The Holtonian

Mac Dreams

So, I like to drool... over computer crap. Its the materialist in me that I often encounter, wrestle with, and suppress only to have it resurface a few weeks later. I've been cruising the used mac world on the web and I must say the computer I really want is this:

I realize its old and out of date, but I'm sorry the new Imac is not as good looking to me as the old one. I love this design, have since I first saw it. It just speaks to me in a suttle tone that the other one doesn't. The new one is just too much like a tv for me, I like my computer to look like a computer and my tv to look like a tv. I don't want the two blended. Its too metroelectronical... blurs the lines between tv and computer (that's a play on the term metrosexual: a person who blurs the line between strait and homosexual).

So i've scoured the used world, found some good stores that offer warranties plus what I want. I wish Mac wouldn't throw the bath water out with the baby when they redesign every new computer they have. I mean upgrade to the G5 but keep the old body style... some of us aren't used to this much change!!!!

I don't know if I'd ever get one, I mean its already out of date, but basically I want a mac for my music, pictures, and internet which I think the G4 would be fine for. Those three things are pretty much all I use my current comp for, but the viruses and general PCness of it seem to make it age rapidly overtime. I mean I don't even think I need a P4, as my p3 still works fine for me. But what I'd probably do with my old computer is reformat it and turn it into a game machine that ran older games that took me back to my college years.

Also two other things I want from the mac world:

So I don't have to crawl under my desk to plug the shuffle in and this

which is the FM transmitter for the shuffle slash charger for your car which is pretty cool.

But as the title states, these are mac dreams.

weekend

Well, I can't tell you how many times I've written an entry only to have it wiped out by either the computer, internet, or some random malfunction. I had a huge entry and it was all gone when my ADD kicked in, I reached down to adjust a usb thing and the computer restarted itself... classic.

Basically here's the gist of what I had written...
Good weekend, but quick. Friday played games with Strows. Saturday went to work for some Overtime, then worked out with wife. Wife babysat in the morning and at night (I joined her). We watched Wimbledon. Good movie for a chick flick. I grew up watching the Wimbledons, French Opens, and US Opens and felt the movie had a good emotive tennis feel to it. I mean it didn't have the emotion of an Agassi Sampras match but it was good. The chick from Spiderman though was annoying, I find her generally annoying in anything she does though.

The roes came up and we gamed all day today. The guys won spades two games to one but all three games were hard fought. We started to watch Oceans 12 but blockbusta gave the roes a crappy copy and we had to abandon watching it.

Roe fixed my usb 2.0 ports. The wrong drivers were set up and I couldn't tell but he could right off. Though unfortunately some stuff won't work on the new usb's like my cd-rw which i was hoping would boost its speed for burning things but alas its stuck on the 1.0 port.

While tinkering with the computer I noticed I had about only 4 gigs left on my hardrive so I've been working all night to free up some space. One thing that has freed up a lot of space is deleting the numerous mp3 programs i had. Going from I river to MD player, to I pod i had a lot of extra programs and extra versions of songs for each player. So I deleted tons of songs but found I tunes was sort of discriminating against songs burned with Media Player. So i sort of scrapped a lot of my music library that i had burned from my cds and am sort of starting over in a sense. Its not a huge deal b/c now I'm just dumping all my cds instead of a song here and a song there. But I will still need a new computer soon. Though I'll probably go the pc route so I can keep a lot of my stuff such as files and parts of my old comp.

so good weekend over all. the end

Magnificent Mark Mulder

OK, this doesn't happen much these days... a pitcher pitching 10 innings in one game. A pitcher pitching a complete game is almost a rare thing now a days with relievers and middle innning relief. But The cardinals Mark Mulder went 10 innings for the win today against those evil Houston Astros. Its just great because here the Astros dump millions out for Clemens, instead of millions out for Beltran, and they can't even score one run for the guy. Its great. Great Baseball. The cards are 11 and 5, not the best but they're getting it going. Marquis has an ERA of 1.25 or something amazing like that, Carpenter is struggling some, but is getting there. And Morris is surprising everyone and coming out with some amazing stuff and hitting the corners and getting some real heat on the ball. Suppan... well he's Suppan.

      Baseball is such a great sport... hopefully the cards can keep it rolling. With Garciappara out in Chi town the cubs weak offense is even weaker... if that were possible. They need to trade something in a bad way, they had zero offense to begin with and now they're relying too much on unproven players. The astros have a good rotation but until berkman comes back they won't do much offensively in my opinion. And the reds... well they're cursed. Oh and Pittsburgh and Milwaukee... I rest my case. I feel bad for pitt not the brewers though, never liked miluakee, their beer is just bitter and terrible... except PBR which will always have a special place in my heart and blood.
      

Video game gibberish

So on the trip to Destin I got a lot of GBSP in or gameboy sp to the layperson. I purchased Street Fighter 2 for the gameboy and its a pretty much exact clone of the snes one. I beat it with pretty much every character. Its a classic game and I love the simplicity of it. Some of the moves i still can't do, and i can't hardly ever consistently do Ryu or Ken's "Aruken." I love Guile b/c his moves are easy, but I kick serious booty with Ryu. I don't even need his special moves, because I've got his regular moves down pat. Its pretty much why in the HOJO Tournament I'm up on Roe in wins. Roe and I have sparred Ryu vs Ken and he relies more on the special moves where I rely upon kicking and punching.
      I haven't played much xbox really at all. Roe and I tried playing Hunters The Reckoning, but got tired of the constant mindless button pushing, all you have to do is keep a safe distance from the baddies and you'll be fine, and frankly that's kind of boring. I also tried playing Serious Sam but found the gameplay a bit dull and story a bit too stupid to enjoy. Halo 2 still remains to be fun and I'll probably take it up a notch on a higher level.
      In other game news I also bought Tetris for the gbsp and got to level 13 which was pretty impressive. I also saw on G4 tv the history of the game tetris. This was pretty darn interesting here's a synopsis of what I remember:

      Russian dude in Commy russia time works for the ministry of computers. He gets bored and combines his knowledge of computers with his love of puzzles. He liked a certain puzzle where the pieces all had to fit into this square perfectly. He desigined the game and took the word Tetra (russian for four) and combined it with Tennis (his favorite sport) thus Tetris was born. He shared the game around russia, basically Commie Share ware. He then got a computer, a PC from Belarus, and saw that his game had made it out of the country.
      An old man american caught wind of the game and saw an opportunity for money. He sort of got the rights for the game and took them to the US and sold them to a few computer companies. The game is made for the PC and is a pretty big hit. Then a few big wig computer companies try to get in on the action. One major company goes to Russia to land the cosole rights and a small lesser known company goes as well. However, the guy who invented Tetris didn't have the legal rights for it, the ministry of computers did since he used their computers to create the game. The two US companies haggle with the ministry of computers... the bigger one has political clout, the lesser offers the ruskies kickbacks and profit sharing for the game. The lesser guy gets the rights and teams up with Nintendo and basically gives Nintendo soul rights. Nintendo then goes and sues the other company (the one with all the clout) for releasing the game under false rights. Nintendo wins, the lesser company convinces nintendo to package tetris with the original gameboy... and the rest is history....

Except what happened to the creator? Did he get screwed? Nope now he works for Microsoft making puzzle games. SO he goes from working for one soul-less crooked dictatorship/totalitarin regime to working for another one... crazy commies.

Well we just got back from our trip to Destin. With our friends Aaron and Fran

It was a stinkin good time. Besides our honeymoon I have not ventured to the oceanic beaches much. I saw much of the Maine beaches but thats mostly rocks and the water is a cool temperature. Not so in Destin. Destin was pretty darn cool, our condo was a good 100 yards from the water, cross the street and you're there sort of thing. The wife spent much time on the beach getting a little too tan. Yours truly stayed under the umbrella and behind many layers of SPF 60. So despite some freckles I look good, no crabby burnage going on with the choltie. The trip down and back went quick, 6 hours or so, which is not too shabby. We got in late Friday night and walked on the beach around midnight and then went into town for some late night Waho, or to the laymen Waffle House. Which I used to be anti Wafflehouse person, but i think after the breakfast burrito my position has changed to a more favorable outlook on their food.

Then we crashed, we got a one bedroom condo to save on the moolah. Wife and I took the sofa bed, which despite a slight pitch in the bed wasn't too bad. In the morning we bageled and coffeed then hit the beach. Aaron and I got bored after a few hours and went into town and picked up a football to entertain ourselves with. Football on the beach is pretty dang fun, diving into sand, throwing long hail mary's, and looking like an idiot in front of the ladies, good times.

Then we outlet malled it. I got some shirts as my collection is a bit dated and now i won't get made fun of at work for wearing the same shirt over and again. Then we went to the Crab Shack which was on the beach at sunset, it was dang good! I got the Crab Feast which was crabb legs, crab cakes, fried crab claws, mashed taters, cole slaw, and a few hush puppies. It was dang dang dang good.

Sunday we beached some more, trying to make the most of our last day.

We went to a harborside lunch dive that took three hours to make a burger... which was kind of annoying. Then we went back to beach with a few beers and drinks in hand. And then for dinner went to Seaside and went to the Red Bar which was a combination of the Atmosphere of Pickel Barrel (cool dive ish feel), service of Lupis (stoned), and the food of St. Johns (dang good and dang expensive). It was awesome.

The wife had a good time, as you can tell she was dying laughing...

Then we headed back today and got back to a dog that missed us a ton. It was a good trip, a day longer though and Aaron and I would have gotten bored. Beaches are ok, but not great for those of us with ADD.

It was a great trip but its good to be back and get back into the daily routine.

What would you do for love? Would you do that?

Did you know, "I would do anything for love... oh i would do anything for love... i would do anything for love.... but I won't do that!" Meatloaf is a fat genius. I wonder what "that" is? This is one of my recent I tunes download, i love that song, but to pay for an entire Meatloaf cd is a waste of my money. I also got "Lift Me Up" by Moby from the new album, good little Moby type song as well as "Where you End" both good songs. Also got some Franz Ferdinand: "Take me out" and "this fire" i just went the popular songs route as I only had a few free songs to get and am not a huge Franz fan, though i see their talent, not all their songs strike a cord with me. Then I bought "You steal my sunshine" by len, a great crappy song from the 90s.
      Hopefully Roe will be able to fix my usb 2.0 card and make it work so I can listen to these songs on something besides my computer.
      I'm really enjoying life right now, work's good, I'm having a better attitude towards it. I hope to be doing something by the end of the year, and the fact of things coming up on the horizon was distracting me from work, but I've changed my attitude to bust it hardcore until I either leave or move up in the company. So approach is making work more enjoyable. Plus good music on the Shuffle Huffle helps.
      I also got a good package today from Mr Fedex. I bought Tetris finally for the wife for the gameboy and Street Fighter 2 Turbo. SF2T is pretty cool and I'm hoping my GBSP cronies Roe, Crabb, and Strow will get the game and a wireless addition and can play each other. Though not sure where or when we'd play.
      We're going down to Florida for the weekend and that will give the GBSP some good use for the car trip. We're going down for a bit of a mini vacation and really i'm only going for the chance to get some decent seafood. There is no good restaurant in chatty for seafood unless you like Captain D's or red lobster. Northshore is hit or miss and when you miss with seafood, you miss big time. I got crab legs the only time i went there and half were great, the other half tasted terrible and i think were rotten. The bone fish chain is here now and i hear they're good, but I yearn for seafood by the sea. Seafood.... oh how I burn for you! Oh how I burn.... oh how I burn.... This fire is out of control... gonna burn this choltie... burn this choltie.
      As you can tell i'm listening to music as I write this. I was lying on the grass of last week, indulging in my self defeat....
      Anywho i better stop before I start quoting Rod Stewart.

Is anyone else having slow internet problems?

Is anyone else having problems with their comcast internet lately? Pretty much this whole week our internet has been jack slow. I'm about to tear my hair out over it.

I am Rudy Rudicker

Tonight I hung with my chum Aaron while our wives tackled projects at church. We watched the classic Rudy, a flick he hadn't seen.

I can't believe how great this movie is, and how I hadn't seen it till a year ago because of my bleeding heart cynicism. I remember when it came out I mocked the bajoogers out of it and thought it was so lame. But it is lame, I mean Rudy Rudicker is one lame dude, but that's what makes him so lovable. He's the guy you root for, he's the under dog... he's Chris Holton. I never knew I wanted to go to Notre Dame and play football for the Irish till I saw that movie... but now I do. I'm quitting my job and focusing only on football and Catholicism. Heh, that's too hard... I'll stick to what I'm good at... video games???

I got an email from good Ole Matty Carr Check out his blog! I'd put a URL link but my url button was removed for some reason when I switched to firefox. But check it out on the link on the side. Mazle Mazle to him for marrying Shannon! Matt had the distinct pleasure of being in the only play I was ever in. He was the star of the Odd Couple, a young Felix Unger. I played Speed, a surly old man who smokes cigars... which was the best part of playing speed... I got to smoke Cigars at covenant... though it was also the worst part. Smoking a cigar everyday has its disadvantages. Roe and Mesh were also in the play... it was a dynamic team of some of the biggest goof offs and slackers ever to grace Covenant College.

Tomorrow will be stinking... actually today will be as its so stinkin late. It will be gardening day, mowing, and general planting. Then followed up with a night of Halo2, which should be good as I will be dead tired. If you wanna play halo 2 Saturday night, give me a call... I’ll be home alone. If you don't know my number... use a carrier pigeon.

Why Won't 99x give me tickets?

So I'm listening to 99x now... trying to be like Scott I guess. I won't listen for much longer but thought while I blog i should at least give it a shot. I also redeemed my free music for my pepsi's from I tunes. I got two Beck Songs from Gameboy Variations. Not sure if this was a released CD but I heard it on my shuffle via Roe and knew I had to have these songs. I bought Bad Cartridge (Epro) and Bit Variations (Girl). I highly recommend these songs for the game dorks out there... crabby i'm looking in your direction.

Well so far no U2 song, but some decent music. Its amazing how much better even the pop radio stations are in other cities. At least they play stuff made in the last year.

Great... now illinois lost too... what a bummer.

I bet a guy at work that the Cards would make it to the WS he took the Bravos. Its a pretty safe bet, b/c chances are I'll win b/c the Cards are better than the braves at least on paper, and the braves are pretty much cursed. Though if neither make it, which would be absolutely amazing, its a wash. But who knows if i'll even be at my company come that time. I had one of my coworkers tell me I should get out while I still can... meaning find another job while I'm still young. It was pretty funny... yet very true.

OK well this u2 thing is panning out, I'll probably bug out. I used to remember when I was a kid... come to think of it I think I still remember... anyway, when i was a kid they had an afternoon show during the commercials... it was called the Chanell 11 kids club, then it became the WB kids club... st. louisans may remember it. But they were giving a Sega Genesis away everday after school, and I promise you I called that thing a million gazillion times and never won that dang sega. So I went out and bought my own and then one of my brothers (he'll remain annoynmous) left it at his ex girlfriends and was too afraid to go back and get it.

OK i'm out.

My Gamecube evolved... and Ranting about Social Security

What happened to my game cube!!! It got larger and a hard drive and games that aren't aimed at children under 12...

I did another system swap this time with Frederick... i'd put a url link to his blog but I don't know it. I gave him the opportunity to play Metroid Prime and Metroid Prime 2 the best two games on the gamecube and he gave me the Xbox with Halo 2. I must say I like Halo 1 better though, i've blogged about it before so I'll just explain why I like 1 more than 2 in one sentence. Halo 1: smoother, crisper, weapons are easier to use, and indestructable vehicles.

But in an effort to not annoy people with video game talk, i'll stop. I'll probably keep the box until frederick wants it back. Though I want my cube back by october as thats when the new zelda comes out.

The time change hit us hard... it was rough getting to church this morning. It was kind of funny seeing all the people walk in around 11:45... i think one guy came in, saw he had forgot to set his clock back and walked out. I hate time change... can't we do away with that? I mean WW2 is over, lets get rid of that and the other major annoying WW2 era remnant Social Security. I saw an old dude holding up a sign that protested, "Don't take my money" i guess in response to the privitization of the social security thing. Well, what about my money old dude? All I'm saying is, if he can sit there and hold a sign for a day he can just as easily be a greeter at Walmart or carry those Little Ceasers signs up and down Battle Field Parkway, it would probably pay more than social security anyway. Hey... what's this... I'm on top of some sort of a box... wait there's a label on the box... S....O....A...P.... huh? It must be some sort of Soap Box... interesting.

A Pot of Coffee, Springing Forward, and Losing touch with Reality

Well I'm out of the pool for church and my office. I did win one of the ones at work, but it wasn't for money. I'm kind of bummed b/c I wanted some moolah.

In other news on SNL tonight the killers, sucked. It was a repeat and I'd never seen them perform before but man they have zero stage presence. It's hard for a front man to be a front man unless they can be cool/zany/or just hip or have a guitar or spoons. When I think of a great front man I actually think of Beck and Bono also Jim Morrison was dang good. Beck is just awesome when he dances or just gets into his songs. Bono, well he's sort of a wanker but one that is so cool that he pulls it off and is just larger than life. Cold Play guy too can really get into the piano where you're like, "if this song wasn't so easy to play on the piano I'd think he was beet-oven or something..." But yeah the killer lead singer has a psuedo homo thing going, no offense intended for those who have a full-blown homo thing going. But I mean he was like the lead singer of the Simple Minds, who I think actually was gay...or at least British... they can be easily confused, but anyway Killer dude was like the Simple Mind guy but just lame. Hm... probably just offended a whole mess of people there... whoops. So much for running for district judge... oh wait I think I have to go Law school for that.

SO where was I? Oh yeah, killers, pretty bad. They're music is a good tempo and if you just had a guy fronting who could dance or be really weird like Jim Morrison or even the Simple Mind guy, and then it would work. But Killer singer just sort of sits there not sure of what to do with himself. That and they dress like a bunch of hipster wanna bees. They looked like they were trying to be too cool for school a little bit too much. I mean the wrinkled suit and tie under the shirt... it was just so forced. Then on his second set he wore a pink leather coat, which leads me to think he's not British (as he's from Vegas apparently)... so that only leaves one other option... he bats for the other team. He's a lefty if you know what I mean... no offense to those that are left handed or ambidextrous, I'm merely trying to say he's gay without saying it.... whoops said it. Not that there's anything wrong with it...unless you read the Bible, then you may have a problem. Then again you could argue that that was merely a cultural thing and the Bible can be changed to meet today's standards... but you'd be dead wrong and pretty stupid... but you can do that... I mean its America we have the right to be stupid and ignore truth. Where am I going with this?

I went to put my apple sticker on my car today... it came with my free Rosiah Ipod Shuffle To The Max but my car was gone... left it at work... hope its still there... hope it still works... otherwise I don't know what I'll put my apple sticker on.

That New Budweiser Select tastes like the crappiest thing this side of the hemisphere. It seriously tasted like someone dropped an Alka-Seltzer in my beer. My buddy A-ron bought a 12 packer last night and he had one and was done b/c it was that bad. I being a guest didn't want to turn down free beer and choked three down but regretted every bit of it that night and the next day. Somehow I got sick and the chick filet I had today didn't seem to make anything better... I thought that maybe the Chicken would counter act the acid in my stomach and make me feel better but it just made me queasy. We went to Lowes today to buy stuff for the yard. We're trying to make it look nice in an effort to make it look like we actually take care of the outside of our house. I spread some weed n feed and we bought some holly bushes and flowers and such to plant here and there and everywhere. Mr. Lowe got a good chunk of my change, though it's all ok (not all good, just all ok) because the wife's nannying will help pay for home repairs and such.

Then we had some friends come up to watch the horrible game... stupid Michigans. But UNC vs. Illinois will be a better match up and a great game and a great team will win either way. Though I'd rather have 35 bucks. I've had about a pot of coffee tonight and I'm losing an hour... super!