So it’s been quite a bit since my last post… so what did I miss?
The family trip to LA (sans Victoria)
My Big Sister’s Wedding
Christmas
Birthdays galore(Mel, Dad, Brian. Me)
My Anniversary was this past Friday, but I plan to post about it tomorrow.

Crap! I might not get any sleep… ‘Die Hard 2′ just came on. Stay Tuned…

Coming up: Reba and Kelly, Old Salem, and New Friends.

[tags]family-tree, geni.com, genealogy[/tags]

So Sunday, I decided to go ahead and take William to see the boys and I could visit with the sis for a while. Poor Brian was completely distraught that he couldn’t go, but there was no way that I could risk him getting anyone else sick. I’m pretty sure that he understood… but I’m definitely sure he didn’t like it.

Well, Will and his cousins got along splendidly. They had a great time playing together and no arguments to boot! I think that could be a first with my kids!. Anyway, like I said, I got a chance to visit with my sister, and somehow felt a little better as I didn’t feel like I got enough time to talk with her(or any of the rest of my relatives) over the X-mas holidays.

In other news, I have officially reached PRO status in baseball, tennis, golf, and bowling on Wii Sports. All I have left is Boxing – and I have a looong way to go before I accomplish Pro. You may ask how such a lazy fatass …erm someone with such limited physical activity as myself might be able to score so well on Wii sports in such little time. Well, in a nutshell, it’s practice, practice practice. When we first got the Wii, I told myself that this thing was going to help get me in better shape – nothing amazing or anything, but at least I’ll be up and moving. I promised myself that I would play every other day for at least 45 minutes – and I have done just that… except it’s more like 1-2 hours(at least!). So you figure 1-2 hours every other day for almost a month… that’s a lot of play time!

But it has worked! I’m nowhere near as winded as I was the first time I played a 2 hour marathon of Wii Sports. And my scales told me this weekend that I had been consistently UNDER 200 lbs. for 4 days in a row! Of course, I probably ruined it by eating over at my Mom’s last night! Eating large portions of Filipino cooking just doesn’t go well with trying to lose weight.

Anyway, I figure if I can keep this routine up, and then purchase the Wii Fit game when it is released later this year, I will be well on my way to being a healthier, happier me.
[tags]wii, fitness, health, Brian, Will, cousins, sister, family, sick, wii sports, wii fit[/tags]

However, the big hit for the whole family, has been the Wii. This is the first thing that I have seen that has gotten four out of the five family members hooked on it. My Wife is the only one that has been able to maintain any sense level-headedness over the absolute need to play it. Of course, we just think she’s crazy!

Both Brian and Will are having a blast with bowling, boxing, and tennis on Wii Sports. They are also enjoying Super Mario Galaxy and Rayman’s Raving Rabbids(Don’t ask). Victoria has gotten to be quite good at bowling, and she and a few of her friends were absolutely hilarious the other night playing tennis.

And while I am interested in all of the games we have so far, I have spent the majority of my time on the Wii playing Tennis, baseball, bowling, and golf. It has seriously become something of a workout regimen for me. Now most of you that read this know me, and know that I am not the most active person in the world, but spending a few minutes boxing or playing tennis will seriously get your heart pumping.

Another nice thing about how Wii sports was designed, is that it does not care of you are young or old, tall or short – there is at least one sport that you can excel at. For instance, Will and Brian play against each other most of the time and while Brian dominates Will in Tennis and Baseball, he can never seem to get the better hand in boxing. In fact, it’s pretty funny watching both of them shadow-boxing with the television and tiny little Will delivering that knockout punch to his big brother! And while Victoria struggles with her swing-timing in baseball, her form in bowling – and the hook on her ball – is something to see…. And me? Well, it’s not quite fair, because I can play on it all night once everyone else goes to bed. I have reached the PRO level (at least 1000 skill points) on bowling, and tennis, and I am very close to reaching it in golf. However, I am not that great in baseball, and I just right-out suck at boxing.

To say that the Wii is getting a lot of play time is an understatement. It has built in Wi-Fi, so it connects to my wireless network and lets me browse the web, or connect to the Wii Virtual Console Channel and download all of those kewl old skool Nintendo games like Donkey Kong or Mario Bros. They also have some old Sega and Neo-Geo games, like Sonic2 or Street Fighter2. I can also turn it on and it will give me the latest weather forecast and a list of news headlines as well.

Downsides? Well, there are a couple… One thing is to take heed of all the warnings that come up on the screen about making sure that the players have enough empty space around them. More than once has someone got unintentionally whacked by the overzealous player. The other? Well, let’s just say that if you are out of shape, you really need to start off playing fairly conservatively. After the first night of playing, I could barely get around the next day.

Now if I could just get my hands on Guitar Hero 3, Tiger Woods ‘08, and Zack & Wiki…

[tags]wii, games, fitness, sports[/tags]

I now have the whole family using the linux partition as their workspace. I also set it up where linux would mount my Windows partition so we could have a separate repository for media(pictures and videos) that can be accessbile from either OS. That way, depending on what OS is up at the time, we could use F-Spot to import pictures in Linux, and Picasa to do it in Windows, and it would import them all to the same place. In the future, I plan to resize my Linux partition, and create a dedicated FAT32 partition just for shared media. Anyway, click the link below to look at all the parts and how I built my PC…. The one thing I forgot to do is take a picture of the whole setup once I was done, but hey… I’m not perfect.

PC Components

[tags]pc, build, ubuntu, windows[/tags]

Powered by ScribeFire.

A couple of notes:

1. Wow does Windows load up fast!
2. After loading up all of the needed drivers, I re-installed Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter and turned the graphic settings all the way up… simply beautiful!
3. I’m really digging this new heatsink. It was HUGE and a pain to install, but in combination with the fans in my case, it is keeping my new quad-core CPU a very cool 25° C.
4. The PC is much quieter than my old one.
5. 32-bit Windows isn’t able to utilize 4 GB of memory. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to get my hands on a 64-bit version. No real matter. I plan to be working in Linux mostly anyway.

I did take a number of pictures that i will import in shortly. I know it’s really geeky, but hey, that’s how I roll…
[tags]windows, pc, games[/tags]

Now all that is left is to install the video card, make sure my BIOS settings are correct, and install the operating systems and device drivers for each…. That should do it.

I’m stoked again. I quit playing games like Oblivion or Ghost Recon: Advanced Warfighter because they were just too sluggish on my old setup. In fact, I couldn’t play Ghost Recon after a while because of all the graphic artifacts and tearing that I used to experience. Now I’ll get to see these games again in a brand new light. I really can’t wait to get home!

Oh, I have a question. If my order was set to ship on UPS 3-day select service, and the order didn’t arrive until the fourth day, what happens? Do I get some sort of credit, or a check? I tried to look for an answer on UPS.com, but didn’t really find anything.

[tags]games, pc, ups, delivery[/tags]