The Pigskin

10.30.2004

I know pretty much nothing about football. I've never been one to keep up with it, much to the chagrin of my Sports-watching grandfather, who I believe has the remote programmed to jump from one saports channel to the other. I'm up to date with most of the rules, but except for well known stars of teams, I couldn't tell you who was where playing what position. Although I don't keep up with the real sport, I have enjoyed a good football videogame from time to time. I haven't really gotten into a football game in years. I tried one of the Madden games around 2000, but it was just way to complicated for me. I was used to a game where either the QB would run the ball or have the option to pass to maybe 2 receivers if the game was really good.

This year I decided to try ESPN NFL game on the PS2. It's less intimidating than the Madden series, and with the difficulty cranked all the way down it's not to hard to pick up. I've been playing for a few weeks now off and on (and even managed to boost the difficulty up to give me a challenge!), and along the way I've noticed something peculiar. Playing as the Tennessee Titans, I'm learning the names on the roster. I found this out one morning while flipping channels during the commercials of getting my news/weather/traffic-update and pausing on ESPN. They were going over the weekend NFL games, and I suddenly knew who they were talking about. Chris Burman spouts off something about "Mason with a grab under double coverage" and I find myself saying "Oh yeah, go Derrick!" followed by a quick cock of head and a "hey, how'd I know his name was Derrick?" Oh yeah, I throw passes to him in a video game.

So maybe this Thanksgiving, while going for my annual trip to the grandparents to have lunch and see way to many relatives, I'll just strike up the oddest conversation my grandfather and I could ever have. Unfortunately, Tennessee isn't playing on Thanksgiving day, but maybe we can find a game on with a team I've thoroughly trounced and can still name some players.

Permalink video games

Cootie Recouping

10.28.2004

I'm still getting over my cootie invasion, so there's not been much going on. I did come across a well done Star Trek Play By Email RPG the other day. They've got some nice graphics for rank insignia and uniforms.

Permalink

The Ahhhs of Chooo

10.26.2004

I have fallen victim to the latest cootie. I am one with sickness. Yesterday was scratchy throat and sinus pressure, today is sinus draining and hacking up a lung. Today hurts more, more I'm hoping it's progress, letting whatever is in my body that wants out, out!

Of course, the important part of all this is who to blame for making me sick. The easiest choice would be the Poplin clan. I went to shower the eldest of the Poplin children with gift on Friday, and the clan has a recent history of being sick. But no, although I enjoyed playing with clan members, especially the Dogs Poplin, their measly city cooties shouldn't be able to affect (effect?) me.

This narrows the field down. Gina returned from Florida Saturday night, so I went to bid her a fond welcome. Yeah, read into that what you want, ya pervs. Gina has been in her new house for a little over a month (I think), and one of the things I remember was on of the inspectors reporting that there was mold growth under the house that needed to be taken care of. Oddly enough, I awoke at about 4:00AM Sunday with a scratch in my throat. I'm thinking it could be a mold-induced scratch, since I haven't had time to build up my immunities to her new home. Curse her new found mold!

Maybe this will guilt her into making me some chicken soup?

Permalink

Russ Vs The PC: Part 2.5

10.23.2004

As I sit at home in front of the PC on a drizzly Saturday night, I've decided that the computer has won. After trying to uninstall, reinstall, and just plain install things over and over, I could never get the blamed thing back to working stably again. So, hoping it was something spooky with the drive the OS was installed on, I switched some drives around, reformatted, and reinstalled everything from scratch. I even bought a DVI to VGA adapter so that I'm now using a single video card to run 2 monitors (even though early testing shows the DVI adaptered monitor looks a little blurry).

So now that I've reorganized everything on the home pc, maybe it'll behave for a while. I'm tired of fighting with hardware, it generally gets the better of me.

Permalink

Russ vs The House: Part 1

10.20.2004

As I awoke to the smattering of rain against the house and thunder in the distance yesterday morning, something struck me as amiss. It was dark. Way darker than it should be at... 8:50 IN THE MORNING!

Well, obviously I was tired last night, I had managed to sleep late. Too late. I got up and started to get ready for work, when walking through the kitchen I noticed something was amiss. This can't be good, 2 amisses not just in the same day, but within about 10 minutes of each other. I looked up to the kitchen ceiling and saw the source of my amissness. I water spot. I big freakin' water spot. A water spot about a foot and a half long.

I climbed up into the attic to see what I could see, which unfortunately wasn't much. By my best guess the water spot was underneath the piece of the air conditioning unit that was in the attic, or maybe it was on the other side. either way, there was about half a foot of insulation between me and the water spot. I looked around the attic roof to see if I could track down the waterfall that had to be producing my spot, but it all looked fairly dry.

I returned to the kitchen to investigate the spot in more detail. It didn't seem to be growing, but it was very, very moist. I decided to work from home so that if disaster struck I could provide a handy bucket for everything to drip into, but luckily it was never needed. With all the wind and rain yesterday this might have been a one time occurence. Maybe the roof is hosed. As is my way, I'm going to wait until the next storm to see what happens.

---

Russ vs The PC: Part 2:

Tuesday morning I turned on the pc, everything worked fine. I turned it off and on about 3 times yesterday, everything worked fine. Maybe the water spot fixed the pc?

Permalink renovation/remodelling