UngsungBlog: A (Fantasy) Sports Blog

As usual, I misremembered to blog in the past few days.  My apologies.

Quick-hitters:

- Retail renting should be called “short-term stealing,” says NetworkWorld’s Paul McNamara. I like that a lot more than “retail borrowing.”

(Tangent: Did Mr. McNamara really use the term “doofus?”)

- Holy crap!  Akismet caught 52 spammy comments on my blog in the past two days!

I love the attention :P.

- I ordered a Canon Imageclass D320 from Quill.com a couple days ago, and with the order, I got some freebies:  a tin of Mrs. Fields nibblers (small, chewy cookies) and a tub of Mrs. Fields Butter Toffee popcorn.  I figured that the cookies (28 half-dollar sized cookies) would last us about three days.

It’s been two, and I’m down to three…

(Make that two…)

- Quick update regarding my XG/MGE rebate fiasco:  my state Attorney Genera’s office sent me a letter, saying that they have sent a copy of my complaint to XG, and they’re awaiting communication.  The BBB also closed my complaint, citing the fact that XG offered a satisfactory resolution; apparently, promising a rebate check (even if it’s the third or fourth such promise) is satisfactory.

3/14/08 is coming up real soon…let’s see what happens.

- So I added a few toys to my video game collection this past week.  To recap:
1) I picked up Rock Band for the PS2 (game only) once I discovered that I could use my Guitar Hero guitars to play the guitar/bass portions of the game.  After a bit of research, I then discovered that the Logitech USB Microphone for PS2 worked with Rock Band as well, so I began hunting for one of those.  I figured that I could form three-fourths of my “band” for a heck of a lot less than the $159 MSRP for the entire Rock Band set.  When the Wii version of Rock Band comes out, however, I will probably pick that up; I’d much rather lay down $159 on the Wii version of Rock Band (when it’s released, that is) than $159 for the PS2 edition.

(Tangent:  I love games like Rock Band, Guitar Hero, etc., not so much for the gameplay, but the fact that I get to discover new songs as well as songs that I knew but never knew the name of!  In fact, the only reason why I started playing the Grand Theft Auto series—Vice City was the first, followed by San Andreas—was for the music, not the violence!  I never really got in to GTAIII, mostly because there was no real music on the radio stations, and I thoroughly enjoyed San Andreas, even though the plane-flying missions were a royal PITA.)

I found that no local stores around me had the microphone in stock, even though Target.com, Bestbuy.com, and Toysrus.com all had the mic available (@ $19.99) for ordering online.  I then found out that Frys.com had the item in stock for $24.99, so I called my local store to check their store inventory.

(If any of you have ever called a Fry’s B&M, you’ll know exactly how well THAT went.)

2) On Sunday morning, someone on SlickDeals reported that the Woodland Hills Best Buy had the Nyko Wii Wireless Sensor bar marked on the shelves for $6.xx, but it actually scanned at $2.49!  He said there were three left in stock after he picked one up.

Later that afternoon, I figured that the three would be gone, but I decided to take a stroll down to Best Buy anyway.I also intended on going to Target—right across the street from Best Buy—and Fry’s—a couple blocks down from there—on the hunt for the microphone and possibly some cheap Wii games.

When I got to Best Buy, I found two Wii wireless sensor bars, and I was overjoyed!  That’s when I realized that I had accidentally picked up the MadCatz version.  Somewhat dejected, I walked over to the Wii games section, and that’s when I noticed a pair of cylindrical tube-shaped packages on the shelf beneath the Wii games.  Remarkably, there were still two Nyko sensors left!  I grabbed one and then strolled over to the PS2 section, looking for the microphone.

(Don’t ask me why I didn’t pick up both of them.  I’m an idiot.)

Over at the PS2 section, I noticed several boxes of the game Boogie, and immediately noticed the words on the left side of the box:

Logitech Microphone Included!

Score!  Best of all, the sticker price was $19.99!

3) After the success at Best Buy, I went across the street to Target to pick up some cleaning supplies and to look for some Wii games.  Specifically, I heard good stuff about Rayman Raving Rabbids, and I knew that my local Target had the game for $19.99.

Knowing that I’ve seen the game before on the shelves outside of the glass cases, I browsed through that aisle.  To my dismay, I couldn’t find the game.   I then went over to the Wii games section, and I found the one and only copy of RRR locked up!  I had an employee grab the game, and it scanned at $19.99!  Yay!

(Tangent:  I have yet to successfully say “Rayman Raving Rabbids.”  In fact, when the associate asked me what game I was inquiring about, I started pointing at it.  When it was obvious that he couldn’t tell what game I wanted, I had to attempt to say the game title.  I didn’t come close.)

RRR is a heck of a lot of fun, though it can get really repetitive rather quickly.

(Yes, the alliteration was intentional :P).

The only drawback to the game is that it requires one Wii-mote + nunchuk per player; I only have a single Nunchuk.  I guess I gotta go pick up another one of those.

Whew!  That was a long post!  TTYL!

Tags: Games, Sports by Peter
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I hate rain.

Sorry, no quick hitters today.

- Thank you, Citibank.  Thank you for not closing my last statement until five days later than normal, even though the statement officially closed around the time I expected it to.  Thank you for not sending me my usual email saying that my statement is ready.  Thank you for not notifying me that I can’t make an online payment for 30 days after making a flubbed payment (yes, my fault), leaving me just four business days to mail you out a check.  Most importantly, thank you for reminding me why (shudder…) Chase gets the bulk of my business.

Thank You Points?  You guys should offer Screw You Points.

- After playing some Wii Tennis today, against computer Pros with obscenely high ranks (1400s, I believe), I wrote the following Haiku.

Wii Tennis is lame.

The computer cheats so much

My Wii-mote got chucked.

Awful, I know

(Tangent:  Yes, I am now in possession of a Wii!  I have no games–Wii Sports excluded–but with the mileage I’m getting out of Wii Sports, I may not need to buy a game any time soon!

Fellow Wii owners:  shoot me your Wii Friend codes!)

My sister then took the Wii Fitness test–she really stinks at it :P–and it was determined that her Wii age was 68!!!  That inspired me to create another Haiku:

[She] is sixty-eight

according to Wii Fitness.

She needs some fiber.

I’m a dead man.

- Here are my Week 15 (Fantasy) Football thoughts:

1) Fantasy Football Playoff Update:  The best team in the Bargain$hare league is OUT, after losing last week, 61-50.

It doesn’t help that Tom Brady scored three points; then again, his opponent had Tony Romo (3 pts).

I also got ousted, 112-95.  Looks like I’m headed for another fourth-place finish, after the best team in the league gets through with me, in the third place game.

In the only other league where I made the playoffs, I was also one-and-done.  Looks like I’ll finish fourth there too.

2) I share Jim Rome’s sentiment in being very very very pissed off at the Miami Dolphins.  Three more losses and you guys would have made history!

Stupid Brian Billick (for not going for it on fourth and goal at the 1).  Stupid Matt Stover (for missing the FG in OT).  Stupid Miami Dolphins.

Grrrr…

3) I know that this joke has been made eleventy billion times already, but Tony Romo really needs to keep his attractive, um, guests, away from him during games!  At the very least, try a brunette!

4) LaDainian Tomlinson is running the Chargers towards a huge playoff push, while the NY Giants are (again?) choking away the season (though they should make the playoffs, barring a mammoth gag), while Eli Manning continues to regress.

5) Speaking of San Diego, that sound you hear is teams fearing the possibility of facing the Chargers, Browns (yes, the Browns), and the Vikings (or even the Saints, should they somehow make the playoffs).  Isn’t momentum great?

6) Screw you, Baltimore.

See ya.

Tags: Cust. Service, Games, Sports by Peter
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Quick-hitters:

- So I am here in MPK still, helping my dad out with a banquet-style lunch/prayer deal.  Think tons of Chinese food, burning incense, candles, and some Hennessey.

(We do something like this four or five times a year, and every time we do this, I get tons of food to take home.  W00t!)

- So my sisters’ Guitar Hero addictions are far past the point of “addiction.”  It’s gotten to the point where I need to buy a second guitar just so I can play!  I’m probably going to pick up this wireless guitar, even though the reviews on Amazon.com aren’t that great.  Oh well; if the guitar’s crap, I’ll use the wired one and force whoever is playing along to use the crap guitar.

- Speaking of my PS2…I love being “handy.”

(Handy, of course, describes someone that is good at “fixing” things that weren’t broken in the first place.)

My PS2’s first controller port had a little problem where the controller would not stay secured on the connector; this wasn’t a huge problem when using the analog controller, but it became an issue with Guitar Hero.  Play too, um, enthusiastically, and the controller would wiggle out of the connector just enough that it would interrupt the game.  I noticed that the problem did not occur with the second controller port, so I grabbed a flashlight to determine the problem.

I discovered that that the PS2 controller ports have a tiny metal “hook” in them; as you push the controller into the controller port, the hook clicks into place on a recess on the controller’s connector, thus securing the controller.  I noticed that the metal hook was bent down on the first port.  A paper clip and some gentle pressure later, and I was able to pry the hook up and out of the way of the controller port.  I attached a controller, heard the click, and patted myself on the back.

(Hey, I gotta give myself some credit every now and then.)

- Michael Vick plead guilty this morning to a federal dogfighting charge, admitting that he was involved in brutally murdering dogs and “supplying money for gambling on the fights,” though he denied actual gambling and profiting from the winnings.  Question:  why would you bankroll a gambling ring if you did not intend on profiting from it?  And what, exactly, is meant by “supplying money”?  Did Vick provide the money for the payouts, or did he offer betting credits to bettors to make these bets?  In any case, aren’t we splitting hairs here?  He was involved, no matter the role, in an illegal gambling ring; never mind the fact that he was also involved in such a disgusting act as dogfighting (which is also a felony, by the way).

Vick finally apologized for his involvement in the illegal dogfighting ring, finally offering an apology to Falcons’ owner Arthur Blank, as well as his Falcons teammates:

“First, I want to apologize, you know, for all the things that — that I’ve done and that I have allowed to happen. I want to personally apologize to commissioner Goodell, Arthur Blank, coach Bobby Petrino, my Atlanta Falcons teammates, you know, for our — for our previous discussions that we had. And I was not honest and forthright in our discussions, and, you know, I was ashamed and totally disappointed in myself to say the least,” Vick said.

I gotta ask:  what took so long?   Why wait until after the guilty plea to offer his apology?  It was pretty clear that Vick was going down the road of a plea bargain weeks ago.  Why not attempt to stop the bleeding as soon as possible, as I suggested last week?  At least the apology seemed heartfelt; that’ll happen when you’re facing one to five years in prison, at least that much time out of the league (if not the end of his NFL career), AND the possible loss of some to all of the $22 million in signing bonuses he received, much less the $100 million or so left on his contract.

Speaking of his signing bonus money, the only reason why Michael Vick is still an Atlanta Falcon is because he must stay on the Falcons’ roster for owner Arthur Blank to attempt to recover some of the bonus money:

In Atlanta, the Falcons said they would not cut Vick immediately because of salary-cap issues. The team intends to pursue the $22 million in bonus money that he already received in a $130 million contract signed in 2004.

“We cannot tell you today that Michael is cut from the team,” owner Arthur Blank said.

“Cutting him may feel better emotionally for us and many of our fans but it’s not in the long-term best interest of our franchise.”

On ESPN’s First Take (their morning sports talk show), Skip Bayless and a pair of ex-football players debated over whether or not Atlanta should get back the $22 million in bonus funds.  Skip argued that Atlanta should be entitled to the money, based on the fact that Vick will not be able to serve the duration of his contract.  One of the two ex-players argued that they did not, and I could have sworn that their argument revolved around the fact that Vick could not serve the duration of his contract.  If that’s true, what kind of argument is that?  Whose damn fault is it that Vick can’t serve the rest of his contract?

In any event, yes, Vick should be forced back to pay, at the very least, a pro-rated fraction of his bonus money.  In fact, I wouldn’t have a problem if Atlanta was awarded the entire bonus.

Vick will be sentenced on December 10, and we should know how long the NFL will officially suspend him soon after that.  Now, I’m aware that even being associated with illegal gambling, under the NFL’s player conduct policy, could result in a lifetime ban from the NFL.  I don’t think this will happen, and I still believe a team would be willing to sign him once he’s eligible to come back into the league, but now I’m not as certain as I once was.

By the way, this is a very interesting article written by Jemele Hill of ESPN.  Why is a dogfighting-loving, illegal gambling ring-organizer taking so much flack, but a DUI/murderer and a person involved in a double-murder take take so little flak?  Obviously one reason for this is the status of the players involved; Ray Lewis may be a huge star in Baltimore, but he is definitely no Michael Vick in terms of popularity.   Is he taking all this flak because we’re a nation of dog lovers?  Is it because he’s such a big star?  Is it because we condemn illegal gambling?  Or is it something else?

We’ll see what happens.  Until next time.

Tags: Food, Games, News, Sports by Peter
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No quick-hitters today!

- So after finishing the OS install on my new computer, I had to install my Syba PCI Controller card to use with my two old IDE drives.  Naturally, something this simple was going to cause me problems.  For some reason, I could not properly insert the card into the PCI slot.  It appeared that the PCI slot was about 1mm too far to the right on the card.

(Tangent:  Normally, when this happens, it’s because the motherboard isn’t attached properly to the chassis; the tip of the PCI bracket either doesn’t fit in snugly to the recessed area of the case [because the board is too far from the left edge of the case], or it can’t go in to the recessed area at all [because the board is too close to the left edge].  Neither was the case here.)

I could not, for the life of me, figure out why the card wouldn’t go into either of the two PCI slots on my Gigabyte motherboard.  It took about ten minutes to finally finesse the card into one of the slots.  That’s when I realized that the card was blocking the floppy disc connector on the board.  I decided to move the card to the other PCI slot, but I could not remove the controller card!  I gently rocked the card back and forth, and the left-end of the card popped out easily.  The right side of the card would not budge, though, no matter how gently I tried removing the card.

(Warning:  Do not try this at home!)

Out of sheer frustration, and with a forceful tug, I ripped the card out of the socket.  I surveyed the damage:  a few scratches on the chassis, and a bit of cosmetic damage on the PCI connector on the card itself.  I then attempted to re-insert the card into the other PCI slot, and it went in without much force at all.  I removed the card and tried inserting the card in the original PCI slot, and it also went in without a hitch.  I moved it back to the second slot, connected my IDE drives, fired up the computer (expecting the PCI card to blow up because of the abuse), and it worked perfectly.  I had to do some re-partitioning, reformatting, and restoring my backed-up files (My Docs, e.g.).

So now I have ~ 500GB of storage space.  Time to fill it all up!

(BTW, for all you AMD-haters out there–and you know who you are–my CPU temps are about 40C idle.  On my old P4–with a superior cooler, by the way–I hit 43C idle.  So there :P)

(Tangent:  Let’s conveniently ignore all the other variables that changed between my old build and this new one:  different PSU, case fans spinning faster, etc.)

(Tangent:  Everyone go spam Hank’s blog and tell him to build a new computer!)

No, I don’t plan on doing any overclocking.  One of these days, I’ll run a few benchmarks on the system.

- Shirin Restaurant was awesome!  Both sisters of mine, one friend, and I swung by Thursday night, and we ordered some baked eggplant dish, the chicken tenderloin plate, and the Shirin Special beef plate:  two types of rice, filet mignon chunks, ground beef, and salmon.  I am a huge fan of the chicken tenderloin, and I can’t help but love filet mignon, but the salmon might have been the best part!  It was so incredibly juicy and tender.

(I could picture my loyal readers–all none of you–drooling right now.  I know I am.)

The bill came out to a perfectly reasonable $50 or so, and we still had tons of leftovers.  One gripe:  I wanted the filet mignon to be about medium, and it came out like shoe leather.  Oh well.

- After Shirin, the four of us returned to my condo, and that’s when my sister’s friend spotted my PS2 and my copy of Guitar Hero Encore.  The next two hours were spent tutoring the three of them on the nuances of playing Guitar Hero…on easy mode.   Then my oldest sister asks if she can borrow the console to (her words, not mine) “rock out.”  I said yes, amid protests from the younger sister, who also got addicted to the game.

(In fact, she stayed up until 2:30AM Friday night/Saturday morning, beating the game on easy, and starting normal mode.  She is normally asleep by 10PM…)

So now I gotta get ready to go home–family function–and I have to pack up the PS2.  I think I’ll swing by on Monday to pick it back up

Next time:  more Mike Vick thoughts!

Tags: Food, Games, Technology by Peter
3 Comments »

This blog entry is going to be all over the place, because the longer it takes me to complete this, the longer it will keep me away from Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80s.

(Yeah, I’m a Guitar Hero dork. I also royally stink at it :P)

Speaking of Guitar Hero and my PS2, I can’t believe my console still works!

(I should mention that I haven’t touched it in months, and it has always been a bit flaky on me.)

I better be careful, or I might just play through the night, and “forget” to sleep.

- There are some foods that are just destined to be leftovers (and I mean this in a good way; some foods just taste almost as good, if not better, the day after). Corned beef is one good example of that.

(Tangent: I can’t believe I didn’t make myself any cabbage! Argh! I don’t care if it’s not St. Patrick’s Day, and I don’t care that I’m not Irish…how could I forget to make cabbage?!?)

I still have some left in the refrigerator, though it may not last much longer *drool*.

Also, day-old roasted potatoes are awesome, especially when used in a breakfast omelet! I had a spinach-tomato-potato omelet–that’s all the stuff in my fridge that was omelet-worthy–and damn, that was tasty! If only I had some pepper jack!

(Hmmm…I might make myself one of those, instead of eating the corned beef; that is, if I can pull myself away from Guitar Hero.)

- Who needs a specialized hand workout device when you can get the same workout by juicing citrus fruits?

(Yeah, let’s conveniently ignore the 3/4 cup of sugar per pitcher of lemon/lime-ade.)

Sadly, I am now out of limes. Hopefully they’ll be back on sale this week, so that I could, um, get another hand workout.

- So I mentioned that I had acquired yet another new toy.

Well, here it is: a Compaq Presario F572US notebook computer. The specs are nice (X2 TK-53 @ 1.7Ghz, 1GB RAM, 80GB HDD, 8x DVD+-RW, 15.4″ WXGA, 6.6lb), but it is a Compaq. It was also pretty darn cheap, after a number of questionable rebates; the deal involved buying tons of security software that were better than free after rebate, and hinges on whether or not I actually get all the rebates.

I’d say it’s 50/50 that I’m going to “keep” it (by “keep,” I mean I’m either going to use it myself and sell my Dell Inspiron 6400, or I’m going to keep it within my family, i.e. sell it to a sibling).

Wish me luck on this deal!

*me rushes back to Guitar Hero*

Tags: Food, Games, Technology by Peter
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