There really isn't too much to report. I've been a little sick the past few days, I don't know if that was in my last post or not. My sinuses have been really clogged up and it even got the point where it clogged my ears, which usually never happens to me. I've had to blow my nose about every 5 minutes for the past few days, it's been really annoying.

We got digital cable on Monday after realizing we were getting totally screwed by Charter for just having basic cable. Basic cable gave us about 20 channels but if we paid $15 more a month we could get digital cable which includes all of expanded basic cable (which is a lot of channels) and then a ton of digital cable channels plus the movie tier for digital cable. So we have a billion movie channels now. We either got a really good deal or Charter was ripping us off big time for just having basic cable.

My parents are coming to visit me during the long weekend. So at least I've got something to do this weekend. Although the new TV has been filling that void.

Also, there's a guy in our apartment complex that apparently thinks it's cool to ride his obnoxiously loud motorcycle during the night. You kind of want to yell at him out of your window but then you realize he's probably crazy so that's a bad idea.

We went to see Snakes on a Plane Friday, and I have to say I'm a little disappointed in it. I was expecting it to make fun of itself a lot more during the film, but it only does that a few times. At times it's actually a pretty serious movie. A whole lot of stupid stuff still happens which keeps you entertained though. I'd say it was still worth going to.

I also went to a bonfire with some guys at work and their friends. That was pretty fun too, although since then my allergies have been acting up badly and I think I'm catching a cold. I'm hoping it will be gone by tomorrow morning so I don't have to deal with sneezing and blowing my nose every 5 minutes at work.

If you didn't know, the XBox 360 supports high definition output to TVs that are HDTV ready. I've never really considered getting a HDTV until recently when I bought Dead Rising. The game has extremely small text and is almost unreadable at times. What makes it even more frustrating is you cannot get hit by zombies when you are answering your phone. So you have to squint to read the text and run around and hope you don't get hit. It's SO annoying. I've read that the problem is that the developers designed the game for HD and not the standard television. This makes the text harder to read. Madden 2007 also has this problem, but to a lesser extent. A guy at work bought a LCD HDTV and got it on Friday and we hooked up his XBox 360 to it and it looked fantastic. Well if you know me at all, that made me want to buy a new TV too. Well Saturday I browsed around at some stores and decided to get a LCD HDTV from Best Buy. Unfortunately, they didn't have them in the Rochester Best Buy so I decided to drive to Inver Grove Heights, about an hour away, to get one since I had nothing better to do. I think it was a very worthwhile purchase. Not only does the XBox 360 look amazing, but DVDs are also breathtaking on it. I wish digital cable wasn't so expensive though so I could get more HDTV content from Charter.

Well most of my friends are headed back to school or are already back now. So if you're one of them, hope you have a nice fall semester back at school. It's weird not going back, I think. Everyone is leaving work and I'm seeing a lot of cars packed full of crap which is all probably going into some kid's dorm room.

We had some pretty crazy weather today. This morning it was really dark out and then around 12:30 the weather sirens for the city for a while. But it never rained, at least at work where I was looking out the window. Then around 7pm it got really windy and started pouring out. It was raining so hard that you'd probably have to stop your car if you were driving in it.

At least I have a funny story out of it. I was going in my room to close my window when it started to get bad out and then a sudden gust of wind slammed my door closed (which was held closed by a plasic doorstop). So I go to open my door and fix the doorstop and it's jammed and twisted up under the door!! I try and get the door open but it won't budge and I can't reach the doorstop with enough of my fingers to pull it out. So I was stuck in my room!! I had to call Justin over to help me. We messed around for a while trying to get the door open but eventually Justin took a screwdriver and poked at the doorstop until it was far enough that I could grab it and pull it out. Pretty crazy, huh? I thought it was pretty funny.

I'm not sure what's going on, I went a while without updating there didn't I? Sorry Kristin, hopefully this post will keep you entertained at work at least for a few minutes.

Well I can't remember what I did last Wednesday or Thursday so I guess it wasn't very eventful, whatever it was. I moved offices at work on Friday and then left early to take a trip home for a orthodontist appointment (which was on Monday). Most of the weekend I spent with my family or doing things like getting my car's tires rotated/balanced. I didn't get to see all my friends, but I did get to see some of them before everyone left for school. It's kind of strange not going back this semester. Everyone is ready to go and I'm not even thinking about it yet. It will definitely be strange to have all my friends in school while I'm out. I was glad to come home this weekend though, I felt a lot better on the drive back, like it was well worth the trip.

For some reason Monday night I didn't really feel like myself. I made a stop in Winona for dinner and then on the way back to Rochester I just felt 'different'. I thought maybe it was because I was driving at night and hadn't done that in a while, but in the end I'm not sure what it was. About an hour after I did get back in Rochester and finished unpacking everything I got really dizzy for some reason. Kind of like what happens when you get up from sitting down too fast, but it didn't want to go away. It was weird. I decided I should get some sleep so I assume that's what the problem was.

Me legs are pretty bit up by mosquitoes from geocaching with Ashley this weekend too. We were only out for probably an hour, but as soon as you go into the woods you are swarmed by them. Thankfully we find the caches almost immediately both times. If we didn't, we'd both probably have big swollen legs and necks right now. When we were on our way to one of the caches we saw a family going back the other way on the trail and they told us "It's an easy find." We thought this was very cool to run into other people who were doing the same thing we were, especially since it's something most people haven't heard of or don't go out and do.

I beat Dead Rising before I left and the "true" ending is actually worse than the first ending in my opinion. There's nothing really special about it. It did unlock a mode where I can go around and kill zombies a lot easier though. I haven't tried it much though since Madden 2007 came out today. I loved the 2K football series when it was published but because EA now has the exclusive NFL rights, I don't have a choice anymore. This Madden game is decent so far. I'm really annoyed by the hard to read text which probably goes along with not having a HDTV (Dead Rising has this problem too). It makes me want to buy a new TV actually. The most annoying thing about the game is the choppy-ness of the menus and some of the after-play camera shots are really choppy and slow. The game also doesn't look that great at all, graphics wise. But again, I think that's a non-HDTV issue because the screen shots online look really, really nice. They have this new Superstar mode where you can play from the perspective of a certain position. It's an interesting concept to say the least. I'm trying to play as a free safety right now. It's a position that isn't involved in every play so I'm fairly safe and probably won't blow my team's lead all the time. It's strange because you play with the camera on that player, not on the whole field like the standard view. This mode sounds cooler than it is though, at least in my opinion. When your player isn't on the field the computer plays the game for you in a faster speed. But the speed is still not fast at all so it takes forever to finish a game. If you like watching football players run quickly, this mode is for you.

I think I could use a day to sleep in really late and catch up on my sleep

I guess I shouldn't have been complaining that they don't sell glass bottled coke anymore, because they apparently do. I had read that Mexican Coke can be found in glass bottles so I was at the local Hy-Vee grocery store and I walked down the soda aisle just to check to see if they happened to have any glass bottled American coke. It turns out they did!!! They are the really small 8 oz bottles, but glass bottled coke nonetheless. They came in a pack of six. I asked someone who was walking down the aisle who looked like he might be a manager of some sort if it was special or if they always have them. He said he's pretty sure they always have had them there. That's what I get for doing my grocery shopping at Wal-Mart, I miss out on the cool grocery store stuff.

Coca-Cola, please bring back Coke in a glass bottle. Everyone knows it tastes better in glass and it sure looks a whole lot cooler too. I'm glad you decided to bring it back in a way, but I really don't like how you're using the plastic tops instead of the cool metal ones.



Also, what's with this new version of Blogger in which we can sign in using our Google accounts? I tried to switch mine over but it wouldn't let me. Did anyone get it to work for them?

Edit: It seems that the reason I can't change (and probably you too Scott) is because I publish my blog on my own server instead of on Blogger's. One of the new features of the Blogger beta is dynamic page creation, meaning you go to the website and it queries the server for whatever the person is looking for and displays it. While this is faster, it obviously won't really work if you publish your blog on a server that isn't Blogger's.

I'm still enjoying Dead Rising. When you beat a "psychopath" in the game they usually die some very gruesome way. So far, one dies by falling on two chainsaws and another dies by having a sword fall on his eye. Pretty gross, huh? It can get pretty frustrating at times but overall, it's fun.

I've been reading Fahrenheit 451 the past few days. It's not bad so far, but I haven't gotten into much of it yet. I've heard it is really good so I'm sure I'll enjoy it towards the end. After I finish this book I'll have to go get some new ones.

The Cubs have lost 4 in a row now, mostly due to horrible pitching. I don't really have any faith in them coming close to the wild card anymore.

I tried the demo of Dead Rising on XBox 360 a few days ago and decided it was worth it to get it. One of the few XBox 360 games I decided was actually worth the money. The game is really fun. Basically, there is a shopping mall infested with a TON of zombies and you get to go around killing them with all sorts of weird weapons like your traditional knife or your non-traditional bowling ball. There is some sort of story in the game but I haven't gotten in to much of it yet because I've been "saving" random people around the mall. Except I'm bad at saving them because they eventually get overtaken by zombies and turned into one themselves.

A movie for tomorrow has not been decided on yet. We'll probably talk about it at work and figure it out. There aren't many good ones opening this week though.

Too many of you visit using Internet Explorer, you should upgrade to Firefox!

I'm not really sure why I look forward to the weekends when I'm here since I do absolutely nothing. Seriously, I'll try and sleep as long as possible (which isn't very long anymore) and then try to figure out how to pass the time. This weekend it involved reading, watching a few movies, and sleeping when all else failed. I look forward to the weekend during the work week and then once I get to the weekend all I want is the work week again so I have something to do. But now that it's Sunday night I want it to be the weekend again. It's a vicious cycle. I think I'm missing school again, or at least will be once everyone goes back.

Huxley's Brave New World Revisited is pretty thought provoking so far. He compares his book to 1984 several times and explains how they represent two different ways of controlling a population and his thoughts on how each of them would work. Basically when you read this book you realize that he's right on most of the things he says, especially about business and marketing products.

I bought Forest Gump and The Butterfly Effect today at Wal-Mart. The Butterfly Effect is the "director's cut" version which is supposed to have an alternate ending. It would be cool to see it but a combination of the DVD sucking and my DVD drive continuing its campaign of not working all the time has prevented me from watching more than half an hour of the movie for right now. I'm sure I'll try again later in the week. Forest Gump, however, works flawlessly and has a bunch of commentary tracks and then a bunch of "making of" videos.

Apparently Green Day released a CD almost a year ago and I didn't realize it. However, the CD doesn't have new music it's just a live CD. After hearing the Goo Goo Dolls live CD I think I might have to buy the Green Day one, because I didn't realize how good some of the songs are live, especially the older ones. It's called Bullet in a Bible.

Chevrolet is expected to announce that they are bringing the Camaro back after a brief absence. Read and see it here. It pretty much looks like the coolest car ever. We'll see how it looks when they actual produce it though. Now they just need to bring back the Firebird/Trans-Am.

Well I'm going to read or something so I can avoid going to sleep.

Edit: I put a movie and music log in the 'stuff' section. I'll add a book log when I get around to it.

Didn't do much today, just sat around. It was a really nice day out though so I did take a long bike ride. It was pretty cloudy actually, so it wasn't really a nice day, but it was a very nice temperature out so riding my bike was nice.

I guess I haven't posted an update on the Cubs in a few days, so I will now. They have won 7 of their last 10 games and have been on fire on offense (except for Friday when they got shut out). Somehow the team all remembered they were being paid to play baseball. On Friday Dusty Baker, the cubs manager, said the Cubs are still in the wild card race. I'm really glad to hear him say that because I was hoping they weren't going to give up. Yeah, realistically the Cubs aren't going to get into the playoffs because they are 10 games behind the leaders of the wild card race. But, if they can somehow pull off a string of wins they have a really good chance since the National League sucks so much this year. Wouldn't that be awesome if they made it in to the playoffs? I think the perfect story would be they get within a few games of the leader of the wild card and then Derrek Lee comes back again and rockets the Cubs into the playoffs over the last week of the normal season. What would be even cooler is if there was a wild card tie!

Justin and I went to see The Descent today. It was one of the better movies I have seen lately. It was very gruesome at times and the filming was done very well, it fit the environment that they characters were in. I'd suggest it to those who don't have weak stomachs.

I actually left work early on Thursday because I had a pretty bad stomach ache. I felt a lot better after taking some medicine and sleeping some, but it came back later in the afternoon. Thankfully it was fine this morning though. Must have been a quick bug or something.

I got invited to Google's Writely website the other day and finally gave it a shot today and I must say that I am very impressed. I'll explain for those who don't know what it is... it's basically Microsoft Word online but you can have multiple people editing a document at the same time and then your changes are seen on everyone's screen. I could see it being very useful for school, especially for technical documents that need to be constantly revised and/or merged. If you want to try Writely out then contact me or leave a comment and I'll hook you up. It's pretty cool.

The past few days have been pretty good. I had to do some presentations at work that went pretty well, V for Vendetta came out on DVD (more on this in the post), and other random good stuff!

Like I said, V for Vendetta came out on DVD yesterday. If you haven't seen it, you need to. It may seem like some superhero movie like Batman or something because the main character wears a mask, but that is very far from the truth. The movie is about politics, freedom, and revenge. Even people I know who thought they would hate it turned out loving the movie. Unfortunately, the special edition DVD is pretty crappy though. There are some extra features but nothing that great. It also has no commentary!! It definitely should since the cast has some big names as well as the directors. Go rent/buy it now!

Keeping with the theme of repressive governments, I just finished reading Brave New World last night. In general, I liked it a lot. I seem to have a thing for books that talk about how government can control life and other things of that sort. Next on the plate is Brave New World Revisited, Fahrenheit 451 and then I'll have to take a trip to the bookstore again. I'll probably get Huxley's Island since it's supposed to be kind of the opposite situation as in Brave New World so it would be interesting to read and compare.

Cubs have been winning a lot, just to remind you.

We had a pretty big storm last night, I think a lot of the midwest did actually. But, today is by far the nicest day we've had in a long time. It's around 75 degrees out and sunny (well it did rain a lot in the morning). Perfect bike riding weather if you ask me, which is what I will be doing right after I finish this post.

Did you know Rochester is one of the windiest cities in the United States? Weird huh?