My wife and I sold our house this past week. We're building a new house close buy in a slightly more expensive neighborhood that I am hoping will deliver a better ROI this time around. The theory goes that the subdivision is new and when it is complete, everyone's homes will be worth more......
From time to time, I talk about Sports on this blog. I'm first and foremost a die hard Patriots and Red Sox fan. March used to be a bad month for me with respect to sports. No baseball, no football and the Bruins were a laughing stock. Lately, the Bruins have been better and I'm a Celtics fan by default. I don't live and die by the NBA and the NHL isn't a televised sport in the south. So, I've filled my March sports need with something much more delicious and satisfying and it comes in the form of UofL college basketball. To me, the NBA doesn't have half the heart that these kids in college do. March Madness is a crazy time of year in Louisville and I've succumbed to the intense rivalry that is UofL vs. UK.
Some would say that I don't understand this rivalry simply because I do not keep it at the forefront of my thoughts 365 days a year. They would be wrong. I understand this rivalry perhaps more than those that are in it because I have a perspective from other sports outside of this region. The UofL vs. UK rivalry is the best in college sports and it's not even close from where I am standing. Perhaps, Lakers vs. Celtics or Red Sox vs. Yankees is bigger, perhaps. It is definitely no less passionate and that's why I connect with it.
In an earlier post on the topic of Star Wars: The Old Republic, I detailed what I thought about the game during my time with it in beta. While most of those thoughts still apply, I thought I would update that post with some new information about the game. My original post can be found here.
I've been playing since day two of the prerelease and I've been enjoying the game. My Bounty Hunter is level 27, has his ship, is struggling to be able to afford his speeder and has his crafting skills about on par with his level. The class quest has been enjoyable. I thought the story line was going to dip after the Great Hunt began but I'm finding the backstory for my companion Mako to be engaging. I still think many of the side quests are repetitive by level 15 but the class quest line seems to have twists and turns in it that I didn't immediately pick up on, making it entertaining. With that, I find myself skipping past the side quests but watching the class quest cut scenes.
Not all is rosy in the land of Star Wars.
I was recently invited to play in the public beta test of Star Wars: The Old Republic. (SWTOR from here on out). Built a level 22 Powertech Bounty Hunter which is about half way through the leveling process. I came away from the experience with mixed feelings. You won't catch me talking about game mechanics or this class is too powerful. The game's in beta and I understand that. What I can talk about is vision, direction, implementation as I see it from the player's eyes.
Blizzard announced today that Annual subscribers to World of Warcraft will get a copy of Diablo III absolutely free. I was stunned until I sat back and took a look at it and realized it has the potential to be a brilliant marketing move by a company known for wringing every last ounce of change from their customer's pockets.
First off, World of Warcraft is about subscribers. $14.95 per month for North American subscribers and 10+ million players(2 - 3 in North America) adds up to a shit ton of cash and a revenue stream that needs protecting. So what's Blizzard to do about it when faced with declining subscriptions?
Recently, my post count has mostly stopped. Since the media center is now functioning stable, there's not much to report other than I'm finding myself wanting an AM/FM tuner card for the PC so I can pipe broadcast radio through my home without adding additional devices to my TVs. Everything else...
I like it. Let's get that out of the way because it hasn't been as smooth sailing as I would have hoped. For instance, a week after I installed the computer, it froze up on me during recorded TV playback on the Xbox 360 in our living room. It did this just as I was getting the wife acceptance...
Insight Communications came to my house this morning and I have to say that the appointment went better than I had originally thought it would. The guy who visited my house was easy to work with and polite. I'm not sure that he knew that he was installing a CableCARD based on his surprise when I explained what I thought the visit was supposed to be about. I believe he thought it was a repair appointment as per the conversation I had with Insight Communications' support desk late last week.. Anyway, turns out that the fitting on my cable amplifier's power cable was bad. Since this is a manufacturer made part, I can only assume that the recent heat in our area cause the cable to expand and come lose causing the power to the amplifier to cut out; boom no cable service.
The signal issue was fixed in short order and he went to his car to get 3 - 4 CableCARDs. I've heard that they are flaky devices so I was glad that he brought a few of them with him so that we could get it right in one visit. His first question was if I was going to install this into a Tivo to which I replied nope and thought to myself that I was in for an eventful install. I told him that I was putting the card into the back of a PC and he replied that he had never heard nor seen this done before. In fact, I was the first person he's seen do this so he was going into the setup process blind. So much so, that the tech responisble for activating the CableCARD was trying to tell him that the configuration was not legal. I might be the first CableCARD in a Ceton tuner in Louisville based on these guys' reaction to my install. Doubt it, but it might be true.
First thing we do is pull the computer out of the shelf and insert the CableCARD. Small word about this process for Ceton:
It's been an interesting journey to setup my media center PC. First thing that happened to me was, I realized that the motherboard I ordered did not have an HDMI output. Oops. One NewEgg RMA later, a $25 restock fee, a $12 shipping label and I was set to order the correct motherboard. Had it overnighted to me so that I could put the PC together this weekend.
I get the motherboard and head to the office to carefully put the parts together and luck would have it, my OS hard drive was delivered to me DOA. One more NewEgg RMA and a $9 restock + label fee for a $49 refund. In the interest of time, I decided to simply partition one of the 2TB drives with the understanding that I would probably image the partition to a new HDD at some point. I had to get the setup working this weekend. The Cable installation guy is coming Monday morning. More on this in a minute.
Install sails along from there. Windows 7 is truly an amazing operating system. I remember when OS installs were a big pain in the ass. These days, Windows 7 simply loads and is up and running in no time. I added the machine to the domain, partitioned and mirrored the other two drives and was off and running with a new home for my personal media.
It was then that I realized three issues with my setup.
Thursday, I took the next step in my Windows Media Center project and purchased the media center PC. Here's what I bought, though keep in mind that I have a good power supply, case and case fans. I have a UPS and a Harmony 890 remote so those costs are not reflected in this project. I now have a modern PC that can be a true Windows 7 machine. Moment of silence here for the impending death of my first and only dual CPU workstation. It's been faithfully doing whatever I asked it to do for 9 years. I've isntalled Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7 Ultimate on this box with nary a driver issue in sight. The Xeon processors still garner a 5.3 Windows Performance score under Windows 7. This machine is a testament to how PCs should work. I hope this machine has the same results. I'm only replacing the machine because Ceton requires PCIe and because I feel like I am tempting fate by keeping my pictures and home movies on a 9 year old PC.
