September 29, 2004
Adventure Racing
A friend of mine and I are thinking about getting into some Adventure Racing just for fun!
Here are some of the races we are considering:
Balance Bar Adventure Sprints
http://www.makebreak.com/Wildlands_entry_info.htm
http://www.makebreak.com/adventure_racing.htm
I think we settled on this one, which is usually early in the year:
http://www.makebreak.com/cushion_peak_adventure_challenge.htm
Posted by Chris at 06:09 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 25, 2004
God's Message to Bush Voters
Broward County, FL - With Hurricane Jeanne moving in toward Florida and three million people being asked to evacuate just six weeks before the Presidential election, the truth can no longer being ignored. God is punishing the people of Florida for electing a moron to the Presidency. I don't think there is another rational interpretation to explain 4 hurricanes in such rapid succession so close to election day. Rumors indicate that if voters in Florida repeat their actions from the last election, the entire state will be sandblasted clean.
Posted by Chris at 03:19 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
April 23, 2004
XM Radio
What can I say besides XM Satellite Radio rocks! My wife had a Delphi SKYFi XM Satellite Radio installed in my car as a birthday present. All I can say is that I love it. Music really enhances everything, and having that much commercial-free music on tap is just fantastic. I'm just about ready to tear off my car stereo antenna and mail it to XM just to say thanks.
If you have a long commute or just love music, you should take the plunge and get XM. I also bought the Delphi SKYFi Boom Box for home use. I was working from home yesterday and I had it playing in the background all day.
Posted by Chris at 11:20 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 18, 2003
CBS Sportsline flails on draft day!
CBS Sportsline has hosted my Fantasy Football League for the past two years (maybe three, I'm not sure). And this year, we had an early draft, set to start Saturday night at 7pm. Everything was ready...broadband access, two laptops in the dining room, chicken cheesesteaks, hot wings and nachos, everyone had their cheat sheets. It was all ready. We even had just about everyone in the draft room (online draft room) just before 7pm. Then, all hell broke loose. The CBS Sportsline draft room had two major problems. One problem was that on the client, a memory leak seemed to exist, causing explorer to crash when it consumed about 90MB of RAM. Then, the response time on the site was so slow, it took more time that we allow a person to draft to refresh. You have three minutes to draft, but a refresh took from 3 to 5 minutes. So you didn't know how the person before you took until you should have already completed your draft. We has speaker phones and cell phones going. At first, I thought it was my home network, so we rewired it really quick, but it still sucked. About three times during the night, the site responded well. But it still made the draft take twice as long as usual. We were there almost six hours before it was done. This season costs about $120 for a league. Based on the performance of their site, we were robbed. If you are thinking of a fantasy league, maybe check out Yahoo. They are a company that has a track record proven to be able to handle a load.
Posted by Chris at 10:23 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
June 23, 2003
Robot Arena 2
My latest gaming has been with Robot Arena 2. You get to create a battle bot type of robot (and the interface is very good, lots of possiblities) and battle it against computer bots and other humans. It's a ton of fun and I'm addicted. The game itself is a little buggy, but still good. The multiplayer (only played once) was very laggy and I got my butt handed to me by someone who built an enormously destructive robot.
Check it out. If you like Robot Wars, you will probably like Robot Arena 2.
Posted by Chris at 11:59 AM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
June 17, 2003
Liquid Nitrogen Ice Cream
I have got to try this sometime. I'm just geeky enough, handy enough, and hungry enough.
ice cream
Here's another site with photos: Microcrystalline in 30 Secondsl
Posted by Chris at 02:19 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
I'm fearful of flyin' and flyin' is fearful of me!
There's some weird things happening at www.rathergood.com, and the most hilarious of them has got to bee Mclusky - Lighsabre Cocksucking Blues - sung by kittens - by Joel Veitch, www.rathergood.com.
Posted by Chris at 02:01 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
June 11, 2003
Orgami Boulder
The Origami Boulder Company is selling wonderful Oragami Boulders. This is the perfect gift for the person who has everything, and the site is hilarious. Be sure to read the FAQ, or you aren't getting the most from the site.
Posted by Chris at 10:19 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 31, 2002
Happy New Year's Eve
New Year's Day is just a day off work to get over a horrible hang over. It's a day you really should spend reviewing your life over the past year and remembering the good and the bad. Pay respects to your success and failure. Forget the resolutions, just connect with who you are and remind yourself of that. But we will probably all spend most of the day nursing a headache and trying to keep down some breakfast.
Personally, I think this evening is the big event. Celebrate the passing of another year and a trip around the sun. Enjoy some time and champagne with the people you love. Count down the seconds...give someone a kiss. Relax. Tomorrow, try to take a few minutes to compare the past year with the way you really want to live your life. It's a good time to correct. But don't do it by making hollow promises or setting goals. Just remind yourself who you are, who you really are, and be that. Be the best you that you can be. That's all that the rest of us want from you anyway, you hungover drunk.
Now go get three or four Tylenol, some nice scrambled eggs with wheat toast and two strong cups of coffee and get started.
Posted by Chris at 02:00 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 16, 2002
Cut-Throat Pollyanna
Whenever we have people over for Christmas, and we try to invite some people over every year, even if it's just a few friends, we play cut-throat pollyanna. It's a blast. What? Never heard of cut-throat pollyanna?
Well it's great fun for friends or for co-workers. I have created a one page graphic of how the game plays out. There are lots of opportunities for improvement of the game, but it's hilarious as it is. It is interesting to see which gifts get fought over and what type of bargaining goes on. There is strategy not only in your selection, but in what you say and do and how you operate later. Some people will steal a gift so they can barter for what they really wanted when the game is over.
I was at one work party where some partners threw some outreagously high priced gifts into the mix just for fun. There was a bottle of scotch in a wooden crate that was stolen more times than I could count.
If you have questions about the game, feel free to ask. Once again, here is a link to the instructions to cut-throat pollyanna in graphic format.
Posted by Chris at 12:04 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
December 12, 2002
Sierra Clone Homebrew
I brewed a batch of beer that was supposed to approximate Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. I used a recipe from the Clonebrews book
except that I screwed it up. I did at least the following things wrong:
- I added a half pound more Light DME (Dry Malt Extract) than the recipe called for.
- I let the wort boil over, losing some of the flavor hops. To compensate, I added more hops. I must have thought that more than half the hops boiled out, because that's how much more I added. I guess I didn't realize how much one of those hop "pellets" expands in boiling water.
- I didn't have a good filter and I had way too many hops, so I used a brush to move around the hop sediment in the wort so the filter wouldn't clog so quickly. This probably had the effect of pushing a lot more of the hops into the primary fermenter.
So the beer is rather hoppy and is also cloudy. It's not bitter. For some reason, the carbonation is not really very, i don't know, bubbly? The carbonation is weak and there isn't much head (which could also be because of the glass I'm using). There is a guy I work with who is a certified beer judge. I think I will ask him to taste it and give it his honest opinion.All in all, I wasn't impressed with my performance, but I liked to book. It has prompted me to consider an all grain brew. But then my tasting didn't go too well, so perhaps I will keep it simple.
Posted by Chris at 10:22 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 10, 2002
SonyKV-34XBR800
I purchased the Sony 34" Widescreen TV on Sunday. I linked to Crutchfield because they have great information about thier products. But I bought the unit at a place called The Record Shop in Cherry Hill, NJ. They offered a great price and even shaved it a little because I picked-up the unit myself, waiving their delivery. It's kinda heavy (need 2 people). But the television has three handles built into each side.
The TV itself is beautiful and looks cool in the cabinet I built. I still need to add walls to the cabinet, so I need to take the TV out this weekend. But it was great to watch the Eagles game on a nice TV. One of the things that I think was not hyped enough about this TV are how cool the Twin View, Index and Favorites features are. With Twin view, two 4:3 pictures are on the screen, one left and one right). You can control and listen to one screen at a time. My wife was watching Dirty Dancing while I was watching football. It worked out pretty nicely.
I have yet to tweak the TV or hook any input, other than Cable, to the TV. So I really can't tell you how good it looks. I will say that watching regular TV on the widescreen is fine. If you get close to the TV (4-6 feet) you can see some distortion. But from a normal viewing distance (8-15 feet) it looks really great. And there are enough viewing modes to make accomodate what you are watching and how you want to view it.
I am still deciding on a DVD player, reciever and speakers. Once I get those, I will really be able to run this system through it's paces.
Posted by Chris at 09:00 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
November 12, 2002
iPod
There is a great article on Business 2.0 about iPod tricks. I can't wait for more of these to surface as the unit gains popularity.
I have a 10GB model that will hold about 2000 songs. I have over 1200 songs on it now and it's not half full yet. I also took all my contacts and calendar items and downloaded them to the iPod from my Palm Desktop using Palm2iPod, which could not have been more simple to use.
I'm starting to think that if everything is this fun and simple with Apple products, I just might switch. I seriously think my next computer purchase will be an Apple computer.
Posted by Chris at 01:34 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
October 08, 2002
We Got Death Star
Posted by Chris at 12:16 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack