December 2007 – Billwil.com

I Added My Cards

I’ve added my gamer card and my zune card to my blog, as you can see to the right ->. I figured if I’m going to throw the details of my life out here on a blog, I may as well add ongoing details on my infrequent gaming endeavors as well as my music listening.

If anyone wants to embed their Zune Card or Xbox Live Gamer Card in their own forum posts, signatures, blog entries, or websites…it’s very easy to do. See the details below.

GAMER CARD

For the Xbox Live Gamer Card, just take a look at this site. Just copy and paste the “iframe” markup and put your own gamertag in there, and viola!

ZUNE CARD

For the Zune Card, it is very similar. First, you must be part of the “social”. For more information on that, see Zune.net. If you have your Zune Social persona set up (usually the same as your gamer tag if you also have an Xbox), you just need to make sure that your profile is public (or no-one can see it). Once you’ve got it all hanging out there, all you have to do is follow a similar procedure as the Gamer Card above. Just copy and paste the following markup to where you want the card to show up. This markup is for the “small” version of the Zune Card.

<div id=”zunecard_small”><embed flashvars=”baseURL=http%3a%2f%2fsocial.zune.net%2fzcard%2fusercardservice.ashx%3fzunetag%3dbillwil%26src%3dmedium&MMplayerType=PlugIn” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” height=”135″ src=”http://social.zune.net/xweb/lx/swf/zunecardmedium.swf?ver=1190″ bgcolor=”#FFF” id=”flashUserCard” style=”” salign=”tl” width=”250″ wmode=”opaque” name=”flashUserCard”></div>

Remember to change the part that says ‘billwil’ to whatever your Zune Tag is (using %20 for spaces, if you have them), or you will display my Zune Card.

K9 Madness

About a month ago a friend of ours stopped by our house because I had told her that my wife, Crystal, had been thinking about getting a dog for our family (the kids have been asking for some time). This friend had recently rescued a stray that was running with two other strays. She could only get one of the three dogs into her car.

When our friend came by, she brought a young, yellow dog that looked mostly like a golden retriever. He’s still here a month later. Sure enough…we’ve adopted a dog who’s now part of our family. His name is Otis, and he has really taken a liking to my wife. Since that day over a month ago, he’s had two vet visits for shots and checkups, undergone treatment for ticks and the like, been neutered, and had a visit to the groomer. He seems to really like it here, loves the kids, and is a pretty quick learner. The vet estimated his age (a month ago) to be around 8 months. He’s mostly golden, but has a black tongue and seems slightly smaller than a purebred golden retriever, so we’re thinking maybe some chow chow in his bloodline…but what do we know? Whatever breed(s) he is…he’s turning out to be a great dog. And, as my dad pointed out repeatedly on a recent visit while he was watching Otis lounge around our house a lot, a very lucky dog.

Here are some pictures of Otis during his first week with us. Pictures are below, or hit this link for the whole gallery.

Obie Loves the Sun Devils

This is my friend, Obie, having some fun at the wildcats’ expense when we found an abandoned U of A cap after ASU beat them on December 1st. Don’t worry…the Calvin impression he’s doing is all special effects…but gets the point across. Besides…this was a home game, and he wouldn’t defile Sun Devil Stadium like that.

Sorry for the small sized pics…but this was taken with my camera phone at night…lots of camera shake and a small sized photo to boot. I think the idea is clear, though.

GO DEVILS!

The Holiday Bowl

Well…its official. The Sun Devils, even in a tie for the PAC 10 title with USC and a fabulous 10-2 season, were snubbed from the BCS. Oh well…you can’t control it, so you’ve got to roll with the punches. We take on a very respectable Texas team on December 27th in the Holiday Bowl in San Diego. I’m trying to get a party bus together to drive down (and when I say party bus, I mean several 30-something dads who have to get permission from their wives to rent an RV an drive to San Diego right after Christmas).

Tickets are available now. ASU and Texas have, believe it or not, never played each other…ever. That’s something like 105 years of football…and they’ve never met. Should be a great game…and a win in this bowl game will be a perfect cap to an unbelievable season for the Devils. Could have gone better…but we’ve gotten used to much worse over the past 5 years. String a couple seasons like this together…and Dennis Erickson will have earned his money and his accolades.

Great job this year, Sun Devils. One more to go. Go Devils!