Category Archives: Entertainment

Every season, they say, “this is the biggest group of Biggest Loser contestants ever.”  This season, it’s true again!  It’s another “Couples” Biggest Loser.  They have a set of twins who, combined, are just 31 pounds shy of half a ton and one guy who is significantly over 500 pounds on his own.

I love this show.  Not sure why exactly, but it’s one of the few TV shows we don’t miss an episode of.  Seeing the transformations of these people over approximately 16 weeks (and then a few more before the finale) is incredibly inspiring.  Some of them are almost unrecognizable by the finale.

So, who are your favorites this season?

I’ve been busy.  I haven’t been playing my Xbox, I haven’t been playing my guitar (much), and I haven’t been posting to the blog.  I apologize.

First, I bought another gun.  Not just any gun, I picked up the XD-45 Compact that I’ve been eyeing for at least 2 or 3 months.  I got a great deal (at the gun show) and we went right from there to Aaron’s property to shoot off a few rounds.  Aaron bought a 9mm XD and another friend bought a Sig P226 .40S&W.  The Sig is a very nice gun.  I was set on going .45 or the deal he got might have swayed me.  I’ll post more about the XD later on, hopefully with some pictures.  Suffice it to say I LOVE IT and it shoots awesomely as evidenced by this target (standing, at about 60ft) even with the compact magazine (which still holds 10 rounds of .45 ACP)!

Secondly, this video had to be posted.  I’m not a huge Weezer fan, but this is totally and completely brilliant.

Nothing more needs to be said about this picture:

The other day, I was researching getting those 5-gallon bottles of water delivered. We already have a water cooler and we bought 2 bottles a while back. We take those two bottles when they’re empty (generally about every 10 days) to Wal-Mart or Publix and fill them up at their purified water dispensers for around $1.50 per 5-gallon bottle. We’ve been getting a bit tired of doing this and with Valerie pregnant, it’s harder (and less of a good idea) for her to fill these on her own.

So, I was digging around, looking for a few different options for delivery services. The best I found was Blue Ridge Mountain Waters. It’s local (somewhat) and it’s the cheapest at $6.95 per 5-gallon bottle. Some of the companies are $8 and up per bottle. Anyway, that’s just an aside.

While I was researching this stuff (using Google, of course) I came across ThinkOutsideTheBottle.org. These people seriously have a problem with bottled water. Enough so that they’ve set up a website, gotten celebrities (ok, Martin Sheen) to throw in with them, and even bought sponsored links from Google (how I found them).

So, apparently, there is an “anit” group for anything you can think of. I never would have thought someone could be anti-bottled water, but there they are!

Yeah!!! It’s nearly time for PodCastle to get rolling.  The iTunes feed is live and they have a date–April 1 (no joke).  Get subscribed to this for the best, free fantasy fiction every week.

Check out EscapePod for more free short fiction (Sci-Fi).

I know, I know–I’ve been very lax about posting lately. I’ve been busy. More on that later.

I couldn’t resist posting this, though. For several weeks now, I’ve had my Google Reader subscribed to the RSS feed for icanhascheezburger.com.

Now, I’ve always been of the opinion that cats are evil (especially after being owned by one for a few years). There’s no denying that they make great photo opportunities, though. Combine that with funny captions in broken English and it’s a recipe for hilarity also known as I Can Has Cheezburger.

I had to post this because I came across this one today which just struck my inner-geek as one of the funniest ones I’ve seen yet.

So, what are you waiting for? Go subscribe to icanhascheezburger.com and start getting a daily dose of feline humor (even if it does seem a little gay).

If you really don’t like seeing profanity written out (subtitle-style), don’t view this. It was just too funny to pass up posting, though.

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UPDATE: Someone pulled the initial video I linked to. If this one gets pulled, too, just go to YouTube and search for Hitler HD-DVD–you’ll find it.

It’s not very often I post simple, funny stuff, but this was worth it. Thank you to my mom and sister, Katy Sue, for introducing me Achmed the Dead Terrorist:

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Make sure you check out his Holiday special, too!

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He kills me (so to speak).

I wanted to post about this days ago, but I’ve just broken free from the clutches of UNIX shell script while trying to get my rapidly multiplying Subversion repositories backed up. As much as it pains me to say it, I believe the death knell has sounded for HD-DVD.

The Sony hype-machine has been in full swing these last 2(ish) years. They were determined not to lose this one. They lost Betamax. They lost MultiMedia Compact Disc (albeit, without a fight). They lost MiniDisc. UMD still hasn’t caught on. They were not going to lose the Blu-ray/HD-DVD battle.

Friday, Warner (a.k.a. AOL Time Warner) announced that they were dumping their dual-format support (which never favored HD-DVD as all their BD releases came out months before the HD-DVDs) and had chosen Blu-ray Disc to standardize on. They claim that “Consumers have clearly chosen Blu-ray…” Of course, on the opposite side is Toshiba (who heavily backs HD-DVD and is one of the inventors), who says, “HD DVD players and PCs have outsold Blu-ray in the US market in 2007.” Well, who are you going to believe?

I have always said that the battle would rage on as long as studios supported both formats, but it looks like HD-DVD’s studio support has drawn to an end. Universal and Paramount/Dreamworks remain in the HD-DVD camp (along with a few small studios), but Warner’s defection serves to put the lion’s share of studio support behind BD. Personally, I blame the PS3. Sony claimed EVERY PS3 as a “Blu-ray Player Sold” even though repeated surveys showed that most people were buying them to play games and didn’t even care (or, in some cases know) that they played Blu-ray discs.

I still hold to the hope that the dual-format players will come down very quickly in price (as both single-format players have), but if HD-DVD doesn’t hold out for the coming year and stay alive, the incentive for the manufacturers to build a dual-format player will just not be there. HD-DVD had everything going for it. It was cheaper to make the players, cheaper to make the discs, and cheaper to re-tool the factories (as it uses the same pressing technology as standard def DVDs).

It’s really too bad. Sony is not a company known for being good to its customers/consumers (remember the Sony/BMG rootkit scandal anyone?) and this much power in their hands is going to be nothing but bad for consumers. Perhaps the worst part of it, though, is that New Line is a Warner subsidiary and now we will never see how awesome an HD-DVD box-set of The Lord of the Rings Trilogy would be. I would’ve been there Day One and paid anything they asked for a piece of that!

So, HD-DVD is dead. Long live HD-DVD!

Growing up, I was really into reading science fiction. In college, I discovered the whole fantasy genre and that’s 95% of what I read now. However, I still manage to get my weekly dose of sci-fi thanks to Steve Eley and Escape Pod.

This awesome (and free) podcast runs a different short sci-fi story pretty much every week. These are not just any short stories, they are top-notch stories from, in many cases, very well-known authors. They are often narrated by some well-known (in literature and podcasting circles) people as well. And, if that’s not enough, Steve introduces each story with a thought-provoking and entertaining short diatribe. He’s been doing this now for a long time and there are some fantastic stories out there.

So, do Escape Pod and yourself a favor, check out EscapePod.org, subscribe to the podcast via iTunes (or your favorite RSS feed reader), and enjoy the stories. Of course, I’m also excited about the upcoming PodCastle–a podcast completely dedicated to my personal favorite genre: Fantasy.