A lighter blog

It seems that everybody has been posting up heavy blogs or has the blues (thank the stars that’s not a real AR Dan bought) or is generally in a serious frame of mind lately. I feel a little silly to be writing about topics as mundane as I have, but maybe it will bring a smile or two to the group.

First, a comment on the good/bad of Chromehounds. For me, it’s probably the best thing to happen to my gaming since I bought the 180 and Halo CE back whenever that was. I know CH won’t last as long as the Halo CE phase, but I’ve logged more hours playing with the OMM over the last three weeks than I did over the entire last year. It’s a drag that you can only get 20 in a squad, that the two squads filled with OMMers rarely meet, that you need a 360 to play and that some OMMers just don’t care for the game, but I’ve been online with the group essentially every night for the past 10 days. That has NEVER happened before. So for me, Chromehounds is pure goodness, and I can even kill netw3rk 1 time out of 3…sometimes…at least until he gets more practice. He actually accused me of cheating last night. ;-)

Most of you know, or can guess based on the Avatar, that I have a Dachshund. She is definitely spoiled and certainly doesn’t qualify as “well trained,” but she is a comical critter and great fun to have around. I know a lot of people don’t get the “pet crazy” mentality some of us have, but it works for us.

At some point many years ago when she was just a year or two old we were looking around for her, but couldn’t find her. She has occasionally ended up in a room or closet after we have left and closed the door, but we looked in all the rooms and had no idea where she was. Eventually I saw her, and it looked very similar to the picture below.

Dachshunds are known to like being under covers. She sleeps in her kennel under a blanket and when she is with us on the couch, she is normally covered as well. However, getting inside the pillowcase was not something I ever expected to see. She doesn’t do this as often as she used to, but it was a little cooler this weekend and she decided to crawl in for a nap, and I wanted to share our dogs’ goofiness with the group.

Sunday we had plans to drive in to the mountains and go hiking, but just before we were going to leave, Terry decides that she wants to rearrange some furniture. Do men ever get urges like that? Do we stop and say “ya know, I was thinking the loveseat would look much better if it was turned a little more to the left.” Anyway, rearranging furniture generally means one thing at our house…something new.

I rarely buy anything like a couch without pushing for us to wait a day to think about the purchase. Terry was thinking about a couch we had seen before at Scandinavian Design, and it was one that I had really liked when we first saw it, and Terry knew it. It is a contemporary looking triple recliner.

Now CapNHun tool/repair story from a few days back comes to mind as I recall our shopping trip.

Terry knows my 24 hour rule, and after we had looked at the couch, she wandered off to look around a little more and I did the same. We met up again after about 10 minutes and she sheepishly says “You’re going to kill me.”

Me: “Why?”
Her: “I found something else I want.”
Me: “What?”
Her: “A light fixture”
Me, incredulously: “For where?”
Her: “I already told you…the dining room”
Me, even more incredulously: “THE DINING ROOM…I just put a new fixture in the dining room 2 effin’ months ago!”
(Just so you know, the house was constructed less than 9 months ago)

She stares longingly at this sort of cool, sort of mod fabric wrapped fixture that is on closeout for $179. I didn’t really like it and it was a little dinged up and didn’t seem to hang straight. I have an issue with things being out of square or not hanging straight, plus it gave me a good excuse as to why I didn’t want it. What was really bothering me was that we had just replaced the original (6 mo old) fixture with a $200 fixture a couple months ago.

15 minutes later though, we had a new couch.

So was I simply outsmarted? Did my wife ever really want that fixture? Did I win the battle but lose the war?

I wish the couch wasn’t as expensive as it was, but it is a pretty nice piece and perfect for watching TV. I’ll post up a pic when it gets delivered next Sunday.

Since we didn’t make to the mountains Sunday, we went yesterday instead, and hiked (wheezed) 2.5 miles at 9000’ at Golden Gate State Park about 30 minutes from Golden.

Posted by Relic @ 8:00 pm EDT | Permalink | 6 Comments

The day the dog went nuts...and other stuff

Our dog went insane Friday, temporarily I hope.

My wife and I have had a budget for many years and we use an old old method of putting money in envelopes. This actually works really well.  It is simple and effective.  But, since we didn't want all that cash laying around in envelopes, we use monopoly money instead (really) and reconcile it to our spending.  I.E. When I bought the 360, I took $400 in monopoly money out of of my spending envelope.  This way we each have our own money, and there is no negotiation for personal purchases.  If I want a new game or she wants a new outfit, it doesn't matter as long as we can "pay" for it.  This takes some time but it is worth not arguing over money.

On Friday, our Dachshund Hannah decided that she didn't care for the budget, either that or she liked it too much.

This is what we found on the office floor when we got home Friday after work. 

Now what is interesting is that she left the groceries envolope alone but trashed each of our personal spending envelopes. WTF!  Can the dog read?  Anyway, we still haven't decided how were going to figure out how much money was where.  I know I had more personal money then Terry, but I can't prove it.  Hmmm, maybe they're in this together.

Another thing you can see in the top left of the picture is 20" of a belt thet used to be about 36" long.  There was a three inch piece left downstairs, but the other foot+ was eaten, only to be horked up around the house in 1/2" x 1" pieces.

Hannah seems to have pretty much recover at this point, but she doesn't have access to the office anymore.

Chicago and the LAN, aka Red versus Blue

Many months ago I realized that I had tickets to two Cubs games for the exact same weekend as the 2o2p Chicago LAN.  I had mixed feelings on this but decided there really wasn’t a way to cram both into the same weekend.

This was a trip that some friends and I had been trying to make happen for last couple of years, and back in March we finally committed to getting tickets for 8/5 and 8/6 no matter what.  I moved to Denver a little over a year ago and I was the one pushing to make sure it happened, since it was an opportunity to get together with some old friends. 
15 years ago or so, before Cubs bleacher seats became so hard to get a hold of, we used to make a fairly regular trip from Minneapolis to see a Cubs game or two and get drunk in the bleachers (and Murphy’s and Slugger’s and El Jardin).  We were all single back then and had some wild times. 

On my final train ride in Chicago on Tuesday (Orange line to Midway) it seemed fitting that I finally realized that two of the “L” lines I had been riding the most for the last 5 days were the Red line and the Blue line.  The Red line runs North/South and is the train you catch to go to both Wrigley Field, home of the Cubs, and US Cellular Field, home of the White Sox.  The Blue line runs from O’Hare on the Northwest end, goes through downtown, then out to the near Western suburbs. 

The Red

We stayed downtown just a few blocks from Michigan Ave and took the Red line to and from the Cubs game both Friday and Saturday.  I’m not much of a sports fan anymore, but the Cubs and Bears will always be my two favorite teams, and Wrigley Field is a great place to see baseball.  The bar scene is also amazing after the game.  There’s a fair amount of people who just go to the bars and not the game, especially on Saturday afternoon.

L2R, Me, Randy, Mike and Doug

Some Bacardi girls

Ya gotta love Wrigley

The Blue

The Blue line has one end at O’Hare, and the other end is Forest Park.  The CTA station in Forest Park isn’t very far from where I grew up and just a couple of miles from where I went to High School, at Proviso East, and much of my family still lives in the area.    On Sunday afternoon I took the Blue line out to Forest Park end and we all got together for pizza.  I’m sure Home Run Inn was and a lot faster than going to Gino’s East, but I’m also pretty sure it wasn’t as good.

At dinner my sister offered me a seat at the Sox game on Monday, which was a rainout makeup with the Angels.  They were season tickets (not theirs) and the ticket holders couldn’t go, and two nephews and their friend (all teenagers) were going.  The tickets were 12th row behind the Sox dugout, so some of the best seats I’ve ever had for a game.

More Red

To get to US Cellular/Comiskey, you take the Red line south to 36th and walk to the field, almost the same type of walk to get to Wrigley from the L.  They’re both “turn of the century” ballparks, just different centuries.  After working at the conference at McCormick Place on Monday and meeting up with my Brother and his family for about an hour down by Shedd Aquarium, I hopped on the Red line down to the game.

Not enough Blue

The only direction I didn’t go on the Red and Blue lines was out towards O’Hare and the 2o2p LAN.  Based on what I’ve read in the other postings on the site, I probably walked the same ground as Tait, Scotib, BigOne and his wife when they were at Navy pier.  They were there Friday and I was there Saturday.  I probably also came close to Torture if he was out at Wrigley on Saturday, since we were there from about 3-9 before we headed down to Clark Dog, which is in, shall we say, an interesting alternative neighborhood.  Good beef and hot dogs at Clark Dog.

So I missed the LAN this year even though I was in town.  Just like the perennial cry of any Cubs fan, all I can say is “Wait until next year!”

If you made it this far, thanks for reading.  See you on Live.

Relic

 

 

 

 

 

Posted by Relic @ 8:01 am EDT | Permalink | 3 Comments

The new TV aka Blog # 1

I was doubly inspired by Castlemonster when he put up a blog on his new gaming set-up. It inspired me not only to blog but also to resolve a situation that has been bugging me for months.

I don’t have the same issues that Castle does since we don’t have any kids, and I normally don’t log on to live until after my wife goes to sleep, but I had other issues using the main TV for gaming.

My wife and I moved from Minneapolis to Denver about a year ago and had a new house built that was completed in December, and soon after I had a big new HDTV delivered. It is a 50” Sony SXRD, and overall I’m really happy with it. This was pre-360 for me and meant tracking down an HD adapter for the 180, which isn’t something I could find at BB, CC, TRU etc., but you can pick them up new for less than $20 on eBay. Unfortunately, I eventually figured out that this TV has a 50 ms “upconversion” delay in video processing, which is enough to really mess with my shooting skills. That isn’t a handicap I’m capable of dealing with. When I got the 360, the only game I had was Oblivion and the delay doesn’t really matter with that game, so I played that on the big TV for a long while.

For shooters though, it was down to the unfinished basement I went. At first this was with a 19” TV that I had used for gaming for a long time on the 180. After having seen Oblivion and Halo in HD though, I could hardly stand looking at the fuzzy screen. When I moved to COD2 I brought the 360 down and switched to an unused 17” PC CRT monitor I had sitting in the basement anyway. This required a 360 VGA adapter for $40 from BB, but I was gaming in HD, although I was sitting about 3 feet from the screen. I don’t have the VGA adapter for the 180, so that was still 19” of 480i blurriness.

What about the sound? The VGA adapter has a toslink port as well as analog RCA connections, but neither works with the monitor speakers. Always trying to do something for nothing I plugged the analog sound into the 19” TV and it wasn’t much but at least I could hear, watching the 17” monitor and listening to the 19” TV.

Fast forward about 3 months to Castle’s blog from Friday. I didn’t want to spend a $1000 but man that sure looks sweet. His blog pushed me pretty close to the edge. I’ve been scanning the ads every Sunday for months looking for something 27” or so that I could use for HD gaming. Add that to my wife and me getting the basement picked up in advance of an in-laws invasion and the scene was set.

My wife doesn’t visit the basement very often, other than to look for a box or some paperwork, and she never really paid any attention to the gaming set-up. The basement only has 3 outlets, none convenient to where the 360/180/Monitor/TV were. Also, as I was hooking all this stuff up it never occurred to me that I really should just go buy a power strip. I had at least 4 extension cords along with controller cables, HD cables, a play and charge cable, three headsets, a 30’ Ethernet cable, a 360, a 180, a TV and a monitor, and plenty of leftover dust from when I built the workbench.

This, she said, has got to go.

“Do you really need all these cords?” Yes, I need all of them…but I said that if bought a power-strip I could get rid of most of the power cords.

“GO!” she commanded.

I mentioned that there was a 27’ widescreen LCD Monitor/TV on sale at Office Depot for $499 that I wanted to look at while I was out.

“Just buy it.” she advised.

Looking at the display in the store left me lukewarm, but I decided to reserve judgment until it was hooked up to the 360. I toss it in the back of the car and I just need to stop at Costco for coffee, pot-stickers, edamame and the power-strip (I forgot to get it at Office Depot) and I’m done. No power-strip that I could find at Costco, so one more stop at Home Depot. Now, which power strip…585 Joules, 705 Joules, 2250 Joules, price range $7-$65…I picked out the black one, $9.

Got home and got the boxes hooked to the TV and then spent some time running the Ethernet cable through the ceiling/floor joists as well as running power from the least conspicuous outlet.

I hooked the 360 up with the HD cables (component) and thought it was just OK. I hooked it up using the VGA adapter and maybe I’m delusional, but I think the VGA looks a lot better. I’m not sure I understand why. There’s no HDMI support but there are two sets of component inputs along with the VGA, so the 180 is hooked up HD as well. The TV also has decent speakers, and I’ll think I’ll hold off on the surround for a bit. The surround I have upstairs is pretty impressive so I’m spoiled, and I haven’t thought much of the HTIAB systems I’ve seen. The headphones Castle mentions are a possibility, but my hearing is already going (really bad tinnitus) and some say headphones are a leading culprit in hearing loss.

Tooling around a couple maps on Halo and COD2 seemed pretty damn crisp. I haven’t actually played on Live yet, but that’ll change, and I’ll probably spend most of my free time in the basement just like in That 70s Show.

Posted by Relic @ 11:05 pm EDT | Permalink | 5 Comments