Borderline Fantastic

My parents are now interested in purchasing a GPS Navigation System. The units have become cheap enough to be attractive to them. That means that I must start on researching all the options available and what will be best for them.

I have GPS in my car. It was one of the features I was thinking about when I started looking at cars. It happened to be installed in the car that I wanted on the lot. While it may have been the much more expensive option, as opposed to a portable unit, I like having it built in much better. Sirius came with the car as well (after I told them I wanted that instead of XM, there was still an option at that time). The Sirius units offer a lot more presets and options but having it built in is so much easier to deal with.

I am a huge fan of my GPS. I’ve had the car for almost a year and a half. I haven’t used the GPS a ton but its well worth it when I need it. I don’t have to worry about printing out directions and if I need to get somewhere all I need is the address. If I’m going to be headed to a few places in different directions I’ll get the addresses before hand and plug them into the unit. I know where all these places are but I don’t know the roads that connect them. I’d wind up driving home and then back out to the next destination. Finding those new routes is always handy. On occasion I will have it on when I’m going through an area that I know very well. This causes me to start having discussions with my GPS. “I know where I’m going!” “Shut up!”

My friend Dave came to visit a while back. He had one of the portable TomTom units. I was very excited to try out a different flavor of GPS. The most exciting part was the choice of voices. In my car I have a female voice with no other options. The TomTom had a variety of voices, male and female, plus accents. I certainly would enjoy having a British navigator.

While doing the research I came across the TomTom voices section. You can purchase additional voices for your device. As soon as you load the page up Mr. T starts yelling at you. The $30 pack of Mr. T, Dennis Hopper, and Burt Reynolds sounds like a steal. Although Gary Busey on his own might be worth more than that.

My Mom came across an article from Reader’s Digest about a guy going on a trip with his brand new GPS. Give it a read, it hilarious and almost exactly what I expect to happen on my parents’ first adventure.

The research has been done and a Garmin Nuvi 350 has been ordered. The trip is in a few weeks. I’m hoping they take along plenty of actual maps for this first run.

I finally ordered the Sports Pack from Comcast this weekend. It includes: Fox College Sports (Atlantic, Central, and Pacific), Fox Soccer Channel, Gol TV, NBA TV, CSTV, The Tennis Channel, and NFL Network. I know, quite a lineup.

I ordered it now because there was a special: $1.99/month for a year. I had planned on getting it for the start of the college football season. Last year there were quite a few times that I’d see a close score of a west coast game only to find that it was only on Fox College Sports Pacific. Leaving me out of luck. With the move of NFL Network to the Sports Pack a few months ago, getting the Sports Pack wasn’t even a doubt.

Now really isn’t the prime season for the Sports Pack. There aren’t any college sports going on. So the FCS channels and CSTV are running games from the past season, or ‘classic’ games. Unfortunately CSTV has most of its deals with non-BCS conferences and it seems that only the Pac10 likes to show games on Fox Sports.

I’m not much of a soccer fan. I catch World Cup Fever every four years but I usually recover from it rather quickly. I have always been intrigued by the European leagues but it seems like quite a commitment to really get into it. With two new channels full of soccer to watch I may learn something by accident. Oh, and David Beckham’s Soccer USA premieres tonight. That will make it to the DVR with an over/under of 8 minutes of watch time before the delete button is pressed.

The highlights of the Sports Pack will be the College Football on FCS, and games/highlights/shows on NBA TV and NFL Network. Plus who know what other college sports goodness awaits me: basketball, hockey, lacrosse. I could easily get hooked on any of those.

What’s keeping the Sports Pack from greatness? ESPN Classic and ESPNU. I blame ESPN for them not being available. They absolutely should be only in the Sports Pack. I’ll pay for them but people who don’t care about sports should not have to chip in. ESPN Classic is actually sent to my house, they just don’t have it in the lineup. I found out when I got my TV with an HDTV tuner. It scanned all the digital channels and found ESPN Classic. I can’t access it through my cable box. Some day soon I’m going to have such a desire to watch American Gladiators I’ll have to run another cable.

The Big Ten Network launches in a few weeks and I have a bad feeling that won’t be added to the Sports Pack in time. Apparently the Big Ten thinks its better than ESPN Classic and ESPNU and that Comcast will cave. I want to hang out with these Big Ten Network executives, they sound hilarious.

So far the Sports Pack doesn’t get high marks. But I hadn’t expected it to be anything special. It should be an entertaining month laughing at what they decide to put on all these channels until football gets started. Then I will have sports overload once again.

Where have I been this week? NCAA Football 08 came out on Tuesday for Xbox 360. I picked it up at Best Buy during my New Music Tuesday trip. For those interested, during my NMT trip I picked up Yellowcard and The Rocket Summer. I highly recommend both of them.

I did not have last year’s NCAA game. I had NCAA 06 for PS2. Last year I went with Madden when I bought my 360. So I apologize in advance if some of my favorite new features were actually new last year.

The graphics are so smooth. The only times the frame-rate seems to drop is when a on-screen graphic is attempting to be displayed. The on-screen graphics are quite large and bright. They also do a poor job indicating if the stats being displayed are for the game or season. What matters is the actual game action, and that is pretty much perfect.
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The season is a little while away, but I’ve got my College Football Pickem game up and running. You can join the Borderline Fantastic group by going to http://icecreamhelmet.com/college/football/g2/ and signing up. This group doesn’t require a password to join. Its open to anyone who would like to join. The picks will be Top 25 games (no 1AA) against the spread. There are all sorts of other options if you’d like to create your own group. You can pick which conferences or teams you’d like to include.

No, its not my birthday. That’s still a few months away. A few friends have had birthdays recently and it go me to thinking about the wishing of Happy Birthday with all the various forms of communication available.

I used to keep on top of birthdays through a variety of methods. All of which left out a large portion of people. Still, it was better than nothing. My first line was my friend Matt, who remembers every birth date he hears. Its really quite remarkable. My other method relied on Away Messages. Either the person who’s birthday it was, posting a ‘Hey, its my birthday! Yay me!’ type message, or a mutual friend having a ‘Happy Birthday so and so!’ Away Message. So if people did not know Matt or did not go on IM, they didn’t get a birthday wish of any kind.

Then Facebook came along and would let you know, when you visited the site, which of your friends had birthdays coming up. The birthdays aren’t quite as obvious as they used to be on Facebook, but I’ve moved on from that method. It was very helpful to keep track or to look up a date if you couldn’t remember.

Currently I try and keep track of birthdays by adding them to my Address Book on my computer. I have gathered the dates from all the previous methods. This is part of a larger initiative of mine to try and keep email address, phone numbers, and addresses as up to date as possible in a single convenient location. Birthdays are part of the Mac Address Book. What makes that so great is that it also incorporates them into iCal. Then I found this amazing widget called Happy Birthdays! It lists all the birthdays you have in your Address Book. It tells you the date of their birthday, how many days away that is and the age they will be.

When the birthday comes around the question is how to handle the acknowledgment of the event.

To me Facebook is the lowest on the list of ways to wish Happy Birthday. While its simple to do and you can mean the best by your wish I feel that you get roped in with lesser wishes, thus weakening your birthday wish. For one, its possible the wisher didn’t know it was your birthday until they logged in and saw it. The larger problem is when this person is someone you haven’t talked to in a really long time. Now if they just wished ‘Happy Birthday!’ then fine, thanks for thinking of me. However, there is no reason to go any further. Any sort of ‘It’s been a while’ or ‘We should hang out’ has no place here. If I haven’t talked to you in a few years I don’t think you wishing me a happy birthday is suddenly going to turn us into best friends. Essentially you want to avoid any sort of exchange that would like similar to this:

Wisher: Happy Birthday! It’s been a while. We should catch up, what’s new?

Me: Thanks! Things are good. Let’s see … a lot has happened since we last talked. I got my driver’s license, graduated High School, went to college, graduated that, got a job and did about a million other things that I can save so we have something to talk about next year when you wish me a happy birthday. Sorry, but don’t expect me to post on your wall whenever your birthday is.

Get the point? Now I’m sure I’ve been guilty of doing some of this. I have since become aware and will try to control my actions in the future. Who knows, maybe I do want to be friends, and I remember the person being pretty cool, you know, when we were teenagers.

So without Facebook, what are my options?

My method of choice recently has been text messaging. Just a simple happy birthday, possibly with an additional message. No questions or reasons for the person to text me back anything more than a ‘Thanks!’ Personally I don’t even need the thanks. I just want to send the wish along but not mess with any part of their otherwise enjoyable day that I really have nothing to do with.

A phone call is an example of the messing with the day. The phone call will inevitably turn into a conversation and an awkward one at that. Some people do fall into the phone call realm. At this point that list is incredibly short. My phone usage level is at a 2 (out of 10) right now so its going to take a lot for me to dial someone these days. Dial means finding the person in your contact list and hitting Send these days, correct?

E-Cards are an excellent idea. I just haven’t gotten into the habit of using them. There are a couple of options and you can write whatever you want at the end to make it personalized. For some reason I’m more likely to send out E-Cards to a bunch of my friends on some obscure holiday than on your birthday. I think I’m going to start considering E-Cards from now on.

Here’s a throwback: A Card. No E in front. This means you actually went outdoors, picked out a card, purchased said card, signed your name, maybe included a message, located a stamp and that person’s address, and put it in the mailbox. These days I’m pretty sure that if you go through all that, and its not a family member, you are legally married to that person. I’m going to guess that its been almost a year since I mailed a birthday card. Who knows when or if I will ever send another.

Now you think you’ve got me all figured out. If you’re my friend you may now be offended if I post on your Facebook wall or that you didn’t get a phone call. This is just what I’m thinking today. Maybe on your birthday I will be in an E-Card mood or have some sort of other crazy idea. Perhaps you’ll get some land on the moon or a membership in the cheese of the month club. If I do post on your Facebook wall, maybe I’m being ironic and figure you will get the joke and enjoy it that much more. Don’t try and keep up, you’ll hurt yourself.

The following is a recap of Sunday, June 24. The last day of the trip.

Sunday Plan: Fly home to Philly.

My flight was scheduled to leave around 2. The airport wasn’t far away so we had a few hours to squeeze in a few stops.
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I decided to start using Last.fm again. iTunes does a fine job of keeping track of how many times I’ve listened to songs and I have some ratings in there to keep track of my favorites and songs I never want to hear again, but don’t want to delete. Last.fm lets me keep track of what I’ve listened to over the past week or month. More stats the better I always say.

The major reason I had stopped using it was that I don’t want it to count podcasts in my stats. The software lets you pick which directories to track. It took a little while to set that up to ignore my podcast directory and it didn’t work. This is a new version of the software, but I haven’t tested to see if it works now. I’ll survive by going to the site and manually deleting what I don’t want tracked. At least they give me that option. We’ll see if I get sick of it again soon.

Last.fm has all sorts of other cool ideas. Add a large user base and you can see why CBS bought them.

The recommendation or neighbor radio both sound cool if you are looking for something new. I’ve never used any of the radio features. I’m content with all the music I have to listen to. I have other ways of finding new artists. Usually by visiting Absolute Punk a few times a day.

I mentioned how much I love stats. Well, not only do they keep track of your own stats, but for everyone collectively. You can also have groups and see what’s most popular within your group. I was a little shocked when I looked at the Overall Charts. The Weekly Top Tracks have a lot of new stuff except at #7 where Oasis - Wonderwall sneaks in. Its a great song, but seems completely out of place on that list.

The feature that could be the coolest but turns out to be the scariest is the Neighbors. Based on what you listen to it shows you the most similar people. To me this is the best way to find new bands to listen to. Its just quicker than the Recommendation Radio. The scary part? My closest neighbor is a 16 year old girl. I should expect this, but I don’t like it being told to me. I’ve only seen music advertised on Last.fm. I’m thankful for that, I’m scared what sorts of ads I’d be getting otherwise based on my music tastes.

I’m going to go do my part to get Champagne Supernova into the Top 10.

My Last.fm Profile

The following is a recap of Saturday, June 23.

Saturday Plan: St. Petersburg, Dodgers vs. Devil Rays @ Tropicana Field

I always see commercials on TV for Sonic. It always looks delicious. I always wonder why they are on TV at home since we don’t have any Sonics. I’ve never actually even seen a Sonic. I mentioned this and there was one in Fort Myers so that was our plan for lunch. I ordered a Crispy Bacon Toaster Sandwich, Tots, and a Strawberry Smoothie. Everything was amazing. It makes no sense to me why there isn’t a Sonic across the street at home, and on every corner from here to Fort Myers, with Steak N Shakes in between. (more…)