I wish there was a widget that worked with Ringo.. or that it supported RSS.

ANYWAY… I just popped in to let you know that there are a bunch of pictures posted up for your viewing pleasure. It’s pretty straightforward, but you have to look around for the NEXT and PREVIOUS buttons sometimes because the ads can be overpowering. That’s what you get for free!

That said, you can view them here.

Enjoy!

The Red Ring of Death has taken another soul. The wife called in last night stating that upon trying to use the XBOX360 to play some music for the children, the machine produced nothing but flashing red lights.

I was really starting to think that I was going to get away without this issue. I have been putting the ole’ 360 through its paces with Halo 3 over these last five weeks, but to have it just suddenly break… man, that is cruddy. And that is exactly how it happens. I know of a few personal cases and many, many thousands reported online. Everything seems fine, and then the thing just quits working one day.

It doesn’t seem to even be tied to any sort of abuse. I have two friends that had the problem about the same time. One of these friends is very neat. The house is always clean, no kids using the system, and it sits on a hard surface with good ventilation and never moves. The other friend has many children that often go bonkers over the machine. It is very likely that the dog peed on it a few times (after he chewed up all the cords) and the inside of the machine might very well reveal traces of pancake batter and yogurt.

Both machines died around the same time. Now mine has gone to join them. I guess I’m glad it happened within the new 3-year warranty period, but no Halo for a few weeks makes Bill sad.

Another thing that makes me sad is being late for church all the time. This past Sunday, I was in such a hurry that I executed a textbook smash-through-garage-door maneuver in order to shave a few seconds off my time.

I hope you enjoyed that added bit of drama. I put it in there just for you! The truth is that I mistimed the door opening by a second. It is one of those habitual tasks that just got the wires crossed. I have the door timed inside my brain. I usually look back there to make sure it is open, but that is always just ceremonial. I’m not really paying attention to the door.

Well this time I didn’t look, and I did catch the very bottom of the garage door with the very top of the van. Fortunately there was no body damage to the vehicle. It did smash up taillight above the rear windshield. The garage door itself was mangled only slightly, and I was able to use additional mangling to get it back into working order. You’d probably have walk up to it to tell it was damaged, so I don’t foresee us fixing or replacing it any time soon. I should probably repair the van just so that molding doesn’t fall off on the highway and land me in a lawsuit.

Just when I thought my life wasn’t interesting…

Sometimes I do, but maybe what I mean is “controversial” things. I have a lot of thoughts and opinions that would surely make people want to say things to me, but most of the time I really don’t feel like arguing. I’m sure I will someday, but that day is not today.

I do however, blog about the children, the Hawkeyes, and video games quite a bit. Those things are pretty interesting to me – if not anyone else. I got my Hawkeye Highlights section updated, though I hesitate to call most of them “highlights”. It was a great game today; however, as Iowa took double-overtime to defeat Michigan State in Iowa City. I was a little disappointed that it even came to overtime after a disappointing final defensive series.

Of course it could also be said that they were lucky to even be in the lead at the end of the game after riding Albert Young for 5000 yards or whatever it was. Iowa has a decent shot at bowl eligibility, and if they win out ( no small task, I know ) it will be all but a sure thing. It is at times like this that I think about how Iowa State is 1-8 – with a sole victory over Iowa – and it makes me want to keel over the yak on the floor. Oh, well – next year, right?

We have almost all of the memory cards full for the camera now, so one of these days we’ll have a lot of pictures for you. Time has become such a commodity lately. It’s really crazy. I have a lot of video to work on as well. It’s something I like to do, but the only time I have to do it is about 30-60 minutes after I get home at night when I usually feel like…

Playing Halo 3. In the fictional land of galactic war, you may now refer to me as LT. BillyActionface. I’m officially a Spartan officer now, so that is sweet. That is more so a reflection of experience at this point rather than skill, but I have been holding my own.

It is now time to watch the Big Ten finale show, and next time I’ll tell you about my candlelight dinner at the Chick-Fil-A!

The final chapter in the Halo Trilogy was release last month on the 25th of September. What I expected was basically an improvement upon all things Halo 2 and I was mostly not disappointed.

The one place that I was slightly disappointed; however, was the part I was looking forward to the most. In the first Halo, there were cut scenes throughout the game that told an engaging and mysterious story. With Halo 2, the cinematics really took over and made for a much richer experience than the first. The storytelling in Halo 2 is one of my favorite parts. The storytelling in Halo 3 is… fine… nothing more.

Everyone was anxious to see what happened after the ridiculous cliff-hanger in the previous game, and that is all we really get. That is nice, but there aren’t any new characters, no motivations explored, and one major player in the story that makes no appearance at all except for a few voiceovers. It wasn’t bad, it just wasn’t as good as Halo 2, which I found to be very, very good.

That said, this is the first Halo game that I managed to complete on Legendary (read: very, very, hard) difficulty. I played through the first time on Normal, and that was way too easy for me having put significant time into the first two games. I ingested the whole thing too quickly and didn’t get much out of it. The second time through was on Heroic, and that makes sure you have to stop and think about what you are doing. It was much more satisfying. The transition from Normal to Heroic was actually harder than from Heroic to Legendary.

Now comes the dilemma. The only thing left is to go play online – which would surely be a rocking good time, but I’m not sure if I want to put up with the other players. Despite the M rating on the game ( for 18+ only ), the online game is dominated by preteens that feel the need to barrage you with every bit of cursing and filth the learned on the internet that week. It doesn’t matter if you beat them or not. Now I’m a big boy and I can take it, but why?

Now, they did put multiplayer cooperative mode in for the campaign this time which is extremely right up my alley. Anyone wanting to get in on some of that, look me up!

“Pay it forward” has become a sort of sappy cliche in our culture ever since the movie by the same name, but I recently got to enjoy seeing it in action!

A couple years ago, a man I work with at Sprint told me that he’d been given two tickets to the Outback Bowl in Tampa, FL. Iowa was playing Florida that year, and he said that if I’d use them I could have them. I ended up taking Dad down there and having one of the most memorable weeks of my life (thanks in no small part to the atrocities committed against Iowa by the Sunbelt Conference officials!).

These were really nice tickets on the club level with the climate controlled concourse and the reserved restrooms and concession stands. We got to go to the corporate tent village before the game and eat and drink to our hearts’ content. It wasn’t something that I get to do every day, to say the least! The face value of the game tickets alone was $150 per ticket, and they could have easily been sold for some tidy profit. But they weren’t, and I got to take a week-long trip to Florida to watch a bowl game with my dad for just under $600.

Clarinda recently signed up for, and won, NASCAR tickets for this weekend. I’m a little curious about what it would be like to go to a race, but on the whole – not interested. We have a neighbor; however, that will be going to two races on our behalf this weekend with his son who likes racing very much. I forgot to jot down what all they get to do, but beyond the races they’ll entry to the corporate village as well as pit tours and a host of other events any race fan would love. Everybody seem shocked that we didn’t try to sell them – even the recipient!

Maybe I’m crazy, but I don’t get that attitude. I get far more joy out of observing the gift getter than I would the extra cash. I’m not saying that I’m unique.. I have a lot of family and several good friends that are very generous spirits – givers in every sense of the word. It’s just nice to be able to see the circle come around every now and then. Just this weekend one of those good friends and I were discussing the difficulties of accepting what we perceive as charity. I have struggled with this myself, but I think it’s something that a lot of people in our culture could do well to get over.

It’s not that I have more money than I know what to do with – I don’t – or that I don’t have any desire for an extra couple hundred bucks – I do. It’s just that I’ve given very significantly at several different points in my life. I’ve seen first hand that while getting is pretty darn sweet, giving is on a whole other level!

The wife and I have discussed before whether we wanted to get the kids any kind of motorized toy car before we got them good and comfortable with the idea of pedaling everywhere. It was really more of an intellectual discussion in the face of the prices of those things. Casual research has shown anywhere from 180 to 300+ dollars. We found this totally sweet Jeep; however, at a garage sale for 20 bucks!

Abby is very excited as you can see! There is an entire album full of pictures for you to peruse. I’m hoping to have some video up soon as well. Enjoy!

I have been trying to select one of the myriad online photo repositories so that when I keep messing around with the site I don’t have to lose all the pictures that I’ve shared. I wanted to avoid paying a fee if I could, but that proved to be a little more difficult than I originally thought.

Derin did a series on his old site (he has since moved to wordpress.com) regarding the many options out there. Almost all of them – if you wanted to use them for free – had a glaring flaw. Snapfish was cool, but you could only share photos by emailing special links to people. Flickr is very nice, but you are limited to only three separate albums – not good for organizing! Many of the others – photobucket, etc. – are visual train-wrecks. Linking to my pictures almost gave me a headache as by brain tried to sort through the muddled ads and garbage. AND my pictures didn’t actually start until about 3/4 the way down the page!

I was nearly resigned to pay for Flickr Pro when Marcellus the Photographer pointed me to Ringo.com. I think this is going to be the winner – at least for now. The user interface very clean for one of the free sites. At least there is a chance that the albums are the first thing you are going to see! I only have one test album up with a couple pictures now, but I’ll keep you posted as it starts to get more populated:

http://www.ringo.com/photos/albums.html?memberId=166175250

Oh yea, I guess I threw in a video from youtube as well. Caution – it may stir up some bad feelings from the past

I was a little resistant to the Big Ten Network as a concept at first, but I really enjoyed watching the Hawkeyes handle Syracuse last night. The first thing I noticed, though, was that they don’t have a ticker showing scores from around the country. Joe pointed out that this is pretty much a given in sports today and I have to agree.

That said, it was reassuring to see the Hawkeye put up some good numbers on offense. Here’s hoping it carries over into Ames next week for Iowa State. 3-0 isn’t a bad way to start the day! Now, the game is going to be on Versus, which I don’t have. Anybody out there get that channel and want to hang out Saturday? Anyone?

UFC 75, on the whole, delivered. The main event with Quinton Jackson overcoming Dan Henderson was an excellent display. The decision victory of Michael Bisping over Matt Hamill was completely baffling to me. I’ve seen my share of dubious decisions, but this doesn’t even qualify! When they interviewed him, the best highlight they could find for him to talk through was him not getting taken down once. Hooray.

There are a lot of factors that are supposed to go into judging. There must be some that I don’t know about. And even if the rules are different, it just means that the rules are lame. However you come to the conclusion that Bisping won that fight, you came to it incorrectly!

I’ve been working on getting things put together today, and I can already tell that this is going to be a lot easier than ye ol’ Community Server! CS turned out to be way too much horsepower for an individual – or even a very small group! So anyway, I think that this theme will stick for a while, but no guarantees!

I was searching through the program guide on the Dish to find all of the channels that were going to have college football tomorrow. I was fairly surprised to see that the Big Ten Network showed as available on my programming package!

Sure enough, Dish Network announced yesterday that they have added the Big Ten Network to America’s Top 100. That’s the cheaper package, therefore, that is the package I have. Needless to say, I am a happy camper as I will be watching Iowa vs. Syracuse tomorrow night!

The other big event tomorrow is UFC 75: Champion vs. Champion. The champions in question are UFC light-heaveyweight champion Quinton Jackson and Pride middleweight and welterweight champion Dan Henderson (the two organizations’ weight class names aren’t the same). Henderson hasn’t fought in the UFC since 1998. I’ve never seen him fight before and am very much looking forward to it – especially free on Spike TV!