• I am really torn about getting a new Blackberry. The Torch obviously has to be better than my first generation Blackberry Bold 9000 but the idea that it is not on the 1 GHz processor level and updated screen is not very appealing for a phone that I will probably have for another 2 years. I might hold out to see if Blackberry makes any new releases for the Bold.
• I think I am at the point where I am going to buy a media server. I want to be able to play music on my home theater system from my PC. Know of any good ones? I am tired of listening to my PC two rooms away when having parties.
• I have another weekend of being out of town. I am really looking forward to hanging out with the Wash U crowd for Ann’s wedding but also really want to sleep in since I am recovering from a sinus infection. Unfortunately that is not possible.
• I do not know what to think of the Cardinals. They seem to make a lot of costly errors, their hitters are not dependable (besides Pujols and Holliday), and the relief pitching is very shaky. I do not think we can rely on Wainright and Carpenter carrying us in the playoffs (if we even make it there).
• This summer’s cable show TV lineup has been pretty good. True Blood has been pretty awesome. They really made this year interesting although it is a little more disturbing than past years. Entourage has also been good. Throwing as many celebrities as they can in an episode seems to work. I am also interested in seeing the storyline for Weeds this series. Looks like they are moving again based on the Series opener.
• Lost Season 6 comes out next Tuesday. It is supposed to have a lot of extra scenes for the last episode. I’ve already moved Disc 5 to the top of my Netflix queue.
• Am I going to buy Halo Reach and Civilization 5 in September? I have not been playing games at all since coming back from Chile but I know I am getting Civ 5 and will be playing it a ton. I will only buy Reach if a bunch of my friends do so I can play them online.

• I have not played video games since I came back from Chile almost two months ago. Pretty odd considering I was addicted before I left.
• I can not get on top of my DVR situation.  I have my DVR 75% full which is about 900 GB. I have complete seasons of Chuck, Dollhouse, Tudors, Flash Forward, V, and probably others. I have over 5 episodes each of Simpsons, Parks and Recreations, The Middle, American Dad, America – The Story of Us, and many others.
• I do not know what to think about this shift from the Big 12. I thought it was a money issue but I read last week that MU has gotten around $22 million a year in the Big 12 revenue sharing program where the Big 10 programs get 20 million. Doesn’t make sense. It sounds like the whole league could fold if MU and Nebraska leave which is eerie. I read a stupid article yesterday that said KU and K State would be out to dry. Both are major sports programs so I am sure they will have no problem finding their way into a strong conference.
• I love that I somehow got new HD channels with Charter. I believe 6 in total. Comedy Central is huge and the Disney channel is not bad. Bravo is also a big one even though I do not watch any shows from there. My girl friend can now watch Drop Dead Diva in HD on Lifetime now too.
• I had a brief stroll down Wash Ave last night and saw a lot of development started back up again. The market that was started before Culinaria opened looked to be going again and almost finished. There is also a convenient store next to Lucas Park being built. Copia looks to open any day and the Vodka bar next door to Copia is open.
• The Lakers Celtics series is pretty good but I think the referees are deterring from the game. There has been a lot of missed calls in terms of fouls….more than normal on both sides. It seems life refs automatically call a foul if the player falls down but don’t call one when players get whacked in arm. The 2  minute replay review needs to be looked at because the Odom-Rondo reversal was ridiculous. Rondo fouled Odom (and it was easy to see) on a rebound that made Odom knock the ball out of bounds. The refs originally called it Lakers ball and reversed. Obviously he would not have knocked it out of bounds if Rondo would not have knocked is right hand off the ball.
• Looking forward to Vegas. More and more people keep signing up plus I can’t wait to hang out with friends I have partied with in a while.

I had been thinking of building a new PC for a while now. I built my P4 over 4 years ago from back in my Circuit City days. It was getting super loud; especially the graphics card fan. It was also super slow. I installed Windows 7 RC1 a while back and was running good but it degraded pretty bad over 7 months. My RC1 trial was set to expire so I need to install my pre-ordered copy of Windows 7 but wanted to do it on a fresh hard drive. I kept reading about how awesome TRIM and SSDs were so I decided to get one. I also got a new graphics card since mine was so loud. I was a little scared at the time since I knew there was a possibility that it wouldn’t work in my motherboard.

I bought the below items from New Egg on the first run.

1. SAPPHIRE 100284L Radeon HD 5750 1GB 128-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16
2. Kingston SSDNow V Series SNV425-S2BD/64GB

I installed both but ran into issue. Everything would boot but I couldn’t get the screen to show anything. I played around with it for a while then went to my basketball game. I came back and played with it some more to find that now it wouldn’t even boot. The only thing that it would do was light the motherboard power light. After numerous hours and not getting one bios error beep I bought a new powersupply below.

1. CORSAIR CMPSU-650TX 650W

I got the unit and still no change. I removed all the components and still didn’t get any bios beep errors so I knew it has to be the motherboard. I priced out a system on Newegg then went to MicroCenter to compare. I was in a rush and wanted to be done with this system so I paid the extra price for MicroCenter even though both Newegg shipments I received the next day after ordering since they shipped from Nashville.

I ordered the following

1. Intel i3-530
2. GigaByte P55A-UD3
3. Corsair XMS3 2 x 2GB

These items did the trick. The install in my existing case took a couple hours. I got hung up on the 4 x4 PS connection because there wasn’t one. The box showed a picture on it and the instructions said that there was a converter cable to convert to a 4×2 if you had an older motherboard. Well they lied and instead had two 4×2 connectors which I just plugged both in right next to each other.

I was hoping to take a Window 7 experience test on my old PC and compare it with the SSD drive to see the difference but didn’t happen since I couldn’t get it running. I can see that it jumped big on my new install but the new processor and board could have something to do with that. Needless to say, above is my before and below is my after. I am a little disappointed with the SSD score. As you can tell, its not that much in difference compared to my previous setup. I also can not figure out how to “overclock” my memory. It is hows as a 1300 even though it is a 1600. I looked at the bios and everything was maxed out. I will need to do some further reading.

Overall I am extremely happy with my purchase even though I didn’t want to spend this much on it since I rarely use the machine. Plus its basically only a web surfing machine since I do all my gaming though the Xbox.  I love its speed of use and boot time.

Wow, what a fun weekend. Mardi Gras is one of my most favorite weekends in St Louis. It is #1 when it is warm but we have not seen that in several years. I also missed out last year due to my senior capstone class at Wash U so I felt like I needed to make up for lost time. I headed out to my friend’s now annual party which has unlimited alcohol (or at least we thought), heated tent, and multiple port-a-potties. It was a a fun time. I was surprised that we did not walk around as much but it was pretty cold. It was also a first that I did not go to a bar but that is because we were having that good of a time. It was also the first time I woke up without a hangover afterwards…lol. Here is the limited pictures from the weekend.

Friday and Sunday were both laid back days. Got some good Vday time in with the girlfriend along with some DVR, COD, and movie watching. Two things: (1) I am getting better and better at COD (up to a level 21). Especially since I gave up on the sniper rifle. My kill to death ration is almost always positive now. (2) I watched District 9 on Sunday. The first 25 minutes was so bad that we turned it off but I gave it a second chance since it was recommended and up for awards. I turned it off right as it was getting good. The weird thing about it is that the movie had a totally different look and feel the first 30 mins compared to the last hour. It was almost like it was directed by two different people. The last hour was very good and I would recommend it. It had a good plot which I did not see coming.

I had the two rings over heating Xbox failure several months ago. I found out that only the 4 ring (i.e the Red Ring of Death) is covered under the extended 3 year warranty. Pretty worthless considering both are overheating issues. I wrote about this before but basically I tried to clean it off, inspect the fans, and put new thermal compound on it but nothing worked. I didn’t want to buy a new one but had so much invested in Rock Band songs that it was hard to walk away.

A friend suggested I give a guy a call that he saw on his work message boards and has this site. I was super skeptical because it didn’t sound on the up-and-up. The reason I thought this was because it was basically a guy picking up Xbox’s outside a local restaurant in St Charles. A second person posted on my friend’s work message board that his fix worked so I figured I would give it a try since what did I have to lose since it was basically useless.

The guy charges $35 (unless it’s unrepairable) but the estimate to fix  is free. Their main fix is to reflow the chips with a special machine. He also does a modification on the fan to keep it running at full power which cost another $10 (even thought he charged me $5). He told me it would be loud so made sure I did not use my xbox for watching movies. He claimed the change would decrease heat by 30 degrees which is a pretty bold statement.

I got the xbox and he told me he reflowed it and put in bolts for the heat sink clamps (something that makes much more sense than the stupid X clamps that MS used). I took the unit home and fired it up. The first thing I noticed is the loudness. I was expecting it to be first generation loud like some of my friends but it is 3 times louder. I don’t notice it when playing games but definitely can when it’s idle. I probably wouldn’t have done this if I knew it was this loud but then again it will probably prevent it from breaking again.

All in all, it is still working after several hours of COD Modern Warfare 2 and Rock Band.

I would make a couple suggestions to the guy running this service even though it sounds like he is running a pretty successful business and I would recommend him to anyone with Xbox 360 problems.

1. Have some kind of receipt/contract for when you turn your $300 xbox over to a random stranger in a mall parking lot. I asked him about a receipt and he said no one ever asked him about that even though he thought it was a good idea. He claimed to do a over a dozen fixes a week so business must be good.
2. Workout a better drop off process. It just makes the whole thing shady. You have a great word of mouth business but it could be better if you had more of a professional front.
3. Detail the 40 day warranty that you claim in a contract. A spoken warranty is never good for a business.

As with every other year, I embarked on my two week hiatus from work for the holiday break. This year was a little different since I rarely went out and instead opted for a more relaxed feeling with the people I care about.

Movies

I saw a ton of movies over my break. All the summer hits all hit my Blu ray at the right time. I am not going to go into a lot of details but I was disappointed in The Hangover. It was definitely funny but I can think of a lot more comedies that are much better. For example, Old School is 5 times funnier. Maybe it was over hyped. What I did see that was amazing was Avatar in 3D. Going into the movie, I did not know much about it except everyone kept saying how good it was. It was very impressive and would only recommend it in 3D (well worth the $17 ticket). The color, images, and plot was fantastic. It instantly became one of my top 5 movies ever and can see it being my first 3D movie since 3D TVs are already hitting the market.

Fantasy Football

I came super close to do the unthinkable and winning my league. That is a hard concept to grasp because I lost 4 out of the first 5 games but had some good mid season pickups (Miles Austin) and people returning from injury (or getting more time due to teammates injured) that made my team into a powerhouse. Unfortunately, I got distracted in the semi finals and did not manage my team that Sunday morning and loss by 2 points when all my bench people had over 20 points each. I won the consolation bracket and scored my points in the final week than both the teams in the final.

Family

I spent a lot of time with the family. What is funny (or maybe not) is that I think I spent more time in a 30 day period than I do the other 11 months combined. I really enjoyed all Christmas and New Years parties that I went to.

New Years Eve

First off, I hope to never plan a NYE night ever again. Unless it is in Vegas (something I have always wanted to do and just happened to be something one of my Wash U friends did this year but she did it way more than I ever could). After much going back and forth, we went to MoMos for dinner and Big Daddy’s in Soulard for the night. It was my first time at MoMo’s. I was most impressed by the Sea Bass. It was $10 and was equal to a $30 serving at most fine restaurants. Big Daddy’s was also good. Well worth the $55 since they had premium drinks and Red Bull included … hello Three Olives Cherry Vodka and Red Bull drinks (my fav). Like expected cabs were impossible but worst than I thought. I thought it would be easier since we went to a 1 o’clock and all the city bars don’t close till 3 but I was wrong. Thankfully a friend drove us home after a couple hours. I found out today at lunch that I could have gotten a ride immediately from a guy at work that lived next door from where we were.

Sports

I only followed two sporting events closely this break, both MU games. The MU vs IL basketball game was a surprising win. The MU bowl game was a rather disappointing one. I did watch a lot of the other bowl games but no NFL games. It is also nice that the Rams got the #1 draft. I would like to see them get Suh as the #1 then a quarterback for the #33 pick.

Various

• After a couple failed fixing attempts, my Xbox 360 is still broke.
• My friends can be complete idiots at times especially when it comes to hot tubs in the cold.
• I did not catch up on my DVR watching which is amazing since no new shows recorded. Watched a lot of movies instead. I also probably only played an hour of video games the whole 2 weeks.
• No one goes to Wash Ave during a holiday break. Important fact to remember.
• Finally went ice skating at Steinberg Park. It was fun but very cold and windy so we did not stay long. One thing to note is that place must make a killing. Very low overhead since it is outdoors and getting like $9 a person.

First off, I have always been a huge fan of Microsoft. Ive own their stock for multiple years and have always been a huge fan of their operating systems. I also was a huge fan of Xbox 360. I thought it has been ground breaking and offered more features than PS3.

Lately, I have been rethinking my stance. Enough that I haven’t installed my Windows 7 that I preordered. The reason for this spite is that my Xbox 360 Elite quit working last month. Everyone knows that Microsoft has experienced a huge problem with defective units due to overheating. I bought an elite almost 2 years ago because it had the new processor that ran at a lower temperature and was quiet. Well, I turned it on last month to watch a DVD and I got two red lights. I looked it up and saw that it was an overheating issue. I knew they extended the warranty to 3 issues for an overheating issue. 2 out of 3 people I know with an Xbox had to send theirs in to get fixed. So I filed a warranty claim to find out that I did not have the “right” overheating problem (i.e. The Red Ring of Death). What is up with that? How can there be more than one over heating issue and have different warranty periods? It cost $100 to send in to Microsoft to get repaired which I thought was totally crazy. Why would I pay for half the cost of a new one to run into the possibility that it would just fail again? My next thing was to take it apart to clean it. I did that and it still overheated. It had no dirt on the fans anyway. I also took off the heat sinks and applied new thermal compound based on possible fixes I read but that did not work either. So that leaves me with a tough decision. I really like having a Xbox and have a ton of money invested in it with Rock Band songs. I also really want to get the new Call of Duty but am struggling with the idea of buying a new one to have the same problem again. I might just buy a Wii because it rocks and a PS3 because I can play COD and also the new upcoming Gran Turismo.

All I can say is how can Microsoft have allowed such a nightmare? They have basically lost a huge fan and purchaser of their products.

• I am talking with a CPA/Tax guy about redoing my taxes to deduct for my entire Wash U tuition. Here is a good article on the subject. I know it will raise a red flag if I refile my last 3 years and get a bunch of money back so want to go through official channels.
• I am officially uninstalling Civ 4 tonight. That game is too addictive. Its taking to much of my time and preventing me from working out and getting other important items done.
• Not sure if this Smoltz pickup is good. I guess it is at least not bad for the Cards since it only cost them $100k. The upsides could be huge with small downsides.
• Does no one want to go floating on August 29th? The Rengler is going with a huge group (25+). Hoff and I reserved a 6 man raft and a cabin with AC that has 3 beds (For Friday and Saturday but we might only use it Friday). The total costs comes to $210 so that would be split amongst whoever goes. Let me know if interested. We are floating the Black River. Were trying to mix it up.
• Going to check out Parties in the Plaza for the first time before volleyball on Thursday.
• Does anyone know a good St Louis cleaning service that will buff hardwood floors? Mine really need it and I do not want to buy/rent the equipment needed to do it.
• I realized that my favorite character is not Kevin Nealon on Weeds. He does offer comedic relief which has gone downhill throughout the season but I realized that Guillermo is not only funny but he makes the show by bringing it back to its original plot line which is more entertaining …. selling drugs.
• Looks like I will finally move/sell my desk tonight. I have posted on Craiglist 3 times and got good responses but everything always fell through. I am still very hesitant about selling stuff on Craigslist. Especially when it is a low cost item.
• I was somewhat entertained with the Shaq Vs show last night. Not sure if any other sports star could pull off that show. I liked it for the same reason the only sports star I follow on Twitter is Shaq….he just says funny things. The staged aspect of the show sort of bothered me.

This was a pretty fun past weekend. It was neither a weekend to get sleep nor a weekend to paint which is what I had planned and two things that I really needed to do. I guess I am going to take the full day off Wednesday to get sleep because I need as much sleep built up for the 6 day trip to Chicago, Grand Haven/Spring Lake, and Grand Rapids.

We mixed it up on Friday. I met some friends at D’s place in Soulard for some cheap drinks then followed it up with McGurks. We should have never left McGurks because Wash Ave was dead. Lucas Park had about 20 people in it, Side Bar was about the same, and Rue 13 had its normal crowd (which normally means no girls but I did dance with a good looking lady for a while with no results). Hoff did convince me to get pizza at the end of the night to continue breaking my “Michigan diet.”

Saturday, the day I was supposed to take easy was pretty fun. After driving around in constant circle between my house and the Soulard area, I went over to a friend’s to swim and have some beers. It was a lot of fun. There was a lot of good Rengelisms to be heard. We started the evening at my house with the boys for a BBQ and some good ole fashion video game playing plus some hot tub lounging while we were waiting for the food to cook. I make sirloin kabobs. They were delicious. We played NBA 2k9 and Left for Dead along with some Rock Band 2. The group loved killing zombies but I more enjoyed the NBA game. Enough to purchase it which is exactly how Matt Smith recently got it and had this whole idea about a video game party. We concluded the night at Harry followed up with more Rock Band. I do have to say that Harry’s is still by far the best place in St Louis to people watch and see a lot of good looking women.

Bar Hopping in the Lou

Hoff and I did a lot of bar hopping on Friday. We started at Lumiere to meet some friends then went to Cielo Bar on top of the Four Seasons. It was empty but it is a cool place. Great place to bring a girl for a date. It was very relaxing with lounge chairs everywhere plus two pools and a great view of the city, the Arch, and the river. After that, we went from Dubliner to meet Dave to Lucas Park (which was more empty than I ever have seen it before) and then to Rue 13 since we knew the night was a wash. Not sure where everyone was at. People tell me it was because the Kumen race the following day. I’m not sure if I believe that.

“I’m on a Boat”

This was the first weekend of the year that I went on the river. Man was it a great time. Mike P, Dave, Jeff, and Catherine made the trek. It started out to a funny experience with Dave dropping his glasses into the 10ft deep brown water at the dock. Jeff thought we could pick it with a magnet but I knew that wouldn’t work. I rigged up a net and amazingly Dave was able to snag the classes out of the mud after about 10 minutes. Once we were on the water, I forgot about how dangerous Jeff’s boat seems but he is merchant engineer so I believe him when he tells me the boat is in sound shape.

We got to the main beech around 1 but it did not start to get packed until around 2. We tossed around the football, walked up and down the beach people watching, but mainly sat on the beach enjoying our beer (in which we drank all of). We avoided playing sand vball because it was mainly guys. We ended the afternoon with the boat stereo blaring to “I’m on a boat.” Amazingly enough, no one had played it the whole afternoon. The girls on the huge boat next to me said they forgot to download it and were glad we played it. On the way back, Mike was hilarious. We were listening to some old school rap and everyone was having fun until we got pulled over by water patrol. Don’t worry, it was really just our friend Tom. He gets to drive a pretty fancy boat. Earlier in the day we saw him on a waverunner doing some undercover work.

After soaking up the sun and the fine AB products, we decided we needed some food. Mike had the amazing idea of going to the China King buffet only a mile away since we did not get the opportunity before Parties in the Park like planned. All I can say is that it was delicious and I can not believe we did not get kicked out. Somehow they must have known and sat us on the side of the restaurant that was totally empty and behind a corner. I got a text the next morning that perfectly described the event “The State Dept called, they said we were being extradited to China to stand trial for the war crimes committed at the buffet yesterday.”

I love sleep but love denying myself of its goodness

This weekend very much replicated last weeks sleep. I had very little sleep Friday night, went to bed around 9PM on Saturday, and stayed up past 1AM on Sunday night. Luckily there are no more NBA games to keep me up past midnight anymore.

The Lake Show

The Lakers won the NBA Finals on Sunday. I missed the first half because I thought the game started at 8 like every other game this playoffs. Supposedly the Magic came out strong but collapsed at the end allowing the Lakers to go on a huge run to end the half. In the end, the combination of Gasol, Ariza, Odom, and Kobe were way too much for Orlando. The series surprised me some what. I thought all the games we close except for the first one. I really expected it to go to 7 games; especially after the trouble that the Lakers had in the previous rounds but Orlando’s amazing 3 point shooting went cold.

I do think that both Ariza and Odom do need to come back next year. If I had to choose one, I would pick Ariza even though I am a huge Odom fan. Hopefully Bynum will pick up his game and be more of a force to ease the loss of Odom. The Lakers do need to pick up a more consistent shooter for the bench. The bench was their strongpoint at once and now it is their weak point.

I’m Addicted

I did start playing the new (I think it is a year old) iteration of Civilization 4. It is called Colonization. To all my Civ 4 friends, this game is very addicting and it is similar to the 3 versions of Civ 4 but it is also totally different. There are so many things you need to control so it is a bit overwhelming. You basically start a colony among Indians and 3 other nations. You can befriend the Indians and the other colonies or fight them. If you are nice to the Indians, they give you things but they also do not allow you to expand your empire without pissing them off. The game has like 20 different types of workers which makes it totally different than past Civ games. I’ve played it twice and I still do not know what I am doing. I think the goal is to build enough points so that you defect from your country like US did from Britain. I haven’t even come close before running out of turns.