Gravedigger – You’re kidding Willie, right?

Jeromey Balderrama

In my email today I got an email from DMB Warehouse telling me to go check out Willie Nelson’s video of his cover of Dave Matthews song “Gravedigger”. I went to go checked it out:

Willie, you’re kidding, right?  Please tell me you’re going into Weird Al parody videos or something ,because I can’t believe that you took this seriously.  Seriously, it sounds like you badly spliced this song up and tried to put it back together after picking it up off the cutting room floor.  I realize that you were a legend in your own time, but this is not the way to come back..  Wow, if Dave were dead, he’d be spinning in his grave.

Random gaming goodness, Romey’s consoles

Jeromey Balderrama

After posting about my Vista upgrade experience, it seems fitting to share some thoughts on the catalyst of the Vista upgrade: the Xbox 360.  I got myself a little Christmas present this year, finally breaking down and buying the Xbox, bringing my gaming system count up to 3 consoles: the Playstation 2, the Wii and now the Xbox 360.

This must be prefaced with the fact that I’m not a big-time gamer.  My time spent gaming tends to come in waves, where I may kill a whole weekend playing games, then won’t touch any games for weeks at a time.  This is regardless of any of the gaming systems, although I have to say that the novelty of the Xbox 360 hasn’t worn out and I’ve been playing it for about an hour each evening since I brought it home.

While owning three consoles does seem a bit excessive, each one basically serves it’s own purpose:

Nintendo Wii:  This is definitely the most popular console for my friends and family, basically because it transcended the gaming experience for them.  My sisters and Bethany, who never have historically been big fans of video games, love playing games on the Wii.   I think this is because the gaming experience on the Wii is so different, that it eliminates the old stereotypes that are brought by video games (all you do is mash buttons, the games are so boring, etc…).  The Wii also travels well, and has taken various trips to many parties, family & friend’s and even on my trips to New York (and now Atlanta).  However given the Wii’s short supply, I pray each time I disconnect it from my living room TV and put it in the bag. Favorite Games: Super Mario Galaxy (INCREDIBLE!), Mario Party 8 and Wii Sports.

Xbox 360: Has definitely found it’s niche in my home: as my solo & online gaming system.  While new, I don’t foresee the Xbox ever drawing diverse interest from the same groups attracted to the Wii, and the games aren’t as entertaining for non-gamers to watch.  This is button-mashing, traditional game-playing.   Basically this is my gaming system that I’ll play by myself (or on-line).  However, the hand-down appeal that Xbox has is the graphics and HD experience.  I fell in love with the 360 HD experience the same way I fell in love with football in HD.  The Xbox won’t travel, mainly due to it’s size, but also partly to the fact that I don’t want to jinx my HD experience with a standard-def TV. I do have an Xbox Live Gold membership (user RomeyInFC) and I’ve really enjoyed the online experience.  Favorite Games: Madden 2008, Halo 3, Assassin’s Creed (granted I’ve only owned the Xbox for 2 weeks)

Playstation 2: The only reason this console isn’t in a closet collecting dust is because of Guitar Hero.  When I bought Guitar Hero I did not have the Xbox yet, and there wasn’t a Wii version available, so I dusted off the PS2 solely for that reason.   I own about 15 PS2 games, and I’ve thought about bringing out Grand Theft Auto for old time’s sake, but PS2 is simply the “Guitar Hero machine”.  If I could I would trade away my PS2 with Guitar Hero 2 (and guitar) along with a few games for the Xbox Guitar Hero. Favorite Games: Guitar Hero 2, Grant Theft Auto (both Vice City and San Andreas)

If I were forced to pick a gaming system, I would have to say that it’s the Wii, but let me play some more 360 for another month and see where things stack up.

Cruising in the ATL

Jeromey Balderrama

TheATL 

Just a quick note that I’ll be hitting the road this week, traveling to Atlanta for work.  This was a bit of a last-minute trip, but I’m on my way – ready or not.

Hopefully I’ll have some interesting stories to share.  Strangely enough, business trips usually leave me with more time on my hands (at least in the evenings) so I’m hoping hit the blog while I’m on the road.  Then again I may be swamped with work and won’t want to look at a computer by the end of the day.  Who knows…

Vista Experience: 16 days later

Jeromey Balderrama

Sixteen days ago, I upgraded my desktop machine to Windows Vista, and so far, so good.  Let me put it this way: I haven’t been driven to uninstall the machine yet.  I’m not necessarily happy with Vista, rather just content with the OS upgrade.

My original motive to install Vista was based on my purchase of an Xbox 360.  I would like to use the Media Center capabilities to stream video over to the Xbox, and my version of XP Home wasn’t cutting it.  While I do have XP Media Center available to me, I decided to bite the bullet and do the install.  My desktop is a decently powerful machine, purchased about 18 months ago.  It’s a duel-core AMD box with 3GB of RAM.  After the initial install performance has been pretty decent.  It wasn’t as fast as a brand new install of XP, but it’s speed hasn’t diminished after loading all of my software (note to self: post list of computer-setup software), as it has on my laptop.  I also have a mid-range nVidia graphics card, so the Aero Glass features weren’t a problem as well.

For the most part I’m satisfied with my machine, but there are definitely a few quirks.  Originally when I installed the beta, I was frustrated with the changing of the keyboard commands, especially with the start menu.  I think this still may be an issue, but it’s been mitigated with my use of Launchy.  I used to use VNC for remote administration, but it runs horrible on Vista, basically being unable to filter out the Aero effects (despite my “low-resolution” settings, etc).  I still have VNC running, but am primarily using MS Remote Desktop to remotely administer the machine.  That runs really well, but has no web client the way VNC does.

Speaking of Remote Desktop, the other gripe I would have is that after logging in remotely and logging out, the next time I log in locally it resolves a blank screen.  My only workaround has been to press WindowsKey + L to lock the machine, Ctl+Alt+Delete to start the unlock, enter my password and be done.  I’m not sure if this is a glitch with my graphics card (although I have a mouse cursor on the blank screen), but it could be a Vista bug.  It’s definitely an annoyance and if I wasn’t so keyboard savvy I’d probably be screwed.

The local desktop experience is beautiful, and I do notice that I’m enjoying working on things in that environment.  I haven’t had any software issues the same way I had when the beta was out.  As for hardware, I had a little trouble with my printers, and I haven’t plugged in the scanner – I need to do that soon.

So far over two weeks in, I’m sticking with Vista.  We’ll see how it is at the end of the month, but it’s definitely not as bad of an experience as I was fearing.

Did Roger do ‘roids? Justice thinks so

Jeromey Balderrama

The jury’s still out on whether Roger Clemens is a juicer.  I saw the 60 Minutes Interview where he vehemently denied using steroids, but my skeptical self still isn’t convinced he’s innocents – too many things don’t add up.

Richard Justice’s column in the Houston Chronical pretty much sums up why I’m not convinced that Clemens isn’t a juicer, and why I’m still left with a lot of doubt.