This Should Work

Jerry, there is no doubt that part of what made you a great football player -first ballot hall of famer- was your extremely rigorous workout routine and your competitive fire. But eventually age catches up with us all, and you are no exception. It’s amazing that you’ve lasted in the NFL for 20 years when most wide outs last only 5. So now that you’re done with football how will you feed that competitive fire? Coaching? Become a partial own of a sports franchise?

Wait, reality TV?!

Well…congrats Jerry on your second place finish in Dancing with the Stars. I raised an eye brow at first, but then I sort of understood that the competition probably drew you in, and you wanted to show the world that you were still quick on feet. Mission Accomplished. Now you can go away and enjoy your family like you said you would after retiring from the Denver Broncos. I hope you have a good life and I’ll see you in Canton in five years.

Wait…what? Another Reality TV show?!

Jerry, you really don’t need to do this, right? Now I’ll see you on Spike TV’s Pros vs. Joes? Jerry, are the best wide reciever of all-time! Even in your 40’s you’ll wipe the floor with these average wanna-bes trying to re-live the glory days of high school and college years gone by. And let’s say one of them actually beats you, what then? Many will think you’ve embaressed yourself on national cable television.

But even if that happens (and I doubt it will) we’ll likely forgive and forget. Many sports fans remember watching Willie Mays stumble around in the Mets outfield trying to hold onto his glory days a bit too long, but that image fades in favor of one where Willie catches a ball over his shoulder for the Giants.

I’m sure that this too will fade away and we’ll remember your catch on Monday Night Football against the Bronocs after your comeback from knee surgery. Just make sure I don’t see you on next year’s Survivor. Please.

I was walking through the mall this weekend and found myself on the mens side of my wife favorite store, Banana Republic, trying to kill time while she shopped on the womens side of the store.

While walking down and looking at things that I would like to buy if only they were half the price, I came across a section of extrememly wrinkled dress shirts. Not one, not two, but an entire row of wrinkled pin-striped dress shirts that were selling for sixty bucks. At first I thought ‘they forgot to steam this row of shirts and rushed to put them out.’ But no, they were meant to be wrinkled.

So I went to their website and there it was:

The traditional pinstripe button-front gets a modern makeover in pre-washed woven cotton that’s undergone our own wrinkling process for an authentic, lived-in finish.

Now I understand pre-washed jeans– they can be rather stiff until they been through the wash a few times– but pre-wrinkled shirts is going a little too far. Believe me, I have no trouble wrinkling my own shirts, I don’t need to pay extra for the wrinkles. But they do go on to state that you can iron out the wrinkles “to reveal a more polished side.” So it’s good to know that I can pay sixty bucks for a shirt that I’ll need to iron right away.

[tags]Banana Republic, Shirts, Wrinkles, Clothing[/tags]

Since switching to the Mac mini as my primary media player for iTunes, I’ve been trying to get my iListen to page to update correctly, but I’ve run into some issues.

First, the program I was using, itunesblogger, is a windows-only based application. But I found another application that does similar stuff for the Mac called Recent Tunes. It’s a pretty cool application that places an icon in the menu bar, showing you what you’ve played and what’s currently playing. I thought this program would work flawlessly -and I’m sure it will soon- but I ran into a small snag last night.

As I was testing program out, I did something (God knows what) and now Recent tunes thinks the only songs I play are by Jane’s Addiction. Two songs in particular: Three days and Pigs in Zen. I found this out after viewing the test webpage and it looked like a crappy MySpace Jane’s Addiction tribute page.

So the iListen to is down right now until I solve the issue (hopefully soon). And yes, I do have more stuff besides Jane’s.

[tags]itunes, Jane’s Addiction, Recent Tunes[/tags]

Partially because I’m a pompous ass, and partially out of fear, I’ve always told myself that I will not become one of Them.

Who is this Them that I speak of? Well there’s a long list, but here’s a few:

• Those who complain about not finding a close parking space and walking;
• Those who don’t use the turn signal when moving into your lane on the highway (or any street for that matter);
• Those who order nonfat coffee drinks but also order a chocolate-cream cheese muffin because “the nonfat makes it okay;”
• Those who make a New Year’s commitment to return to the gym only to drop out two weeks later;

In the cases of the last two, I find myself slipping a little. I’ve started buying non-fat drinks with the high-cal muffin and I’m at the gym less frequently these days. Worse yet, I try to rationalize it.

“Well it’s alright if I don’t go to the gym today, because I walked to work” says one side of my brain.
“Walking may be cardio exercise, but what about strength training, eh?” says the other side.

It’s a battle that many go through and this is apparently my time to go through it now. I’m pretty sure that I’ll come up with some sort of compromise, like working out only two days a week instead of trying for three (which has happened maybe twice this year). The goal is to keep doing the good behavior until it becomes routine, whether you want to or not. That’s what I’m trying to remind myself in order to avoid becoming one of Them.

photo from The Harvard Film Archive.

I finally broke down and bought a Mac computer and I am so glad that I did.

One of the downsides to keeping up with the latest computer gadgets is that I always read about “the next genereation” of a product and convince myself to wait on purchasing the item. This was true the Mac products, but I just got tired of waiting and spent the money on a Mac Mini.

Along with the mini I purchased a wireless keyboard and mouse (bluetooth)and becuase I don’t have an extra monitor laying around the house, I’ve hooked it up to my HDTV!

I’m hoping to turn it into a media center for our household, allowing us to stream music to any room in the house with speakers. I’ve spent most of today “moving” my music from CD’s to the Mac Mini. I’m still deciding about placing a copy of our digital photos on it as well.

But one thing I am truly enjoying is getting to know OS X Tiger. At first I found it a little complicated because I was so used to Windows as well as the ability to right-click items. But after a while I got used to it and started using some great porgrams included in OSX like Automator and Expose.

I’m having a lot of fun with my new toy, but the one downside to Apple’s products is that they’re very white; perfect for showing all the dog hair that gets on the keyboard!

So if you’re curious, this is what my entertainment center looks like (click the picture to view the flickr notes):

[tags]Mac mini, HDTV, media center[/tags]

This past weekend we upgraded our cable package to HD+DVR package available. We did this for two reasons:

1. Using a VCR to record TV shows is soooo 1999;
2. I wanted to get the most out of our new HDTV.

After playing around with the new upgrades for a few days, I seriously don’t know how I watched television before. Of course the whole pausing live TV thing is cool (I used it last night while waiting for my wife to come downstairs and watch 24), but the image quality on the recorded programs is excellent. I was so used to grainy, washed-out images from VCR tapes, but now I’ve seen what I’ve been missing.

And the HD channels, oh the HD channels! These channels are so crystal clear that I was watching programs just because they’re in HD.

NBC’s Winter Olympics- I watched men’s downhill, pairs figure skating, and cross country skiing. Why? Because it was broadcast in HD!

CBS’s Cold Case- I watched part of an episode of this mediocre drama. Why? Because it’s in HD!

ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy- Watched a full episode of this show for the first time. Why? Because I now receive HD!

And yes, you read that correctly- I watched pairs figure skating. But trust me when I tell you this will not be a habit. Four years from now at the next Winter Olympics I so excited about HDTV that I’ll sit and watch figure skating just because it’s in HD.

[tags] HD, HDTV, DVR[/tags]

Yesterday, I went to the grocery store to buy some cough drops for the family since we’re both a little under the weather. As I’m perusing the selection of cough drops, looking for the right brand with a decent flavor, I find one advertising that it has “0 Carb!”

I know that they are just jumping on the whole Atkins/South Beach Diet craze to help push their product, but I have yet to meet a person who’s said something like “Jeez, my throat feels like I’m swallowing hot gravel and a couch drop would really help. Oh, thanks… Holy Crap, look at how many carbs are in this thing! Get this out of here, I’m on a diet!”

Having stated that, I ended up purchasing the 0 Carb cough drops (not because of the zero carbs, but because they were Honey-Lemon flavored).

[tags]cough drops, halls, throat[/tags]

Tonight, while my wife went to a business dinner, I pushed myself to the spicy food limit. I made a dish that I haven’t had for about 9-10 months: Chicken with Chiles. It’s a recipe from Fuchsia Dunlop’s excellent book Land of Plenty, and the last time I made this Sichuan dish, my wife stopped eating it after a few bites because it was too hot/spicy. I remembered it being spicy, but not “I can’t take it” spicy; more like tingle your lips for hours spicy.

So I preparing this dish tonight while my wife was getting ready. The first step: measure the chiles. The recipe calls for “1 small rice bowl filled generously with dried red chiles, preferable Sichuanese (about 2 ounces).” Since I was just making this for myself, I cut the recipe in half, which still amounted to 40 red chiles.

As I finished cooking the dish, my wife came downstairs and said “It smells good but (cough, cough) really spicy!” After cleaning the kitchen, I sit down with a beer, Chinese food, and my big screen ready to enjoy my food. Then I start eating and realize that I’m drinking the beer before and after every bite of chicken. I start picking some of the chiles out to hopefully bring the heat level down, and it helps, a little.

My wife says is smells good and she’d like to try a piece, but she doesn’t “want my mouth to be on fire at dinner.” I tell her it’s not bad in between swigs of beer and now water. She tries a small piece of chicken.

“What do you think?” I ask.

“I can only taste the chiles” she replies.

Eating this spicy treat reminded of the only other time I had something so spicy that I almost threw in the towel: In high school, my friends and I were hanging out watching Monday Night Football and decided to make nachos. But we thought it would better to have “fiery nachos.” So I asked my mom if we had any chili peppers in the house. At first she said no, but after further consideration, and some nagging on my part, my mom went to the freezer and pulled a small bag filled with five small chiles.

“Now these are really hot” she warned “only use one. No more than two.” But we were young and brass (or stupid) and diced up three chiles, mixed it in with the cheese and chips and baked the whole thing.

After a few bites one friend was asking for bread, another for a glass of milk, another asked for anything but water. I think we ate about half of the nachos all the while saying, “I can’t believe how hot this is!”

I’ve been planning on buying a new TV for a while, but last night I finally did it. After researching for about two months, measuring the cabinet space available, and visiting Best Buy a few times I purchased a 37″ LCD HD Monitor for the new house.

It’s a Westinghouse HD Monitor that has seven different inputs (four digital inputs, two analog inputs, and one computer input). I’ve been playing around with all the picture settings all morning and I think I’ve got the picture just right.

The next step is to upgrade my cable to the HD package. I’m putting the cart before the horse a little (I should have upgraded my cable before buying the HD monitor) but the sales are happening right now just in time for the Super Bowl. I couldn’t pass up on the savings.

[tags] HDTV, Televisions, Super Bowl[/tags]