The Barry Gibb Talk Show

Published by Brian | Filed under comedy, video

I wish I knew why this amuses me, but I don’t.

Keep your iPhone! Make mine a Bold!

Published by Brian | Filed under Uncategorized

Top 10 Reasons the new iPhone is no BlackBerry - iPhones are neat, but my number one reason for not ditching my BlackBerry is because mine is fully subsidized by my company including full GPS, text messaging, push-to-talk, BB data-plan, etc. The web surfing capabilities of the iPhone are neat, but I hear the upcoming BlackBerry Bold sports a much improved version of the browser. I send a lot of email, IM’s, and text and because of that I need a real keyboard. I tried an iPhone at the AT&T store and my thick fingered hands just weren’t proficient at typing. The Bold is where it’s at, Jim!

I welcome my new Comcast overlords

Published by Brian | Filed under Uncategorized

Silly Comcast. I thought they were going to be here on June 2nd, turns out they decided to come June 1st (a Sunday). Not a problem except I had to scramble and unpack my modem and set up a laptop. Still, it was worth it. Let’s review the year in Internet speeds for Brian.

DirecPath: 2783 kbps (347.9 KB/sec transfer rate) down and an upload speed of 445 kbps (55.6 KB/sec transfer rate). Meh. Acceptable.

AT&T DSL Xtreme: 6319 kbps down, 433 kbps up. Currently it’s the best DSL AT&T offers and I had no complaints except if I did any uploading, it would kill Wendie’s ability to get on XBox Live.

Comcast: 30971kbps down, 2469 kbps up. Yeeeeeeeeah buddy! That’s what I’m talkin’ about! Obviously I don’t do a sustained 30971 kbps down … it’s 10 second bursts here and there or some such, but 2.5 mbps up??

House (no, not the TV show)

Published by Brian | Filed under house, misc, wendie

Wendie and I have finally purchased a house. It’s odd, really, that at 32 years old I’ve lived only in either other people’s houses, dorms, corporate apartments, my own apartments, and hotels. At the point in my life that I would have normally bought a house, I started traveling full-time and then when I was ready, Wendie wasn’t because she was in school in another state. Wendie has graduated and takes the NAPLEX soon, I’m happy in my job, and the buyer’s market we’re in made conditions ideal for jumping into the fray.

Photos are here if you’re curious.

It’s a nice, big house for two people. 4,375 sq. ft not counting the fully finished basement which is also probably between 500-1000 sq. ft. Of course in Georgia, no one will tell you your square footage, which is asinine and I can’t seem to find a straight answer as to why this is. Oh well. Five bedrooms, four bath, three sided brick, and concrete siding on the back. One nice bonus is that it’s less six miles from work. My new commute should be no less than my commute now which is great! The home inspection went well and nothing major was found wrong; only little things like a single loose shingle, the bushes around the HVAC units need to be trimmed better, and we had a loose stair on the attic ladder! The builder did a really good job and the house is only eight years old. The previous owners had a great eye for colors and we agree with their color schemes and won’t be changing them soon. We have a bedroom on the main so when parents come to visit they won’t have to worry about stairs. The master bedroom has a fireplace. That’s not so great news for my hot-natured self but Wendie will like it.

Unfortunately, we now have to furnish this house and our single bedroom apartment that was furnished with “placeholder” furnishings isn’t going to scale upward. The master bedroom is done as is the dining room and the fridge but we’re taking our time with the rest of the house. We’re considering a DirectBuy membership since two of my friends swear by them and we are having to furnish a house from scratch, but we’re not sure yet.

The hope is at holiday time we can get folks to come see us rather than having to go see them since we can pretty much accommodate everyone. Wendie and I are really pleased. We’re lucky in that we have similar tastes and were both able to walk away with a house we both really like. We saw so many houses in so many neighborhoods … it was overwhelming. I can’t emphasize enough how glutted the housing market is right now in Atlanta. We also like the fact we ended up behind a country club / golf course. Hopefully that will keep the property values good.

We’re glad the hunt is over, though the other stuff that goes with buying a house is in full swing. I’m having the house pre-cleaned before we move in, I have to secure the moving truck, I’m trying to get the utilities cut over … you know, the usual tedium. Speaking of which, this is yet another place I’ve lived where DSL isn’t an option for me. My current DSL plan of choice that gives me 6 Mbps down / 512 Kbps up (i.e. AT&T’s DSL Extreme) is not an option at the new place though the puny 1.5 Mbps down / 256 Kbps up service (i.e. AT&T’s DSL Ultra) is. Since it isn’t 1999 anymore, I’ll be upgrading to a beefy cable modem with Comcast. I’m not really thrilled about it since Comcast hates P2P but short of a T1 to my house, it’s my only option. Also, Comcast doesn’t list straight-ahead, no B.S. descriptions of the service they’re selling you. Allegedly I’m buying their top tier of non-business class cable Internet service. I’d like to link to their site to make my case, but as their site only works in Internet Explorer I can’t. Their gaudy, “opens a new window for every click” website may function like it’s 1998 when no other OS’es or browsers were worth supporting but here’s hoping their Internet service is good. If nothing else, I’ll probably get a premium Plaxo account for free. I saved half the cost of the cable modem by buying my own. I guess I’ll eventually go back to DirecTV for TV service as Comcast’s prices for TV are priced such that even my double-income-no-kids-having-ass had to wince at what they think are competitive prices. They don’t even offer as robust of an HD lineup as DirecTV! I was relying on Hulu and the like but Hulu is trying to force me into piracy when all I want is to be legit.

Note to Netflix: Don’t do it

Published by Brian | Filed under dvd, movies

Dear Reed Hastings,

I’ve been a customer for nearly six years. I’ve liked your service. I stayed with you even though I suspect you of throttling my account when I turnaround my discs too quickly. I realize your earnings are down, but your plan to penalize Blu-Ray customers by charging us “a modest premium” is short-sighted and stupid. The rationale that “consumers are used to paying more for high-definition content” is wrongheaded. You’re killing this format before it even starts by turning it into a niche market. Do you want to drive me into using Amazon Unbox, XBox Live, or Sony’s upcoming VOD service? You can’t buy a TV these days that isn’t hi-def, so why charge us more to take advantage of it???

Movie review: Forgetting Sarah Marshall

Published by Brian | Filed under Uncategorized

Alan Sepinwall reviews “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” - I saw this over the weekend and I liked it a lot. I’ve enjoyed Segel’s work since “Undeclared” and his slaptastic work on “How I Met Your Mother” is fantastic too. I never saw Freaks & Geeks, though I’m working my way through it now.

I had never heard of Russell Brand before seeing this movie, but he had me laughing as his otherwise one-note character was much more memorable than it would have been. It was good seeing Mila Kunis in a non “That 70’s Show” role. I always found her grating, but she did great here. She and Kristen Bell didn’t have enough to do in the movie.

Segel flashes his uh, stuff in the film. As in “Walk Hard”, it’s amusing but it must have been uncomfortable for the parents I watched who brought kids in to this R-rated film. Seriously, I see almost as many kids brought by parents in R-rated movies as I would in a Disney film. Idiots.

Do you Hulu?

Published by Brian | Filed under tv

Medialoper reviews Hulu today and I must agree … it is pretty terrific. Recently, I ditched DirecTV after bemoaning the suckage that is Direcpath. Hulu has seriously cut down my reliance on things like tvrss.net since I can have the episode the day after it airs without a serious drain on my bandwidth.  Out of the shows I make a point to watch, most are on Hulu: Family Guy, The Office, My Name is Earl, 30 Rock, Battlestar Galactica, Monk, Psych, Terminator … if ABC and CBS would quit streaming off their own site and get with Hulu, I’d be set. Medialoper’s criticism’s are well-founded though. I think in time, they’d be foolish not to follow the suggestions in the article. I hope. They have the potential to make me want to give up on cable/satellite altogether if they’d go day-and-date with the broadcast schedule, offer all seasons of a series (not just the most recent), and add more content.

That being said, I’ll likely pick back up with DirecTV when Wendie and I get a house in the next six weeks.

New monitor, new PS3 firmware, new vision

Published by Brian | Filed under computers, dvd, misc

Bigger is better

I just ordered a 24″ monitor from Newegg and I’m not sure what I’m going to do with my old one just yet. Do I keep it at home and have a dual head setup with greatly disproportional visual real estate or do I take it to work so it can live with my work issued 17″ monitor where the dual head setup would work out much better? Part of me hates to use my own equipment at work but on the other hand it’d make my work day a lot easier on my eyes.

I want to see!

Speaking of eyes, back in January I had Lasik (IntraLase to be precise) and my results weren’t so good. The doc tells me that after surgery, your eyes tend back toward the behavior they had before so they tend to push your vision in the opposite direction. For example, I was farsighted in my left-eye before the surgery so they made me slightly nearsighted knowing that my vision would tend back toward that. In a small number of cases, the eyes don’t move back toward their old tendencies and they “stay” right where the surgery put them. Guess what percentage I’m in. It won’t cost me anything to get it corrected again it’s just mildly irritating that I went from farsighted in one eye, nearsighted in the other to totally nearsighted. At least I won’t have any trouble seeing my monitor.

Hi-Def goodness 2.0

Still wondering which Blu-Ray player to get? Go with the PS3. The 2.20 firmware is out today which turns your PS3 into a profile 2.0 player. Mine was a 1.0 player when I bought it and I updated to 1.1 within a month of its release and as of about 20 minutes ago I made it a 2.0 player. Yes it’s stupid that the spec wasn’t finalized and keeps evolving and yes it sucks that most players haven’t been upgradeable and yes it sucks that Blu-Ray players prices went up after the demise of HD-DVD, but what can you do? This update also remembers where you were in a DVD or Blu-Ray even if you pop it out of the unit. Finally! Most recently I rented No Country for Old Men on Blu-Ray through Netflix and it looked great. My next Blu-Ray release will be Walk Hard on April 8th which is one of the discs with content specifically for profile 2.0 players.

The King would be proud

Published by Brian | Filed under dining

I went to The Vortex in Little Five Points tonight with one coworker and one former coworker who’s now at Microsoft and while there, I ate the most unhealthy thing I’ve ever had in my entire life. It is known as the Elvis Burger and is a burger with peanut butter, bacon, and fried bananas.

Actually, it was pretty good. I’m sure Elvis himself would’ve had one. Yes, I apparently have a death wish but at least it wasn’t as bad as their Double Bypass burger which is a huge sirloin patty topped with a fried egg, three slices of cheese, four slices of bacon, a side of mayo and the buns replaced with two grilled cheese sandwiches.

 

Over at the AV Club: Hard Target and the ghosts of Katrina

Published by Brian | Filed under movies

An interesting article over at the AV Club says the 1993 Jean Claude Van Damme movie Hard Target is indicative of the problems that plagued New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Yes, someone is actually using this movie to point out differences in social classes in New Orleans.