Rock You Like a Hurricane

Friday has come at last and for a 3-day weekend, no less. Well, a 3-day weekend for everyone except me, depending on what Gustav does. Assuming the 5 day track doesn't see any dramatic shift to the east, then everything should be fine, but we all know how accurate the 5 day track is. They never know what it's going to do that far out.

The hurricane season sure has picked up all of a sudden. Gustav is working his way towards the States, and now we have Hanna doing some kind of crazy thing heading northeast and then turning to the south towards the Bahamas. Who knows where she'll end up.

I didn't get to watch any football last night. I cut the grass when I got home because I wanted to avoid having to do it Saturday morning. By the time I finished up, got a shower and ate some dinner, it was after 7:00 and I was pretty tired. I'm sure I'll make up for it this weekend though.

I hope you all have a great Labor Day. Since Monday is a holiday, I'll be taking the day off from blogging also. If something changes with the Gustav though, I may post anyway. Who knows.

Have a good Friday.

--Paul

Nerds Can Love Football, Too...

It's Thursday and that means that it's officially the start of the college football season. There's a few games tonight. Of the teams that I care anything about, Troy, Vandy and South Carolina get their seasons kicked off tonight. Saturday's the big day though as pretty much everybody else gets going. I know they've saved a couple of games for the holiday on Monday, but the only major one is Tennessee v. UCLA.

I'm looking forward to the season. There should be some good games and if Auburn can do as well as all the commentators seem to think that they can do, then we should have a very good year, indeed. I'm excited to see Auburn's new offense now that they've had eight months to really work on it. I know they ran it in the bowl game last year, but I don't think that it was really indicative of what it's going to look like this season. It'll also be interesting to see how the QB position shakes out. Either way, I'm hopeful for big things from Auburn this year.

Have a good Thursday.

--Paul

We're Halfway There

It's Wednesday!

I've played with PlayOn and TVersity some more and they both have strengths and weaknesses. PlayOn's capabilities for streaming video from the web are great. The quality leaves a little to be desired, but I think that it will improve over the course of the next year or so. They have a good bit of content also. There are a good number of TV shows on Hulu and they have a decent list of full length movies also. The major disadvantage right now is that PlayOn doesn't have local media streaming enabled, so you can't stream any music, pictures or videoes that you have on your local PC. It's coming, and the software is still in beta form, but you can't yet.

TVersity does local media streaming very well though. It doesn't have much web content, but for stuff you have on your PC, it's awesome.

Sorry for geeking out on you the past couple of days, but this is the kind of stuff that really excites me. I'm just amazed by the fact that somewhere in the world, there's a harddrive that has a video stored on it, I can access that video with my PC and my PC can send the video to my Xbox in my living room through the air. Simply incredible.

I'll try to get off the geek kick tomorrow. Have a good Wednesday.

--Paul

That Wasn't So Bad

Yesterday wasn't as bad as I feared. I don't know that I can remember a day when the sirens went off as much as they did yesterday, but other than that, it was pretty typical. It's actually kind of hard to remember what typical bad weather is when we haven't really had any in so long.

There's been a good bit of talk on the internet lately about a new software called PlayOn. It's a media sharing solution for devices that are capable of media streaming. Their main target is the PS3 and the Xbox 360 (and to some extent, the Wii). You install the software on your PC and then it streams your music, pictures and video to your game console in your living room over your wireless network. PlayOn has a free trial and then costs $30. The media streaming is great, but the really cool part is that it can stream video from the internet to your living room. It can grab video from sites like YouTube, Hulu, and supposedly their working on getting Netflix to work.

I haven't actually tried PlayOn yet. I started out with another program called TVersity. It does kind of the same thing, but only supports YouTube. The great thing about TVersity is that it's free. So far it works really well. If you have a game console and any amount of music or any kind of interest in getting internet video to your tv, then I would highly suggest trying these out. It's really some of the coolest software I've seen in a while.

Have a good Tuesday.

--Paul

It's Going To Be A Long Day

I can tell already. The tornado sirens started going off a little before 5:00. We've pretty much been awake since then. I got up and checked the radar and the advisory and we tried to go back to bed. They kept firing off the sirens though and they seemed to time it so that they went off just as one or the other of us or both were getting back to sleep.

There they go again in fact.

Actually, just looking at the advisory again, we're pretty close to where they're saying a storm capable of producing a tornado is moving. It's supposed to be in Sanford right now which is just a mile or two Southeast of us.

Fay has been a strange tropical storm. It rained all morning and afternoon Saturday but we only got about 2 1/2" and it had pretty much stopped by dinner time. Yesterday was pretty much a beautiful day. All the rain arched above us and we had clear skies and a nice breeze. Now we're getting the harshest weather we've had yet from the storm.

We had another do-nothing weekend. There wasn't anything going on and we basically just stayed home and sat around. We did watch a movie Saturday night. "Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day". It was pretty good. We had seen previews for it in front of a couple of other movies we've watched and it looked interesting. It was pretty funny and while it was more aimed at the romantic comedy crowd, it really didn't follow any of the usual trappings for that kind of movie. Well worth a rent, I say and DeAnne would tell the ladies to go buy it.

That's all I've got for now. Have a good Monday and try and stay dry.

--Paul

He Wouldn't Have This Problem With a Mac

more animals

Friday So Soon?

The week really flies by when you only work 3 days. If only we could move to a 3 day work week. Or even four 8's, now that would be nice.

I haven't talked about music in a while because I haven't gotten any new music in a while. That's recently changed though. I got the new Coldplay album, Viva La Vida, and it's great. I don't think it's any great secret that I've always loved Coldplay and I think this may be one of their best albums to date. I don't know if I love it more than "A Rush of Blood to the Head", but it's great. It's definitely their most ambitious work, and I mean that as a compliment. They take several risks, musically, and they all pay off. It's a great album and you should absolutley go get it.

I also got the new Augustana cd. They had a minor hit on their first album with the song "Boston". This cd shows growth and is very good. If you've never heard their first cd "All the Stars and Boulevards", you should get it and their new cd "Can't Love, Can't Hurt".

I hope you all have a good weekend. It looks like it's going to be a wet one for us with the leftovers of Fay moving in. See you on Monday.

--Paul

Thursday, but it Feels Like Tuesday

Being off and down at the beach on Monday and Tuesday have really messed with my sense of time and what day of the week it is. The week is almost over already and it feels like it's just begun.

I was trying to think if there were any more stories from the beach worth relating to you here and DeAnne helped me out last night. She reminded me of the guy we dubbed "leather man". I don't remember seeing him on Monday, but Tuesday when we got to the beach, we looked around, found a spot and when we got over to where we were going to make camp, there was a guy laying on a blanket a little ways off. He was about as brown as a crayola crayon and looked to be asleep, lying on his back. This was about 10:00 in the morning. As time passed, we noticed he would turn over every once in a while and every now and then he would get up and get in the water for a few minutes and then head back to the beach and lay down again. About 12:30, we decided to go in and get some lunch. We came back about 1:30 and the guy was still in the same spot. We left at 4:00 and he was still there. It was really amazing that anyone would want to do something like that to their body. One day this guy is going to be one giant, walking skin cancer. It's sad, but it did give us a little entertainment to watch and see what he would do as the day went on.

Our children's program at church, Awana, started back off last night. This is our third year doing Awana and so far, it's looking like it's going to be our biggest yet. We had a good group of kids for it to just be the first night and things in my group went pretty smoothly. It should be a good year. It would be nice if we already had the new "Family Life Center" built, but all in due time.

That's all I've got for today. Have a good Tues...I mean Thursday.

--Paul

Back to Reality, One More Time

Well, we made it back from Destin. We had a great time. The beach was awesome. It was a little cloudy, but for the most part it was nice. It was a little cool early yesterday afternoon, but other than that, it was great. They had a purple flag out for jelly fish the entire time we were there, but we never saw a single one. The only thing bad about the entire trip was the bed. We had to sleep on a sleeper-sofa and it was pretty rough. Other than that though, we had a great time and we really appreciate Dad and Sherry inviting us to go.

So it's back to work on a Wednesday, which is really weird, but it is what it is. I'm going to have to try and catch up on all the news and everything this evening. Dad had a laptop with him, but we didn't spend much time in the room or bothering with the internet. I kept an I on my email and myspace and skimmed the news, but I still feel behind a couple of days.

I know this is short, but I'm running late this morning. I'm not really running on full steam and it's put me behind. I'll try not to fall asleep in the shower tomorrow. Have a good Wednesday.

--Paul

A Travesty Has Occured

The new Harry Potter movie has been moved back from November of this year to July of 2009. Apparently the writer's strike earlier this year is to blame. The full press release is here. The strike seems to have left Warner Bros without enough time to get a big summer blockbuster movie ready for the summer '09 season, so they're taking the sure thing they have in Harry Potter and moving it back so they can have a big summer movie.

I'm terribly disappointed. The teaser trailer they released a couple of weeks ago really had me fired up for the movie. I've tried to find the silver lining, and if anything it's that this should cut down the amount of time between when we get to see this movie and when the first part of book 7's movie comes out. I still think I'd rather get to go ahead and see this one in November though. And to think, I was mad about 24 getting canceled for the 2008 season. This just adds to the pain.

Tonight should be interesting. We've made plans to go play tennis with Dad and Sherry and my step-sister Kelly and her husband Josh. I haven't set foot on a tennis court in ages so this is probably going to be both painful and embarrassing in one go. I'll tell you all about it on Wednesday. Have a good weekend.

--Paul

Long Weekend Coming

We're getting close to the weekend once again and it's going to be another long one for DeAnne and I. Dad has invited us to go down to the beach with him and Sherry for a day or two. They're leaving on Sunday and we're going to go down Monday and come back on Tuesday.

I'm beginning to think that all of the trips to the beach that we've made this summer have really gone to DeAnne's head. She's been watching every show on Travel Channel that has anything to do with a beach. She's been talking about wanting to go on day trips. This may not seem odd to you, but before this summer she would talk about how she hated day trips because you had to ride back home with sand in your shorts. She also keeps talking about "just one more trip" to the beach before the summer's over.

So I'm taking off Monday and Tuesday so no blog post those days. Yesterday's post was actually post #175 in total since starting this blog and post #130 for the year. I've kept up with this a lot longer than I really thought I would when I started. I've strugled to find something to say at times and I've probably been pretty boring at other times, but I guess if you're still reading, then it couldn't have been too bad. If anyone has any suggestions on what they would like to see me talk about in the future, or if you don't want me to change a thing, leave a comment and let me know. I'm all for trying to make the blog better. At any rate, thanks for reading the last 175 (well, 176 counting this one) posts and I hope you'll stick around for the next 175.

Have a good Thursday.

--Paul

Rain, Rain

I don't know what we got during the night, but I checked around 5:00 yesterday afternoon and we had had an inch and a half of rain to that point. The grass has perked up considerably. In fact, I'm pretty sure that I'll be cutting it again this weekend, but that's okay. I'm just glad to have the rain. If it means having to cut the grass, then so be it. At least the yard doesn't look like it's on the brink of becoming a wasteland any more.

I'm sad to say it, but I'm not really enjoying No More Heroes on the Wii. The controls are cool and there are times when the gameplay is really great, but between the great moments are these long periods where you do odd jobs and it kind of takes a GTA approach that doesn't work. I was looking at my games the other day trying to decide what to take to trade in on Rock Band 2 and realized I haven't ever played one of the two games that came with the xbox so I figured it was time to give it a go. I'm not a huge fan of racing games, but Forza Motorsports 2 is pretty cool. It was a little tough in the beginning, but I'm starting to get the hang of it now. There are a lot of options with tuning your car and I've never been much of a gear-head, so I really don't know what they all do. I'm sure all of the cars can be upgraded and tuned to drive better, but I seem to be doing okay with the default settings. I'm still early into the game, so I'll have to play around with some of the settings and see what happens.

Well, it's time to run. Have a good Wednesday.

--Paul

Mushroom Kingdom

Courtney just emailed this to me and I thought I'd share.  In one fell swoop it combines 3 things I love: video games, comics and movies (in this case "300").  It's from a web comic called "VG Cats".  I've read some of them before and the guy that does them seems to be pretty funny.  Thanks Courtney for bringing this one to my attention.

--Paul

Not So Sleepy

Last night was much improved over Sunday night. The animals didn't do anything crazy and I got in bed on time, so I'm feeling a lot better this morning.

So, for Sunday, Beth, fresh off the mission field, was asked to do a presentation about her mission trip to Peru. As part of the trip, she had led song services in Peru and so Bro. Matt asked her to led the Sunday night song service. She then enlisted me to play guitar for her on a couple of songs. We practiced Saturday night after DeAnne and I got back from Kinston. Considering that that was the only real practice we had other than right before the service, it went extremely well. Beth did a great job on both the song service and with her talk about Peru. It was really inspiring to see someone embrace God's call on their life like she has and it was just awesome to see what God has done through Beth so far.

We finally got some rain yesterday. We had about 6/10 of an inch, but it was such a good, slow, soaking rain that it probably did more good than if we had gotten 2 inches in 30 minutes. Hopefully it'll rain some more today and I think there's a chance again later in the week. I just hope it's not too late for my good grass.

That's all I've got for today. Have a good Tuesday.

--Paul

Bernie Mac

Comedian Bernie Mac died early this morning.  While he had the usual foul language problem most comedians seem to have, I always thought that he was one of the better comedians out there.  The jokes about raising his sister's kids that led to his Fox tv show were great.  I'm sad to see him go so early. 

--Paul

So Sleepy

I'm running a little late this morning so this is probably going to be short. We had a rough night last night and I can't get going this morning. We cut Emma's toe nails last night and it's always an adventure when we do. I didn't get to bed until late. Then, at some point this morning, Emma decided that she was going to give herself a bath or something and started smacking her mouth and making all kinds of noise. DeAnne tried to give her something to drink, but she wouldn't take it. It finally got to the point where DeAnne took her and put her in her bed in the utility room for the rest of the night. Somewhere in the middle of all of this, the cat decided that he wanted to go outside and let us know by getting in the window and playing with the blinds until one of us got out of bed and put him out. So the animals caused a little havoc last night and now I'm dragging this morning.

We had a good weekend though. We did the usual hanging out on Friday night, playing dominoes. The on Saturday, I got up and cut the grass as planned. Then, DeAnne's twin niece and nephew were having a birthday party, so we were going over to Kinston for dinner. We've been having a couple of plumbing issues, so we came up with a plan to get everything fixed and decided to go on over to Enterprise while we were heading towards Kinston and hit Lowe's. Since we were going to Enterprise, I decided to take a couple of games to trade in and see about pre-ordering Rock Band 2. I took four games with me and ended up only paying $10 for Rock Band 2. On the way back, we hit the birthday party and then came home.

Saturday night was spent preparing for Sunday, which I'll tell you about tomorrow because I'm going to be late if I tell you now. Have a good Monday.

--Paul

freecreditreport.com Commercials

I had to take a moment and link to this article about the freecreditreport.com commercials.  I've always loved the ads and in true Hollywood fashion it turns out the "lead singer" in the band in the spots isn't even American.  He's French Canadian.  Anyway, it's a really great article so I thought I'd share. 

--Paul

It's The Weekend!...

...well, almost. It is Friday though, so that helps. We don't have any big plans this weekend. I know I said that last week and we ended up at the lake, but that wasn't really planned, so it doesn't count. I'll be cutting grass tomorrow. I don't know if I can stand the anticipation (that's sarcasm folks). Other than that though, we've got nothing.

I didn't have a chance to play any video games yesterday. DeAnne decided that she wanted to play a game of dominoes. We ended up playing for about 2 hours. She beat me pretty bad, too. I was working on a comeback at the end, but I was already too far in the hole. There was no coming back.

I'm really at a bit of a loss as to what to talk about today. I guess I'm just going to wrap it up and say see you on Monday. Have a good weekend.

--Paul

Movies and Games

I failed to mention it earlier in the week, but we watched "Drillbit Taylor" on Monday night. It was pretty good. The language was a little rough at times, but when is that not a problem in movies today? It's about these boys that get on the bad side of the school bully their first day of high school. They hire a body guard to protect them from the bully, but they guy they hire is really a bum that's conning them into thinking he's an ex-army ranger. Owen Wilson plays the bum and does a good job. Overall, a good renter when the kids aren't around.

I played through the first level of No More Heroes last night. So far I like it. The graphics are a little rough, but I think some of it's on purpose. I think they're going for a kind of stylized look that in the end didn't quite work out like they wanted it to. I'm not sure if it's the Wii's lack of graphical prowress or if they just rushed the game, but the results aren't very pretty. The controls are pretty cool though. I'll keep you posted as I go through the game.

I seem to be running a little late this morning, so I'm going to wrap this one up. Have a good Thursday.

--Paul

It Took A While

Well, it took me a while, but I finally beat Super Mario Galaxy. I've had the game since Christmas. It just seemed like there was always something else dragging my attention away. First it was Rock Band and then GTA: IV came out. Then I played through Guitar Hero II on the xbox. It was just always something. But that's okay because now I've beat it and I can move on.

It was a really good game. I don't mean to make it sound like it wasn't just because I would leave it for something else. It was one of the more unique games I've played in a while and should be a must-have for anybody with a Wii, especially if you have children. I've been playing Mario games nearly my entire life and I hope that they're still this good when I have children so that they can enjoy Mario as much as I have.

I saw an article yesterday that seemed to confirm that Rock Band 2 would be out on September 14. I had heard that date already (thanks Edwin!), but it now seems to be final. I guess I've got until then to get through No More Heroes.

It's Wednesday! Have a good one.

--Paul

Dinner With Friends

My old friend Trey called yesterday and invited us to dinner with him and his girlfriend last night. Trey's been cooking in restaurants for a while now and he's picked up a few things along the way. Needless to say, dinner was excellent. After dinner we hung out and caught up on old times. It was a nice change of pace for us on a Monday night and it was nice to get together with the two of them and hang out.

Other than that, it was a pretty uneventful day. I've been playing Super Mario Galaxy some again and I've finally reached the point of being able to beat the game. I've got my 60 stars and the final boss fight has been opened up. We'll see how it goes, but maybe I'll be able to beat it this afternoon. After that, I really want to play No More Heroes. I'm hoping I can move through it quick enough to be done with it by the time Rock Band 2 hits in the middle of September.

Yesterday's post was long and today's is short. You never know what you're going to get when you come here. I hope you all have a good Tuesday.

--Paul

A Nice Weekend At Home

Or it was for the most part. We actually had a really good weekend. It wasn't too busy and it wasn't boring either.

On Friday, our friend Beth (Bryan's sister) returned home from being in Peru on mission for 2 months. We were invited to go eat with the Cox family and a few other people as a welcome home party for her. It was good to see her and hear some of the stories about her time there. After we ate, we headed over to Bryan and Adrienne's and played dominoes the rest of the night. DeAnne was introduced to a game called Mexican Train while she was at the beach with Stephanie and now she's got the rest of us playing.

Saturday was really good. We relaxed most of the morning and then a little after lunch Bryan called and wanted to know if we wanted to go to the lake (Gantt) with them and Beth. Todd and Kim, a couple from our church, have a boat and wanted to take Beth out for some fun. So we went out to the lake for a couple of hours and rode around and did some inner-tubing. I've actually never been tubing before and it was really a blast. We had a great time and we really appreciate Todd and Kim taking us out with them. DeAnne took a bunch of pictures, so look for the usual slide-show on her blog later today or tomorrow.

Finally, Sunday was just a nice relaxing day. We went to church and then after that we hit Wal-Mart for our weekly grocery run. We ran into Dad and Sherry while we were there. They were looking at wireless routers and wanted some advice. We brought our groceries home and it wasn't long before Dad called and had already gotten frustrated with the router, so we headed over and hung out with them for a little while. After that, we went to evening services and then called it a day.

All in all, it was a great weekend. It wasn't as busy as the last couple have been, but that was part of what made it nice, I think. Have a good Monday.

--Paul

Now It's Friday...

...and not a moment too soon. I'm hoping to catch up on some sleep a little this weekend. Something has happened every night this week to wake me up in the middle of the night. Most of the time, it's been the neighbor's dog. He's been coming over around 3:30 or 4:00 and eating any food the cats have left and drinking their water. Naturally, the cats don't take too kindly to this and as things escalate, they get louder. Emma hears the noise outside and being the good guard dog that she is, she begins to bark like crazy. It's kind of hard to sleep when you have cats and dogs throwing down outside. It's really hard to sleep when you've got a dog standing next to your head and barking. So I've been having to get up and go break up the fight outside and then come back in and calm Emma down and then try to get back to sleep. DeAnne, being the natural sleeper that she is, barely notices. She usually rolls over a couple of times, tells Emma to hush and then she's back in never-never land. I don't imagine that the current situation bodes well for my sleep patterns when we have a child.

Speaking of children, DeAnne had a baby shower to go to last night, so I watched "The Bank Job". It was about as "R" rated a film as you can get, but it was pretty good. If you like cops and robbers and improbable situation movies (Snatch, Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels), you'll probably like The Bank Job.

I hope you all have a restful weekend. See you on Monday.

--Paul