In my continual mission to be awesome, yet frugal.  I present my dual 22 inch monitor LCD monitors and monitor stand.  I found the monitor stand for only 40 bucks on the world's best website, Amazon.com.  You'll also note, I left the side of my computer off for added affect or is it effect?, whichever.  Feel free to be jealous and/or leave comments about how jealous you are.  

This is the third installment of "What I'm listening to, right now" and I'm having better luck updating that previous attempts at blogging.  However, does it ever seem the music industry has lulls in awesome music?  It seems that way to me and ask Socrates said "Perception is reality".  Well maybe it wasn't Socrates, but someone smart probably said that.

1)  Come On - Green River Ordinance
  I think this group falls into the Pop Rox category, which is my term for rock music with a very pop feel.  It has a very catchy chorus and I think its cool thier name has been mentioned in an Andy Griffith episode.  Points to anyone who knows which one..
2) Hallelujah - Kate Voegele
  Yeah, well I like it.  So there.  The song has been done to death, but I like her version.
3) Meet Me Halfway - Black Eyed Peas
  I haven't much liked anything BEP has released as of late, but this song features a lot of Fergie which is probably why I like it. 
4)  All The Right Moves - OneRepublic
  I have always liked OneRepublic, but it seems with their new album they have taken a turn for the worse.  Don't get me wrong its a good song, but no where the caliber of their other songs and definitely not in the same vein.
5)  Back Again - Parachute
  I gotta admit, I discovered this song while playing Band Hero.  I admit I like the Guitar Hero games.  I mean its either that or air guitar, so I stick with Guitar Hero.  I believe this song also falls into the Pop Rox category.

Anyways, that was a very lack luster list in my opinion but maybe you'll enjoy more than I do.  Oh, something new I'm trying is an Amazon widget (seen below) that the songs I've talked about here.  And yes, I will get a kickback if you happen to buy them, but I'm mainly looking for an easy to to share the songs on my site.  We'll give it a go and see how it shakes out.

I believe this year has to be one of the best and biggest hauls I've ever had for Black Friday, without ever leaving the comfort of my home.  (I refuse to leave my home on Black Friday for any reason besides the house burning down around me, just to give you an idea about the complete hate I have of Black Friday.  However, I thoroughly enjoy the online deals.)  The deals I got were as follows (in least awesome deal, to most awesome deal:

1. V-Moda Headphones  Regular Price 22 bucks and some change, Black Friday Price: 15.85
2. Staples Desk Chair Regular Price 99.99, Black Friday Price: 69.99 and 30 dollar mail in rebate
3. Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard, Regular Price 79.99, Black Friday Price: 19.99  Booyah!
4. Assassin's Creed  for PS3  Regular Price 17.32, Black Friday Price: ZERO point ZERO  By some miracle, the game was supposed to cost me 9.99, however because I love Amazon.com so much, they decided to give it to me for... on the house!  And I hear you say, "But Nick, you had to pay for shipping! Its not that awesome of a deal".  I am an Amazon Prime member, which gives me the awesome benefit of paying ZERO point ZERO for anything that Amazon fulfills.  And it gets even more better (yes, I know that's bad English, but I don't care), Amazon has a trade in video game program.  The current trade in value for Assassin's Creed, you ask?  12.50.  That's right.  I'm going to end up 12.50 in the green by "buying" a video game.  Thank you, thank you.  (I'm thanking everyone for their spontaneous applause that had to erupt after reading that.) 

I hope your Black Friday excursions yielded equally awesome treasures.  Feel free to tell me about them!

I've been on vacation since the 21st of November and you'd think I would have been a productive member of society, perhaps starting my own charity or feeding the homeless or at very least, updating my blog.  However, much to my chagrin I did none of these things.

What did I do you ask? 

Nothing. Zero. Zilch. Nada.  Unless of course, playing video games and watching TV count as "something", which I don't personally believe they do.  I suppose I get minor points, for throwing a Guitar Hero soiree which required some "cleaning" (isn't that such a dirty word? ha! "clean" being a "dirty word", I kill myself) and I do believe that gets me to a grand total of 5 points over the course of 8 days out of a possible 4,342,874,234 points. 

In my defense I have "acquired" new video games as of late, "Band Hero" and "Rachet and Clank: Tools of Destruction".  Band Hero is the latest installment of the Guitar Hero franchise and is basically Guitar Hero 5 repackaged, with new songs and some kind of sing-a-long mode, which I haven't tried out yet.  I'm assuming its more like the "Party" mode that won't boo you off stage no matter how bad you are.  Rachet and Clank I had never played previously, but looked good enough online that I decided to buy when I was at Best Buy.  PS3 is my gaming console of choice and the graphics are ah-maze-ing.  The weapons are cool and there is a lot of fun to be had.  The game "seems" a little short to me, but I've probably played it a total of 20 hours and am on the verge of beating it (if I was a better video game player, that time would probably be halved). 

Well, that's a run down of the weeks major events, hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving and I'm looking forward to joining productive society on Monday.  Sigh.

Okay, I'm a slacker, but not really, but kinda.  I've been a little under the weather as of late, but the clouds are clearing and hope to be back to 100% just in time for my start of vacation.  Friday, 5pm cannot get here soon enough.  So that is news item number one, that I am indeed taking an entire week off of work next week for the Thanksgiving Holiday.  It is a rare occurrence indeed, but it couldn't have come at a better time.

News Item numero dos, Packers almost pitch a shutout to the Cowboys.  Color me surprised.  Against a dismal Tampa Bay team, the Pack gives up 30 or so points, yet against a potent Dallas offense, they limit the Cowboys to a single touchdown in the waning seconds of the 4th quarter.  Wow.  I hope this is the start of good things to come.

News Item 3.  I picked up the graphic novel, Batman: Hush.  So far, so good.  The artwork is excellent and there is a ton of appearances from all the favorite batman characters.  You gotta love it when Bats almost loses control and beats the Joker to an inch of his life.... not to mention, when he punches Supes (Superman) in the face.  Great story.

I suppose that's enough new items for today.  Hopefully, I'll have have more updates in the upcoming vacation week.

The football gods are punishing me.  The Packers lost yesterday to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.  Let that sink in a bit.  The Packers looooooosssstttt-ta to the Bucs.  The Bucs have not won a game all year and the Packers decide to give them a freebie and lose.  Tragic things like this aren't supposed to happen to good people.  And by good people I mean me!  I am devastated.  I see another 8-8 season on the horizon.  Maybe next year we'll do better.

As promised, this is the second entry of "What I'm listening to, right now".  And away we go....

1. Second Chance - Shinedown.  The Shinedown boys do it again with a great rock song.  If you like Shinedown, you'll like the song.  Period. End of discussion.
2. Someday - Rob Thomas  I didn't enjoy his first album as much, but his second sounds better to me.  Haven't decided if it is better, but I do like the first two songs at least.  This is song reminds me of "Her Diamonds" only better.
   
3. Break - Three Days Grace  I'm not a huge Three Days Grace fan, but this song rocks your socks off.  Literally.  You will be air-guitaring like a fool and your anger meter will go up a notch. Awesome video as well.
   
4. The Truth - Jason Aldean  Another good ballad from Jason Aldean.  Yes, its a sad song.  Yes, I'm a sucker.  Yes, I love it.  Its a good sing along song.  The lyrics are good on this, very clever.
5. Why Don't We Just Dance - Josh Turner  I wasn't sure what to make of this song at first, but I kind of dig it now.  Its real catchy and I always like his songs.  Plus the video is pretty funny.  Feel free to make snide comments.... now.
   

I finally released my small open source project called XML Factory to the free world this weekend,  You can check it out at http://sourceforge.net/projects/xmlfactory/ .  Hopefully it'll be useful to someone.  The inspiration for the project came from the Oracle XML SQL functions.  At first, I found them verbose, however I now appreciate their simplicity, ease of use and power.  I decided that Java too needed such an XML library and I've tried to reproduce that in my project.  Furthermore, I don't appreciate that most XML serialization techniques require heavy customization of my Java beans via annotations or the like and wanted my project to be more "bolt-on".  Well take a look at it and feel free to submit any feature requests or if you have any suggestions, please let me know.
 

I have always been an avid football fan and although I didn't get to watch a lot of football growing up, I love keeping up with the NFL.  Until this year, my interest has only been Green Bay Packers related and some playoff/Super Bowl game watching.  This year, however, I was invited to join a Fantasy Football league.  Its a great concept, basically play General Manager/ coach for your own little franchise made up of random players throughout the league.  The first couple of weeks, I was completely stoked, reading every piece of data on the interweb (note: interweb = internet) I could find in relation to fantasy football and the players on my team.  When I win, nothing can top that.  I feel just as awesome as when the Packers win.  However, as is the case more often than not, I lose.  And it devastates me.  My beloved Packers, just got done with a 31 to 3 trouncing of the Browns and yet whereas I should feel awesome, I'm simply worried about my fantasy football game.  By the way, I trail 6 points in my game and we each have one player remaining to play.  My remaining player is Brandon Jacobs, who has barely cracked 5 points this season.  And in my infinite football wisdom and further adding insult to injury, I decided to not play Darren Sporles who decides this week, is going to go for 15 fantasy points!!!!  So instead of being ahead by 9, I am trailing by six, with a player who has disappointed me all season long.  Welcome to fantasy football.  


So now, I find myself watching multiple football games on Sunday, cheering for random players on both sides of the ball.  For instance, today I was cheering for Atlanta to run the ball more, because I have Michael Turner and for Atlanta to stop Marion Barber and keep Dallas to only field goals, because I have Nick Folk the cowboys kicker.  I'm sure anyone watching this behavior must surely believe me to be mad.  Rest assured casual omniscient observer, I am not insane; I am simply playing Fantasy Football.  


Update:  I eked out a victory last night, 100 to 97.  When I was sure Brandon Jacobs was a total bust for this year, he comes through with a huge 14 point performance thereby negating my horrible decision to play him in lieu of Darren Sproles.  I love fantasy football.

There are very, very few movies that when I see them on the tele, (no I'm not British) I have to stop and watch them.  The Sandlot, A Few Good Men, and of course Apollo 13.  Even though I've seen them all several, several times I simply can't help myself.  Apollo 13 was critically acclaimed, however, was it really that great of a movie?  Eh, I'm not so sure, but I'm still amazed that 40 years ago they sent someone to the moon!  This is where the nerd in me comes out, just imagine, if someone told us, "Hey, you gotta send 3 guys to space and the entire guidance system has to run on a blackberry.".  We would totally freak out, yet, we'd have an advantage because our computer, aka the blackberry, would still be waaaay more powerful than their computer was.


Programmers today are so spoiled and I have to admit, considerably less skilled than those gentleman, myself included. The real question is, is it our fault?  A java program for instance, can't run in 1K of memory.  And maybe I could geek out a C/C++ program to do the same thing, but at what cost?  I just lost all portability (for the most part) with that move and to what end? To save a meg of memory space?  I think its just one of those things that happens.  As time moves on, we make things easier so we're more productive.  To do that, requires trade offs and sacrifices.  At the end of the day we have to use the tools most suited to the particular task at hand.


So could we write a program using our blackberry to guide a space shuttle to the moon?  I'd say yes.  Could I?  Maybe? Probably not.  Who knows?  One thing I do know, is those guys did it and my hat is off to them.