[Sports] NFL Draft 2008

The 2008 NFL Draft is coming soon, and I just can't force myself to get excited over it. The past four or five years have seen my interest in the weekend surrounding the draft rise steadily year after year. I wouldn't classify my excitement for this year as reaching a plateau. Its more like a jagged drop off.

I admit that this is likely due to the Green Bay Packers failure in the NFC Championship game and the announcement of Brett Favre's retirement. I just can't get excited for a new season when Aaron Rodgers is going to be leading the Packers this fall. Now, I could be wrong, and I hope I am, but teams are usually devastated after a legendary quarterback retires. I can only think of one exception, and this is the transfer the San Francisco 49ers went through in the 90's from Joe Montana to Steve Young. Even this isn't entirely the same, however, since Montana didn't retire. He just went to another team.

Rodgers seemingly injury prone NFL career thus far, as a backup no less, does not inspire a lot of confidence. This makes me wonder how much confidence the players and front office have in Rodgers. Will they be looking to draft a quarterback high in the draft to compete with Rodgers?

I guess I feel more afraid of what the Packers will do in the draft this year than I am excited about what they'll do. I will still follow the event this year, but I may not follow on television AND the internet like years past. Don't screw this up, Green Bay Packers, I don't want a repeat of the Packers 30 year absence from the Super Bowl.

P.S. We're running on a 10 year absence right now. STEP. IT. UP.

[Video Games] A Return to Vana'diel

I am bored, to say the least. The drawback about shuffling between two hotels, every week, for going on 8 weeks, is the internet access. I can only get online to play my Xbox 360 at one of the hotels. The second hotel seems to have a NAT problem that won't let me play. I hear they are working on it, though.

Every week, at least two times a week, my girlfriend and I have been visiting Gamestop. We don't necessarily buy anything every trip, but we are averaging around one purchase a week. This week turned out to a Square Enix week. She wanted to watch me play Radiata Stories (PS2), and I wanted to play Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core (PSP). We got both. I noticed a stack of trial copies of Final Fantasy XI for $1.99, and I mused that it might be nice to put it on her new Sony Vaio laptop. She grabbed the disk, tossed it to the clerk, and away we went.

I played Final Fantasy XI for around three months when it initially came out on the PS2 in the US in March of 2004. I was also one of the lucky few that got to beta test the game. I say lucky because beta testers were rewarded with free 40GB hard drives and free copies of the game a week before it was released in retail. I say lucky because this retailed for around $100. Lucky.

I know what you're thinking. You're wondering why I would play a four year old game? Well, the game technically game out in Japan in May of 2002 on the PS2, so its really a six year old game. I'm playing it because I had a lot of fun playing it when it first came out. This was in large part due to the friends I was playing with at the time. I also thought it would be nice to introduce my girlfriend to the world of MMOs, dangerous as they are sometimes, and we kind of need something to do with our evenings.

We finally got into the game after the required two or three hours of updates were downloaded. I admit I made a mistake in hastily jumping into the game without reading any of the online game manuals. Can you fault me, though? After all, I did play the game already. However, our first half hour of play was hindered by me trying to work out how to do, well, anything. I was able to finally switch the input from standard keyboard to compact keyboard, once I figured out how access the menu. Yes, I didn't even know how to open something as simple as the game menu.

We played the game for two hours last night and for 20 minutes today at lunch. My girlfriend seems to like it so far, even if she is frustrated at my adventurous nature. I want to challenge monsters where the outcome is uncertain. I want, well, a challenge. She wants me to grind on lower level monsters and not risk my characters death. This is going to be long standing battle, I can tell.

We are having fun together, and that is all we really wanted. However, there are some problems that likely won't encourage us to continue playing after our 30 day free trial ends.

First, I knew the economy in FFXI was a mess, but I didn't realize it was this bad. It is simply impossible someone new to come into the game. Weapons and armor for low level, new characters is completely priced out of our range. Once we have enough money to buy these low level weapons, though, we won't need them anymore. We'll simply be upgrading to a less outdated weapon.

Second, this is a six year old game and it certainly shows. I think its time for Square Enix to phase out Final Fantasy XI and introduce a new Final Fantasy MMO. Final Fantasy XIV or XV, perhaps? I can hope, can't I?

Lastly, the heart of any MMO is the Massively Multiplayer part. Most of my friends moved on from Final Fantasy to World of Warcraft years ago. Many of those that moved onto World of Warcraft have even moved on from that.

In the end, I think this trip down memory lane will be a fun experience for my girlfriend and I. I may even convince her that she doesn't have to just watch me play, that she can take the controls for awhile, too. Maybe, when our trial period is up, I can convince her to even give World of Warcraft a try? We shall see, my friend, we shall see.

[Pwned] Not So Little Guy Fights Monster Bully

The president of Blue Jeans Cable fired back at Monster Cable after receiving a Cease and Desist letter ordering them to halt production of their Tartan line of cables. I'm not sure I've ever gotten goose bumps while reading a response to a legal document.

This response letter from president Kurt Denke draws a very deep and very narrow line in the sand between Blue Jeans Cable and Monster Cable. He is almost daring the litigation happy Monster Cable lawyers to cross the line and bring on a fight to the bloody finish court battle.

"It may be that my inability to see the pragmatic value of settling frivolous claims is a deep character flaw, and I am sure a few of the insurance carriers for whom I have done work have seen it that way; but it is how I have done business for the last quarter-century and you are not going to change my mind. If you sue me, the case will go to judgment, and I will hold the court's attention upon the merits of your claims--or, to speak more precisely, the absence of merit from your claims--from start to finish. Not only am I unintimidated by litigation; I sometimes rather miss it."

At one point, he even insinuates that Monster Cable may be actively trying to circumvent US tax laws.

"I assume that Monster Cable International, Ltd., in Bermuda, listed on these patents, is an IP holding company and that Monster Cable's principal US entity pays licensing fees to the Bermuda corporation in order to shift income out of the United States and thereby avoid paying United States federal income tax on those portions of its income; my request for these licensing agreements is specifically intended to include any licensing agreements, including those with closely related or sham entities, within or without the Monster Cable "family," and without regard to whether those licensing agreements are sham transactions for tax shelter purposes only or whether they are bona fide arm's-length transactions."

I'm going to try to follow this story to see how it ends. We'll see if this ends up as a full blown courtroom drama, or if it whithers and dies in some back room or phone call.

[Movies] Netflix

I am lovin' on the Netflix right now. Here's the story.

Yuki signed up for Blockbuster online awhile ago, yet since I got to NYC we haven't used it. Yes, that's right, since I've got there LAST JUNE, not one DVD has been sent or received from Blockbuster online.

Now, we recently signed up for a temp mail box here in Vegas, so I decided it would be a good idea to start using the service since there is just nothing to do when we are in Laughlin. At the very least, we can bring a couple of movies with us for the three or four days we are here.

However, we don't really go to the Blockbuster locations, so the two free coupons we get a month that I could use for game rentals isn't entirely practical. I decided we would cancel her Blockbuster Online account (kudos to Bb for giving us until JUNE to return the movies we currently have out).

We signed up for Netflix on Sunday night, instead, because I wanted to try out their streaming service. They have a decent list of movies you can watch streaming. They claim 8,000+, but we know I won't verify that number.

In addition to your mail queue, you get an "Instant Queue." I don't why they call it a queue, tho, since there is no limit on the number of movies you can watch, how man times you watch them, or what order you watch them in. Its more of a way to remember movies you may want to stream in the future than an actual queue.

So, last night Yuki added The Tick to the instant queue (not the animated series, the live-action series). We watched the first episode, and the quality was pretty good. After that, I decided to watch The Karate Kid (they also have 2 and 3 available to stream). Yuki had never seen it, so we ended up staying awake until 2am watching it.

There are a couple of drawbacks. First, it appears that some movies can appear blurry for some reason. I tried watching Tin Cup and Notting Hill (Yuki wanted a RomCom, and I like those two), but they were too blurry to watch. It was most noticeable when there was text on the screen, like actor names and such, but I only made it 15 minutes into Notting Hill before I had to stop it and try The Karate Kid. I couldn't find any explanation for the blurriness in their FAQ, nor is there any way to decide what settings to use for streaming playback.

This leads to a second, and killer drawback for Soy or Roop. The streaming service can only be used on Windows XP or Vista, and only in IE (although, an IE tab loaded in Firefox worked on my PC). It has to do with Apple not licensing out their DRM to anyone. So, for the foreseeable future, Mac-boys are going to be left out in the cold.

Otherwise, I'm quite content with it for now. I only encountered one spot where the movie had to stop and buffer. Groundhog Day, The Karate Kid, The Tick; they all looked great. They even have entire TV series available for streaming, although this list is small. Most notable would The Office, Heroes, 30 Rock, and Law & Order.

I'm happy, for now. I hope they can improve their streaming library, but for now its very nice.