First off, I would like to explain that I am NOT a cat lover. I do not like cats… But there was something different about this cat… Please read on.

Today I got the call I did not want to hear. Misty, our cat of 18 years, pasted away this morning. As much as I want to be sad, I cannot shed a tear… The last 4 months have been REALLY hard on her and it was her time. I keep on thinking the reason she died was my fault… See, I have been coming home every week and spending time with her. I have been coming home to watch football for 14 weeks. I only missed one week since the beginning of the season. Most of the time, I spent sleeping at my parents’ place with Misty. I want to say it’s my fault, but it is not.

Aaron is the last to leave my parents’ house… [Aaron graduated, Beth got married, and I got married.] The three of us moved on with our lives. Now our last childhood pet, will not be there when Aaron, Beth, and myself come to visit. I still have issues not seeing Max [our dog November ’00] meeting me at the door. I know now that everytime I come to visit my parents’, it will be different not seeing the ONLY cat I ever liked. Misty was also the only cat that Heather [my wife] ever liked.

Through 18 years, we never had problems with our loving cat Misty. Now I must shed some tears, because I will never find a better pet than Misty. Today is supposed to be a good day and I will make sure it is.

Misty; our favorite cat May 19th, 1987 to December 20th, 2005

Andrew

Follow

Bears –
CHICAGO (AP) — Rex Grossman had waited a long time for this — nearly 15 months — so he was surprised and thrilled when the call finally came.

After replacing the struggling Kyle Orton in the third quarter, Grossman warmed the crowd and then the Chicago Bears’ offense in a 16-3 victory over the Atlanta Falcons on Sunday night at frigid Soldier Field.

“It was a thrill,” Grossman said. “To finally be back and have crowd support like that is not really something you can explain unless you have the experience yourself.

“To run out in Soldier Field and have whole crowd cheer you on after missing 26 games or whatever I missed and going through all the rehab and then to have that fan support running out in the huddle in a close game against the Falcons and playoff run — it’s a very unique situation. It’s a memory I’ll take with me the rest of my life.”

Grossman added a different dimension.

***Bears Playoff info*** –
The magic number is 1 for divison.
For a playoff birth: Redskins or Bucs loss.
For first round bye: Giants and Panthers loss, and Chicago win.

Halo 2 –
I played Halo 2 with Mike last night from 11pm – 5am. I should have quit at 1am, but I just continued to play. I sucked it up so much, that I need to play a couple of days in a row in get back to normal status.

Andrew

Follow

Today My Brother graduated from Illinois State University. He got his bachelor in Political Science. He was very happy to be finished with his degree. Right now he will be preparing to coming a Lawyer. I am VERY happy for him. I know he will suceed at being a Lawyer. I think he will bailing me out at some point… I hope not.

Andrew

Follow

taken from cnn.com:

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) – Interesting factoid about the Nintendo Revolution controller: It’s smaller and lighter than you might think.

I recently had the chance to get some hands-on time with the company’s next generation console to see whether the Revolution was, in fact, revolutionary. While the controller I used was still a prototype (the final one will be a bit larger and will include a button to power the machine on and off), it gave me a good chance to see what to expect when the system launches next year.

Shaped like a television remote control, the Revolution controller uses internal sensors to translate your wrist, arm and hand movements on screen. It’s easy to use, but takes a few minutes to adjust your playing style. (I initially found myself waving my arms wildly, resulting in the onscreen pointer whizzing back and forth at blinding speeds.)

Nintendo wasn’t kidding when it said it wanted to change the way people play, though. Once I figured out that subtle movements made for simple gameplay, I went through eight demos demonstrating a variety of features and possible uses. A simple point and shoot demo (like any of the thousands of Web-based Flash games) was more fun than I expected. I effortlessly pulled off loops and flight stunts I’ve never been able to manage with today’s standard controller in a flying demo, simply by holding the controller as I might a paper airplane. (“Star Fox” fans should start getting excited.)

Other demos allowed me to telescopically zoom in and out on the screen, simply by moving the controller forward and backward and try some fishing by ‘feeling’ fish nibble on the line (via a rumble effect), then yanking the controller up in the air to hook them. (“Animal Crossing” fans, you might want to get excited, too.)

By adding an auxiliary thumbstick controller, I was able to play through a level of a retrofitted “Metroid Prime 2” (a GameCube game). Confession time: When it comes to console shooters, I’m terrible. I can finish them, but I’m nowhere near as competent as I am with my mouse/keyboard setup for the PC. In the early stages of the “Metroid” demo, it looked like this trend would continue, as I was all over the screen. By mid-way, though, I was better able to move and aim – and enjoyed the game far more than I did with the GameCube controller. (“Metroid” fans… well, you’re probably already pretty excited.)

It turns out I’m not the only one who has this problem with standard controllers.

“I was a developer for many years before my current role, but I’ve never been a very good gamer,” Nintendo president Satoru Iwata told me. “I’ve never been able to control a first-person shooter, but as soon as I used the Revolution controller, I found it very easy to control the game. So, I think that’s a genre that’s particularly well suited for the controller.”

Reggie Fils-Aime, executive vice president of sales and marketing for Nintendo of America, said he hopes to see another type of game really take off with the Revolution.

“I hope [massively multiplayer online games] are really explored on this system,” he said. “That’s a genre, from the home console standpoint, that really hasn’t been explored very well.”

One of the problems the Revolution faces is dislodging the idea of the standard controller from people’s minds. Mention home video games to most people and they’ll conjure a mental image of someone sitting on a couch, both hands gripping one of today’s standard controllers and not moving much. So the idea of moving your arm in a virtual sword fight or taking virtual aim at onscreen monsters might be hard to get across.

“When we first watched it, we thought, frankly, ‘what the hell is this?’,” said Jack Sorensen, executive vice president of worldwide studios for THQ. “The main thing is getting it in your hands. Once you do that, it’s pretty intuitive. It’s not about more buttons. It’s about ease of use for consumers. … I’m surprised and happy with the direction Nintendo is going.”

Nintendo was in a similar situation a year ago when it launched the Nintendo DS. Explaining to people that a touch screen would be used to play games wasn’t easy. The DS was something that had to be experienced to fully understand. Iwata said the company is better prepared this time around.

“It’s going to be a challenge to take something that’s a new concept and new idea and convey to the public … how to understand it, but honestly I think the Revolution controller is going to be a lot easier to convey to the public than the DS was as a system,” he said. “We’ve learned a lot in terms of how to communicate to people these new and different ideas and because of the experience we had with the DS, we’re much more prepared.”

The company has high hopes for its next console (Revolution, it should be noted, is just a code name – the system’s official name will be announced next year). Iwata has previously said if sales do not surpass the GameCube’s, it will be considered a failure.

It goes beyond that, though.

“Until now, within a single household, we’ve had family members who play video games and family members who don’t play video games – and they’ve been very separate,” said Iwata. “Gradually, the barriers between those two have gotten stronger. … Today, if you don’t understand the controller, you’re not able to enjoy video games. … We expect [the Revolution controller] to become the standard in video game controls.”

That’s a tall order, especially amongst an audience that tends to be resistant to change. (The DS was often scorned by core gamers when it was initially announced. Some of those same gamers now regularly sing its praises. Others continue to argue it’s a gimmick.)

The Revolution is scheduled to launch next year, most likely in the same time frame as Sony’s (Research) PlayStation 3. Nintendo, which has already hinted it might offer the console at a lower price, has already promised to reveal all the details at a May press conference preceding the E3 trade show (the annual gathering of the video game industry).

That doesn’t mean it will retreat behind a veil of silence until that point, however.

“It’s fair to say that we have a number of things that we will begin unveiling all next year, leading up to E3,” said Fils-Aime.

Truth does hurt some people… Dare I say more.

Andrew

Follow

taken from Q101.com

Warner Bros. Records’ attempts to block the distribution of American Edit, a mash-up of Green Day’s American Idiot album, has sparked a protest among Internet activists. More than 200 participants took part in “Dean Gray Tuesday” this week by either posting the American Edit album online or turning their background page gray. The action was intended to be a “single display of the consumptive power of the mash-up and home-remix community,” according to AmericanEdit.org.

The album is very interesting. It is something to go out there and download.

Andrew

Follow

taken from Freedom to Tinker :

Here’s a great gift idea just in time for the holidays: Make your friends and relatives their very own copy-protected CDs using the same industrial-grade passive protection technology built into XCP and Macrovision discs.

Passive protection exploits subtle differences between the way computers read CDs and the way ordinary CD players do. By changing the layout of data on the CD, it’s sometimes possible to confuse computers without affecting ordinary players — or so the theory goes. In practice, the distinction between computers and CD players is less precise. Older generations of CD copy protection, which relied entirely on passive protection, proved easy to copy in some computers and impossible to play on some CD players. For these reasons, copy protection vendors now use active protection — special software designed to block copying.

Discs with XCP or Macrovision protection employ active protection in conjunction with a milder form of passive protection. You can create your own CD with exactly the same passive protection by following a straightforward five-step procedure. I’ll describe the procedure here, and then explain why it works.

What you’ll need:

* A computer running a recent version of Windows (instructions are Windows-specific; perhaps someone will write instructions for MacOS or Linux)
* Nero, a popular CD burning application
* CloneCD, an advanced disc duplication utility
* Two blank recordable CDs

Step 1: Burn a regular audio CD

Start Nero Burning ROM and create a new Audio CD project. [View] Add the audio tracks that you want to include on your copy-protected disc. [View] When you’re ready to record, click the Burn button on the toolbar. In the Burn tab, make sure “Finalize disc” is unchecked. [View] Insert a blank CD and click Burn. Be careful not to infringe any copyrights! For loads of great music that you can copy legally, visit Creative Commons.

Step 2: Add a data session to the CD

Start another Nero compilation, this time selecting the “CD-ROM ISO” project type. In the Multisession tab, make sure “Start Multisession disc” is selected; and in the ISO tab, make sure Data Mode is set to “Mode 2 / XA”. [View] Add any files that you want to be accessible when the CD is used in a computer. You might include “bonus” content, such as album art and lyrics. [View] For a more professional effect, consider adding the installer for your favorite spyware application and creating an Autorun.inf file so it starts automatically. When you’re finished, click the Burn toolbar button. Insert the audio CD you created in Step 1, and click Burn. [View] Nero should warn you that the disc you’ve inserted is not empty; click Yes to add your data files as a second session. [View]

Please goto Freedom to Tinker for the whole article. This is fun and hard all at once. Try it… I did!

Andrew

Follow

taken from the Sun:

A BRAVE teenager who saved a bank thousands of pounds by foiling a cash machine scam was rewarded yesterday — with a plastic calculator. Luke Bridges, 17, tore a false fascia off an ATM machine then fled from crooks waiting nearby who had put it there. He ran home with the device — used to “skim” customers’ PIN codes and clone cards — and called police. NatWest, owned by the Royal Bank of Scotland — which is worth £54.9BILLION — said they would reward the teenager for his bravery.

But when he opened a parcel from the bank he found a plastic calculator worth a few Pounds.

Furious HSBC cashier Luke said: “I plan to send this thing back with a letter telling the bank they can use it to work out how much money I saved them.

“It looks like the sort of thing they dish out free to bank staff.
“I didn’t expect much but I risked personal injury removing the false fascia and outrunning the crooks. “I thought NatWest might give me some sort of monetary reward as a goodwill gesture. “It’s disappointing but says a lot about what banks value the most — saving themselves money.”

The Sun revealed how Luke foiled the fraud scam earlier thi month in Westcliff-On-Sea, Essex.

NatWest claimed they had sent Luke CD vouchers, which he denied. A NatWest spokesman said: “We are very grateful to Mr Bridges for helping prevent cash machine users falling victim to this fraud but we would never encourage anyone to put their safety at risk by attempting to remove any such device. “We advise anyone who notices anything unusual about a cash machine to report it to the bank or the police immediately. “We have written to Mr Bridges expressing our gratitude and have sent him a gift and CD vouchers.

“We have also re-emphasised the dangers of removing such devices.”

What the Fuck? I would have beat the piss out of the bank manager. Stupid Brits.

Andrew

Follow

The Bears’ eight-game winning streak came to an abrupt halt Sunday in snowy Pittsburgh as the Steelers dominated on both sides of the ball in a lopsided 21-9 victory.

Damn Kyle Orton and RonTuner; Both of yous SUCK! I cannot believe they won 9 games so far… Defense has scored more points than the offense… What does that tell you?

Andrew

Follow

More at Thomas Hawk’s Blog

“I will make sure you will never be able to place an order on the internet again.” “I’m an attorney, I will sue you.” “I will call the CEO of your company and play him the tape of this phone call.” “I’m going to call your local police and have two officers come over and arrest you.” “You’d better get this through your thick skull.” “You have no idea who you are dealing with.”

These are all direct threats that I received today from an individual who identified himself as Steve Phillips, the manager of PriceRitePhoto in Brooklyn, New York when I called to inquire about my order with them. My crime? Telling him that I planned to write an article about my unfortunate experience with his company regarding the camera order I had placed with him yesterday.

How are these people able to stay in business?

I suppose I should have been duly warned based on PC World’s Camera Confidential expose written a few years back about unscrupulous camera operators operating out of New York, but I have never been so utterly offended by a retailer in my life. I guess in some ways this is my own fault, or as Steve Phillips reminded me, you’re a “professional photographer you should know better than to buy things on the internet this way.”

I have been keeping track of The new Canon EOS 5D for a while. As those of you who visit this site regularly know, photography is a passionate hobby of mine. I’ve told myself that I’d pick up a 5D as soon as the price dropped below $3,000. I’ve been regularly checking both Yahoo! Shopping and PriceGrabber for a while waiting for one to drop. Well yesterday for the first time I saw that the 5D was for sale for $2,899 at PriceRitePhoto. I placed an order online and this is where my trouble began. The order went through and was confirmed and is shown below.

More at Thomas Hawk’s Blog

Please Read the WHOLE Story… It is VERY interesting!

Andrew

Follow

“Shouldn’t Nintendo be dissuading people from buying the Xbox 360 by convincing them to wait for the Revolution? IGN threw the question at George Harrison in today’s Nintendo Minute on IGN Revolution.

From IGN: “George Harrison, senior vice president, marketing and corporate communications, Nintendo of America: With so many new products being released each month, Nintendo must always be very strategic in deciding when to stir up buzz for a particular game or system. During this year’s busy holiday season, it wouldn’t make sense for us to get gamers excited about a console that they won’t be able to play until 2006.

Our focus right now is in generating excitement for our current heavy-hitting holiday line-up that includes Nintendo’s first-ever online gaming network in the U.S. with Mario Kart DS and Animal Crossing DS. This is huge for Nintendo and, as you know, the response has been outstanding, with nearly half of all Mario Kart DS owners already playing online. These online titles hit stores in time for the holidays, so it makes sense Nintendo is concentrating on them now while the market for them is hot.

However, once the holiday rush subsides, I think it’s safe to say that you can expect Nintendo’s attention to gradually shift toward its 2006 priorities. Revolution is clearly one of these priorities, and we expect to see gamers become even more excited for Nintendo’s next console in what they learn in the coming months.

So though competitive noise may be high right now, rest easy knowing that Revolution will soon have its day in the sun, and all eyes will shift toward it. “

This however is where we disagree with Nintendo. While they may only have so much left to disclose about the Revolution, it is thought that it would be more profitable to take some measures to dissuade people who are currently tempted to purchase an Xbox 360. This may not be so.

Nintendo has statistics on information release dates and over all consumer response when amidst competition (as do all 3 companies, which help them to base their decisions). Perhaps with the lower cost of the Revolution and the alleged fun factor Nintendo can profit more by delaying the next hurdle of big Revolution news. Who knows. I guess we’ll see – Though we certainly can’t see the reasoning.”

I love hearing about there articles!!! I KNOW I am buying an XBox 360 and the Revolution. It is sad when you buy a system for Halo and another for the rest of your games…

Andrew

Follow

taken from Wrestlezone.com :

Wrestling star Eddie Guerrero died of natural causes related to heart disease, said the Hennepin County Medical Examiner Thursday.

The medical examiner’s office said Guerrero, who was found dead in his hotel room on November 13, died of “natural causes related to arteriosclerotic heart disease.” That term is synonymous with coronary heart disease, a narrowing of the blood vessels that supply blood and oxygen to the heart.

The coroner’s did not address what led to the heart trouble, although the wrestler’s wife, Vickie Guerrero, said last month on WWE.com’s website that his past substance abuse and aggressive workout regimen caused the heart disease.

Following Guerrero’s death, WWE announced the institution of a drug testing policy to screen for steroids and other drugs.

Andrew

Follow

Taken from Bungie.net

“Earlier today, we completed the update of the Halo 2 playlists as described in the weekly update. If you can still see Head to Head in your playlist selection screen in the game, you need to log out of Xbox Live and log back in until Head to Head is gone and the new playlists are showing up. Bungie.net is now also correctly showing the new lists. Have fun, and post any questions to Optimatch.”

Here are the following changes to the playlists:

Major Clanmatch and Head to Head have been removed.

Minor Clanmatch has received a change in configuration. It will now be called Clanmatch and will allow for team of 4-5 clan members each. Your Minor Clanmatch ranks will persist to the new Clanmatch playlist.

Two new unranked playlists have been added, Rumble Armory and Team ActionSack.

6v6 Team Battle has been added as a ranked playlist featuring team sizes of 5-6 players each. Big Team Battle now supports only larger team sizes of 7-8 players each.

Team Snipers is now a ranked playlist and has a total of 15 maps. Your hidden rank will now be displayed.

Yessssssssssssssssssss!

Andrew

Follow

Taken from 99X Rocks :

99X and Michelob Ultra Amber proudly welcome back the annual 99X Nutcracker Christmas, featuring headliners NONPOINT! Friday night, December 9th! Doors open at 5 with the show to kick off at 5:30 at Peoria’s Expo Gardens! 99X local Rockers 3AM Project, Trip-Rod, and 99X’s original house band, Justify The Means rock the house, with regional rockers ‘Left for Dead’ opening the show!

Tickets are available at Radioplex, all Co-op Records, Elmore Musical Warehouse and ‘Shandi’s’ in the Canton Square in Canton. Tickets are $15, $20 gets you a ticket and a commemorative Nutcracker T-Shirt! Check out the coupon on the back of your ticket for savings on a 99X Nutcracker ornament at ‘Rudolph and Me’ in Northwood’s Mall…see you at Nutcracker 2005, from Michelob Ultra Amber, and 99X Rocks!

I cannot WAIT!!!

Andrew

Follow