Foxhound

Last night I got home from work and had a serious gaming itch. I grabbed my Gears of War 2 and turn on my XBOX 360. I popped in the game and waited as the loading screens came through. I get to the title screen only for my XBOX 360 to freeze. I said okay this has happened before. Let me reboot the console. I reboot only to get this:

That’s right, the dreaded red ring of death. I couldn’t believe it, I never thought it would happen to me. I never thought I’d become a Microsoft statistic. I thought I’d had a good XBOX after the first 6 months of ownership I thought I was in the clear. The reason is its a known fact that the RRoD tends to happen within the first six months of ownership. I have had my system for 21 months, I thought I was good. I called Microsoft and now have to send it back for repair. Techniacally, it is not a repair, as Microsoft just send out a new (referbished) console from their factory. Now I have to wait two to three weeks to get it back. Now I have to wait to play Gears of War 2

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Where were you at 11 PM EST on November 4, 2008? At the time all the news networks announced that Barack Obama had been elected the President of the United States of America. For many myself included the announcement was surreal. I never thought that an African-American would ever win the Presidency, let alone in my life time. Obama locked up this election earlier then the past two elections. Americans had spoken and spoken loudly. America was looking for change, change from a Repulican regime that had drove America into financial peril. The economy became the biggest issue of this election. Obama hammered his opponent John McCain on the issue. McCain just couldn’t respond and never had a fighting chance. By 10:30 PM the election was technically sealed, Obabma has 207 elctoral votes when breaking news broke that Obama had won Virginia and its 13 electoral votes. Virginia is a state that hasn’t voted democratic since 1964. That gave Obama 220 elctoral votes with 11 PM near and the state of California and its 55 electoral votes at stake. California is a pro-dominantly democratic state. No way was it going for John McCain. However, at 11 PM Obama didn’t only win California which won him this election. Obama also won Washington state, Oregon, and Nevada. Nevada had crossed over to blue after being red the past two elections. Then at 11:15 the nail in the coffin for McCain who had already lost the election, Projections gave Obama the controversial state of Florida.

I still can’t believe that Obama won by such in impressive margin. As of this morning Obama leads the popular vote 52% to 46% no President has ever broke the 50% barrier by so much.

There is major work ahead for Obama lets hope this change pays off. It will take time to solve these issues lets hope four years is enough for Obama.

Congratulations to Brack Obama, the man who will be the 44th President of the United States of America.

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Knicks Coach D' Antoni

Mike D’ Antoni changed the tone and direction in his first official game as New York Knick head coach. Before last night D’ Antoni made it clear that incumbent starting center Eddy Curry wouldn’t be starting.  Curry would not be in D’ Antoni’s eight or nine man rotation as well. Curry would be the last man on the bench. However, in a surprise move by D’ Antoni, Stephon Marbury the much maligned point guard joined Curry on the bench and saw his first DNP-CD (Did Not Play - Coaches Decision) in a very long time. After the game D’ Antoni admitted that Marbury will see more time on the bench then on the hardwood this season.

After the game the media rushed to Marbury’s locker for comment from the veteran point guard. Marbury was quoted “Nah, I didn’t expect that”. Marbury did not make a big thing of the issue saying “This is a business, and I understand the decision. If that’s the way they want to go, I’m fine with that.” Marbury is right this is a business and this is not his fault Knicks owner James Dolan did not want to release Marbury because he is owed $22 million this season the final year of his contract. Dolan will paying a lot for his bench Marbury and Curry combined make $31 million.

D’ Antoni had the guts to sit Marbury and Curry, something that former coach and GM Isiah Thomas didn’t. Thomas always used the money issue as a reason Curry and Marbury should be on the floor playing. D’ Antoni doesn’t like Curry’s work ethic and has benched him for it. As for Marbury he was never in D’ Antoni’s plans and since Dolan did not want to eat $22 Million left on Marbury’s contract D’ Antoni was left with no other choice. It will be interesting to see how the Knicks fair the rest of this season. The one thing we did learn on opening night is that the coach is in control not the players. Which is a huge difference over the last few years. Hats off to Mike D’ Antoni for showing the guts Isiah and company did not.

FYI: The Knicks beat the Miami Heat 120-115.

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Last night World Series game between the Phillies and the Rays was suspended due to heavy rain. It was the first time in baseball history that this has happened. The problem is baseball could prevent this. Lets look at a fact. First, last night first pitch was scheduled for 8:29 PM.  Two hours and ten minutes later the game was halted with the score tied at two in the sixth inning.

Major League baseball could have corrected this problem by starting the game earlier. Tell me why on a weekday is a World Series game starting at 8:30 PM? Kids can’t watch baseball too late as they have school the next day. Most working Americans can watch the entire game as they have to go to work the next day. The truth is that Major League Baseball has sold its soul to advertisers and the Fox network similar to the way the NBA has sold out to TNT for the NBA playoffs. Think about this does Fox really need to do a thirty minute pre-game show? No, Fox makes money off this pre-game which offers nothing to the fan. I don’t care what BJ Upton or Shane Victorino do in their free time. Or that Jaime Moyer has had a long road to get the World Series. These pre-game shows suck and I never watch them. If you rewind five or even ten years ago these pre-games were non-existent. I don’t know why all of a sudden a thirty minute pregame makes a huge difference.

If the World Series ends tonight on resumed play it will be terrible that Major League Baseball put the Rays and the Phillies through what they did last night. Worse yet what they put the fans at the ballpark and at home through. Hey Bud how about starting games earlier and not putting players through some horrible conditions last night. That won’t happen though since Major League Baseball has already sold their collective souls to endorsers and TV networks.

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For most people like myself with an HDTV we love our HD programming. The problem is most of our service providers don’t offer enough programming in HD. I have Cablevision where I live and they do what they can to add HD channels but in my opinion haven’t added enough over the last year. While they offer great exclusive channels like Monsters-HD and Kung-Fu HD. They lack channels like Sci-Fi HD and USA-HD. Both these channels offer great exclusive shows like Monk, Psyche, Burn Notice, Eureka. Both have been available in HD for over a year. Yet, neither channel is available on Cablevision.  I have called Cablevision who recently added Nick in HD (when more then half of their programming not in HD). They told me that they should be adding these channels sometime in February after the cutover to all digital. I still don’t believe that they just won’t add those channels now. Cablevision took an entire block of channels in the 700s for HD yet a lot of these channels remain empty.

Cablevision is not the only company that has issues with HD channels. Verizon, Direct TV, and Dish all have similar issues. The problem with these companies is that they have to pay extra to add these channels to their systems. I find this problem as stupidity on the end of the channel distributers. Look at it this way. USA and  Sci-Fi each have standard definition channels on cable. Now they are fishing their HD channels trying to get better deals then their SD counterparts. Remember these HD channels will become the standard channels begining in February after the HD switch. They are trying to get more money hence Cablevision and others not adding channels. I just want to watch my favorite shows in HD will someone budge so the channels can be added?

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Pro wrestling news website wrestlezone.com has stooped to a new low. I understand that websites need to get hits to generate revenue. However, over the last few days columnist Bill Behrens has launched a personal attack on pro wrestling promoter Dennis Richardson.

I don’t know any of these guys personally. I think this terrible and unjust way of doing outing a man. Fans going to this site to get news and scoops have to put up with this nonsense. The problem with the attacks are there are not any names (other then in his first article) to support this claim that Richardson is not paying wrestlers. In his first article Behrens mentioned names but in his last two post attacking Richardson he has said names are withheld. If Behrens really wants to have a scoop put up names and statements of real wrestlers and don’t withhold names. Give us proof, don’t just go out blathering “I heard from one guys”. This all out assault just turns me off to the wrestling business. I wanted to rant so there you go.

I have no problem if he was outing Richardson outright but the fact remains that this just looks like an all out assult on Richardson. I have been so disgusted by this that I will be removing the link to wrestlezone.con from my list of places to visit.

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Over the past few weeks I have notice that time is zooming by. I remember when time was slow. You remember that? When days seemed like months and years seemed ages. Well, ever since my 18th birthday times have changed. This weekend I wanted to do so many things and didn’t do half of what I wanted. Boy, do I long for those days were things were much slower and months didn’t seem to fly by. I was thinking the other day as I was instant messaging a friend. She asked me what did you do the last few months you were in college. I thought back and couldn’t believe that it has been four years since I graduated.

While most lament this life passing by thing. I know why days, weeks, and years go by so fast now. Once you start a career time really zooms here’s why:

There are 24 hours in a day:

You spend 8-10 of those hours at work.

You spend 6-8 hours sleeping.

On weekends you try to pack as much as you can in. Time goes even faster.

Technically, your day consists of 6 hours of your time. As a kid it was school from 8:30am - 3pm then you have the rest of the day. Now it consists of work 9-5 and the reason I put 8-10 hours a day is you have to account for the time it takes you to get to work and home via transportation.  We always sacrafice sleep to try to extend our days. The reason life passes us by is we are living in 6-8 hour days of our own time. The rest of our time is owned by work and sleep.

I have to try to find a way and get some of that time back. I think we all do.

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I finished GTA 4 two weeks ago. As I did with Metal Gear Solid 4 I waited to review it until I finished it. This review won’t be as thourough as MGS4 only becuase if I broke down every mission in GTA4 this review would take days to write.

On the ending: I thought for as many hours a player puts in the ending is disappointing and not rewarding enough. You put 30-50 hours in to a game you expect something for your efforts at the end. I thought the thing that was the most disappointing was after the last mission all you get is $200,000 dollars added to your bank account. While I thought the final two mission were great in terms of action and story telling. The rewards at the end of each are not worth the time a gamer puts in to this game. The one thing I do give the developers and writers is the last mission was great because it incorporated all the elements of the game. I thought the game was very well written, GTA4 is like the movie Scarface only without the ending that Tony Montana had. I enjoyed GTA 4 though it didn’t deserve the 10/10, 5/5, and A+ ratings it received.

On the story: I thought what separated this GTA from other GTA games was the story. Niko arrives here with nothing and gets involved with the wrong people. However, as the game goes on Niko earns the respect of all the people he works for and with. The one thing that made Niko memorible was his loyalty to the people closest to him. Niko did most of the things he did to protect his cousin Roman at all cost that even included killing anyone who might disagree with him.

Supporting cast: This GTA had some great supporting members around Niko. Little Jocob was one of the best supporting members in a GTA game. His Jamaican accent was funny and hard to understand at times. He became Niko’s best friend in the game. Packie was another great cast member. Packie always had a great crime story to tell or tell Niko some irish history. Dimitri might be one of the greatest villans in GTA. By the time you get to the end you hate Dimitri more then anybody else. There were many memorable characters too many to go into here.

Final thoughts/gripes: While it took me four months and a total of about 47 hours of gameplay. When you see the ending and get your money, you ask yourself thats it? The game itself has it’s problems. The cover system is not as responsive as it should be and the shootouts in the game are not that difficult if you know how to use this cover system. Hey, Rockstar!!! For the next GTA could you come up with more missions that don’t include chasing. I swear almost every mission in the game is chasing someone down to kill them. My favorite missions in the game where the pick-up missions. What made these mission great was you’d pick up something only to be chased and have to escape from the cops or enemies or sometimes both. It gave the game a thrill that was different then the you chase someone down and kill them. That is my biggest gripe with this game is the repetitive missions. Once you get towards the middle of the game and fail a mission two or three times you start questioning should I continue? I say continue but just remember the ending is not rewarding.

My grade: B (people playing GTA for the first time) or C (long time GTA players)

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Macho Man Randy Savage

Wrestling legend Randy “Macho Man” Savage was removed from THQ’s upcoming WWE video game Legends of Wrestlemania. Why was Savage removed? He was removed by direct request of Vince McMahon. This leads to a question that all wrestling fans have been asking for many years. What is the beef between Vince MacMahon and Randy Savage?

You see, this isn’t the first time Savage has been outcast from WWE. Two years ago WWE Home Video planned on producing a Macho Man DVD that would focus on his career in sports entertainment. Just as production was about to begin McMahon pulled the plug on the project. Fans have been lobbying for years that Savage should be inducted to the WWE Hall of Fame, this has still not happened.

This beef goes all the way back to 1994. At the time Savage was semi-retired from pro wrestling and working as a color-commentator for WWE Raw. Savage wanted to get back to full-time wrestling, however, McMahon thought Savage was better suited as a color-man. By the Summer of 1994 Savage was unhappy that he was wrestling less and knew his contract was coming to an end. In September of 1994 Savage’s WWE contract expired. Savage did not renew and signed with rival WCW. Some people speculate this is where this beef began.

Many myths have circulated the internet regarding this subject. One says that Randy Savage was the man who took Vince’s daughter Stephanie’s virginity. This rumor can not be confirmed nor denied. The funny part is if you do the math Stephanie was 18 years old at the time Savage left WWE which means this could in fact be true. I don’t believe it but hey you never know. Another myth is that Savage still had a few years left on his contract and negotiated his way out of it to leave to WCW. A few superstars did do this in the mid-to-late 1990’s. This rumor has no basis to it since there is no way Savage negotiated his way out of WWE with out some kind of no-compete clause.

I would love to find out what has caused this friction or beef with McMahon and Savage. One things for sure Vince McMahon is a hypocrite. Vince has always said that he does what is right for the fans, in the interest of fairness. Vince, the fans want to see Randy Savage in the hall of fame. A DVD would be nice too.

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Over the past few weeks sleeping has become an issue for me. For some reason I have been unable to get a good nights sleep. The worst part is I don’t know exactly what is keeping me up. I know that a few nights I had terrible cases of GERD. GERD can keep you up at night but the past few nights haven’t been like that. It’s been I lay down and close my eyes but just can’t seem to fall asleep. It is strange because I have been doing the normal things I usually do. Watch movies, sports, play video games. I’ve done all I can to try to stop this, I changed my dinner time to earlier. Stopped playing video games after 9 PM. Anything that would stop this. I don’t know how much longer I can go on without much sleep. Isomnia sucks.

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