Author: Otto

Spin the Wheel!

Went over to the Saucer last night to see my friend Aimee on Wheel of Fortune.

It was a lot of fun, they had reserved the entire beer garden section for the crowd and had the show up on the big screen above the stage. Despite the sound coming from one TV being out of sync with the main screen, it was still quite a good show. I was fairly shocked at the number of people there, it was in the 60+ range. Of course all her family was there, and several of the other teachers from her high school, I just wasn’t expecting that much of a turnout.

Of course, Aimee won, to the tune of $47,500. Which is great, because now she can’t be not telling us anything like she has been doing for the last 3 weeks. 😉

So congratulations, Aimee!

She was also interviewed on the news at 6pm, which was almost as entertaining as the show itself. I missed the interview at the time (arrived late), but my Tivo picked it up for me so I got to watch it this morning.

Afterwards, we had trivia night, which I unfortunately had to depart from early because I really was not entirely well yet. I’ve been sick all week, and though I was past most of it, the combination of two beers and the drugs I had taken was making me quite dizzy. So I went home and collapsed. However, I’m feeling much better this morning, if I could just get over this nasty cough.

On another topic, my dad sent me some pictures of the half-completed piano/bar cabinet that he’s building me, so it should be ready in another month or two. My condo is starting to look like somebody actually has a sense of taste. Well, okay, maybe not, but it’s slowly coming together. I’ll post some pictures of the half-built, but now painted, piano later.

What I got for Xmas

I think every blogger should have to have a post where they detail what they got and gave for Xmas. It seems natural. I mean, you’re going to post pictures, family you saw, etc, but the real fun is when you go home and get to play with your new toys.

My parents gave me some really neat brass candle holders, a little sushi plate kit (along with a bottle of sake), a rather interesting cooler, and towels for my bathroom.

I gave the parents a pod-type coffee maker with some coffee pods (since their old coffee maker sucks), and a couple bottles of liquor. Also got my nephew a train set, and sent some coasters to a friend of mine. Some other less interesting stuff was sent to various places too.

So what did you get for Xmas? What did you give for Xmas? Post it on your own blog, or just put what you got in the comments here. 🙂

Off for Xmas!

Shopping for Xmas is exhausting. Getting the presents, wrapping them, mailing them, it’s such a pain in the ass that I now understand why I never really tried to do it before. It’s much easier to simply not expect any presents and not give any presents. I mean, seriously, I can shop for myself. And most of the presents I’ve gotten in the past have been somewhat useless crap. At least my parents figured me out a while back and now tend to get me beer and/or beer-related accessories.

Still, I tried. Got the parents something, got something for my nephew, even mailed a few things off to some friends. Now all I have left to do is to wrap one present, stick it in the car, and drive to the parents house. So, I’m out for Xmas today. Have to spend some drinking quality time with Mom and Dad. What else are the holidays for?

However, I will be back in time for Trivia night at the Saucer on Xmas day, so I’ll see everybody then!

Note to Self…

Going to five bars and drinking for 14 hours on a Sunday doesn’t lead to a heck of a lot of productivity on Monday

Although it was good to see The Dempseys again, and the Saucer girls were quite surprised to see me turn up at a baby shower, and I did enjoy PBR in a can at the Deli… Although there was all that, the pain was, and to some extent still is, rather immense. My back is on the edge of killing me and I may need drug infusions to make it to Trivia tonight. Also, I somehow did something rather severe to my finger which makes it difficult to type properly.

On the whole, a good time, but not something I can repeat very often.

You Still Don't Know Jack

You Dont Know Jack Box ArtI remember back in college, we’d have hours of fun playing this game. This was when they had online episodes and I had all the CD versions of the game as well. A great little three player trivia game. The online versions even preceded the whole flash gaming craze. They were done in flash, but at the time the most complex flash games looked like stuff you’d seen on the Atari back in the day. But trivia doesn’t need complicated graphics, just sharp text and a soundtrack. The soundtrack, of course, was what made the game.

But when Jellyvision folded, I forgot about it, more or less.

The other day, I ran across my old CD’s and tried to get it working again. It had some minor problems with XP, but nothing that searching the internet could not fix.

In the process of that search, I discovered that You Don’t Know Jack is back!

Jellyvision has reformed and has spent most of the year publishing new online episodes on their website: http://youdontknowjack.com. Most of them are “Dis or Dat” episodes, which are short, but they have loads of full episodes too. Well worth a play through.

Enjoy!

Holy crap, it's cold!

At about 2 pm yesterday, I stepped outside from work and it was nice. About 75 degrees, a bit overcast, raining. When I left work at 4:30 pm, it was 45 degrees.

That’s right, in two hours, it dropped 30 degrees.

It also decided to get so dark in the sky that it looked like night. Okay, so night was only an hour away anyway, but still, it was suddenly dark and cold. It’s like we skipped fall and went straight to winter, all in the space of two hours.

I’m not a winter person. I need heat.

On a plus note, there’s new bars around that are pretty fun, and I’m planning on enjoying them this evening. Although if it’s overly crowded at the Saucer (with the Dempsey’s playing it probably will be), then I might just leave there early and head straight for Hoop’s instead. He better be open, or I’m going to have to drink somewhere else. And I really don’t want that.

Status update

You know, I really need to get in the habit of posting here at least once a week. I guess I’m just busy or lazy or something like that. Anyway, I figured a status update is in order, so I’ll run over a few quick one-liners to let people know what’s up.

First, for all the people in town this weekend, I won’t be here. Sorry, heading to a wedding on Friday. Be back late Sunday. This means I’ll miss Sunday Funday yet again, which I do hate to do. I do plan on going to the Saucer this afternoon though, for a little while.

Last weekend was a blast. The South Main Arts Festival was a heck of a good time. Although the art itself was rather expensive, the various food shops were spectacular. Had a good time at the various costume parties as well. Didn’t get any pictures, but Paul did, so that’ll do, for now. I’ve got some stashed somewhere, I’ll post them eventually.

The weekend before that I was in Atlanta, doing a combination beer festival and bachelor party. This event told me two things: a) I’m getting old and creaky, b) I can still hold my liquor with the best of them. While the pain was for lack of a better term, immense, at least I was still able to drink for 13 hours straight and remain mostly upright, with only the occasional stumbling. Pictures of some parts of this will be posted soon.

The weekend before that, my dad was in town for our local block party, or as I want to call it, the bi-ann-sou-mai-con. He had a good time, and got nicely wasted. Went to the Metal Museum the next day, for their annual Repair Days thing. Got some iron work he brought repaired, and then he left early, but not before picking up many pieces of Gus’ chicken to take back to mom.

The weeks before that I probably did some things too. Just not particularly important ones.

I will resolve to update more often in the future, I swear.

Minor highlights of the life of Otto…

Let’s see, haven’t posted here in a while… what to say…

Lorelle invited me to make some guest posts this month on her blog. I wrote a short little technical ditty about how to integrate Microformats and WordPress Themes. If you’re into WordPress, or CMS’s in general, it’s worth a look. Since I use this site as a sort of test bed, I might also mention that it’s currently showing nine, count ’em, nine different microformats. And a few other things that aren’t microformats as well.

Went to the Art on Tap beer festival this last weekend. Had a hell of a good time, but was rather disappointed in the food selection. Also, it was one of the only beer festivals I’ve ever seen where all the beer was poured out of bottles. The exception was the homebrews poured by The Bluff City Brewers, which were all really good. I recall getting back to the Saucer, I don’t quite recall going home. So clearly, I had a good time. Paul posted some shots of the fest, some of which include yours truly.

The Rapscallions won at Trivia tonight, amazingly enough. Pete has clearly been making the questions harder, as we only scored 79 out of a possible 160-something. Still, that was enough for a tie, and we won the tie-breaker. $50 in the pot for the next party!

I received an invitation to the wedding of Chris, a friend of mine currently living in Atlanta. I kinda wonder about it, the wedding reception is at a beach resort in Alabama, but it’s in November. Anybody know what the weather is like at Gulf Shores in November?

Along with the invite, I received a summons from Zach for the Bachelor Party in October. Unfortunately, I’m told that it’s the same day as the Great Decatur Beer Tasting Festival. That’s just poor planning, man. Although, a beer tasting in the afternoon, followed by a Bachelor Party all evening… I’m not sure I’m capable of that anymore. I’m not as young as I used to be. Still, it’s doable, and damnit, I think I’m going to have to try. And then this weekend, I have the Cooper-Young festival to cope with. Along with a keg party a block away from the festivities.

Oh yeah, and Raiford’s is reopening, with Raiford back at the turntables. Now that I live about 2 blocks away from that point, I can see many 40’s in my future.

So, the fall is looking busy.

New iPods today

Gizmodo is running a live blog of the new Apple iPod announcements today. Interesting reading. Quick rundown:

  • New iPod Shuffle – price lowered to $79 for 1GB
  • New iPod Nano – thinner, slightly wider. $149 and $199 for 4GB and 8GB
  • New iPod Classic – basically the same as existing iPods, but thinner and cheaper. $299 and $349 for 80GB and 160GB!
  • New iPod Touch – essentially, its an iPhone without the phone part. It has Wi-fi web surfing and iPod capabilities and the same interface as the iPhone. Also can buy songs directly from the iTunes music store. Downside: 8GB and 16GB for $299 and $399. I can’t see paying that much more and giving up all that space just for that somewhat annoying interface.
  • iPhone gets ringtones – They’re adding the ability to turn your purchased songs into ringtones… for 99 cents per song. This really sucks, basically you buy the song for 99 cents and then pay an extra 99 cents to turn any 30 second section of it into a ringtone. And it only works with songs you buy from iTunes and even then only 500k of their catalog can do it, not just any song. Really lame and one more reason not to get an iPhone, IMO.
  • iPhone also gets ability to buy direct from iTunes music store.
  • Starbucks integration – When you get the new iPod Touch or iPhone near a Starbucks, it’ll have a special menu to let you see the last 10 songs played there, and allow you to purchase them from iTunes.
  • iPhone price drop – The 4GB version is now gone, the 8GB version drops 200 bucks to $399. The price drop was required, IMO, but anybody who bought early kinda got screwed. Especially if they got the 4GB model, not only are they out $100 extra, but also out 4GB. Bummer for you suckers!

Seems to me that the price drops across the board make sense. Most excellent news, IMO, is the reasonably priced 160GB iPod classic. I really want one of those. The iPhone price drop is likely to try to stave off competition from the upcoming Google Phone. The iPod touch just seems somewhat worthless to me, but then I dislike the iPhone interface concept to begin with. Touchscreens are not my favorite things.

Still, neat stuff. Take a look at the many pictures Gizmodo posted on the live blog, some of them are quite cool.

Edit: Apple now has info about the new iPod’s up on their site: http://www.apple.com/

Now this is a phone I might get…

According to the rumor mill, Google is creating their own phone.

I could definitely get behind this one, as opposed to the iPhone. They haven’t actually decided on a design yet, but some obvious things that will be included:

  • Google Maps
  • Google Calendar
  • GMail
  • GPS
  • Google Talk
  • Probably Google Documents and Spreadsheets

Considering the recent talk-talk about bidding for the 700 Mhz spectrum auction, it’s possible that they’re considering building their own large scale data network, much like they’ve already done in parts of San Francisco and such. If so, then it seems likely that the Google Phone would work on that network as well as normal cell phone networks.

Hopefully, they decide to sell the phone standalone, with no service. If it’s GSM, then in theory, I should be able to simply pop out my SIM card from my existing phone and pop it into the new one. That should be the way phone service works, this sucky tying the phone to the carrier business has to end.

Also, Google was making talk-talk about how they wanted the network spectrum to be required to be “open” in the sense of allowing mostly unencumbered network access for various things. The FCC went along with a couple of Google’s ideas, but not the full set. So I’m thinking that Google might push to buy the spectrum and turn it into a countrywide data network (which the winner of the auction is actually required to do anyway, within 10 years), but perhaps offer free network access in exchange for pushed advertising and such. Maybe even to the effect of creating devices that sit on your home network and access the internet via Google’s spectrum. That would be very cool, and well worth the trouble.

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