Archive for July, 2008

for the good of the customer

Tuesday, July 29th, 2008

I know this isn’t a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but…

In 2005, in response to EA Sports’ exclusive license with the National Football League and ESPN, Take-Two Interactive signed an exclusive third-party licensing contract with Major League Baseball (MLB), MLBPA and MLBAM to produce MLB games. The agreement, which runs from Spring 2006 to 2012, allows for the console manufacturers Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo to produce MLB titles for their respective platforms, but bars third party developers such as EA Sports from continuing or developing their own MLB games. As a result, the MVP Baseball series now features college baseball, with MVP 06 NCAA Baseball having been released in late January 2006, and MVP 07: NCAA Baseball in February of 2007.

So for six years there won’t be a PC version of a MLB baseball game. I was wondering what was up with that. First I couldn’t find a version of Triple Play (by EA) since 2002 or something like that. I thought, surely EA has released a baseball game since 2002. Then I found out it was renamed to MVP baseball. So I looked up MVP baseball, and saw the newest version was 2005. Now I see why.

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Friday Night

Saturday, July 19th, 2008

Went to a Redhawks v. Redbirds game on Friday night with Nate, Brit, and of course, Bethany. I think I’ve been to 2-4 games. They’ve been fairly entertaining. The last time I was there, we saw a walk off home run (that means it ended the game), and the Redhawks won. This time a Redhawk was thrown out at the plate in the 9th to end the game. Not bad at all. Final score 5-4 visitors I think. Saw several home runs, stolen bases, and a few rather poor plays, whether on throws or fielding. I say poor, compared to the major leagues that is. I know I couldn’t do any better. It’s ok. It made the game more fun. And even in the big leagues a catcher’s throw to second to try to nail a guy stealing goes into center field once in a while. We were on the first base side, about 3 rows up, and about 20 feet past the base. I guess it would be more accurate to say right field seats than first base seats, maybe. We were sitting in front of a not-too-bright-in-baseball guy, although maybe he was younger. Like early teens. I don’t know, I didn’t turn around to look. And I didn’t correct any of his dumb statements (to his dad, I think) either. Give it a 7/10 overall.

Posted in general | 1 Comment »

happy fourth

Friday, July 4th, 2008

We (my parents, my sister, and my cousin) went to Yukon to watch fireworks. I took the camera that my sister and I got for my parents’ 25th anniversary to play around with. Got some photos (probably upload those tomorrow) and some video:

[flashvideo filename="http://content.icynemo.us/video/fireworks1.swf" /]

[flashvideo filename="http://content.icynemo.us/video/fireworks2.swf" /]

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I’ll take some… and no thanks!

Friday, July 4th, 2008

Apparently companies are even worse about losing our data than we suspected. From the article:’According to a study of 106 major U.S. airports and 800 business travelers published by the Ponemon Institute and Dell Computer, about 12,000 laptops are lost in airports each week. Only 30 percent of travelers ever recover the lost devices. Nearly half of the travelers say their laptops contain customer data or confidential business information.’ Kinda scary …

I wouldn’t mind if 1/2 of 1% of those came my way… a year, never mind a week…

On the other hand…

8.7 million AOL subscribers face a new 20% fee increase next month — unless they agree to never call AOL’s technical support lines. They’ll have to use AOL chat for support or the online help "portal" unless their issue is a failed connection — and they’re being enrolled in the program by default unless they opt out. Ominously, AOL used the exact same wording as when they quietly changed their terms of service to allow them to sell subscribers’ home phone numbers to telemarketers. ‘Your continued subscription to the AOL service constitutes your acceptance of this change.’

That’s pretty funny stuff. Who uses AOL anymore, anyway…?

Posted in tech | 1 Comment »

restored!

Thursday, July 3rd, 2008

I restored my twitter account. Sometimes (ok, well, often) I just have to say something pretty much pointless, and twitter is just the place to send it.

Recently I’ve been thinking, Craft really needs to change the columns in their database that store numbers from string to numeric, so they sort properly. I mean, that’s perfect twitter information right there… yeah!!!

Anyway, even if no one follows or replies, I’ve decided twitter is for me.

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return to the past

Wednesday, July 2nd, 2008

I uninstalled Firefox 3.x and reinstalled Firefox 2.x

Yes, FF3 is quite a bit faster. I noticed that after opening a few tabs in FF2. But there were some things that just drove me nuts about FF3:

  • Windows Media stopped working. Sometimes.
  • Gmail text wouldn’t wrap text when I was composing an email.
  • And full-screen flash still doesn’t work, but that’s a Windows / Video driver issue I think.

A lot of extensions still don’t work in FF3, but that’s ok. Adblock and FlashBlock work.

Also, the Wild resigned Andrew Brunette. Sweet. I still have the video of him scoring the goal in game 7 against the Avs to advance to the next round. I think that was Bruno… anyway… it was Bruno…

The Minnesota Wild signed forward Andrew Brunette to a multi-year contract on Tuesday.

The 34-year-old picked up 19 goals and 59 points in 82 games for the rival Colorado Avalanche last season.

Andrew is a consistent offensive performer and an excellent teammate who helped create the culture of our team," said team general manager Doug Risebrough. "We are better on the ice and in the dressing room with him back. Not often do you get a chance to correct a mistake."

Brunette had been a member of the Wild from 2001-2004, scoring 54 times and adding 110 assists in 245 regular-season games during his first tenure with the franchise.

He scored arguably the biggest playoff goal in team history, in Game 7 of the 2003 Western Conference quarterfinals against the Avalanche, eliminating the powerhouse club on its home ice after rebounding from a 3-1 series deficit. That season, Minnesota advanced to the conference finals, where it bowed to Cup finalist Anaheim.

Following the cancelled 2004-05 season, Brunette signed with the Avs, and enjoyed stellar years while skating on the club’s top line alongside captain Joe Sakic. He posted career-highs with 27 goals, 56 assists and 83 points in 82 games two seasons ago.

In 788 games over 12 seasons with the Capitals, Predators, Thrashers, Wild and Avalanche, Brunette has amassed 191 goals and 549 points. He was a seventh- round pick of Washington back in 1993.

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