Month: December 2007

Happy New Year to All!

Jeromey Balderrama

The hours of 2007 are waning, and with it I want to wish everyone a very Happy New Year!  After 4 consecutive National Catholic Student Coalition conferences, this has been my first New Years in Colorado in five years, and I’m really looking forward to just being home.  Originally Bethany and I were going to travel for the evening, but the with end of my break from working approaching, I really needed a quiet evening from home with Bethany.  We cooked a New Year’s feast complete with steak, crab legs, a baked potato, Caesar salad and garlic bread – as you can tell the workout regiment is back with a vengeance in 2008.

Looking back on the year, it’s easy to see how plentiful my blessings have been:

  • I have been graced with good health throughout the year.  Aside from a few bouts with colds (as well as a painful Thanksgiving bout with the flu), the only major medical ailment I experienced was my Las Vegas knee injury, and I’m happy to say that I’m fully recovered
  • I’m thankful for being gainfully employed.  For now it seems that the danger of layoffs has subsided and I’m grateful for being challenged and enjoying my job.
  • I’m grateful for Bethany and the joy that our relationship has brought me.  I am excited to see our relationship grow to new levels in 2008.
  • I’m graced with my continued drumming: with Greenfoot, my choir at church, as well as various other projects.
  • I’m thankful for my family, as it continues to grow with the addition of my sister’s husband Matt.
  • I’m grateful for my wonderful friends.   I have some really amazing people in my life.  I’m also disappointed because aside from Facebook and MySpace, I haven’t done the best job in keeping in touch with a lot of my friends. My resolution for 2008 is to be a better friend.

There are countless other blessings, but it’s needless to say that 2007 has been an awesome here, and here’s to looking forward to 2008.

And they wonder why people hate Vista?!?

Jeromey Balderrama

As part of getting a new Xbox 360, I am in the process of upgrading my desktop to Windows Vista. I’ve been meaning to rebuild my desktop for sometime, and used this as a good excuse to try out the new OS. However, stuff is happening to me that makes me scratching my head wondering how stuff like this can happen almost after a year in the wild.

I realized that one of my file copies didn’t succeed, so I wanted to restore from a back-up. No problem – I have the files backed up from last Friday (in XP), but apparently I cannot access XP backup files from Vista without downloading a utility. I make my way to Microsoft’s web site and am prompted to install the Genuine Advantage installation utility. I right click that stupid information bar in IE and get a message that my computers settings don’t allow ActiveX applications installed on my computer to run from a web site.

Fair enough Microsoft, I understand why you want to run the “Genuine” check (although I disagree with your “guilty until proven innocent” mentality). I also understand you want to keep a computer secure and ActiveX scripts are definitely a concern. But when your OS doesn’t allow me to run your utility on your web site, then that’s unacceptable! Then they wonder why people think Vista is such a nightmare.

Since I’m at my family’s house I’ve done virtually all of the installation remotely through Remote Desktop and VNC (which sucks on Vista by the way). This means I haven’t physically sat in front of my Vista computer and experienced the OS – so I’m holding off judgment. However, headaches like these are tilting the scales in a big way for me.

"12 days" ruined by Xbox

Jeromey Balderrama

Well my original hope of the 12 days of blogging has already been wrecked – due in large part that I’ve acquired an Xbox 360.  Currently owning (and loving) the Wii, as well as the PS2 (which pretty much is only used for Guitar Hero) at this point, getting a 360 a tough internal sell. However, I finally managed to push myself over the fence and buy myself a little Christmas after considering the following:

  • The games on the Xbox 360 are gorgeous, and I love taking in HD content.  Some of these games are unreal in their quality.  The Wii games are a blast to play, but their graphics aren’t anything to write home about.
  • The single-player games: Xbox has an awesome lineup for single-player adventure games.  I realize that Wii has a decent catalog building up, but right now I primarily consider the Wii a party game machine (with the exception of a few games like Super Mario Galaxy).
  • I was looking for a Media Center extender, so that I don’t need to burn content to DVD in order to play them.
  • The 360 offers a cheap way to get an HD-DVD player, if I decided to go that route.

Right now my desktop machine doesn’t have Windows Media Center, so I’m upgrading to Windows Vista (gulp) to try to get that experience.  After my failed beta attempt over 1 & 1/2 years ago, I’d like to see if Vista SP-1 would stack up.  More to come on this experience.

Break time = blog time

Jeromey Balderrama

After what’s been a crazy last few weeks between finals and big projects ramping up at work, I’m thankful to be on a 12-day break from work.  I can’t remember a time when I’ve needed a break more.  Aside from spend time with my loved ones, I have absolutely nothing planned!  Being that I can’t sit still, you’ll probably find that I’ll be blogging a little more consistently during this time.  The song "The Twelve Days of Christmas" come to mind, which makes me think about the Twelve Days of Blogging – that may be too much commitment. We’ll see.

Watch here for more posts!