pressing start to shut down
Microsoft has been taunting us with discussions of it's new OS, Longhorn for years now and have published some screenshots of their new candy coated shell (pun intended) here and to be honest, i'm wondering why they've spent the last 10 years renaming 95 to new an exciting names and just giving us the same old shit. yeah, it looks pretty, but OS X has looked like this for just as many years. the menus all look the same, internet exploder has added some tabs. something users have been requesting for years and firefox does automatically, and for free. MS needs to scrap it all and do something new. yeah, they created the 'windows' concept, but it's time to move on and give us something really new for our money. i'll stick with xp, thanks.

internet radio rawk!
two weeks ago, the wifey and i hit our local big buy and picked up one of these little dealios. man alive, is this shit cool! run some wire or spend a little extra in wifi and you can listen to your entire pc music library and any internet radio station on your stereo system. we use itunes and the cool thing about this is that one roku device can see both libraries and lists them separately by name and then everything inside those libraries. if i'm tired of listening to george straight from her library, 3 remote button clicks and i'm listening to my p. diddy. and to listen to internet radio, you don't even need to have the computer on, because it runs straight from your router. pure genius. and to make life even better, we bought and installed some outdoor speakers yesterday for the patio and wired and mounted them last night. now the neighbors can listen to my copy of Revolucion de Amor with me.

you're only as old as you feel
so about a month ago, i had this life changing experience and now i have a wife and child and i've turned mid/late 30s recently and i'm starting to feel how i imagined my dad felt when i was about 13. it's terrifying. my wife and son talked me into buying a pair of rollerblades yesterday and we spent an hour playing tag and chase the idiot (usually me) before passing out in the pool. i had a pair of blades when i was in my early 20s and just sucked at it. i didn't skate, i walked on them and fell pretty frequently. nothing like my early years and my pair of rollerskates where i was the master. i'm no scott hamilton, but i gotta say that i did pretty well yesterday and think i'll keep it up. i could handle losing a coupla lbs off the waistline and skating in mid july texas weather should quickly take care of that.

and to counter all that outdoor work . . .
living with a 9 year old keeps me up to date with all the cool games that are out or on their way. funny thing is, he's gotten more addicted to all the games i've introduced him to here recently. he's neck deep in City of Heroes still and i've gotten him fully addicted to Tribes. He's dying to see the maps i built for competitions and now he's speaking of joining his mother and i in Diablo 2 games online. he's a MP freak and can't get enough time in with me. i believe he spent roughly 18 hours playing on saturday. i thought i was a fiend, but the world could be coming down around him and he wouldn't know it. and i'm happy as i finally finished the Chronicles of Riddick. LOVED IT! what an amazing game. i've restarted Half Life 2 with the intention of actually finishing it this time with the expansion pack coming out this fall. and i picked up Battlefield 2 last week and it's allowing me to relive my BF1942 glory days in all new 3D beauty. now, if i could just talk my wife into getting that second job to support me so i can just sit and play all day long . . .