2006 October Archive at Tim and Change Will Surely Show

Monthly Archive for October, 2006

Pimp my Ride

Published

on October 31, 2006

. 0 Comments

So, with getting a new car, there are a few things I’ve wanted to do to make it “my own”. First I’m probably going to get the windows tinted. I’ve seen pictures of other 07 Camry’s with various tint levels and I think it’ll look nice with the Dark Grey. The only question will be how dark do I go. Ohio Law allows the front side windows to be up to 50% and the rear sides, and back to be any limit. I want all the windows to look uniform so I’m thinking I may knowingly break the law and get ~35% all around. We’ll see.

The Dark gray color is perfect to match for a Scarlet and Grey Ohio State driving machine. I’ve debated picking up a buckeye leaf magnet or two to put towards the rear. Kind of give it a Buckeye helmet look. I’m not sure if that’d look too tacky or not. For now I just have my Ohio State Lifetime Alumni sticker in the rear window.

Finally, I’m debating getting a personalized license plate. I’m kind of up in the air on this. On the one hand, I think it’s kind of neat and a good way to make a statement for what you care about. On the other hand, it can be kind of arrogant and nerdy. Plus if you don’t choose something you absolutely love, there is the chance a year or two from now you’ll regret what you chose. Obviously the first choice would be something Ohio State related. If I do end up getting a personalized plate, it’ll probably be an OSU plate. The hard part is in Ohio almost anything you can think of that remotely resembles OSU is already taken. That’s when I was surprised to find one that kind of works that hasn’t been taken yet. What do you think of :

I think it could work. Especially for a license plate, it’s right on the border of being or purpose or not. (by the way if comes 2 weeks from now I try to go register that plate and it’s taken so help me, I will track down every IP that has hit this site and find you!)

Other plates that I saw but are way to geeky to actually have are OMGWTF, YA RLY, AFK BRB, or ALTF4.

We need to reserve NEWBS for when he gets his hot 1984 professor driving Mercedes.

Finally got around to snapping some shots of the new car for you to see. I’m trying something new by embedding a slide show into the post. We’ll see how it works.

Gears of War (Mad World)

Published

Tim

on October 31, 2006

in Games

. 0 Comments

Gears of War is an Xbox 360 game that comes out in about 10 days. It’s supposed to be for the 360 what Halo was for the original xbox in terms of “killer app”. So far I have been avoiding the hype (knowing that I’d be picking up the game day 1), but a trailer was released last week for the game that has got me super excited. It’s so good it deserved it’s own post.

High-Def Trailer

Standard-Def Trailer (if you have a slower PC)

(btw all footage is in-game. No pre-rendered PS3 BS here)

A Moral Consumer

Published

Tim

on October 30, 2006

in Games and General

. 3 Comments

So as I briefly mentioned in my last post that the current TV I own was purchased from Costco. One of the reasons I decided to make my purchase through them is because Costco has an unbeatable return/warranty policy. On every time they sell, there is a lifetime satisfaction guarantee. No questions. So, if I have a problem with my TV 3 years after the purchase date, I can just take it back to Costco and get a new one. Now this is where the dilemma comes in. Technically I can take my TV back at anytime, for any reason. In the year that I’ve owned my TV the price on it has dropped about $500 dollars. That’s quite a bit of money, but nothing too surprising for a tech item like a 50″ Plasma. But, I could return the TV, get my full original paid price and then purchase a new one for the lesser cost (plus the fact that it’d be a year newer). Now technically this is within the written rules of Costco’s policy, but it is not at all how it was intended to be used. A year from now, there is a good chance the TV could be down to $1000 cheaper than when I purchased it. Would I feel more pressure to return it then? I’ve pretty much decided it would be morally wrong to do so, and so I probably won’t. They’re not making it easier that they are building a Costco here in Columbus which would make returning such a large item 10x easier than hauling it down to Cincinnati. I’m still glad to know that if I run into any problems with the TV I’ll be able to get them resolved anytime.

This past weekend I ran into another situation involving “working the system” but for a substantially smaller item. I ended up giving in, but I’ll let you determine if it was wrong of me to do so. Anyway, last week Toys R Us ran a promotion in their video game department where if you bought 2 games at full price you get a 3rd one for free. I hadn’t bought a new 360 game in quite a while and a few had come out that I was interested in purchasing so I made my way down to TrU. Unfortunately once I got there, none of the games I wanted were in stock. I was somewhat bummed because I was really looking forward to playing some new games. I thought about it for a bit and an idea came to me. Why couldn’t I buy some games I didn’t care about, get gift receipts for them, and then once the games I did want came in stock, go exchange for those? I decided this was a valid option and went ahead and purchased 3 new xbox360 games. Soon I realized that this would not suffice as I had just dropped the cost of 2 brand new games and still didn’t have anything to play. So another idea came to me. Why not go ask another store if they’ll accept a no receipt unopened video game exchange and get one or two new games that I would play? I trekked on over to Target, saw that they had both the game I would exchange and the game I wanted, and went up to the customer service desk. The girl there was somewhat unsure if they were allowed to do a no receipt exchange on video games, but her co-worker said it was ok as long as it was un-opened. Apparently with Target you are limited to doing 2 exchanges a year (they take your driver’s license number). I didn’t want to do 2 games at the same spot, so later I went to Meijer and did the same thing and they had the same situation. Now I have brand new copies of Marvel Ultimate Alliance and Splinter Cell: Double Agent, as well as a gift receipt to take back to Toys R Us once Gears of War comes out. Honestly I don’t feel bad or like I did anything wrong. Sure it wasn’t how the system was designed to be used, but I don’t think it’ll hurt Target, Meijer or Toys R Us. If anything, I am now a very pleased customer with all 3 stores.

What would you have done in both situations?
Reviews on the games to come at a later date.

A brand new car!

Published

Tim

on October 24, 2006

in General

. 7 Comments

As I said in my last post, I have made the purchase of a new car. For those of you who don’t see me regularly in real life, since I was 16, the vehicle that has brought me to and from has been a 1994 Camry. It has been an excellent vehicle that kept up its looks, was easy to work on and really never had any major mechanical trouble.

A few months back I started feeling the urge to look for a new car. No reason in particular, it’s just I’d been out of school for a year, my current car was getting quite old to where if something major broke on it, I really didn’t want to deal with it, and I just felt it was time. So I started looking around at what I’d like to purchase with no real timeframe in mind. Right off I knew I wanted to stick with the same type of vehicle, a 4 door sedan. No Trucks, SUVs or Dragsters for me. Since my current car had lasted over 12 years and was still kickin, I wanted something reliable that I could have for a very long time. Also I wanted something with a little umph in it, mostly because I’m still young and like to enjoy a good drive. I’d pretty much narrowed myself down to 2 categories. Get a relatively new mid-line sedan (Camry, Accord, Legacy or Sonata) or a sportier but older high-level sedan (330i, A4, TL). After considering it for quite a long time, I decided to keep with my desire for longevity and low maintenance and insurance costs down, and eliminate the higher priced, luxury vehicles. After some more consideration and research I was able to make my decision. For 2007 Toyota has totally redone their Camry look and design. It looks nothing like the previous Camry’s (which in my thought looked like a grandma car (no offense grandma)). Other cars that I were in my pool kept me curious but in the end I decided I wanted a 2007 Toyota Camry SE V6.

Now that I had decided what car I wanted, it was time to find the best way to purchase it. One thing I quickly discovered was that Toyota was having no trouble selling this car and was in no hurry to sell for a low low price. I couldn’t even find an SE V6 anywhere to test drive. That’s when I came across a little known fact that Costco has specific dealers that they work with to offer cheap rates to their members. I called up the only Costco “authorized” dealer in Ohio who happened to be down in Cincinnati. When I talked to him he told me that he had a SE V6 Camry coming in with all the options I wanted and even the color I liked and that it should be arriving within a week. We worked it out to where he was able to quote me a price over the phone and I told him I’d have to call back. I really wasn’t expecting to have to make a decision so soon, but after giving it some though I called him back. Supposedly the Costco price is non-negotiable since it’s cheaper to begin with. I told him I really wanted to buy the car and it was everything I needed, but it was just X to high. I was surprised when he went and talked to his manager and came back to give me the deal I had asked for! I put down $500 to hold the car once it came in, and then last Wednesday Kate and I drove down to pick it up. On the way there I started getting nervous realizing I had never seen the actual car I was purchasing, but once we pulled in all worries were gone after I saw it. The whole buying process really wasn’t that bad. I was even able to be a part of an extra incentive that gave me $400 off just for being a recent college grad! After handing over a check for more money that I ever had before, I drove off in my new car. This car is awesome. The V6 is a blast to drive, making me wish there was no such thing as speed limits. (0-60 in 6.5s is just too fast

It’s funny to look back and think the biggest two purchases in my life have been my TV and now this car, and that both of them have been bought through Costco. Next up, houses in packs of 3.

Update: Honestly I meant it as a joke, but :O - Link

Still no pictures yet as the weather hasn’t been agreeable, but I promise I’ll get some up soon. I have uploaded pics from the past two Buckeye games that you can take a look at if you so desire.

World of Warcrack

Published

Tim

on October 20, 2006

in Games

. 2 Comments

So I’m sure nearly all of you have heard of this game (World of Warcraft is the proper title). It’s currently one of the biggest games out there with tons and tons of people playing it for hours on end. I was part of the original beta and played the first day it came out, but was able to take myself away after about 6 months of playing.

Over the past few weeks, small things have been drawing me back into playing. I really don’t want to and know I shouldn’t, but there is some addiction deep down inside that is calling me back. I thought I’d be able to cure my craving by getting a small taste and went ahead and bought this full size poster . Nope, still want to play. Once the new expansion pack was announced and an estimated release date given, I knew that would be my moment of weakness. On an entirely different motivation, as soon as I saw that Amazon had pre-orders available for The Burning Crusade Collectors Edition, I went ahead and ordered 3. Now why you may ask did I order multiple copies of one game. This is the reason. The original WoW CE is going for insane prices on ebay, due to the limited copies Blizzard produced. At first, ordering the CE for the expansion, I was a little worried. Had Blizzard picked up on the rare availability and were they going to produce more? Apparently not. As of today, it is impossible to find a pre-order anywhere. And Ebay is proof. I can tell you now I will be selling all 3 of my copies to the highest bidder. This coupled with an article I read the other day has dramatically lessened my desire to go back and play. Now I give it 50/50 odds. Besides, I have tons of other games that I need to get to and Gears of War & the Wii will be out real soon.

btw I got a new car. Pics, story and details later.

An HD Nibble

Published

Tim

on October 17, 2006

in Sports and TV

. 0 Comments

Here is just a taste of what HD College Football has to offer. Keep in mind this is compressed to where it’s not full quality (but I’m a great video encoder now so it’s pretty darn good).

You’ll need an xvid codec. If you don’t know what that is then why are you here? No seriously just ask in the comments. If you have the guts!

Right-Click > Save-As
gonzo_catch_HD.avi (13 megs)

Baseball Playoffs and College Football

Published

Tim

on October 17, 2006

in Sports, TV and Tech

. 2 Comments

My two favorite sports are Baseball and College Football.

For baseball, the greatest two points of the season are the two weeks leading up to the playoffs, and the playoffs themselves. What’s funny is, for the rest of the country, if two specific teams aren’t playing in Post-Season, no one watches. With both the Yankee’s and Red Sox being out, viewership for the post-games this year is way down. I still love watching no matter who plays.

The greatest points of a college football season can happen almost every weekend. The reason I think college football has become so much more popular over the past few years is because with the way the BCS system works, every game matters. Even if your team isn’t playing, you’ll watch two teams because if one of them loses and is ahead of you, all the better ranking for your team. It’s an interesting situation that I don’t think happens in any other sport. Besides the fact that this past weekend’s Auburn/Florida game was a great game of football, the fact that Florida lost a) helps USC in the rankings and b) helps M*ch*gan in the rankings which in turn helps Ohio State in the rankings because those two teams will play each other.

Speaking of the Buckeyes, last week I finally got around to purchasing an HD Capture card for my PC. Now I’ve been enjoying the greatness that is HD Television for over a year now via my Costco Purchased Vizio 50″ Plasma Monitor, but I’ve never been able to recording anything of my choosing (usually I’ll just ~~download~~ aquire from alternative sources). Now that I have this capture card I can record all the Buckeye games in wonderful 720p. This week I’ve really gotten into video editing and encoding and have been able to put together some awesome looking clips from the Michigan State/OSU game. If I get a chance I’ll post some links later.

Back, now with more Sidebar!

Published

Tim

on October 13, 2006

in Flickr/Pics, General and Site Maintenance

. 1 Comment

Well it seems as though everything is back up and running like normal. Not too much has changed visually, but there are a few things on the back-end that I’ve updated which will make future additions a lot easier to make. One may difference you may have noticed is the sidebar. Now I can add a lot of cool “gadgets” to the sidebar. You’ll notice my Xbox GamerCard and Last.FM stream on the About page, but I’ve also added a neat Flickr flash gadget as well as a new “News I like” section. This will replace the “Asides” section.

I talked a while back about how I was totally into aggregate news feeds and the websites that have taken off due to the use of RSS. Ever since that post I’ve continued to use bloglines as my main choice of RSS reader. That all changed about a week ago when Google updated their reader. Now google.com/reader/ is my prefered method of viewing headlines and news content. Some of the highlights that won me over are the ability for GR to realize a post as read or unread on a post-by-post basis instead of by feed. Also I like Google’s “Staring” and “Sharing” system much better than Bloglines. Now I’ll have an updated list of the 5 most recent stories I thought were interesting enough to include on my site (though I still need to work with the css to make it blend more with the scheme of my site). For a compelte list you can get see the full page here or use my rss feed here. I’m going to try and see if I can somehow work the full page version as an aditional page into my site.

I’ve finally gotten around to posting pictures of both my TV and PC setup on Flickr. Check out the link below for more shots.

Yes I do realize that 3 screens is a little excessive and uncessary, but from the first time I saw it I knew I had to make my own. Plus the two 17″ screens are used from Ebay so the whole setup really wasn’t that expensive.

I feel as though there were quite a few things that I wanted to post about, but now I forget them. More later I suppose…