How the DVR stole Christmas

Black Christmas specifically... While trying to set up some future recordings on my DVR... my trusty TimeWarner box took a shit on me.

I don't really know what I did to stress the machine.... I guess the OS isn't very stable.

INHD had a repeat play at 2:00AM so I managed to capture that broadcast. Anyhoo... don't assume that your recordings will always be there for you when you come back home.

Downtown, San Antonio

Finally got around to visiting downtown San Antonio over the weekend... While there I took me'trusty camera along to take some shots of the City here are some photos of my visit.

I'm not entirely familiar with the buildings around town yet.... so I can't point out the buildings below. My visit downtown (or the Riverwalk as its more commonly known) was my first real visit that I've ever done by foot.

Here's a photo I took of a church on St. Mary's street. I didn't catch the name of the church but with the "virgen" hanging there mightily... I think it's a pretty safe bet that it shares the name of the Street its on.

It occurred to me on my way back to the car that I didn't take many snapshots during my first visit. Spent way to much time in deep conversation with my friend Chivo... I did however stop for a moment and took a shot of the "Robert E. Lee HOTEL" in the distance. I didn't go up to street level to walk closer to the building for a proper shot... it was well over a 100 degrees so we sought out cover when ever possible.
The Riverwalk - Again.. it was my first visit to the Riverwalk by foot. I found myself enjoying the visit a lot more than I thought I would. I was in the area around 1:00PM so many of the places that I thought would be of interest (BARs) weren't exactly open for me to swing in and get a swill. I had a nice lunch on the River... my friend and I ate at a place whose name I can't remember at the moment. The food wasn't anything to really write home about. It did however hit the spot.

Highlight of the visit was a killer ice-cream shop that had a beautiful bi-level deck to sit on. Very touristy... but I'm anything but a local for the moment. I hope to swing by at nite in the near future so that I can write up a proper report about the watering holes in the downtown area.

Ekobase 5 (we're kicking these mo'fos out)

Ted, James and I post our 5th LOST (the TV show) related podcast.

We talk about the different DHARMA Initiative stations, what they are and what they do.

Three new characters join the cast of LOST for season three and Rollie makes many mistakes on tape one of them is about Angelina Jolie.

.aCr.

The Story of Ruth... not that Ruth

Its about 5 after 7... heating up some breaky before I bust out for work. Looking for something (anything) to watch before I bust out of here I see something on the channel guide called "the story of ruth".

Thinking it had to do with the Yankee Slugger I tuned in...

Was I surprised when it turned out to be about the The Old Testament Moabite that converts to Judaism, flees to Bethlehem and falls in love.

I so want to call in sick so I can finish watching this.

It has Elana Eden and Stuart Whitman. Who is kinda dreamy in a poor-mans Heston sorta way.

.rollie late to work.

In appreciation of : V for Vendeta (the Movie)

I was a little hesitant to go see V for Vendetta when it hit theaters because I really wanted to read the celebrated graphic novel. It then occurred to me that I could count the number of graphic novels I've ever read on one hand.... two. (Ghost World & the Originals)

Knowing very well that I wouldn't get around to reading it till sometime next year I opted to go ahead and rent the movie.

I won't go chapter and verse into what the movie is about... Think 1984 with an Anarchist Batman in a Guy Fawkes mask.

Much to my surprise I got really into the movie last night. The dialogue is quick and witty... so I found myself paying close attention so that I can figure out all the Orwellian backdrops.

Anyhoo if anything described above is of any interest to you... go out of your way to rent it. Me'thinks you'll dig it verily.

.alamo city rollie.

Some else out there is catching what I'm dropping

Looks like I'm not the only one who thinks this Pluto thing is bunk. Get your bumper sticker HERE.

Saying goodbye to Pluto... we barely knew ya

The International Astronomical Union voted this morning to redefine the term "planet", thus demoting the Ninth planet "Pluto" to the status of a "dwar planet" - leaving our solar system with a uniform 8 planets now...

I'm a little upset about the Astronomical Union decision on this... Pluto, albeit a planet I rarely think of, was a planet I think many could relate to. It was furthest from the sun... it had a wacky orbit that made it the 8th closest planet from the sun... it was one of the sure fire answers in 6th grade when I had to pencil in the planets in order.

Anyhoo... I'm really bummed.

Neptune... know that you will never have a cartoon character named after you.

.aCr.

Maddenoliday - a day late...

Picked up my copy of Madden 07 last night... but didn't get a chance to throw it in the 360 till 11:30PM because of some Podcast recordings earlier in the evening.

I debated getting the title all together because I picked up NCAA 07 with the purchase of the 360 a week ago... but found a brand new copy for 46 bucks (retails for $59) at a local WalMart. Knowing that I would pick it up at some point I opted to get it now... throw it in every once in a while until I totally commit to starting a franchise on it.

Threw it into the console late last night to see the differences between it and NCAA 07... Both games were developed by the same development team so there were a number of similarities in the game play and controls. This was good.. particularly in the game play so I could get through a tune up game without getting my ass handed to me by the computer.

While tooling around in a practice game (Pats VS Bengals) I decided to alter the elements to see what a game would be like in the rain. The game played incredibly well with the altered settings... the graphics are amazing and EA went out of their way to show that they could detail little things such as field conditions when players tear up a wet turf.

I've read a lot of good and a lot of bad reviews for the latest Madden installment. The Madden franchise is everything that's great about sports gaming while at the same time it represents everything that is bad about gaming... I haven't purchased a Madden football game since Madden 2001 so I'm looking at the game from a very different perspective.

The game has come a long way since I first started playing Madden. While it's a very solid game... its not my favorite Madden of all time.

That honor still goes to Madden 1993. I purchased that Madden for my Super Nintendo and I played that fucking cart until it could be played again... Those who had this madden will remember that it only had the Players Union agreement so there wasn't any official teams.


The game lacked from any key features. it didn't have a regular season. you could only participate in a playoff and you had to write down really long codes to continue play after a game because it didn't have any memory on the cart to save your progress.

The reason I loved the game so much... Madden 93 started the playbook calling by having you select your play calling by selecting - STRONG, PRO, FAST (i can't recall the terminology) but that had a very big effect on who was in the huddle. You could catch a Defense napping if you were quick enough with your play calling so that their player assignments were back on the field yet.

How did a feature this good get lost over the years?

Player substitution is a big deal. It happens on almost every play - thanks largely in part to players having "specialist" duties. Players now magically appear in the huddle and you get to the offensive line with far too many pre-snap options.

Ok... maybe you can't have enough pre-snap options... but introducing player changes would add a much needed degree of difficulty.

XBOX Live Arcade

So... I've had the XBOX 360 for about a week or so. When I'm not playing NCAA 07, I've been rocking out a little bit of the XBOX Live Arcade.

I was a little hesitant to purchase any games at first... but I was shocked by how easy it was to download and play the available demos. A demo that really wooed me was Rockstar Games (maker of the GTA) Table Tennis for the 360. I took a little while to download the playable demo but it was worth the wait.

The game has some of the easiest controls I've ever absorbed on a first play. It's also highly fucking addictive. I have a gift certificate laying around and me'thinks I found myself my second title for the 360.

Offically Up in iTunes

For those waiting to subscribe to the podcast in iTunes... your wait is officially over. You can now get all your PopCulture Cast goodness by clicking here.

The Boston Massacre pt. II

I thought 2007 was supposed to be the summer of sequels?

Much like like the first Boston Massacre (Yankees / Sox, 1978), the Boston Red Sox find themselves 5.5 6.5
games out of the AL East lead with only 39 games left in the season.

When Johnny DEAMON wasn't kicking our teeth in on Friday & Saturday, Derek *Bleeping* Jeter hit a huge homer in the top of the 10th last night to possibly extinguish any hope of a Red Sox post season.

The Sox and Yanks tangle up today at 1:00PM EST to finish up their 5 game home stand...

The Sox lost the afternoon match against the Yankees 2-1...

It Lives

September29th.com got a few cosmetic touches this evening... Happy to report that the September29th/Podcast area of the site is up and fully operational.


"Nevermind the Rollie, its the pop culture podcast"

The show is in the process of being added to iTunes so you'll have to do a direct download till the middle of next week...

Anyhoo - quit reading here and click "podcast" in the header bar above!

.alamo city rollie.

Evil Empire VS Olde Town Team

With September around the corner and the Sox down in the AL East by 2.5 1.5 games... This weekend's Five games in Four days series could be the make or break point for the Olde Town Team.

ESPN is going to carry 3 of the 5 games and I'm pretty sure that FOX will carry the Saturday game nationally so that gives many of us without the MLB package a chance to catch all the action.

Tune in for what will probably be the most talked about Baseball weekend of 06.

I've said it for years... Detroit is the birthplace of everything

Detroit. You've given us cars, fabulous music and today you've given birth to an overdue revolution.

A Judge in Detroit ruled against the Administration's Surveillance program. I can't stress how important of a win this is. There's going to be a very long and ugly turf war in the coming months... Stop everything that you're doing right now and bone up on the subject.

Belated Anniversay

Just occurred to me this evening that 12 months have past since this website got retooled as the "B" word. I started September29th.com in late 2002 and updated a raw web page with photos and humorous stories about things going on in Detroit. I did a terrible job of archiving any of the content I was putting up the first 2 years... I decided to look into a blogging tool to take care of just that when I finally got off may ass to get that accomplished.

In the past 12 months... a lot has changed. This website has been on 3 or 4 servers.... I have had 4 different places of employment, I've lived at three different physical addresses and I've been in and out of a very meaningful relationship.

I don't really ever know what I'm going to put on the site when I sit on my powerbook... I just sorta stare at the screen and start typing till I feel better.

Big ups to everyone who swings by the site. The next couple of weeks are going to be really exciting. I can't wait to deploy all the goodies in the coming days.

Ticky Tacky Song Change!

So... I'm a few minutes into the Season 2 of WEEDS and they fucking changed the song to the intro of the show! Well... they didn't change the song, the artist who sung the song in the first season is now absent. In her place... is some throaty guy.

WTF? Is this unprecedented?

One of the reasons I dug this show was because of the intro song....



Update: Just got off the phone with my friend Heather. She informed me that the throaty voice in the theme song tonight was Elvis Costello. Still wished the song wasn't altered.

NCAA 07

OK...

No joke. The new NCAA game is one of the craziest football games I've ever played in my life. I've only played one game so far... (Auburn/Clemson - I was the away team, Auburn)

Here's a rundown of what I think so far.

The Good:
1.) The Graphics. Unreal is an understatement. The lighting, the condition of the field when you play on it.... the details... the stadiums, the camera shots, the tackles... in short = it's nuts.

2.) Menu Screens : Ok... while this may be silly for some... NCAA has a lot of Menu interface when you start a Dynasty. Not only does it look amazing.... it's possibly the finest work they've ever done. I should know... I've played the shit out of the series.

3.) ESPN realtime updates: OK. So i went a little nuts and hooked up the WiFi for the XBox. Dude. I get real time scores of shit going down in real life. Like - I got the Redskins/Bengals score while I PLAYED.

4.) Stadium Momentum. Seriously... playing away is really hard. Like HARD.

5.) Jump the HIKE - I don't know when they brought this in... but if you can time it just right. You can have you team Jump the Hike and get a HUGE jump on the O-Line.

The Bad:

1.) No CLASSIC - viewing angle. There's a fixed shot of the action in this years NCAA. Unless I can find where to zoom out a bit... this is something I'm going to get used to.

2.) Pace of the Game: Because of the graphics... the game takes a very different pace from all the other NCAA's I've ever played. Meaning... if you picked up a NCAA one year to the next... you didn't miss a beat. This one is way different.

3.) the Controls - the Controls are very new and they're very detailed. Everything from Kicking (think - Golden tee) to the onscreen options. It's CRAZY intensive. They've merged a lot of Madden/NCAA improvements from the past 3 years into this one title... It's going to take a while to understand it all. Once I do... it's going to be a plus.

4.) Repetitive Shot sequences : Like early EA Games... there's a lot of looping graphics that can get old. It's the first XBox 360 port... but you know that good things are going to come of it.

5.) Game Clock - ok... this is good and bad. You know how its almost impossible to get a delay of game in these football games? Well... it's totally possible now. It feels like a 24 second clock. and with the graphics being unreal as they are... its crazy how many penalties you can get in one game. I figured out how to get to the line quicker... but you have take time to let players line up and the options on O are crazy... so you run the risk of going over anyways when you're trying to figure out the new button layout and the OPTION ROUTES.

All in all... I just SCRAPED the surface yesterday. I'm blown away by how crazy the game looks on the TV. I'm blown even more away by how good the system is. It's like CRAZY good.

I sorta wished I held out for Madden in a way. It's going to be a game that has more bugs fleshed out and I'm going to probably pick that one up... which is going to possibly put this game on the shelf for a little bit... but I have a solid week of playing it to make me possibly hold off on getting Madden on release day.

Taking the Plunge

Picked up an XBOX 360 over the weekend...

The lowdown on what I got.

• The Puto Edition (with everything that comes with it)
• An XBoxGold for 3 months for 19 bucks (i don't know if I'll be doing this or not... did want to try it tho)
• An extra controller
• A quick charge thing for two battery packs
• An extra rechargeable battery
• WiFi dongle
• NCAA Football 2007 (which I'll review in a separate post)

Took me about an hour to unpack - hookup - and get all my settings straight.
I got it upscaled to 1080i and it looks pretty good.

The menu screens are very user friendly. It has a lot of Tech-Heavy/Networking rich features that I'm not going to fuck with...

There's lots of shit to square away out of the box. I just downloaded the demo of PacMan onto the hard drive. I think i have an option to purchase for 4 bucks. It says "400".... but that may refer to a point system Microsoft has I'm not familiar with... worse case scenario its Lira.

It doesn't play well with the Mac out of the box... but Nullriver has a solution for that.

My sister is pretty into one of the games that comes installed on it called "HeXic". It was developed by the guy who did Tetris I think...

No complaints thus far... I've had little luck getting the 2nd wireless remote to be recognized by the XBox. I need to read the instructions on that and how to turn on & off the system with the wireless remotes.

Summation: Possibly the best Microsoft product I've ever owned. And it pains me to say that...

Season 2 of WEEDS on Tonight

Just realized that Season 2 of WEEDS on Showtime starts tonight.

Show kicks off at 10pm EST.

Hello Kitty Must Die: Part 2

A few months ago... I posted a lengthy rant about why Hello Kitty sucked and Fender Strats with Hello Kitty's sucked even more. Never failing to amaze me... I ran across a boingboing.net entry about the new Hello Kitty Visa.

While I place little doubt that children have credit cards their parents take care of... This card is everything I hate about Hello Kitty and the people who love her.

If there was any justice... the card should have strict spending limits like not allowing you to purchase anything above 3 dollars or anything under 600 dollars. Making the card pointless and increasing the possibilities of it getting rejected when I stand behind your sorry ass.

Panda Express

While out doing some errands over the weekend... my sister asked if I would be down for some Chinese. I haven't had any good Chinese food since I left Detroit so I took her up on the invite.

My expectations came crashing through the floor when I realized that the place was between a Starbucks - with fucking drive-thru and a T-Mobile center.

I was hungry... and my sister really wanted to go... so I sucked it up and went in.

The place was well kept which is nice great and all... but all the great Chinese places I've been to have shared space with Liquor Stores or were at least within the ear shot of one.

The clientele was predictable.... Half the people who dined in groups were taking calls on their cellphones.

The Food :

I didn't get anything too thrilling to write home about. I didn't have any MSG's... but I'm not exactly a picture of health so that category is a push.

Summation: Avoid if possible.

The Orange Man Commeth

Several years ago... ABC took a chance on Dennis Miller in the Monday Night Football booth. What many people don't know is... one of modern day heros, Tony Kornheiser, came in second place to Miller. Tony went on with his job at the Washington Post, his radio show (then on ESPN Radio) and began one of the most well respected sport shows on television - Pardon the Interruption.

Tony later got fired from ESPN for reasons that are really silly to rehash... but its safe to say that ESPN doesn't care for The Orange one and Tony doesn't care for the channel he refers to as the "Four Letter network".

Fast forward a few years... Tony finds himself as the third guy in the booth for Monday Night Football, for the network he has a love hate relationship with.

So you're saying to yourself... big whup. I don't like football.

Tony is going to be the GUY people will be talking about on Tuesday mornings. I guarantee it. It's not a question of "if" he'll upset someone... its only a question of "when".

This is the same guy who upset a country when covering the 84 Olympics for the Washington Post.

Go get em Tony.

Big Birthday Ups

For my dear friend Chivo.

He's currently settling into his new Apartment in downtown Dallas, Texas. He begins his PhD program tomorrow so the likelihood of him surfacing soon to enjoy anything is rather bad.

If you peep the blog today Chivo, this quick post is for you. I'll get in touch with you soon to work out the details of me visiting later this month and you coming out here for a visit in the Fall.

werd,
.alamo city rollie.

Lazy Sunday

It's about 5 past 1:00 PM in San Antonio Texas... Currently enjoying a very lazy Sunday afternoon at home with the dogs and the Television. Don't have much to report on... I've seen an unusual amount of movies over the weekend. There's a slight chance that I may go out and purchase something stupid this afternoon... but more on that later if I end up going through with it.

Have a quick update on the September29th Podcast... James and I have been working over the weekend with getting a couple of the open items cleared away before we go live this week. One of the things that got completed last night was the graphic for the show... James is hellbent on making this an enhanced-AAC recording so I needed to dream up logo of sorts.

It's very Sex Pistols...


"Nevermind the Rollie, its the pop culture podcast"

September29th Podcast?

Don't know when its going to drop... but I recorded the first of what I hope will be a number of PopCulture podcasts. I recorded the show with James and Ted last night. We talked about a number of things and we have an obscene amount of material in the can so I don't really know what's going to make it and what's going to be left out.

Anyhoo I'll post more about it once it goes live.

- Rollie

EkoBase 4

Keeping our promise to make EkoBase more frequent... we dropped our 4th installment today.

Peep the EkoBase Podcast by clicking on this link. It's been one of my favorite shows we've done...

Topics:

1.) Chicks we think are going to get laid in Season 3 and likely die shortly after. (girls have been dying for showing any affection on the show thus far)
2.) Whats up with the cloud monster? (i drop a mad - theory on this subject)

Anyhoo... its LOST / Star Wars related. Peep it.

The END. VS Black FLAG?

Before you get too excited about this post being about the seminal punk-band BLACK FLAG... this post has more to do about the other Black Flag that matters. Pest medicine.

While out looking for WASP/Bee/Hornet/Evil-With-Wings venom... I hesitated to look at anything other than the classic poison "black flag".

I mean... is there a better name for anything out there? It's a fucking black flag!

I wish they'd branch out and make more stuff... I don't know if I would buy "Black Flag 2% Milk"... but if it where "Black Flag 2% Chocolate Milk".......

I digress.

While out I ran across a new poison. Not only does it have a cool name. It has brand logo to die for! (no pun intended)

The brand - "The END."

How cool is that? "The End PERIOD"

I really dig the 'E' within the 'E'... it's like the best Ska Band logo that never was a Ska logo.

Can't say much for the product... I went with Black Flag... but it was close!

.eatshitbees.

Nicknames Needed for the new W/D's

I finally got the the Washer and Dryer installed at my new place... I don't know very much about Washers and Dryers but we scored a pretty good deal on these.

I thought the learning curve on how to use these things would be pretty nuts but I'm happy to report that they're some of the easiest washer and dryers I've ever used in my life.

It has a number of settings that I'm likely never going to use... but they're hands down the best fucking things I've ever put my sorry clothes in.

An Hour In Gridlock..

So... you know you're new to a city when you haven't bothered to program local radio stations to your car for the morning and afternoon commutes to and from work. My commute is 6 miles or so and it rarely takes more than 10 minutes to get from my front door to the parking lot at work.

Was I surprised this morning when I was stuck in Traffic for 53 minutes!

I called the office 10 till 8 to inform them that I had been stuck for 15 minutes and would be coming in a little later than usual... I never bothered to see what the hold up was.

Upon my arrival I got word that a Woman was killed when she attempted to cross I-35 (kiddy corner from where I work) but got ran over by oncoming traffic.

Nuttyness.

Cicada Killer WASP - In my GARDEN

Ok... I'm a city boy. I know dick about about the animal kingdom... and I have a very respectful fear for any animal that isn't domesticated.

Was I surprised the other day when I mistook a Cicada Killer WASP for 2 Dragonflies mating in my garden...

Despite having a rather nasty name... The CKA happens to be one of the most harmless bees out there. Their sole purpose is to kill Cicada's and live underground.

Wikipedia informed me that they're a solitary bee... which is cool on several fronts. But having 3" bees at the foot of my doorstep isn't going to work for me.

Haven't been able to find a Insect Area Map to confirm that I have CKA's... I read that they were quite common in the North but couldn't confirm them being in Texas.

There's a number of Cicada's around here so it makes sense for them to be around.

Anyhoo... look for me to wage an all out war with them in the coming days.

NBC - NFL Pre Season HD

After doing a number of chores around the house this weekend, I made it a point to clear my evening schedule to watch the first NFL Pre-Season game of the year (Raiders/Eagles) on NBC. I forget how many years its been since NBC had football... but they recently secured Sunday Night games when ABC left Monday Night Football to ESPN late last year.

NBC is producing their first HD game ever... which is sorta fitting seeing that this will be my first complete viewing of a football game in HD.

Have to say that NBC doesn't have the best HD production I've seen in recent weeks... Perhaps they're just working out all the bugs but there's been some glaring HD troubles in the first half.

For some reason the camera lens appears to reset and go out of focus from time to time.

It appears that they've taken care of the problem... The only other observation I have to make is that games shot in 16x9 are really great to watch from home. It's amazing to see a game when you can read the types of defense 2ndary coverages are being played.

If you're into football... you have to get HD.

Blogger's been down...

Blogger's been down for a couple of days so I haven't been able to
post any updates... Once the fix is in - I should have 8 or 9
things to throw up.

.be warned.

RIP - Arthur Lee

Hands down one of my favorite artists of all time, Arthur Lee, passed away last night after battling lymphoblastic leukemia.

My introduction to the psychedelic rock band LOVE came when I read an interview about the band in high school. Arthur was unapologetic about his influence in rock... so I dropped everything that afternoon and purchased Forever Changes on the strength of its cover.

Several years later while in Detroit, Arthur Lee went on tour and I had a chance to see him perform Forever Changes in its entirety.

He will be forever missed.

Top 5 Channels that need to go HD

Now that I've had HD for a few days... I've just realized that there's a number of channels that don't broadcast their content in HD.

The top 5 channels I'd like to get their HD shit together are (in no particular order)

CNN - Admittedly... i don't watch much of CNN outside of the occasional Cooper Anderson 360... but its a 2 hour show that I would love to see in 16x9.

MTV - I honestly couldn't tell you what MTV is programing these days... but if it were in HD, I'd watch the 15th Real World.

Comedy Central - It's an injustice that both the Daily Show and the Colbert Report are not in HD. WTF?

Bravo - Ok... I'm a closet BRAVO junkie. Project Runway season 3 should be in High Def.

MSNBC - If there's an hour I really try to block out for myself daily... its 7-8 so that I can see the Countdown on MSNBC...

Come to think of it... all News channels should be in HD.

*Update*

It just occurred to me that PBS (yes... you read that correctly) is in HD... yet a channel like TBS or WGN don't syndicate their HD content. While I don't care for the programing of TBS or WGN - Cub and Braves games in HD wouldn't suck..

Also - TBS shows College Football Games from time to time and that would be hella cool.

Speaking of hella cool... the Weather channel in HD would be epic.

- rollie

Guins

Over the weekend I finally got around to watching the documentary, The March of the Penguins. Knowing very little about Guins, aside that they were birds and reside on a polar cap... I thought it would be a 90 minute piece where they show baby penguins gliding around the ice on their bellies.

Much to my surprise, it was a straight forward documentary with Morgan Freedman doing the English narration.

After watching the documentary I learned that Penguins must procreate under the harshest of conditions. I guess one can make a case for a lot of species that have to overcome incredible odds to survive...

Anyhoo... while cute at times it made me think quite a bit about my surroundings and the precious fuck all I do about to make life around me live a little easier.

Go out and rent it. Your brain will thank you later.