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!

sparky



Zune 2 + 1 Day

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!

sparky

Zune 2 Almost Here

Here we are about a year from the inaugural release of the Zune media player platform and brand, and they are releases the next batch.  Here’s the kicker…and completely new to the media player world…almost all of the features for the new generation release are just a software upgrade away from original Zune owners.  Try that with an iPod.  🙂

The new hardware, though, is definitely worth a look.  There are two new flash based players (4GB and 8GB).  With no hard drive, these flash players are great for running or other workouts, or other activities where the device will be jostled and bumped constantly.  With no moving parts, there is nothing to break or skip from all the movement.  These devices still support full video, etc., and are pretty small.  The new hard drive based player is a whopping 80GB, is smaller than the original Zune, but has a bigger screen.  The new “squircle” is click or touch sensitive, so take your pick on how to control it.  Here’s a picture of the new lineup and a link to the Zune site.

This picture shows, from left to right, the new flash based Zune, The new Zune80, and the Zune30 (original Zune).

So, everyone knows this, right?  Well check this out.  Engadget has a story about Zune Originals…you’ve got to check this out.  They’re beautiful.

Tomorrow is the day.  If your an original Zune owner, synching tomorrow will bring you a nice surprise!  Enjoy.



Not undefeated, but still in it

My Sun Devils are no longer undefeated, but going to the Rose Bowl is still in our own hands!  Our only loss came in Autzen stadium to Oregon, so both teams are tied for 1st place in the PAC 10 with a record of 6-1.  Oregon holds the tie-breaker because our loss was against them.  That puts them in the driver’s seat to win the PAC 10 and go to the Rose Bowl…assuming that they win out.  Since they are now ranked number 2 in the BCS standings, though, they will go to the National Championship game if they win out…leaving ASU (again, assuming no losses against USC and UofA) to represent the PAC 10 in the Rose Bowl.  Assuming ASU wins out and Oregon suffers one more loss, again, ASU would go to the Rose Bowl as the sole PAC-10 champs.  The only thing ASU has to do is win their last two games!

The next game is on Thanksgiving day at home against USC.  This will be the big test.  On December 1st, ASU faces Arizona at home.  This is a very winnable game, but Arizona, with nothing much to be proud of, will base their season on this game…so the Devils will need to be ready.

Okay…now on to more College Football Poll insanity.  Okay, I can buy the top three teams in the BCS Standings (LSU, Oregon, Kansas).  They deserve to be there.  I would swap LSU and Oregon, though.  Kansas is a tough one…they are the only major conference team to be undefeated right now…but their schedule is laughable this year (not playing Texas, Texas Tech, or Oklahoma).  They definitely deserve to be in the top 3…where they go, that’s tougher.

Now, on to the rest of the top 10.  This is where it gets just plain silly.  I’m going to compare all these teams to ASU, since that is what I care about…but it helps demonstrate the absurdity.  First, why is Ohio State ranked above ASU at this point (and now I’m talking about the human polls…because that’s where the tradition garbage comes in).  Let’s see…both have one loss, but that’s where the similarity ends.  One of those teams plays in a terrible conference.  One of those teams lost at home to an unranked opponent from that terrible conference.  One of those teams has no notable wins at all.  The other team plays in arguable the best or second best conference.  That team lost to the number 2 team in the nation who is from that powerful conference.  Figure that one out.  What about West Virginia?  C’mon…the Big East?  West Virginia lost to South Florida who was exposed recently as a mediocre team with their 3 game loosing streak to non top 20 teams.  And some of their wins are against teams like Western Michigan, Marshall, and East Carolina (where the freak is East Carolina?).  There is no logic that should rank them above ASU.  Missouri plays in a decent conference, but the Big 12 North is much weaker than the south…and Missouri probably won’t even win that half of the conference to play in the title game?  We’ll see, but if that’s the case, how can they be ranked ahead of ASU?  Oklahoma is a good team…and probably deserves a top 5 or so ranking…but they did loose to an unranked team that ASU beat handily…so again, should they be ranked above ASU?  These rankings really need to have more to do with what has happened on the field and less to do with where the voters think they should be based on where they were ranked last week, when was the last national championship, and what color uniforms they wear (and other irrelevant things).  What happens on the field matters.

That’s it…



Craig’s List Delivers!

I’m probably the last one to figure this out, but Craig’s List actually works!  I’ve browsed the list many times in the past looking for values of certain cars, bikes, etc.  I’ve even contacted a few people about some of these items before, but I’ve never actually bought anything or sold anything on the list…until yesterday.

LA Fitness built a gym near my house last year, so since I joined, I quit using my weightlifting rack that I had in the garage.  I’ve been meaning to get rid of the giant beast, but procrastination was the word of the day.  I wanted to get a good picture of it before I posted it somewhere…so I waited.  Yesterday, though, I decided just to throw up an add for it on Phoenix’s Craig’s List using a drawing of the product I found on the web.  Within 4 hours of the posting, I had two people emailing me about it.  By the 5th hour I was handing out my address to two people, had third person that wanted to buy it the next day, and a fourth inquiring about it.  By the 6th hour, there was a guy at my house handing me cash and this behemoth was carried away.  Most importantly, it was carried away by someone other than me.

What I can say, as someone who has done a little bit of “trading” on ebay, is that in our society that values instant gratification so highly, Craig’s List delivers!