Month: December 2006

So long 2006. This has been the best and the worst year of my life and it seemed like 10 years worth of events compiled into one.

New Years Eve is actually my Dad’s birthday and here’s a video of him playing a coffee shop gig in 1997. He’s covering John Prine’s Be My Friend Tonight.

Happy Birthday Dad!

Watch out! My daughter can beat up your daughter.

Eagles win big over Dallas

I watched Deal or No Deal for the first time.
Short Review: It sucks.
Extended Review: It really sucks.

New Arcade Fire track (read review by the BM Rant)

RIP James Brown

One of my Christmas gifts this year was an eight pack of Beers of the World. I figured I’d write a short review of each beer as I finish it off.

The first on the list is Haagen Australian Lager.

Info:
Brewed by Independant Brewers Australia in Laverton, Victoria, Australia.

5.0% Alcohol

Color:
Light gold, slightly cloudy. No visible sediment.

Smell:
Nothing unusual

Taste:
Suprisingly mild. I was expecting something more bitter, but it has almost a buttery taste. Not bad.

Merry Christmas!

(pic via boingboing)

I think ET said it best when he said, “Ouuuuuuuuch.”

This is why insurance companies drop you if you own a trampoline.

Yesterday I had Verizon FIOS installed. Check out the speed results so far.

It’s advertised as 20Mbps download and 5Mbps upload, so it’s pretty close according to the Speakeasy Speed Test.

Actual download speeds have varied for me. It seems most servers cap users at 400 KB/ps. This morning I tried downloading the Microsoft DirectX SDK and got this result.

2500 KBps comes out to around 19.5 MBps. Pretty nice so far!

I don’t think SNL will be able to top this for a while. Everyone’s linking to it, but it’s worth it. NBC even posted the uncensored version on YouTube.

Last night was the final episode of Survivor: Cook Islands, the much talked about “race tribes” season. Predictably, they integrated the tribes early on, so race quickly became a non-issue in the show. We saw a few twists, a great comeback, and two opposing victory strategies. Who won and why did they win? Read on.

The biggest twist of all was probably revealed when Jeff mentioned Brad would be the first member of the jury. This occurred two votes earlier than usual, ensuring that something was going to be different about this season’s final tribal council. The leading theory, that there would be a final tribal council with three people and a jury of nine turned out to be true. Why did they decide to try it out?

One of the main criticisms of Survivor is that the best player usually finishes third. Typically the best strategist can make his way into the final three and has to face a challenge that is usually suited to one of the three more than the others. No one wants to take the best player with them to the finals, so the best player has to win or e voted out.

By eliminating the final three challenge, Survivor allowed the dominant strategic player (Yul) and the dominant physical player (Ozzy) to go against each other in the final council, whereas before it would just be Becky vs Ozzy. There were three players left, but let’s be honest, Becky had no shot against these guys at all.

In the end, Yul defeated Ozzy by a margin of 5-4. Why? I think despite Ozzy’s ridiculous challenge streak, he wouldn’t be where he was without Yul bringing him along at the final 9.

Overall I’d say this season was one of the better of the 13 seasons.

I’m not sure why, but a ton of new people registered on the site this weekend. I figured it was probably a spambot, but the addresses and usernames look real. If anyone registered in the last two days, send me an email and let me know.