Tuesday, January 15, 2008

In case you were curious about my thoughts on the recent football games, keep on reading!

Lets start with Seattle vs. Green Bay. While I've never really been a huge Brett Favre fan (mostly because he's working towards his third retirement and his name is not pronounced like it is spelled) it was nice to see him win his latest playoff game. Seriously the man has all but sucked the last couple years. With his new skill of NOT chucking the ball up in the air like it was a free t-shirt at a baseball game, and his young spunky team, Green Bay seems all but unstoppable. After Grant's two fumbles the Packers rarely made a mistake. But seriously, when was the last time you saw 2 inches of snow on a football field and didn't enjoy watching the game being played there?

Next up was Jacksonville vs. New England. It's no secret I greatly despise Tom Brady and his team of video taping cheaters. However it was also a no-brainer who was going to win before the game even started. I must admit though, in the first half the Jags gave the Pats a run for their money, but by the second half Brady was done screwing around. He ended the evening with some crap-tastic 24/26 completions or something. While I'll admit, Brady is currently one of the best quarterbacks playing, that doesn't mean I have to like him. Nor do I give him all the credit. He's got one heck of a collection of linebackers and an amazing arsenal of receivers and running backs. I attribute liking the New England Patriots to liking the New York Yankees. Yeah take that you stupid little Boston Nation people! At least your basketball team still stinks!

Sunday proved to be hard on not only Indianapolis, but also the victor of that game, San Diego, as well. I'll admit, I thought Indy had it in the bag well before the game even started. There's not a single person around (that is sane) that would disagree with the statement that Payton Manning is one heck of a quarterback! I figured that with the return of Marvin Harrison (even if only for a decoy) and a healthy line the Colts would be on fire. Sadly this was not so. Rivers' ego was just too big for the Colts in the final game in RCA Stadium. The game was extremely physical. With the loss of Rivers, L.T., and countless others, the Chargers are now left with a second string team to take on New England this weekend. One good thing is I doubt this marks the end of Manning's TV career. Yeah, I feel ya.

The last game of the weekend was indeed a shocker. Who would have guessed that Dallas would suck it up so hard that they could scratch a diamond? Shortly before the game I was having a phone conversation with Andy in which he stated that relying on Eli Manning to have another kick-a** game was like relying on January to bring cold weather. Well, in fact Eli did have a great game and January did finally get cold! Do I think Romo lost it for the Cowboys? Of course not. His hooglabah with Jessica Simpson had nothing to do with the team's loss. It was indeed a team effort. The icing on the cake may have been T.O. balling like a little girl who lost her doll. Here's an idea, suck it up and play sports like a professional (and stop picking on his quarterback [That's just me making fun of the Cowboys (and T.O.). I don't actually care for them, or their quarterback])!

Thursday, January 10, 2008

Another January, another stretch of ridiculously warm temperatures. I'm starting to get tired of people claiming, "This is warmest January they remember!" Guess what? It was the same temperature last year, and the year before that and possibly even the year before that. Every year in January I get royally jacked because the weather is too warm for me to go snowboarding. This typically wouldn't bother me if I didn't buy a season pass for the current year at the end of the previous year. It's hard to drag yourself up to the mountain when there are 3 slopes open and the temperature is 66 degrees. But I might as well get used to it. I'm convinced that the days of large snows in Pennsylvania are over. With the increased rate of melting ice in the polar ice caps in addition to more and more man-made pollutants being released into the atmosphere, It's my belief that PA will eventually become an ideal temperature zone, sort of like San Diego, at least in the winter anyway. It'll still have hot summers, but even those seem to be on the decline. Overall I doubt too many people that aren't two-plankers or knuckle-draggers would mind the steady migration to a more temperate climate, but for the balance to remain, there needs to be other places that are more severely affected by global warming. Perhaps colder, crop destroying winters in the south, or maybe excruciating, life threatening heat near the equator. In my own opinion, I'd prefer to stick with the weather patterns of yesteryear where PA winters were cold and snowy, and the Earth functioned properly.

Tuesday, January 08, 2008

There are some pretty neat technological ideas going on here in 2008. I think by the end of the year you'll be pretty impressed at what is being manufactured these days. Just to give you a hint at what's in the works, and what's to come, here are some of my favorite tech-stuff.

The days of Digital Rights Management (DRM) are over! It took some time, but the consumer finally won out (for once). ITunes and Amazon to name a few have been offering DRM-free music for quite some time now (at an increased rate of course), but the last major music supplier to go DRM-free, Sony, did so today. What does this mean for you? Well you don't have to worry about the songs you download not working on all your music gear anymore. If you download from iTunes, you can play that song on any device, and any computer. If you download from Amazon or NBC, play it anywhere. What a concept right? This gives companies new freedom at what they can offer you. Not to mention it gives you the ability to easily share that music you download legally with your buddies. This hasn't really been a hassle if you've been downloading music and videos illegally for the past few years, but who would have guessed less governmental control was what consumers wanted? Oh right, consumers (For safety sake, I don't condone illegal music downloading)!

Another cool thing making its way into 2008 is the new open standard for cable communications. While currently the FCC is not to thrilled about this (why, I have no idea) cable companies such as Comcast are eager to jump on board. This standard has actually been in the works since 1997! What does this mean for you? A whole bunch of new gadgets that's what! No longer will your DVR be specific to your cable company. TVs will now be able to have DVRs built into them and who knows what other fancy-pants interactive devices companies like Panasonic and LG will come up with. Panasonic hopes to have out a little portable DVR player by the end of this year. This would be a device you plug into your cable outlet, select what shows you want to record, record the shows, unplug the device and take it on the go with a little built-in 8.5" LCD screen. All without having to deal with that pesky cable service (of course you'll need video broadcast thru a cable company for this to work, it just doesn't matter which one).

Finally be prepared for some über-fast PCs to be making their way to dealers by the end of this year. Intel has been hard at work with multi-core processors (even more than the current 2 or 4 you can get now) and new-style transistors so they can cram even more processing power into the same chip, and have it work without as much heat dissipation. While these new processors will no doubt be costly, they will drive the price of current processors down. This is good for me because I always buy year old processors. No point in spending all that money for something that will be of date in a few months. There has also been some breakthroughs in flash storage capacities so expect giant sized wee little storage cards in the next couple years too. One really cool one has a built-in Wi-Fi so once you take your pictures, you're computer starts to download it wirelessly. Seriously doesn't that kick butt or what?