Getting Away From It All In The Midwest

The most depressing thing I've ever learned about Wisconsin:

When Wisconsinites vacation, they go to Iowa.

-t

2

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SauvignYoouuk Blanc (Red Sox Wine)

Last night was our company outing. Almost exactly like last year's. This time, though, in addition to the batting cages, booths for henna tatoos, caricatures, psychic readings, and green-screen photographs, they had a wine bar. There had to be sixty bottles of wine opened and waiting for us. They were serving the wine in the giant red cups you find at beruit tournaments, full.

But, nobody was drinking any wine, since, after all, it's ballpark themed, there are burgers, hot dogs, fries, cheeseburgers, and giant pretzels everywhere, and free beer; people were drinking the beer. Not the wine.

So, at the end of the night at last call, when there were still fifty open bottles of wine sitting full on the table of the wine station, I asked for one. Bottle.

"Hey, excuse me," I called over the ridiculously loud DJed music, "can I get a bottle?"
"A bottle?"
"Yes."
"Um...empty, or full?"

Hmm.

"Full."

So he gave me one. Sweet, right?


Anyway, I was pretty drunk on free beer at that point of the night so I'm not really sure what happened to the full bottle of chardonay I was carrying. I know I didn't bring it home on the train, and I had some difficulties sneaking it into the after-party bar. But the point wasn't to drink it, it was to ask for it in the first place.

-t

3

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RRoD - F#@K!!

This is the Red Ring of Death:



It has its very own wikipedia page.

To save you some time, the basic gist is this:

To save money, Microsoft decided to manufacture their own graphics chips rather than contract the job to a graphic chip company.

The Microsoft chips, turns out, sucked. They overheated and fried the motherboard. The indicator is, you got it, the three flashing red lights, RRoD.

Consumers were pissed. So, Microsoft, to their credit, decided to comp the repair costs, refurb console, gratis. They also decided to start contracting out for graphics chips.

I've been pretty lucky, so far. The consoles were failing at something like 17% (acceptable levels are normally near 1-2%) and I've had my system for a while.

Well, today, after work, as I was sitting down to play a few rounds of Call of Duty 4
RRoD

And boy, did that suck.

I called the repair hotline, they walked me through some troubleshooting steps, took my information, and will be shipping me a prepaid box in a few days.

So, I guess I'll have some time to catch up on my reading. Or Red Sox watching. Or I could just play more Super Mario Galaxy.


-t

4

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Troublemaker

I'd like to interrupt this countdown to my millenial post and take a moment to promote the new Weezer album.

It's pretty awesome. If you're a Weezer fan I can heartily recommend the Red Album because it's more Blue Album and Pinkerton than it is Maladroit and Make Believe.

Certainly more mature than the two previous self-titled discs (the Blue and Green albums) with a hint of the angsty lyrics of Make Believe, the Red Album does manage to keep the music much more upbeat and brighter than the bands two most recent releases (more like the radio friendly "Beverly Hills" and "We Are All On Drugs" than the later "This Is Such A Pity").

Maybe you've seen the music video for the first radio single "Pork And Beans" full of the internet memes:

Rivers Cuomo isn't the vocalist on three of the songs at the bottom of the set list, giving the other band members, unfortunately, a chance to flex their vocal chords. Bell is passable on "Thought I Knew" but the others are, well, they're pretty awful.

I'd also recommend getting the Deluxe Edition of the release, it includes four "bonus tracks" that make up for the deficient turns Bell, Shriner, and Wilson take on the mike on tracks 7, 8, and 9 of the official release (particularly bonus #1 "Miss Sweeney").

For those of you who aren't going to buy the whole disc I'd recommend the following tracks for download!

(1) Troublemaker
(2) The Greatest Man That Ever Lived (Variations On A Shaker Hymn)
(3) Pork And Beans
(4) Heart Songs
(5) Miss Sweeney (bonus track)

With "The Greatest Man That Ever Lived (Variations On A Shaker Hymn)" unreservedly my favorite song.

-t

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