Saturday, December 23, 2006

I love big media

This was a blog posted on CNBC, right next to it was a link to the video for this story..which you had to pay $9.99 to become a member to see...


Paid Video Downloads Are Way Behind The Eight Ball

All the studios and networks are ramping up efforts to sell their movies and tv shows online with sites like MovieLink, CinemaNow, and of course, Apple's iTunes store. But it's just not that big yet -- illegal downloads outpace legal alternatives five to one.

Eight percent of internet-using households download peer-to-peer, but just 2% of those households pay to download video files. And guess what? Most of those paying are paying for porn! Um, I mean, adult entertainment. And speaking of "adult entertainment," tune in later for my report on Playboy [PLA 11.38 -0.04 (-0.35%) ].

Bidding on movie star contracts ... (it's not what you think)

No, you can't buy a contract to become a movie star, otherwise every pushy stage parent would be going nuts.


Monday, December 18, 2006

Deal or No Deal


Little known fact about Rachel is that she is very perceptive. She can walk into a room and tell who is in a bad mood and who wants to date whom.

This gets me in trouble often:

Rachel: What's wrong?
Dave: Nothing
Rachel: Something, you're acting weird.
Dave: I'm not acting weird.
Rachel: Yes you are - just tell me.
Dave: OK, I ate the last of the cookies and would still like some.

One night this weekend I was bored and started playing Deal or No Deal online. I had picked 5 of my first 6 cases when Rachel walked in and sat on my lap effectively taking over the laptop.
Usually she will close my fantasy sports teams and check her Myspace but this time she said she had a feeling about case # 23. She selected it and immediately eliminated the $1,000,000 out of the game. Before I could even say "What happened to my Monies?" she found the $750,000 and $500,000 cases.

Restarting the game she selected her case and proceeded to play the game out. With 5 cases left in the game Rachel had the $1,000,000 case and 5 small amounts left. She eliminated the cases one by one turning down over $350,000 fake dollars to keep her original case.
As the results show above she had the $1,000,000 in her case all along. We are currently buying lottery tickets on the way to the casino.

On a side note the online game is broken. My theory is they always offer less than money than the TV show to make you think the money on TV is amazing. But I think their calculation is messed up. Normally each offer is a little less than the average value of the cases remaining to keep you going. But when you are down to 2 cases the offer is usually 1/2 the value of the largest case. In the online game Rachel had 3 cases left $1 mil and 2 little ones giving an offer of ~$350k. Turning it down she eliminated a small amount leaving $1 mil and a small case. The online offer actually dropped to $349k.

Friday, December 15, 2006

Last Working Friday of 2006



I can't help but think I'd blog more often if it wasn't such a pain to login to this thing.

I am done with Fridays (maybe even Thurs and Wed) for 2006.

The only plan for tonight is to watch UMass in the Football Div 1-AA National Championship game. Rachel isn't feeling well and may go to bed early so I may have to wake her up later to tell her who won the game.

It is weird to hear the announcers say that it has been 8 years since UMass was last in the Championship, considering I was at that game and it doesn't feel like that long ago (they won and I still wear the t-shirts).

I'm upstairs in the Man Cave / Workout room (depending on the user) which isn't a bad deal now that we have a couch and chair up here to sit on. I have 2 pans of brownies and a Lucy laying next to me. Should be a relaxing night.

*Touchdown UMass*

Sunday, December 10, 2006

Christmas Carols



Growing up I loved all the holiday standards. Karen would include Celine Dion remakes into that list but I think most people know what I mean. One that I never really liked was the Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on a Open Fire) it really didn't do anything for me. Just this holiday season I have heard it a few times and I am really starting to like it. Maybe because it has a very vintage sound to it that I can appreciate being a homeowner (I like staying home a lot more now).
Now I am starting not to like some of the old corny songs like "Grandma got run over by a reindeer." Maybe I just don't like holiday carols with their own cartoon. I really can't stand any remake from pop bands of any era. U2 or whoever trying to sell some records over the holidays. The absolute worst I have heard this year is the Carpenter's "Santa Claus is coming to town." It is slow and drawn out and painful with their changes to the melody.

Disc #2 Song #11
Listen to a sample here on Amazon

On a side not one of my favorite things about being a homeowner in the winter is controlling my own heating vents. While there is no good reason to have a vent fully open in a small bathroom I love it because it makes the bathroom very very warm. At my parents house we had a couple of cold bathrooms just because they were small and on the outside wall with a cold window.
I think I really cemented my appreciation for the warm winter bathroom in Rachel's last apartment. She had only a couple big heating vents and one was in the bathroom so it was easily 90 degrees all the time. Perfect for staying motivated to take a morning shower before going to work.

Friday, December 8, 2006

Bedtime adventures

Maybe not the ones you want to hear about...
Rachel and I saw a crazy special on people in England who have night terrors. They walk for miles and climb 150ft cranes in their sleep or eat crazy food like a butter stick w/ mayo (no mustard). One guy was even in trouble for starting to have sex with a girl at a party after everyone passed out, until his 4 previous girlfriends testified that he does that in his sleep with no memory of anything.
I am not that weird.
But I do have a history of sleep issues. In college I was on the top bunk. One night someone in my sleep yelled "watch out for the bat" I woke up and a bat flew into my chest. I took my pillow and smacked it into the wall but it kept flapping in my bed. I jumped off the top bunk only to have my roommate investigate that there was no bat.
Another time I dreamt my old roommate was slowly backing over me with an old muscle car so I rolled out of the top bunk and didn't wake up until I hit the floor. Luckily I rolled out far enough to miss my roommates night stand but not too far to hit the futon. That was my last night on the top bunk.
That roommate was very good at dealing with my sleep issues. The first roommate, Jon, was a friend from high school who drank and smoked a lot of pot. So I would end up scaring him a lot more than I was scared. One night I was convinced that our neighbors were trapped in our microfridge and we needed to get them out, Jon ended up saying "dude you're really freaking me out right now".
So I am not as crazy as these sleep terror people because I have some recollection of what occurs but all of my actions are motivated by events that happened in my sleep seconds before I get up.
At the apartment Rachel loved to have the the ceiling fan on at night which I rarely used (maybe it was hot in the bed for those hoping for the other bedtime adventures). Several nights she would wake up with me standing on the bed reaching for the fan getting dangerously close to being hit. I was convinced the fan was falling on us and I had to catch it.
Literally our first night in our first house I had some issues. I woke up to a loud bang (the house settling?) and was convinced it was a gang of robbers hitting a bunch of houses at once by checking if they could get in the garage doors (I get a lot of detailed info from these episodes). As I lay in bed and looked out the window (no curtains yet) to my neighbors across the street, I am sure to this day that I saw something trying to get into their garage door. My best bet now is that it was the branches of our little tree swaying in the breeze. But at the time I thought it was 2 guys rolled up in a rug to avoid being seen by security cameras banging on the garage door. It gave me an eerie "The Village" or the X-files fear at the time.
Rachel woke up to me kneeling at the window watching intently, she asked "what are you doing?" I waited then said "yup, I knew it I knew it" clutching the phone in my hand ready to dial 911. I am not sure why I did not call because I was convinced what I was seeing was real and already made the decision that I should call.
Recently, I just wake up with the need to see if the dog is still breathing. Rachel will catch me leaning out of bed trying to see if I can hear Lucy or see her ribs move. It is a strange feeling because there is no convincing me that I am wrong.
I don't know what will happen when we have kids...

Monday, December 4, 2006

Useful Websites

My admins have presented me with recent data showing that my comments per blog ratio has decreased recently. And I agree my progress towards settling down can't compete with babies popping up all over the place. My Blog Comment Ratio Action Committee has suggested a more interactive topic to really get things going.
So I decided to discuss some of my most useful websites that I use and hopefully learn about some new ones to try.

News: CNN.com - very easy to use and usually my homepage (especially at work). I usually ignore the top story and some days I read most of the articles on the homepage. It is the only place that I learn about celebrity gossip and divorces.

Weather: Weather.com - I don't watch the local news so this is helpful. I enjoy the hour bu hour forecasts but the radar no longer zooms in as well as it did a few years ago.

Sports: ESPN.com - The standard for scoreboards and checking out games but now too many of their articles and content is for INSIDERS. I believe in not paying for anything when I have 100 million other options so I have been checking out SI.com for sports articles.

Email: Yahoo.com - Hotmail gets way too much spam and I just haven't gotten around to using gmail much. Plus Yahoo was one of the first to give a lot of storage.

House Hunting: Sibcycline.com - Not sure the range beyond Cincy but I love the interactive map. Zillow.com is good for getting all the scoop on prices.

Books: Notthebookstore.com - obviously.

Search: Google.com - I find the image search very useful for blogs and work related things.