In a recent commercial from for the Falcon XR8 Ute, Ford has created a manly man’s dream world. The paper delivery isn’t a newspaper, but a burrito, a group of men chase after a beer truck called "Mr. Frothy", most of the stores in the town have large signs that read "Tools". Oh, and the theater is running "BEER: The Musical". I’d watch that. 🙂 Click here to read more and watch the video.
Category: Entertainment
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Just in time (apparently)
Today we had some tech (and apparently sales… keep reading) folks come out from Comcast to fix some cable troubles. Our ancient, old-school analog cable has been having troubles with some channels. It’s not a new problem, it just took Kelly and I a long time to finally call Comcast about it. Channels 2 through 13 were having some ghosting issues, and two other higher channels had insanely low audio volumes, to a point where we’d have to crank up the receiver and then remember to turn it down before changing channels again.
The Comcast techs hooked up this nifty box that both played video / audio from the cable, as well as analyzed the frequency strengths, etc. I heard it for myself, apparently there was nothing wrong with the signal. It could have been the old VCR we had our cable run through to change channels. Dunno. However, the helpful fella started talking to me about digital cable, their PVR units, and even how I could get things working with my MythTV box upstairs (that for years I’d been using to record shows with, later burning them to DVD, sans commercials, for later viewing). After some brief consideration, I decided to go ahead and upgrade… mainly because for a year, we don’t really pay anything different than we have been paying. While I feel it was definately an upsell, I don’t feel cheated. I’ve been wanting digital for a while. I wanted the handy guide for navigating channels. I definately wanted a PVR hooked up to my TV directly for a change. The extra channels are nice and all, though I’m not too concerned about most of them (though now we have BBC America, and for 6 months free, HBO). Neat-o! Guess I’ll see in a year what I want to keep and what I don’t. Chances are I’ll get so used to the extra features that I’ll drop the premium bits (HBO) and keep the PVR & extra digital channels, and just pay the extra $10 a month or whatever it comes down to. Either that, or we’ll get our use out of it and drop it. Time will tell.
Here’s the part that makes this all kismet-like. I just read that the free channel guide my MythTV computer uses to get it’s channel data, is dropping it’s free service as of September 1st of this year. Apparently there has been some abuse of their free XML data (likely that the data was being stolen and re-sold). This could mean that in three months, unless something else crops up, MythTV boxes will become a lot less useful. This makes me very sad, and perhaps the company (Zap2It Labs) will offer some kind of paid subscription service (like you pay for with any other PVR service anyway), but for now, it makes my cable upgrade a timely one.
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BBQ and Arcade Fire
Yesterday I spent most of the day doing general maintenance: cleaning up the house a bit, returning bottles and cans and doing some grocery shopping, going to Gartner's for some delicious meat products, and doing several hours of yardwork. That meant that I was exhausted and crashed early after watching some TV. That turned out to be a really good thing.
Awoke at 8am, tried to fall back asleep but couldn't, so I got up and made coffee and some breakfast. I cooked up eggs and some english bacon that I'd picked up the previous day, which wasn't as good as I'd hoped, but still decent. I spent most of the morning tinkering around on the computer, killing time before going to my friend Sean's Memorial Day BBQ / Birthday / Housewarming in Washington. Had a great time visiting with old friends, meeting new folk, and of course, hanging out with my buddy Sean and his family.
Just before 9:00pm Kelly and I decided to head back to Portland, wanting to get home somewhat early. About 10 minutes into the 35 minute drive back I get a text message from a coworker asking "Are you here?"… this coworker had picked me up some tickets to the 'upcoming' Arcade Fire concert about two months ago, and given them to me last Friday… and all of a sudden, it occurs to me that the show (which I thought was tomorrow) was tonight! Oh shit! Kelly and I drive as fast as we dare into town, rush to find a parking spot, and run to the venue. Fortunately we arrived shortly after Arcade Fire took the stage (missing only a couple songs). Whew!
The show was incredible. There were ten people on stage (there are eight core members, the other two were touring members), a few of them changing roles throughout the show (keyboards one song, drums the next, etc). A prime example was founding member Régine Chassagne who played the hurdy-gurdy one song, sang beautifully on In The Backseat the next, and then played the drums for a few songs before going to the keyboards. They sounded fantastic, and it was probably one of the best shows I've seen in a LONG time. Damned near a religous experience, between the sonic power from the band, and the mood of the crowd. Just incredible. If you haven't heard of them (much less seen them live) I highly reccomend you check them out. Hallelujah!
I'm just glad I'd gotten a full night's sleep before this day & night, since I'd mistakenly thought the Arcade Fire show was tomorrow. This means I can hopefully have a nice, relaxing evening at home before going back to work on Tuesday. Hooray!
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Here come the Fuzz
This afternoon Kelly and I joined Mr. & Mrs. Ghost Dog to see Hot Fuzz. The movie was hilarious, and anyone who likes Shaun of the Dead will like Hot Fuzz. Both films were written by Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright, and star Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. And both films do the same thing, take a style / genre of film (zombie movies, or in this case, 'action cop drama' movies) and put a unique (and comical) twist on the whole thing. I highly recommend it.
Also, during the previews, we saw one for another movie starring Simon Pegg called Run, Fat Boy, Run, which also looks to be pretty funny. Too bad that won't be out until 2008.
What a week, and what a day.
The past week has been pretty crazy at work. SuperSweetCo is prepping a new version of the software that I worked on a few months back. The UI is changing a little bit, which means that there's quite a bit of work for me to do. I can only hope the changes are received as big improvements. Stress!
After work yesterday I decided to walk homeward for a bit, the weather was nice, and I needed the physical and mental break from the week. I ended up walking about halfway home (at little over 3 miles) before catching a bus. Once I got home I drank a few beers and watched some movies from Netflix that K had already seen during the week. One of them was a pretty good (and quirky) romantic comedy called Happy Accidents. In general, anything with Vincent D'Onofrio I like… and Marisa Tomei isn't hard on the eyes either.
Today I had to get up early to help my friend Jenn move. In general helping a friend move is relatively easy, not because I'm all that fit, but it's normally pretty straight-forward… move stuff from point A to B. However in this case my friend Jenn swapped houses with a friend who lived about 3 blocks away. This might sound simple, but it's not. It meant that myself and the 10 other hard-working blokes had to fill the moving truck for a couple hours (climbing and descending steps and stairs, weighed down with heavy boxes, furniture and appliances), only to get to the other house, unload all that stuff, only to refill the moving truck with the stuff from the other house… effectively starting all over. Despite a couple beers and a short pizza break, after four hours I was exhausted. I'm not used to that level of strain. Oh, and the best part was about half-way through it started raining. Whee! All my complaining aside, I was still happy to help Jenn move. Just hope I never have to help move a house-swap ever again. It's a bit like rubbing salt in a wound. 🙂
After getting home and washing the stink off, and spending a couple hours relaxing (and letting the soreness set in) K and I joined Mr & Mrs Ghost Dog at the Mash Tun for a fantastic meal and some delicious beers. One of the beers that both GD and I enjoyed was a brown ale called Turbodog from Abita Brewing Co. in Louisiana. It was a delicious, quality brown ale with a slightly sweet and bitter flavor. And, it's got a cool name! 🙂 Had a great night, but I'm feeling very sore. I suspect tomorrow is going to suck.