Things have been going along well lately. I can't think of too much to report.

It's been really cold over here in the past few days. Rochester Public Schools canceled their classes yesterday and today because the morning temperature was -25 with -50 windchill readings. It's supposed to warm up so that will be nice.

I've been watching the TV series Dead Like Me on my Xbox 360 recently. It's about a girl who dies and then becomes a grim reaper who has to take people's souls before they die horrible deaths. It's pretty entertaining. It's much more humorous than I just made it sound. It's available on Netflix Watch Instantly so I've been trying that out. I really like that service on Netflix, but they need to improve their selection of movies and try and work on a way to get 5.1 sound to work for streaming video. I wouldn't watch a blockbuster film with just stereo sound if I could get the disk.

My car has been having some issues lately. I've always had bad luck with tires so this shouldn't have been too surprising. The car had a flat back around November which was discovered during an oil change. They repaired it and then noticed that my wheel bearing was bad. $600 later everything was back to normal. On my way to Green Bay for Christmas I lost about 8 pounds of pressure on one of my tires so I had to take it in again to a place in Green Bay. Apparently I had a bead leak and they also informed me I needed new tires, because the tread wear was getting to be very small. When I headed home I bought some new tires at Discount Tire Co. The tires are pretty nice, but not something I wanted to spend money on. It also may or may not be leaking engine coolant. I haven't seen enough evidence so far to say that it is or isn't though.

I've been playing Gears of War 2 as far as gaming goes. I also finished up Fable 2 recently and I've been playing Fallout 3 on and off. There were too many good games released at the end of 2008 and it's hard to play them all. I will be going back to Fable 2 at some point because they released some new downloadable content. I'll probably start that again once I finish Gears of War 2.

I don't think I mentioned it but I took down the Netflix movie list on my sidebar for the website. I forgot why exactly, I think there were problems with it loading. Eventually I will try and put it back up, but it's not high on my list of priorities right now. In its place I put a flash application showing my Twitter feed, in case anyone cares what I am doing or likes reading random sentences that I post.

If you weren't paying attention to the CES show in Las Vegas this past week then you've been missing out. Palm finally introduced a new phone that looks good for once. It's called the Palm Pre and is exclusive to Sprint. I'm on AT&T so I can't really get it, but was planning on getting a new phone soon anyway. Right now I'm leaning toward the iPhone with the possibility of the Blackberry Bold. The Bold is $100 more expensive right now and I'm not sure I'd get $100 more worth of fun out of it. I will probably figure out the phone situation over the next week or so.

Labels: car, netflix, phone, twitter, weather, xbox 360

Things around here have actually been pretty busy lately. Now that work has started I don't have all day to sit around so the weeks have been going by a little faster. I haven't posted in a while though so I'll here are a few things that I've been up to.

I have been looking at purchasing a road bike since last year and I finally broke down and got a new Trek road bike last week. I was planning on saving the purchase for later in the summer but after riding with Mike, a friend from work, I saw that road bikes were obviously superior for the long distance rides that I do. I took the bike out for the first rides this past Saturday and Sunday and I am amazed how different this bike is compared to my Trek hybrid. The bike is much lighter and much smoother while riding, as long as you don't hit bumps. I should get a lot of use out of this bike for many years to come.



Both of my bikes have cyclo-computers which track my speed, mileage, and cadence. I really enjoy using them because it helps me get a feel for if I'm improving my time or cadence over separate bike rides. In order to better track everything, I made a page on my site to log each 'real' bike ride that I go on. I put a bunch of information in for each ride and the page will also calculate averages and totals for all the rides. If you want to take a look you can find it under stuff or you can click here to visit.

Justin and I have been playing a lot of Lego Indiana Jones for a few weeks now. We both really enjoyed the Lego Star Wars game so the Indiana Jones version was an obvious choice for some multiplayer action. So far we've found it to be a little glitchy at times (somehow we got 4 billion studs, which is the game's currency) but very fun. We're attempting to get 100% in the game which will probably take a few more weeks.

Shortly after moving I purchased an entertainment center cabinet to store my electronics in. I believe I may have mentioned this earlier, but my living room has a built in hole for a TV which has little/none space for other things like DVD players and my Xbox 360. After putting some wiring in the walls, thanks to my Dad, and picking up my cabinet I have found out that the cabinet is really not designed very well... at least for someone who loves TV/electronics as much as I do. The doors on the front close very tightly and there are only small ventilation holes in the back which are all full of wires now. I became concerned that my things would be ruined if I ran them too long in this setup. In fact, I ran some tests on my media computer and it got to about around 60 degrees Celsius which is much too hot for a computer. My Dad found some vents online that are made for media cabinets so I purchased some of those and plan to put them in the cabinet to hopefully fix this problem. Of course I first need to buy a drill, which I have been putting off for a while now since I don't feel like driving to Lowes which is on the opposite side of town.

Along with the cabinet, I also purchased some end tables for my couch and chair. They look really good with the colors of my furniture so I'm really happy with them. Eventually I'll get around to posting some pictures of everything setup once I finish hiding speaker wire.

Speaking of the speaker wire, speakers were also a problem once I setup my new receiver. Apparently the receiver I purchased does not output analog audio through its digital audio out port which is what I was relying on it doing. This meant I would have to buy digital cables and hope that worked but then the Wii would have no sound at all unless I found a digital audio adapter for that. The easier fix was to buy new speakers, which ended up being a nice option. The result is now 5.1 surround sound in my living room compared to the virtual 6.1 (I think?) speakers I was previously using. Now my problem is trying to hide the speaker wires for the back speakers, which I will also have to deal with shortly.

I think that's all for now. I'll be pretty impressed if you actually made it through the whole post.

Labels: bike log, biking, home theater, xbox 360

I'm all moved in at school now and we're in the second week of classes. After looking at my degree audit I noticed I didn't need one of my classes so now I'm only taking four and don't have class Tuesdays and Thursdays. I am working again Tuesdays and Thursdays though. However, like the title of this post says, school is boring.

The apartment here is pretty nice. The building is around 100 years old but the inside has obviously been renovated since then. There are more electrical outlets in my apartment than there were in the whole entire house I lived in last year. Eventually I'll get around to uploading some pictures of it as well as the house I lived in last year. The one problem is I wish that big trucks didn't drive downtown Hancock because it's hard to hear the TV or talk on the phone when you're near the window when it's open. I guess it won't need to be open for very much longer since it's been getting cooler out.

Microsoft finally sent me a repaired XBox 360. It was sent to Green Bay since they only ship to your billing address, but I should have it in the next few days. I'm glad it's back now because in 13 days Halo 3 comes out and I can't miss that.

I've found that biking here is a lot more tiresome than in Rochester. There aren't many bike paths here that are paved but even the ones that are have modest hills in them and I don't seem to ride hills very well. I've found a few roads that are a little hilly but are manageable that I've been riding on so I'll probably stick with those. Now that it's been getting pretty cold I've been shopping around more for a bike trainer. It looks like I might have to buy one online as the stores here aren't very helpful or don't know what I'm talking about.

The travel bug I sent out a while ago has made its way to Germany. I don't know if I mentioned that earlier or not, but someone took it from Texas to Germany and it has now moved around several times within Germany. I think it's pretty cool that it has wound up all the way over there. You can see where it's been by clicking here. I've done one geocache since I've been here that was around my apartment. I should look for a few more, since there are several within a short distance of my place, including one that is right across the street.

Labels: biking, geocaching, hancock, school, xbox 360

Tomorrow my parents will be arriving and we're going to load up the car to move my stuff back to Green Bay. On Friday I'll be headed back up to MTU for my final year. I really don't feel like leaving Rochester right now though. It's been a pretty fun summer. Hopefully the year will go by quickly at school.

The webcam will be offline for a little while since I'll be moving. If possible, I plan to aim the webcam out my window in my Hancock apartment. This means that it should be looking at downtown Hancock so it will be a little more interesting than the boring no-activity yard which it was previously pointed at.

My XBox 360 received a visit from the fabled "red ring of death" a few weeks ago. For those of you who are not familiar with this, it means that my XBox no longer works and has to be sent in for repairs. Earlier this month it happened to me and then it went away but a few weeks ago it came back with a vengeance and forced me to request a repair on Xbox.com. It looks like they will be sending me a refurbished 360. I'm hoping they send it out tomorrow so that there is a chance I can get the 360 before Friday when I leave since it is shipping to Green Bay. I really want to play Bioshock, which has been receiving all kinds of good press.

Labels: davecam, moving, xbox 360

In case you were skeptical about that XBox 360 blog I mentioned before, here is part of the latest entry that it put up for me:

I heard someone tell drstan00 to go play outside and he was like 'screw that!' so we did some gaming.

Come on, don't think find that hilarious? It's supposed to be from the XBox's point of view.

So I have a little over a month left here. It has actually gone by fairly quickly. I thought it might drag on and on but for some reason it hasn't. At first it was going by very slowly but lately it seems like I'll wonder what day of the week it is and it's already Thursday or Friday (except today is Monday unfortunately). I'm kind of excited to get back to school and see everyone but I'll probably miss not having homework.

I'm pretty tired, so I'll stop typing since I keep making mistakes and it's driving me crazy.

Labels: rochester, xbox 360

Happy Emergence Day!!

What's Emergence Day? Basically it's just a day Microsoft has devoted to giving away prizes to people who play Gears of War online as well as having "play with fame" in which the lead singer of Megadeath will be online playing. Gears of War came out last Tuesday in some places but it has been slowly trickling out to stores since then. I got my copy Wednesday. In case you hadn't heard all the hype about this game, one of the biggest draws of its attention is because of its graphics. It is arguably the best looking game ever, up to now. Take a look for yourself (click on them for a bigger version):




Those are in-game pictures. Amazingly, there is no slow down at all in the game. I am really surprised how amazing it looks, especially in HD. The game plays just as good as it looks too. So far it's probably my favorite 360 game, topping Oblivion. The only bad parts are its lack of story and limited multiplayer modes. There is a story behind the game, but they really didn't try hard to tell it and parts of the game I would be on a mission to get or do something and I don't recall even being told WHY I'm doing it. They should have fixed that up. Multiplayer only has 3 or 4 types of games you can play. They are incredibly fun, but still there is only 3 or 4 compared to Halo's basically limitless approach.

One last nerdy thing and then I'll move on. Apparently XBox 360's everywhere are starting to get into this blogging thing. My 360 just made a blog of its own! Actually, the website tracks what you do on your 360 and then writes a blog entry as if the XBox was writing it. If you don't play it that day it will even write and complain how you never use it and it misses you. It's hilarious.

The Packers won today but unfortunately I was "disabled" for most of the day. I woke up with some stomach pain and it didn't go away until about an hour ago. I was laying down during most of the game but I saw parts and heard all of the game. Glad they did so well versus the Vikings. Now I can go into work tomorrow and brag to all the Vikings fans.

Labels: gears of war, packers, xbox 360

So I finally decide to post something and Blogger is down for maintenance, what's up with that. So I'm writing this post in CoffeeCup HTML Editor, which is pretty handy by the way, although I mostly use it for syntax highlighting.

Every time I get out of my car I get shocked as soon as I go to touch the door. Sometimes, I'll avoid touching the door when I get out to open my garage at the apartment and then when I go to put the key in the garage it gets me there. I can't avoid it! I don't know if it's my car that does it or something that I wear. Either way it's been doing it for a long time. One of my jackets does it too when I take it off or put it on, but that's to be expected for a jacket. At work when I take it off I cautiously put my hand near my metal drawers and wait to see the huge spark it causes. It's actually kind of fun except for the fact it stings.

Windows Media Player 11 was just released recently and I am very impressed with it. I've never been a fan of Windows Media Player but this latest version is pretty nice. It now has this pretty slick black look to it and everything in your "library" is represented by its album art. So when you search through your music you see all of the album art. It's very cool. There is also a feature which allows you to stream music, photos, and video to your XBox 360. This existed before but you couldn't stream video unless you had Windows Media Center Edition. Well now it looks like you can stream videos without having it, but from what I've experienced so far it only work on very select codecs. So no DivX, AVI, and I tried MPEG-2 which doesn't even work. XBox is supposed to support MPEG-2 so I bet it's WMP11 that is blocking it.

I bought F.E.A.R. for the XBox 360 last week, I believe I mentioned it in a previous post probably a month or so ago. It's a first person shooter like Halo but there is also a paranormal twist to the game. There are people who just appear out of nowhere who will disappear into thin air after staring at you or they will tell you some part of the cryptic story and then leave you. The main person seems to be this little girl in a red dress. She's very creepy, see for yourself:


Um.. yeah, creepy. The game is meant to be scary and it's pretty good at doing it. Occasionally you'll just be walking down a path and you'll hear a sudden creepy sound and see something disgusting on the screen. It catches you off guard, it's fun.

Gears of War comes out next week which is supposed to be XBox's killer holiday game. It looks pretty sweet so hopefully it is. I played the Rainbow Six: Vegas demo too and that game is looking awesome as well. There are too many good games coming out.

Speaking of good games, Burger King is releasing three of their own XBox/XBox 360 games this November. Pretty crazy huh? They are $3.99 with a value meal purchase I believe. I'm sure they are pretty horrible games but they will be worth $4 a piece just to laugh at them. The XBox 360 has these "achievement" points you can earn by doing certain things in games and then people can view them online. Well these Burger King games will have them too, so it will be hilarious to lookup your friend online and see he got 20 points for doing something in "Sneak King". Check out a screen shot of the game, it's so funny!


In one of the games, Sneak King, you have to sneak up on hungry citizens who are starving for Burger King and surprise them with a sandwich. You are judged on your technique and surprise factor I believe. How ridiculously funny does that sound?

Labels: gears of war, music, xbox 360

The Killers are releasing their newest CD this week, I believe. Hopefully it's as good as their last one. I hope it's a bit longer though, their last CD is way too short.

I downloaded a demo of the game Lego Star Wars II for XBox 360 the other day and thought it was one of the most hilarioius and unique games I had ever played. The demo features one of the levels in the game, the Mos Eisley Spaceport. After spending a good deal of time playing the demo and reading about the game, I decided to get it. Apparently there are many different hidden doorways and interesting puzzles to solve during the game, which will keep me playing it for a while. There are also TONS of characters. While there is little difference between some of them, it's still cool how there are so many. The coolest part of this game is how it follows the story lines of each of the older Star Wars movies. You are treated with entertaining cut scenes between episodes which give the basic run down of what is happening. The characters do not talk but the developers gave them a very good sense of humor instead. Combining the unique style of Legos with Star Wars and humor is a winning combination.

Since I've already made a geek out of myself this post, I'll just continue to do so. I also downloaded the demo of the new Sonic the Hedgehog game for XBox 360. I had heard it had some camera angle issues, which pretty much every 3D Sonic game has had so I didn't think too much of it. Well let me say that the demo is HORRIBLE. Maybe I'm just not playing the game how it was intended, but the level is extremely poorly designed. If you don't do exactly what is asked of you at a certain point you will most certainly die. This wouldn't be a big problem to me except that you can't even see what you're about to do because the camera angle is so bad all the time. Sega has a LOT of work to do before getting this game to the point where it doesn't suck. Graphically it looks pretty good, but there is a lot to do still to fix the gameplay.

The third demo I tried this weekend was called F.E.A.R. It stands for first encounter something something. This game has a lot of potential. It's a first person shooter but the controls are really sensitive. So much that I had to turn the sensitivity WAY down so I could even aim my character in the right direction. It's really cool when you fight enemies in this game though. They jump over obstacles, hide behind stuff, and they die very dramatically. There is also a feature similar to bullet time, like The Matrix. The demo starts like a game where you just are against some military group but then it freaks you out by having these ghostly characters appear and disappear at unexpected times. For example, you start going down a ladder and turn around and there's a little girl in a red dress looking right at you and then she suddenly disappears. The weirdest part is when you are suddenly in a hallway where the ceiling appears to be a pool of blood and as you walk down the hall weird stuff happens and the little girl appears and disappears again. Messed up game.

Labels: music, sonic, xbox 360