Another batch of random updates...
...which is fairly soon after the last one, so this one may be shorter.
My thoughts on college football: While I know that part of the problem in the game against Duke was the fact that Tech's quarterback was in only his second start, most of the rest of the team looked pretty mediocre, too. Tackles were missed that would have been made just two weeks ago, blocking was mediocre, it was an entire team half-effort. I can only hope that the kids were just looking forward to next week, practicing for next week, so that Tech can beat their in-state rivals. There's more than just bragging rights riding on this one; Tech has 6 victories, so they get to go to a bowl. UGA needs to win this week to get their sixth. Winning the game would be great. Making the Dawgs stay home for the holidays would be even better.
It could happen. As I noted in a comment to someone else, Tech going to a bowl game and UGA staying home could only happen in bizarro world. Will Snyderwine (Duke's kicker, who's usually money) missing a chip-shot field goal is also bizarro world. Stephen Hill (Tech's wide receiver who's built like his two _very_ good predecessors, fast like them, but catches footballs about as well as I do) breaking the game open with a touchdown reception is also bizarro world. We have precedent...
ESPN's pundits seem to think Tech will be going to the Military Bowl, which used to be the Eagle Bank Bowl, played just down the road at RFK Stadium on Wednesday, 29 December. I may have to put in a few extra hours at the office on Monday and Tuesday of that week so I can get out early enough to get to a 2:30PM kickoff. Assuming that's where Tech winds up.
I've done some shuffling around of the home entertainment setup. For the past few years, I've had an old iMac upstairs whose job was solely to watch television, strip the commercials, and crunch it to a format the AppleTV could play. Now I have a sub-$100 device (a SiliconDust HD Homerun) sitting in the sunroom that is designed to take in HDTV and spit it back out on an ethernet port.
This has multiple benefits:
1) The HD Homerun should take a lot less power to run than an iMac.
2) The new device doesn't have the monitor lighting up the upstairs at night, glowing eerily under the bedroom door.
3) I can now have two things happen at the same time, since there's two tuners. The old setup only had one. Oddly enough, almost everything Amy or I watch on broadcast TV happens on Monday.
4) All the crunching and converting now happens on my computer in my office, which runs circles around the decrepit old iMac. My desktop is a 2.8GHz Core i7, the old iMac is a 1.83 GHz Core Duo (note I didn't say Core 2 Duo).
5) I can now watch TV from any computer in the house. Lousy timing, since the football season is almost over.
This frees up Chad's old iMac to do something else, though I'm not sure there is anything worth doing with it. The machine's topped out at 2GB of RAM, and honestly, even between that and the older processor, it'd still be a decent mail-and-web-browsing machine, possibly a bit pokey when it comes to Flash content, but otherwise fine, but the audio board's developed an issue where all noise coming out of the machine (built in speakers or out the headphone port) is scratchy. A simple USB sound stick would fix that, I suppose, but I'm still not sure whether or not I've got a problem for it to solve...
I've been itching to go drive a Honda CR-Z. This doesn't make any sense at all to me. I've never been a huge fan of the hot-hatch style of car. It's not even a very hot hatch, it makes fewer horsepower than my Miata. It's a hybrid, but only gets 36 or so MPG. It doesn't have room for both my wife and my dog. And I've never been fond of front-wheel-drive vehicles-- I often refer to it as "wrong-wheel-drive". On paper, it looks like absolutely everything about this car is wrong, and yet, I find it fascinating, and want to drive one.
Speaking of new shows, the American version of Top Gear started up recently. I decided to give it a season to see how it is. I love the BBC version (even if I don't know who half of the guests are for the "Star in a Reasonably Priced Car" segment), and somehow I can't imagine the American version getting it right. But we'll see. I signed up for an iTunes season pass, which puts me up to five shows I get from iTunes-- which means it's still much, much cheaper than cable or FIOS TV for us. (For those keeping score at home, that's Burn Notice, Eureka, Mythbusters, Top Gear America, and Warehouse 13. If they start carrying the BBC Top Gear soon after it airs in the UK, I'll add that to the list. We didn't bother getting Stargate Universe after season 1.)
I'm looking forward to getting out to Colorado this winter. The lack of vacation time at my new job has me champing at the bit to get out and go just about anywhere, but it'll be doubly nice to see so much family all in one place (Or, well, relatively [pun not intended] so; Englewood isn't all that far from Parker)-- both my mom and Amy's folks will be in town.
My thoughts on college football: While I know that part of the problem in the game against Duke was the fact that Tech's quarterback was in only his second start, most of the rest of the team looked pretty mediocre, too. Tackles were missed that would have been made just two weeks ago, blocking was mediocre, it was an entire team half-effort. I can only hope that the kids were just looking forward to next week, practicing for next week, so that Tech can beat their in-state rivals. There's more than just bragging rights riding on this one; Tech has 6 victories, so they get to go to a bowl. UGA needs to win this week to get their sixth. Winning the game would be great. Making the Dawgs stay home for the holidays would be even better.
It could happen. As I noted in a comment to someone else, Tech going to a bowl game and UGA staying home could only happen in bizarro world. Will Snyderwine (Duke's kicker, who's usually money) missing a chip-shot field goal is also bizarro world. Stephen Hill (Tech's wide receiver who's built like his two _very_ good predecessors, fast like them, but catches footballs about as well as I do) breaking the game open with a touchdown reception is also bizarro world. We have precedent...
ESPN's pundits seem to think Tech will be going to the Military Bowl, which used to be the Eagle Bank Bowl, played just down the road at RFK Stadium on Wednesday, 29 December. I may have to put in a few extra hours at the office on Monday and Tuesday of that week so I can get out early enough to get to a 2:30PM kickoff. Assuming that's where Tech winds up.
I've done some shuffling around of the home entertainment setup. For the past few years, I've had an old iMac upstairs whose job was solely to watch television, strip the commercials, and crunch it to a format the AppleTV could play. Now I have a sub-$100 device (a SiliconDust HD Homerun) sitting in the sunroom that is designed to take in HDTV and spit it back out on an ethernet port.
This has multiple benefits:
1) The HD Homerun should take a lot less power to run than an iMac.
2) The new device doesn't have the monitor lighting up the upstairs at night, glowing eerily under the bedroom door.
3) I can now have two things happen at the same time, since there's two tuners. The old setup only had one. Oddly enough, almost everything Amy or I watch on broadcast TV happens on Monday.
4) All the crunching and converting now happens on my computer in my office, which runs circles around the decrepit old iMac. My desktop is a 2.8GHz Core i7, the old iMac is a 1.83 GHz Core Duo (note I didn't say Core 2 Duo).
5) I can now watch TV from any computer in the house. Lousy timing, since the football season is almost over.
This frees up Chad's old iMac to do something else, though I'm not sure there is anything worth doing with it. The machine's topped out at 2GB of RAM, and honestly, even between that and the older processor, it'd still be a decent mail-and-web-browsing machine, possibly a bit pokey when it comes to Flash content, but otherwise fine, but the audio board's developed an issue where all noise coming out of the machine (built in speakers or out the headphone port) is scratchy. A simple USB sound stick would fix that, I suppose, but I'm still not sure whether or not I've got a problem for it to solve...
I've been itching to go drive a Honda CR-Z. This doesn't make any sense at all to me. I've never been a huge fan of the hot-hatch style of car. It's not even a very hot hatch, it makes fewer horsepower than my Miata. It's a hybrid, but only gets 36 or so MPG. It doesn't have room for both my wife and my dog. And I've never been fond of front-wheel-drive vehicles-- I often refer to it as "wrong-wheel-drive". On paper, it looks like absolutely everything about this car is wrong, and yet, I find it fascinating, and want to drive one.
Speaking of new shows, the American version of Top Gear started up recently. I decided to give it a season to see how it is. I love the BBC version (even if I don't know who half of the guests are for the "Star in a Reasonably Priced Car" segment), and somehow I can't imagine the American version getting it right. But we'll see. I signed up for an iTunes season pass, which puts me up to five shows I get from iTunes-- which means it's still much, much cheaper than cable or FIOS TV for us. (For those keeping score at home, that's Burn Notice, Eureka, Mythbusters, Top Gear America, and Warehouse 13. If they start carrying the BBC Top Gear soon after it airs in the UK, I'll add that to the list. We didn't bother getting Stargate Universe after season 1.)
I'm looking forward to getting out to Colorado this winter. The lack of vacation time at my new job has me champing at the bit to get out and go just about anywhere, but it'll be doubly nice to see so much family all in one place (Or, well, relatively [pun not intended] so; Englewood isn't all that far from Parker)-- both my mom and Amy's folks will be in town.