iLetDown

So Apple's big iPad announcement was a pretty big letdown for me. As I posted on Twitter yesterday, I think it boils down to the fact that I was hoping for a Mac tablet, not a iPhone tablet. I wanted a device with a full-blown operating system, not just the stripped-down, restrictive OS that the iPhone has. I really don't think that it would be that hard for Apple to re-skin the Mac OS for a tablet and I think they would have had a lot more interest than what they seem to be getting. I really think they missed the chance to have a truly versatile device that could blow away anything that went up against it.

I think they also missed a huge opportunity by leaving out a camera. The lack of a camera is just a huge face-palm move. The video chat possibilities are just an obvious killer app for this thing and Apple already makes one of the best with iChat. An iPad version of iChat is just a no-brainer and the only thing I can think of to justify it is that Apple couldn't get the hardware done on schedule and pushed the feature back to the next generation of the device.

So other than the iPad, I've been sick this week. It started Wednesday and Thursday afternoon I went on to the doctor instead of trying to fight it off myself this time. It turned out to be the beginning of a sinus infection so he gave me two shots and some pills and I'm starting to feel a little better. I've been okay during the mornings, but as the day progresses I tend to start feeling worse. Hopefully I can turn the corner today and be done with this mess pretty quickly. This is the third time in three months I've had some sort of sickness and it's starting to get old.

Have a good weekend everyone. See you on Wednesday.

--Paul

Wednesday Already

Time flies, huh?

I beat Mass Effect Saturday morning after I finished my blog. It was an incredible game and if you have a PC or a 360, you should definitely play it. Mass Effect 2 came out yesterday, but it's going to be a while before I can pick it up. It's been hailed with pretty much universal praise. I really wish I could go ahead and get it and play it but I've got too many other games from Christmas that I need to play first. Maybe by the time I get to it, the price will have gone down.

We bought a T.V. to hang on the wall in the office and I got it mounted yesterday. Once I get some cable track up and hide the cables, it should look pretty nice. The mounting job was actually easier than I thought it would be. The hardest part was finding the stud to hang it on. After I was sure I was in the middle of the stud, it was a pretty simple thing to get the screws in the wall and the T.V. on the mount. I've got to get a slightly longer coax cable to use, but other than that, it's ready to go and should be pretty cool for when we're on the elliptical.

Apple has a big press conference scheduled for today where it's expected they're going to announce their long-awaited tablet. If this thing turns out to be as cool as all the rumors say it is, it should be pretty incredible. I already want one and I have no idea what the thing even does or what it looks like. That's how bad the hype for this thing is. I really don't think that there's any way it's going to live up to the rumors and hype, but you never know. This is Apple we're talking about. I just wished I had bought some stock in the company a year ago. They've gone from $90/share to over $200 in less than 12 months. If the tablet meets expectations, it'll go even higher. I'll let you know how I feel about it on Saturday after the initial shock has worn off and I've had time to really process all the information about the device.

Have a good rest of the week. See you Saturday.

--Paul

Withdrawls

Something strange is going on with Blogger this morning.  It's gave me a bad request error when I tried to publish my post and now I can't even get back into the dashboard.  Weird stuff.  At any rate, I'm going to try and email the post in instead.  So here goes nothing.  The original post starts here:

It's now been over two weeks since I've played anything on the Xbox. If it weren't for playing New Super Mario Bros. Wii with DeAnne, it would be two weeks since playing any game. Things have just kept coming up. We were out of town the past two weekends and during the week we've been busy trying to keep caught up on house work. The T.V. shows that we watch are also back in full swing so that adds to the distractions. Hopefully when I'm through with this blog I'll have time this morning to finish up Mass Effect. I'm not sure how much I've got left on it, but I'm getting close to the end.

Speaking of T.V. shows, 24 started it's season this past week and it was just as awesome as ever. It's always interesting to see what's changed in the time between the seasons. If this year is as good as last year, then we should be in for a great ride.

There's not been a whole lot else going on. Like I said earlier, with the past couple of weekends being so busy, it's taken all we can do to keep up during the week. The only thing we've got planned this weekend is that we're going to Kinston today. DeAnne's sister is having a baby shower in Utah this afternoon and DeAnne and her Mom are going to have one in Kinston at the same time and connect the two with webcams on Skype. I've been selected as tech support for the party, so it should be interesting. I'll let you know how it goes on Wednesday.

Have a good weekend.

--Paul

Happenings

So yeah, Butch Walker...wow. It was an incredible show. Probably 250 people at most in a tiny theater watching an incredible artist play though one of his most personal and poignant albums. It was pretty amazing. It was really kind of like being at a recording of MTV's "Unplugged" series. Everyone was seated and during the softer moments, if anyone had been talking, you would have been able to hear them. We managed to get on the second row in the center of the stage and it was a great seat. I'm still just blown away by the whole experience.

I haven't talked politics in a pretty good while, so forgive me while I return to that topic. This just can't be ignored though. In a shocking turn of events, a Republican has been elected to the Senate seat that was held by Ted Kennedy for 47 years. While that fact alone is amazing, it's the implications to the political landscape as a whole and especially what it means for the Democrat party that's the real story. The Dems were already beginning to spin the loss before it ever happened and they'll continue to make it seem like it's not a big deal, but it's time to face facts. People in this country are tired of the policies that have been on the agenda for the past 18 months and they're tired of not being listened to. Hopefully this special election will serve as a preview of November when the entire House and a third of the Senate comes up for election. It's time to clean house (and Senate).

Back to happier topics, the Smashing Pumpkins released the second song from their ongoing project yesterday. It's called "Widow Wake My Mind" and you can download it for free (or just listen to it) from http://www.smashingpumpkins.com. I haven't had a chance to really listen to it yet, but if it's anything like the first song, "Song For A Son", then it should be well worth the two minutes it'll take to download.

That's about all I've got for today. Have a good rest of the week and I'll see you on Saturday.

--Paul

From the ATL

We made it to atlanta last night about 8:00 EST. So we made pretty good time. Emma did great on the ride and she's enjoying the new places to explore and spending time with MeMaw.

We're looking forward to the show tonight. I'm sure we'll have lots of pictures to share. We're also going to try taking some video but we'll have to see how that turns out.

Till next time

--Paul
Sent from my BlackBerry

Elementary, My Dear Watson

Well, I just deleted an entire paragraph that was pretty much the same as what I talked about on Saturday. I'm still not used to the new schedule and I've found myself loosing track of what I've covered and what I haven't. Be glad I realized what was happening or you would have gotten another recap of the meal we had Friday night.

At any rate, we had a good rest of the weekend. We shot down to Mobile for a couple of days and had a good time hanging out with Courtney and Edwin. We watched the new Sherlock Holmes movie and I thought it was pretty good. I don't remember a single curse word being uttered which was a nice change of pace for movies these days. The story was interesting and the movie overall was very entertaining.

T.V. shows are starting back full force. We're less than a week away from the return of "24". One of my other favorite shows, Chuck, came back this past Sunday with another episode Monday. We watched the first two hours of it and it was just awesome. It's such a geek-fest kind of show that it makes me giddy to watch it. I think DeAnne tolerates it at best, but she will watch it with me, unlike "24". "American Idol" started back last night but we haven't watched it yet. It's one of those shows that we pretty much record the entire show first and then spend probably 70% of the show in fast-forward. We do the same thing with "Biggest Loser".

So that's about it for today. Have a good Wednesday and a good rest of the week and I'll see you back here on Saturday. We'll be in Atlanta for the Butch Walker show (excited) but I'll at least post a short blog from my phone or something.

--Paul

Didn't Forget This Saturday

Whew, where to start?

Yesterday was DeAnne's birthday. I think overall she had a pretty excellent one. We ate dinner last night at Andalusia's new Japanese steak house and we were both blown away by the quality. If something puts that place under, it won't be the food, it'll be the price. It was as expensive as most other hibachi places I've been, but it was still pretty steep for Andalusia. We dropped about $45 for the two of us. That's not something we can do every week, so we'll only be going every now and then. Hopefully the place makes it though. It was really good.

The annual Consumer's Electronics Show (CES) got under way this week out in Las Vegas. Every year companies get together and show off all the new tech they're working on. It's a geek's fantasy island and I always watch the news coming out of the show a little closer than I should. This year's big thing has been 3D. 3D T.V.s will start showing up this year and content providers like DirecTV are going to start hosting 3D channels from ESPN and Discovery. The thing about the 3D stuff is that you can't really watch a demo of it on the internet because it's just in 2D, so I'm not really sure how 3D is going to do. I'm not just wild about the idea myself. You still have to wear glasses and I just don't know how anxious I am to sit around and wear glasses and watch "Law and Order" in 3D. I can see where it would be cool in some instances. "24", "V", "Star Wars: The Clone Wars" come to mind, but I think the scope is kind of limited. I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

The other big thing being talked about is "slate PCs" or what used to be called "tablet PCs". I think Microsoft made the big push for "slate" and I'm not crazy about the term. I like "tablet" more I think, but either way, the devices that are being shown are pretty cool. The fact that Apple is probably about to announce their own tablet in a couple of weeks just makes it even better. I've never really understood the appeal of the little netbook PCs, but a 10 or 11 inch iPod Touch. Now that's something I can get behind.

Switching gears a little, we watched "Julie and Julia" the other night and it was pretty good. The acting was great and for a "chick-flick" it really didn't have too much of the standard formula to it. The language was no worse than any other PG-13 movie you see and the fact that it's based on a true story makes the whole series of events pretty cool.

That's about all I've got for today. Have a good weekend and I'll see you on Wednesday.

--Paul

Lots To Talk About

It's amazing what can happen in just a few short days. First let me apologize for not posting on Saturday. Of course, since I posted all last week, I more than made up for it, but still, I told you I would post on Saturdays and I'm sorry I didn't this past week.

We had a pretty good weekend. We spent New Year's Eve over at Bryan and Adrienne's house and shot fireworks with them and had a good time. Friday we ate lunch with DeAnne's Mom and watched Auburn win 4 times and loose 3 all in one game. Saturday we decided to get out of the house and we went down to Florala and visited the junk shops down there. We didn't find much but there was a booth of comics and sports cards in one of the shops and I bought some comics. We also ate lunch at El Toro and I can't say I would recommend it. The salsa was good and that's about the only compliment I can come up with for the place.

Shifting gears, Google held a press conference yesterday to talk about their new phone called the "Nexus One". It's only available on T-Mobile right now, but it's coming to Verizon in a couple of months. You can see some cool demo stuff at http://www.google.com/phone. It looks like a pretty cool phone, and it can probably compete with the iPhone pretty well. The only thing is that it doesn't have iTunes, which is the same problem that ever other phone that competes with the iPhone has. Without the iTunes integration and iPod interface, I really think it's hard for a phone to compete against Apple. It's the same thing that's happened to iPod competitors. They may have a great mp3 player, but iTunes is so integrated into the minds of mp3 player users, that a lot of people just won't use something that doesn't work with iTunes.

The other big announcement that came out yesterday was about Butch Walker's new album. Pre-orders went up for the album with different levels offering different pre-order bonuses. The most expensive package, and I'm not even sure it was for real, is $25,000 and claims to grant you a writing session with Butch and the chance to play the song on stage with him during a tour. As awesome as that would be, there's no way I could come up with that much money so I opted for the $75 option instead. It includes a signed vinyl copy of the new album, a CD copy of the album, a t-shirt, a limited edition poster and a few other little things. Hopefully it's all as cool as it sounds.

CES, the annual giant electronics show is this week, so I'm sure that will provide me with plenty of stuff to talk about on Saturday. Have a good rest of the week.

--Paul