Hey it’s a New Year!

So many things to mention so far in 2010…

Bret Hart came back to the WWE and looked like an old man needing closure (and also a paycheck). TNA had a horrible show but popped a big rating due to  the trainwreck appeal and now they’ll most likely think they’re on the right track and run Mondays every week. At least it answers the question of what would WCW look like if it was still around.

Alabama wins the National Championship in probably the worst title game ever. Also nice of Colt McCoy’s handlers (read: his father) to tell him not to bother getting back in the game so as not to risk his NFL future. ProTip: going back in the game would most likely have been his last time playing meaningful football. Does anyone really see him as anything but a solid backup you wouldn’t feel worried about running your team for a few weeks but not as your full time QB? Also, you have to feel bad for his backup. Nothing like having your time in the spotlight turn into you shitting your pants on nationwide TV for 3 quarters while turning in a performance that would cause Jamarcus Russell to feel bad for you.

The Steelers missed the playoffs, which sucks, but they had no one but themselves to blame. What’s really bullshit is how the Jets basically get handed a playoff spot due to having their last 2 games be against teams who didn’t give a shit. Now they’ve always been one of my secondary favorite NFL teams, (and I hope they beat the Bengals since I want to see Chad Johnson fail in a big game again), but anyone who thinks they deserve a playoff spot after throwing a rookie QB to the lions is insane. I would have rather seen Houston or Denver get that last spot, but those are the breaks.

On the video game front, New Super Mario Bros. Wii is my Game of the Year for 2009. If you don’t have it, get it.  It’s funny how Nintendo always gets shit for being family friendly or not catering to the so called “hardcore” gamers, yet they just keep consistently putting out one great game after another. Bowser’s Inside Story, Punch-Out! for Wii, and Wii Sports Resort were all great games released in 2009.  Nintendo and the Wii in general get a bad rap since there’s so much shovelware released by lazy third party developers, but if you compare the three big systems you can’t help but notice more solid games on the Wii.

That’s it for now, we’ll see when the next posting will be….

Things I would like for Christmas (a compilation)

In no particular order:

1. The Apple Tablet to come out so I don’t have to keep hearing every tech blog speculating over it 100x a day.

2. The Steelers to actually start making changes instead of doing the same thing every week expecting the results to be different (what was that about insanity?).

3. For ESPN to hire people who realize teams exist outside of New York, LA, and Boston to host their radio programs.

4. For MLB to realize having 75% of your teams being for all intents and purposes non competitive isn’t a good thing.

5. For Pittsburgh Post-Gazette sports writers to realize Matt Capps sucked and that the Pirates didn’t need to reward such suckage by giving him a raise.

6. Speaking of the Pirates, I’d like for people to realize that half the reason the Pirates have been losing for so long was  that they’d overpay for middling talent like Capps, so telling him to GFY was probably the best move of the offeason.

7. For people to realize that monthly bills need to be paid, even in December. It’s not like Christmas sneaks up on anyone, most stores start the holiday push in mid-August for chrissakes. Therefore don’t blame anyone but yourself for “ruining Christmas” when you don’t have the money for bills and presents.

8. For AT&T to actually invest in upgrading its network instead of getting into slappy fights with anyone who points out how it needs improving.

9.  For WWE to stop doing three hour shows until they figure out how to not make them boring as hell.

10. For those reading this (yes both of you) to have a happy and safe holiday season.

Fantasy killed the Football Star

So the 2009 NFL season is about halfway over, and one thing seems crystal clear: discussion of a player’s worth is now almost entirely based on what kind of points they produce for fantasy football owners.

Case in point: Almost everyone you ask will list the top 3 QBs as Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, and Drew Brees. The first two, yes, but Drew Brees? Really? Sure he’s good, but top 3 level? I submit the reason why is because if you happen to own Brees in your fantasy league he will probably give you a billion points a week. Playing against the weak ass NFC South teams will do that for you. The Saints this year have already played the Lions, Bills, and Panthers. They have the Rams, Redskins, and the Bucs twice yet to go. Now obviously they don’t have control of the schedule, but fate has handed Brees a list of teams anyone with functioning arms could rack up some serious yards on.

Then you have a guy like Ben Roethlisberger. He’s done nothing but win since he’s come into the league. He’s in his sixth year and has already won 2 Super Bowls. He puts up solid numbers, not the kind Manning puts up, but the Steelers have been traditionally a running team. This isn’t like in college where a running team may only pass a handful of times a game, Ben’s worst season statistically still saw him put up nearly 2,400 yards. It’s funny, when I mention him to others as a legit top 3 QB, the typical reaction is the other person runs to look up his stats to shove them in my face to prove me wrong. When they do that, it almost always ends with the other person saying “wow, I didn’t realize he had these kind of numbers”.

That’s the thing. Ben’s not going to win you your fantasy league championship. He’s not going to put up video game kind of numbers. He will do one thing, and do it quite well: win professional football games.  His career is actually very reminiscent of another Steeler QB. Yes, Ben’s not the first quarterback to lead the team to 2 Super Bowls, only for people to say “well they have the best defense and are mainly a running team”. All he ended up doing is lead them to 2 more championships largely on his passing abilities.  All signs are pointing to Ben doing just that as well.

Maybe then he’ll get some consideration as a top 3 QB in the league.

Happy Halloween!

So it’s Halloween, the one time of year people forget about being paranoid and take their kids around to get candy from strangers. Personally, I’ve already given myself a treat and purchased Tekken 6. Just as fun and less chance of finding a razor blade inside.

So this obviously isn’t going to be an every day thing….

Still getting used to the new schedule, two hours earlier than before and now my weekend is Thursday and Friday, but I’m going to try to add stuff here more often.

Of course it also hasn’t helped that there hasn’t been much to talk about, as almost all of my interests are in a dead spot. The Steelers are in the midst of playing against two teams most high school teams could score on. The Penguins season has just started and there’s not much that’s harder to get excited for than early season hockey. Even video games are in the doldrums as all the top level developers are holding back their big guns for Christmas shopping time.

One thing has been on my mind, and there’s no way to do a smooth segue into it so I’ll just cut to the chase: As someone who has to deal with the public on a daily basis, by far the #1 problem facing America today is a staggering sense of entitlement. You’d be amazed (or not, depending on your life experiences) how many times a day I have to deal with people who are shocked and offended to have it revealed that the universe does not revolve around them.  Nothing’s ever their fault. Payment late? Must have been the mailman’s fault. Or we did get it and for some reason are playing a game of keep away with it. Our system is bad, our people are poorly trained…..anything and everything under the sun except for the one thing that quickly becomes the elephant in the room: IT’S YOUR FUCKING FAULT.

You are not being picked on or singled out, everyone else who is months late on a bill gets treated the same way you are being treated right now. Company X wouldn’t give you a break like you claim because Company X is in business to make money, not give endless breaks to deadbeats. Also when we offer you options and you turn them all down, don’t start yelling how we don’t help people either. Even God only helps those that help themselves.

Well that was a fun weekend…

So a couple days of relaxation were almost ruined by the Steelers almost blowing yet another 4th quarter lead, only this one was 28-0. Now granted, there was that weird special teams TD and the fact that the Chargers run their offense as if it was still playing in the AFL (all pass, all  the time), but there’s no reason for last season’s #1-in-all-categories D to make things interesting at the end.

OK, there’s one reason.

One thing this season has revealed is that the Steelers defense the last few years has basically been “don’t worry if you mess up because Troy will save us”.  Only now they don’t have their usual safety net and it shows. Badly. Opposing QBs don’t have to spend time accounting for him, meaning they can get rid of the ball faster to avoid sacks. Now he’s getting ready to start practicing again, and the question now being asked is “should he wait until after the bye week to come back”.

Really?

You have your next two games against the pro football equivalent of 1-AA college opponents (Detroit and Cleveland), and you want to make your star defensive player’s first game back be  after the bye against a pass heavy Denver team on ESPN? Let the guy get his feet back against teams it won’t kill you to have a guy getting his legs back in the secondary.

I’m just armchair coaching of course, but to me it just makes sense to ease a guy coming off an injury back into a high pressure situation, not throw him into one and expect him to be exactly the same in his first game back that he was before.

TGIF

Finally, I think, Friday is around the corner and it’s nearly the end of another work week (at least before my new shift starts which will put the end of my work week on Wednesday, but that’s another matter).  So like I normally do when the clock passes 12 midnight, I went to read the weekly Q&A on the TV section of the local newspaper’s website.

…and there it was.

One of the mentally anorexic folks I deal with on a daily basis decided to write in a question referring to me by name. You see, the company I work for is providing free digital boxes for folks who’ll be effected by channel changes coming later this month to some areas. Only thing is this guy lives in an area where those changes happened 2 months ago and he missed his opportunity. Now he reads something in the paper and all he sees is “free box” and is calling in all GIMMIE FREE STUFF, RAH!

Let me tell you, there’s few things worse than dealing with a sense of entitlement wrapped in the cocoon of someone collecting social security. Now don’t get me wrong, I respect my elders, but just because you made it this many spins around the sun doesn’t give you a free pass on the Asshole Express.

When I tell you that you aren’t eligible for something, guess what? I mean it. Asking for my supervisor won’t change it, neither will writing to the TV guy from the newspaper. How about this option: accept what someone who works for the company is telling you.

What a concept.

Homebrew 1 – Nintendo 0

So for those who don’t follow such things, there’s an active homebrew community of people who make applications to run on the Nintendo Wii.  While there are some that can (and are) used for piracy, most are things like DVD players and emulators.  Nintendo’s previous Wii system update was designed to finally allow players to use the SD card as storage instead of having to solely rely on the woefully inadequate built in storage on the Wii itself. What they somehow didn’t count on is that allowing access to the SD card would allow the homebrew community a much easier window of access than before.

A little bit of background is needed at this point: previously in order to create homebrew apps, one would need to run an exploit where a quirk in a Zelda game for Wii would cause a crash that would allow access to the system level needed to create homebrew applications. Allowing users to run programs off the SD card suddenly meant all anyone needed to do in order to hack their Wii for homebrew would be to copy the files to a card and run a file.  What’s amazing is that Nintendo, long aware of the homebrew scene, somehow didn’t seem to realize how easy they just made it for them.

Not surprisingly, a new update to the Wii system (version 4.2) just came down the pike two days ago. The sole purpose of this update was to close the loophole they created that made homebrew simple. They didn’t even bother to create any pretense of it being a bug fix or security update, a note on Nintendo’s site just listed patching the homebrew exploit as the sole change for the update.

The hilarious part is no more than 24 hours later the homebrew community already had working fixes for the new system update. All that Nintendo did was change the coding for one part of the system software, and seemingly ignored the fact that the very exploit they patched created a backup of that very same part. All the homebrew folks had to do once they realized this was to copy the backup over the file Nintendo patched, and voila – homebrew was back.

I don’t fault any company for wanting to protect their intellectual property, but they have to realize that communities of dedicated users will always be one step ahead of them. We see it all the time with the iPhone dev team releasing a new jailbreak every time Apple updates the iPhone OS.  If people find out there’s more ways to use their device other than the way the default software allows, there will be someone who will hack/exploit/jailbreak the device to allow them to do it.  The days where a company can dictate to their customers how a device can or cannot be used are over, and those who insist on trying to keep it that way do so at the risk of being seen as overbearing and ham-fisted.

Hello world!

So I’ve decided to do the blog thing, and you*  may ask why.  Well I’ll tell you. Like everyone else on the internets, I’m a person with opinions. Lots of them, about lots of things. So you’ll find a lot of them posted here. Now unlike most blogs, there won’t be a strict theme that is adhered to. I often wonder why so many sites limit themselves to only one type of topic. It’s always a sports blog, or a video game blog, or an Apple blog, and never shall there be any mixing betweenst them.

So I say why not?

On this blog you may find a post about sports. Or video games. Or a new iPhone app. Or why the Steelers suddenly can’t hold on to a goddamned lead after 3 quarters.  Basically whatever the hell enters my brain at the moment.

In other words, a random collection of things.

(*you in this case may be completely hypothetical as I don’t expect a lot of people to read this thing)