You didn’t Hear that? No? I did. It’s the sound of a big inhale before the chaos begins… it’s the calm before the storm.

Actually, that might not be entirely true… the first bit of the storm has already hit with the announcement of Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 this morning. Some time after that, Xbox is going to release our recent Preview this week, to people that signed up for it; that bring Facebook, Twitter, Last.fm, and Zune Marketplace to 360 users. And then on the 22nd, Windows 7 hits retail shelves; that unleashes every OEM that has been sitting on new machine models, waiting for 7 to ship. That includes ION based netbooks, allowing the tiny models to play HD video without breaking a sweat. Also likely to improve on the Atom CPU as well… Add to that Apple and Google’s intention to start new ad campaigns on the 22nd, to steal 7’s thunder…

Yes, it’s going to be a very, very busy and exciting week – who says all storms are bad?

In what was supposed to be a “small” upgrade, I decided to bump up my home machine.

It has been almost five years since my last upgrade. Been jones’n for some more oomph. Finally said “why not?” Steve said get a Mac. I said “when they have a relatively cheap PC with some power and no monitor, I’d consider it.” Right now, you can’t turn off the monitor of an iMac and still use it remotely: that’s a deal breaker. Also, I don’t know that I want to drop $1500 on a machine that isn’t meant to run the OS I plan to run. The Power Mac would be good, but that’s way over priced at $2500.

I wanted Core 2 Duo, 2GB, decent video card, under $500 – the image over there is the “before” picture.
Continue reading Bounty →

The Godfather comes out for the Xbox, PS2, and PC tomorrow. No 360 version though – at least not yet. What makes me go “WTF?!” is that the 360 version might not be available until Christmas. At least that’s the latest from Kotaku. Fat chance in hell that I’m waiting that long to pick up this particular game.

Truth is that this supports my argument about “backwards compatibility” on the 360: my original Xbox didn’t blow up when I bought a 360. A lot of people kept going on and on about it, when the 360 shipped – I still say it’s no big deal. Because, how do you offer backwards compatibility on games that hadn’t shipped yet? And talk about staying power for the Xbox – how many people were making PS1 games after the PS2 shipped? I mean, I bought Battlefront II for the Xbox a couple of days before the 360 shipped. Bought Black last week. I’ll probably buy The Godfather tomorrow, particularly because I’m Italian. Er, I mean, because it won’t be available on the 360 for a number of months and waiting for games is not one of my virtues.

Ah, the pain of being a Geek these days…

The new SDA is available at the local T-Mobile. Yet, as I told Anna, I’m trying to convince myself that I don’t need it, and I told Steve, I’m doing everything in my power to keep my fat ass in my [office] chair. Here’s the punch line: it’s because I bought a new vacuum yesterday.

Um. Like, w00t or something?
Continue reading When Knowing Isn’t Half The Battle →

Just a couple of notes – if only to myself – that have a high rate of Geekiness to them… cool stuff, actually.
Continue reading Random Geekness →