course. every time a new show comes out, i get this picture of a bunch of executives or writers or whomthefuckever is trying to float this flimsy shit-raft down a piss river. i see these commercials and think, “goddamn, i can’t wait to not watch that in hopes that it desperately fails.” i am overjoyed when i hear about a newly advertised television show that fails. overfuckingjoyed. since i own a tv, i’ll just watch whatever the blinky lights on the screen formulate right? i’m the brainless american tv viewer right? i’ve tried to get into this shit, but i don’t really know what’s at the root of my hatred for this stuff. i used to think i was bitter at tv for taking my seinfeld away, but that’s not even close. i barely watch seinfeld anymore and at this point, even the best sein reruns i could take or leave. i really enjoyed the simpsons movie, but i honestly don’t remember the last time i watched a new episode. something is missing with that show. they’re trying too hard to appeal to a certain crowd or trying to be too smart or something, i have no idea, but give me reruns or give me death! i don’t watch reality television, i don’t watch lost or 24 or heroes. for one, i didn’t get in at the beginning and secondly, i’ve seen portions of lost and 24, and i don’t consider myself missing anything. i think what it boils down to is this: i don’t like to be told what to like and i especially don’t like to be told what is popular. shows like the simpsons and seinfeld weren’t heavily advertised when they started getting popular and as a whole, advertising wasn’t the in-your-face beast that it is today. seinfeld and the simpsons weren’t thrown at you during every commercial break like new/popular tv shows are today. at least not that i remember. i take that back. seinfeld was thrown in your face, but only during the later insanely popular days. i’m reminded of the two weeks before the final episode aired and how annoying that was. the sad thing is, i don’t have a solution to this problem. networks need to keep churning out shows every season for ones that have failed in the past or ones that have ended in the prior season. i’m just tired of being fed a new show that reminds me of a similar show. life=house. journeyman=the deadzone=that old show with scott bakula where he travels through time. carpoolers, i’ve never seen it, but it’s a comedy about work and relationships i’m guessing? how many of those have there been? then there are shows like “who’s smarter than a 5th grader” or whatever the hell it’s called. seriously, how many quiz/question and answer shows can you come up with? it started with who wants to be a millionaire? then there was that show with the british sounding bitch that said “goodbye!” the show with bob saget, deal or no deal, and the other half a million i can’t think of and will not waste my time googling. they’re popular for a couple weeks, if that, then they fade away and next thing you know they’re on weekday television only with a new host. oh shit, that one with drew carey, i remembered another one. notice how i have no idea what any of these are called? because they’re the same concept, with slight yet insignificant tweaks to the style of play. ok, except for deal or no deal, they’re all just taking something like the board game trivial pursuit and applying a theme and a host, really. this is not to mention shows that i haven’t thought of (prison break and dancing with the stars come to mind, i hate them). 30 rock and the office are the only two television shows that i can recount attempting to get interested in. it didn’t work. both are funny at times, but truly, i don’t see myself getting into them any further. they try so damn hard too. at least they’ve made it though, they seem good. they’re just not my cup of tea. maybe all this tv talk is just a result of my refusal to give any of these shows my attention at a given time on a given day. they haven’t earned it.

the one show that i’ve seen that really caught my eye was “it’s always sunny in philadelphia.” i’m hesitant to have even brought that show up but, it has potential for me. i haven’t seen one single episode in it’s entirety, but the parts that i have seen have actually made me laugh out loud. really, i smiled, then laughed out loud, then smiled some more and maybe chuckled after that. that’s more than i can say for a majority of shows that i’ve encountered lately. but keep tryin’, i love to watch you fail.

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millersville lacrosse players hazed

October 5, 2007 at 12:46 pm · Filed under life, news, sports

mvilleth92.jpg “cheers! any ideas on the type of brew in the pic? my guess is ol’ natty light. i zoomed in with photoshop and couldn’t tell. too pixelated.”

the illustrious millersville university sports program is already back in the news. this story as well as this ap story popped up today. three of the ‘ville’s womens lacrosse members were suspended for violating hazing policies. this comes in the wake of the millersville football players sex-assault brouhaha (look a few posts down). now, millersville officials have decided to hold a “special training and brainstorming session” this fall for their 500 to 600 student athletes. training and brainwashing brainstorming eh? yea, i should hope so. might want to consider putting a leash on some of those rowdies over there. the three members of said lacrosse team were suspended after photos of a team party appeared on an anti-hazing website. oops! the pictures apparently showed athletes with beer cans duct-taped to their hands and housing some shots (this sounds like fun to me). photos also showed female athletes with men’s underpants on their heads or having their hair wrapped up in “tampon curlers” (undies and tampons appear to be unused, phew!). those photos can be seen here. now, the entire women’s lacrosse team won’t be able to play their few fall games they have scheduled or take a spring break lacrosse trip (probably a good idea). the entire team will be required to do community service and the three suspended members will have to develop an anti-hazing program and present it to fellow mu students. apparently after the training/brainstorming sessions end, the university will think about developing a type of slogan or policy for their student athletes. how about, “millersville university athletes: think while you drink” or “let’s use a little discretion.” eh?  i’ve grown weary of this topic.

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it happened again!

October 4, 2007 at 12:34 pm · Filed under life, news, sports

golf.jpg “He’s on his final hole. He’s about 455 yards away, he’s gonna hit about a 2 iron I think.” — i can’t link to a golf story and not quote either carl spackler or caddyshack in general … it will never happen

for the two people who regularly peruse this blog (that i’m aware of), i posted a story a little while ago about two golfers who got hole-in-ones on the same hole, in the same round of golf. i thought that was pretty crazy. but apparently, it happened again in york, pa.

Bill Maslowski and Carl Workinger got their holes-in-one while in a threesome with Steve Fahs at York County’s Grandview Golf Course at about 8:30 a.m. Thursday.

“I’ve never witnessed anything like this before,” Maslowski said. “I never even heard of it. Two holes-in-one on the same hole — wow!”

dude obviously doesn’t read this blog or he definitely would have heard of it before. so sad and no, i won’t make a threesome joke. i’ll just acknowledge it’s presence and move on. for the record, maslowski hit a five-iron on the 152-yard fourth hole. fahs, their lowly, non-ace getting lackey, missed the green and workinger slapped a six-iron into the cup. what’s the deal with using a five and six iron on a 152-yard hole? i go par-three pitch-and-putting about once a year and i can hit a nine-iron a good 130-yards, and straight too! personally, i find real golf a little too challenging and strictly try to stick to pitch-and-putting and of course, mini-golf. therefore, i am obviously qualified to bust balls here and i will take liberty in doing so, for fun, and my own personal inward, at-desk, laughs. really though, i have on occasion gone real golfing and yes, i too suck at it. my pitch-and-putt skills make me lethal from inside ohhh, about 130 yards, but once the irons get flatter, it’s pretty much a crapshoot. real golf, however, tends to be pretty time consuming, somewhat expensive and then there’s the fact that i only have one or two immediate friends who enjoy the real deal. i greatly enjoy the sport of golf, i was just making those jokes for the sake of joking and so in the event that i go back and read previous posts, i can laugh at myself and my pseudo-witty banterings. lighten up.

p.s. if you read the actual story, i like the fact that they cited the golf digest 17 million to 1 odds study that was mentioned in my previous hole-in-one related post. seriously, it happened twice in like a three-week span. time for some golf digest brainiacs to re-calculate and re-formulate.

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