MichaelandChrissy.com

Twitter is an online service that allows you to post public announcements of your current doings. The catch is that you can only post text blurbs of less than 140 characters (called a “tweet”). They have a desktop widget that allows you to enter updates whenever you feel like it. You can even send updates via your cell phone, but I hate text messages, so I won’t be doing that.

It’s sort of like a thirty second blog entry, which is nice because I usually spend more time tailoring my blog updates. Some people use Twitter as their exclusive blog, but I think that would be difficult given the character-limit restrictions. I tend to ramble though…

You can go directly to my Twitter page, but my last three updates will be posted to our web site and the most recent one will show up on right column of this page (see it there?).

I received my new HIS video card and memory from NewEgg.com yesterday (I switched from ZipZoomFly to NewEgg to get free shipping). Installation was a snap. Our Dell XPS G5 boxes open right up without any screws (just a latch that you pull up), and the whole side swings right out on a hinge. It was the easiest hardware upgrade that I?ve ever done. I installed Chrissy’s two gigabytes of RAM first, and then started over on my machine.

It was pretty easy to install the video card, although it took me a few minutes to release the old one from a restraining bar that held it in place. After popping in the new memory chips, I booted it back up and replaced the video drivers. ATI packs a lot of stuff in with their drivers. My machine was notably faster when it came back up, but then again, it now has triple the amount of RAM that it had yesterday.

I ran the Transformers game with FSAA (full screen anti-aliasing), the highest resolution (1600x 1200), and all video settings cranked to max, just to see what it would look like, and I was blown away. Everything looked better, moved faster, and was much more enjoyable. I had never turned on the FSAA before, since it was too intensive, but it makes a huge difference. I wish that I had started playing it this way from the beginning. I might need to play Oblivion all the way through again, just to see how much prettier it can be.

I spent the better part of Sunday putting up the outdoor Christmas decorations. I generally don’t like to sit outside in the cold, but it’s impractical to bring every strand of Christmas lights into the house to check them where it’s warm. So I sat out in the garage, laying each strand out and then plugging them in one at a time. I hate that. What I really hated was finding that half of my strands don’t work anymore. I was able to fix two of them by replacing the bad bulbs, but I still didn’t have enough strands to go all the way across the front of the house.

I decided to skip the strand lights. I like them (they look like icicles hanging from the gutters), but I don’t have enough to make it look right. So I started on the lawn decorations. Right about here, it started to snow. Sleet, actually, like frozen rain. It didn’t stop until I was done setting everything up. I have eight red-and-white striped candy canes (with lights), one white tree (with red and white lights), four box-shaped presents (with lights) to go on either side of the tree, one “Claire the Square” snowman (with lights), and a small sleigh with two flying reindeer (again, each with more lights). It’s a very bright display.

My favorite part of decorating the yard might be layout and power management. I got two more extension cables last year, the kind with an outlet every three feet or so. These work out nicely because I can plug in three candy canes into one outlet and then run the cable over to the next set of three candy canes, and so on. I also use fewer power cables this way (I used to have to run 10-foot extensions all over the yard). This year, I went from using six power cables to only two of the new kind, and only used one three-way outlet splitter. I ran everything into a timer that turns everything on at dusk and off three hours later.

“Black Friday” seems to start earlier every year. Kohls announced that they would be opening at 4 AM this year, so the original plan was to wake up at 2:30 AM and get to Kohls by 3 AM to wait in line. After looking at the Kohls ad, however, Chrissy changed our plans. Instead, we woke up at 2:30 AM to arrive at Toys R Us in Merrillville by 3:30 AM. Since we got there so early, we were in the first quarter of the huge line, waiting in the thirty-degree cold for 5 AM to come. Note the repeated use of “AM” here — this was damn early, people!

Toys R Us had about a dozen things that we wanted, and not all of them were for me. Chrissy bought a lot of items for Aiden this year, including presents for Christmas, Easter and his next birthday. They had a Cybertron Optimus Prime for half off in the sales ad (which I wanted), but they didn’t actually have any in the store. We got everything else that we came for though, and actually made it out of the store before the end of the line had made it in the front door.

We also visited Kohls, but not until 5:30 AM, well after they opened. The line inside the store was wrapped all the way around the building. It took an hour and a half to get to the checkout counter. I stood in line while Chrissy brought back items to add to the pile. Before long, I was pushing two huge stacks of boxes and a completely filled shopping bag around the store with me in line. We had a coupon for an additional 15% off, so we totally killed in there.

All of our Christmas shopping was done by this point, but we always stop by the mall to buy some clothes before we close out “Black Friday”. We browsed the Woodfield Southlake Mall and then headed home by 10 AM for a nap. I would not fully recuperate for two days. To cap it all off, Kohls charged us twice for a crock pot, so we had to go back to Merrillville for a refund later that afternoon. Since we were already out that way (and we had Aiden with us this time), we went to Aunt Linda’s to see Sandy and Eric (and families), as they are rarely in town at the same time.

Lately I’ve been watching “Noein” and “Ergo Proxy” every week, but both series are coming to an end this week. “Noein” is on the Sci-Fi Channel’s “ani-Monday”, which was a fantastic idea for them. Although I don’t care for “Virus Buster Serge”, many of the other shows on ani-Monday have been really good. Proxy is on FuseTV, along with “Tenjho Tenge”. I usually pass on Tenjho as well, since it seems to be made by and for 13-year-old boys.

I wasn’t expecting much from “Noein“, but it grew on me due to its great character development. I’m a sucker for multi-dimensional time-traveling shows. This one gets away from the gratuitous time-travel paradoxes by hopping between alternate realities as well as through time. The series started out a little ambiguously, but it gets much more interesting if you hang in there. Towards the end of the series, I was looking forward to see what would happen next.

“Ergo Proxy” was in my Netflix queue before I saw it on TV. I’ve really enjoyed it, despite the commercials that pitch the show that you’re currently watching — I don’t see the point in having advertisements for the DVD set when you’re already seeing the series for free. Unless you’re really impatient and you just have to see the entire series in one night. Personally, I can never get enough Pino, who may be the best Cohito-infected autonomous robot character ever.

A new series on the Cartoon Network called “Death Note” also looks promising. It’s about a genius high-school student that finds a magic notebook that belongs to a Death God. When you write someone’s name in the notebook, they die within a minute. Unfortunately, there are dozens of rules associated with the Death Note, and at least two must be explained in detail each episode. Once you get past the long-windedness of each episode, it’s easy to appreciate the amount of thought that goes into the writing. The Japanese version had three seasons, so this anime shouldn’t run out after 24 episodes like “Noein” and “Ergo Proxy”.

I also recently watched “End of Evangelion“, the Evangelion movie which was basically episodes 25 and 26 of the “Neon Evangelion” series. I saw the first dozen or so episodes on Cartoon Network, but they stopped showing them before I could record the whole set. I think that I might have to go back and watch the entire series on DVD, since I was a little confused by some of the events in End. It was still pretty good, although I might have to officially rename it to “Shinji’s Annoying Whining Continues Even After Everone Is Dead”. The ending was strange, but I later read that even the director didn’t understand what was happening.

I normally keep an eye out for new anime on the Cartoon Network, so I set this one to record even though I didn’t know what it was and there was no synopsis. It took three weeks for me to get around to watching it, since I got better things to do than watch TV shows with no synopsises. But I’m glad that I finally watched it, because it’s awesome. The show might be an acquired taste for some, but Bruce Campbell fans will enjoy it immensely (more on that later).

“Stiff” was produced by the team that made “Aqua Teen Hunger Force” and “12oz Mouse” (a favorite of mine). No word yet on whether this will be a series or not. The premise is about a private detective that cannot die and his psychotic girlfriend. They battle demons and Deadites (for lack of a better term) with kung fu and overt displays of firepower. I’m not sure if you could drag that out into eleven episodes, seeing as though the episode slumped a little in the middle, but it would interesting to see what they come up with.

The pilot is clearly an homage to Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead series, particularly “Evil Dead 2: Dead By Dawn“, as evidenced by its comedic bits. I was an Evil Dead fan before “Army of Darkness” came out (I actually saw AoD at the theater with my cousin Eric, also a big Raimi fan), so I really like the style that this short movie takes on. Gallons of blood and green bile, impertinent undead and sarcastic one-liners make “Stiff” the perfect stand-in until the release of “Evil Dead 4“.

My knowledge of current video cards is woefully inadequate. For example, the last time that I upgraded a video card, I was looking for one that was AGP compatible. That means that the motherboard has a special AGP slot that you plug the card into. Well, it turns out that my computer has the newer video card port, PCI Express x16. This gives me a much better selection of video cards to choose from, since AGP cards are being phased out of the marketplace.

I didn’t want to spend a whole lot on a new card. I could get a really nice high-end card for $200, but I figured that I could settle for an average card in the $100 range. So now it was a question of which major type of card to go with, ATI or Nvidia? Both companies create video cards in a number of styles and price ranges, so it was a hard choice. Swavek suggested that I take a look at Tom’s Hardware, which rates and compares computer hardware. That was very helpful.

After doing a little more looking around, I found that the ATI HD2600 XT is comparable to the Nvidia 8600 GT for 3D gaming and seems to be much cheaper (although it really shines as a home theater card). The 2600 XT has a faster processor clock and a faster memory clock than the 8600GT, but the 8600GT has twice as many texture units and raster operators. Since I’m looking for roughly 8600-level performance, but I don’t use my computer exclusively for gaming, I think that the 2600 XT might be the way to go.

I’m leaning towards the HIS Radeon 512MB 2600 XT card. ZipZoomFly has some awesome deals on RAM right now, so I’m going with them. Also, I’m hoping that there will be an online special for Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving). If I get lucky, I can get a sweet deal for everything and then get free shipping on top of that. After all, this will probably be the last upgrade for my computer before we buy another one (maybe a year or two down the road).

I know that I've given up movie theaters, but I recently saw a couple of trailers that make me want to change my mind. Both "Cloverfield" and "Aliens Versus Predator 2: Requiem" are due out soon, and they both look really good. Normally, if I hear about a movie that I would like to see, I will wait for the DVD to come out and watch it at home on my big screen TV, but I might break down and at least see "Cloverfield" at the movie theater. It looks like "Cloverfield" needs to be seen on a huge screen, in all its glory, for the full effect. Hopefully it will come out on IMAX.

The original trailer for "Cloverfield" was placed before the Transformers movie, but they didn't reveal the title. J.J. Abrams has kept the lid closed tightly on this one, so curiosity is pushing people towards it. From what I can tell, it's a mix between "The Blair Witch Project" and "Godzilla". The entire movie is filmed on a video camera by a small group of friends as they escape the path of a giant monster that attacks New York (hurling around Statue of Liberty heads). The teaser trailer is on YouTube, but the full trailer, in high-resolution, can be found on the official web site.

I was really excited when the first "Aliens Versus Predator" came out in 2004, since I was a big fan of the comic book series by Dark Horse (back in my late teens). However, this film was so awful that not even the appearance of Bishop's great-grand-daddy could save it (and Lance Henriksen is awesome). AvP was hamstrung by a PG-13 rating and a low budget, so much so that fans thought a sequel would never happen. Luckily, we were wrong. An R-rated sequel is due out soon, and "Aliens Versus Predator 2: Requiem" is so gruesome that you have to validate your age before you can view some of the trailers. I'm pretty sure that this movie will redeem the franchise and allow for a third movie.

I recently got a copy of Windows Vista from the IUN bookstore. I don’t think that Vista is ready for prime time yet, but I wanted to give it a try after the first service pack came out. I believe that my 3.2Ghz Pentium 4 processor should be able to handle the new OS. However, Vista is a resource hog, so I will need to upgrade my computer’s single gig of RAM before upgrading. I should have two free slots, so I should be able to put another two gigabytes of RAM in there without spending too much.

I’ve never opened my Dell. It’s odd that I used to work on my computers all the time, but I haven’t opened this one up in the two years that I’ve had it. I figured that as long as I’m upgrading the RAM, I might as well toss in a new video card as well. I know that I currently have an Nvidia 6800 video card in there, but that’s about it. The rest of the machine will keep, but I’ve noticed that BioShock and Transformers will run a little slow at higher resolutions. I’ll need to do a little research about recent video card technology before going through with this.

Chrissy wanted me to watch The Big Bang Theory because she says that it’s like watching me on TV. I wasn’t sure how to take that. I’ve been teaching K221 at IUN every Monday, so I haven’t caught it yet, but Chrissy recorded them all. So we sat down and watched two hours straight. It might be the funniest show ever, in the same way that Dilbert is hilarious to me because I live it on a daily basis. I’ve heard that a lot of people don’t like it (it replaced “The Class”), but they probably don’t relate to the humor the same way that a geeky person can.

The show is about these two physicist roommates, Leonard and Sheldon, who are living the geek high life. Along with their equally out-of-place friends, they play team video games, watch Superman marathons and organize their cereal selections according to fiber content. Now if this doesn’t sound like me and Carl back in the day, then I don’t know what does. Many of the jokes might go over non-geek heads, but I appreciate them because, again, I live it on a daily basis.

Hilarity ensues when you add in their hot neighbor, Penny, who hasn’t got a geeky bone in her body. The comedy is all about the contrast between her lifestyle and theirs. In real life, I would guess that Penny would cross the street to avoid Leonard and Sheldon, but she’s written to be fairly friendly and doesn’t mind dressing down around them. In fact, she doesn’t leave much to the imagination. If I had a daughter, she wouldn’t leave the house dressed like that — but that’s just me getting old. That’s me: old and geeky.