Anyhoo… I rushed to get the pix imported into picasa and up on the web. I excluded the awful blurry pix and I tried to go thru each of the ones and correct the red-eye stuff, but some of the pix still could be cropped better, and touched up a bit. But to appease the largest amount of people, I decided to just upload the rest of them, and let you guys grab whichever ones you want, and edit to your hearts’ content!

Just click on the link below to be taken to the album:

Coats Christmas 2008

or enjoy the slideshow!

Sorry I’m so late this year on getting this out. If you have any questions, just leave me a note in the Comment section and I’ll be happy to help.

• My Dad’s Birthday
• Valentine’s Day
• Brian’s Birthday
• Our Wedding Anniversary
• Amy’s Birthday

Oh, and you can throw my little sister’s birthday in there as well….

Anyhoo, back to the subject at hand. I am brand new to the whole Guitar Hero franchise, though I’ve been wanting to play it since the first one came out(this is the first version that is available for the Wii). So, being wet behind the ears, I decided to wuss out and start the game on easy. The game has a great song list that can be played in four modes: Easy-utilizes only 3 of the five finger buttons, Medium -adds more notes to the note chart and includes a fourth button, Hard-includes the fifth button and the note combinations are harder still, Expert-just insanely fast note combinations and lots of advanced techniques. See here for a more thorough rundown of the game.

It took some time to get used to the controller, but once I got the hang of it, I cruised through the first 2 concerts with no problems. In fact, I finished the whole game on easy in less than 1 week… scoring at least four or five (out of five) stars on each song(but one… more on that later)!(*patting self on shoulder*) Medium difficulty is a completely different story however. I find myself practicing a song over and over and I can barely get 4 stars on most of them. Strange how adding just one more button to a note chart just changes the whole complexity of a song.

Speaking of complex songs… Slayer’s Raining Blood is one of the songs you can choose to play in the last set of the game. OMG!!! Even on easy, I got booed off of the stage 3 or 4 times before completing it with only 3 stars. The song is just wicked hard and pretty fast. I haven’t even tried it on medium… and probably won’t. the other 3 songs on the set(you need to complete 3 out of 4 songs in the set to advance) are just easier for me to play.

The boys have watched me play the early parts of the game and both have taken an interest in playing it. I let them both play through the tutorial, and though both of them completed it, Will seemed to have a tougher time since his little fingers are having troubles spanning the 3 buttons needed to play in easy mode. But, he fought through A LOT of frustration and continued to practice the songs in the first set…. and as of this past weekend, he had completed both the first and second sets on easy. I have to say that I was quite proud of his determination. He never gave up even though I saw times where he stomped off crying in frustration, and others when he looked ready to throw the guitar controller into the TV. To see him pass the first few songs after all of the practice. The look on his face was worth it.

I’m not sure how much further in the game I am going to let him go. The last few parts of the game are more mature themed than I think he should be a part of. The final stage is actually in Hell and you have to play “Devil went down to Georgia” against a caricature of the red man himself in order to complete the game. I’ll probably end up letting him play up to set 6 or so and then have him move up to the next level. I just think that some of that stuff might frighten him a little.
[tags]holidays, GH3, wii[/tags]

Xmas2007

[tags]holidays, christmas, pictures, picasa[/tags]

Merry Christmas, Everyone!

~The Palomares Family

[tags]Christmas, holidays, Santa[/tags]

Anyway, A few days back, a couple of my co-workers(Thanks Jamie and Philip!) sent me a link to this wonderfully entertaining video of a men’s a cappella group called Straight, No Chaser singing The 12 Days of Christmas. I figured that since I was so into the Christmas spirit and truly love a capella harmonies, that I’d share with you guys as well. Enjoy!

[tags]Straight no Chaser, music, a capella, Christmas, holidays[/tags]

Today, my mom treated our family to see “Enchanted” in the theaters. Quite a funny movie. Disney does a pretty good job of making fun of itself. All-in-all, it s was pretty good. Then my mom lost her cell…. Luckily we were able to find it. Some nice person turned it in to the ticket booth.

So, not a bad day altogether, don’t you think? I would have thought so too… until we got home and found out that my windows pc had died. I was able to get it to boot into safe mode, but nothing after that. When I try to go into normal mode, I get either a BSOD, or it freezes before the login screen ever comes up. I thought it could have been a video card issue, but I put in my handy spare, but to no avail. same BSODs. So, I’m now typing this up on my work laptop. I dunno when – or if – I will get this fixed…. Hopefully I can troubleshoot this thing and figure out how to fix it, but without any really good information from Windows, I’m really at a loss.(Another reason to switch to linux)

Sooooo… without a home PC (my linux machines are all server types without GUIs), my posting will be relegated to my breaks at work, and from this laptop, when I’m at home. Bummer….

[tags]windows, windows-sux, Thanksgiving, holidays, Disney, movies[/tags]