First off, tests are stupid. Now that we have that out of the way we can move on.

Couple of things for you TV Heads :

LOST & 24 are coming back in January. Both with their normal, epic-premieres. 24 actually is grabbing two nights, and starting with 2 hour episodes. So you have 4 hours of 24 in 2 days. There were a lot of numbers in that sentence. I saw a weird, middle of the day, making-of the ‘24 movie’ which I think is what they are referring to those 4 hours as, some sort of mini-movie… and it looks like same-old same-old Jack Bauer being absolutely all that is man and then some random explosions thrown in . Hopefully it redeems itself after the abysmal season that was last year and gets back on track.

Lost is also coming back, and this time with an extra episode (or two) to make up for the few we were shafted on last year due to the writer’s strike. January 21, 2009 . Set your tivos. Its a 3-hour premiere, but only 2 hours of new stuff. This season will be interesting since we already know the 6 got off the island, how are they going to wrap this show up? I have no idea. I believe there is one more season after this, but the plot lines have been written and so now we are just unwinding the rest of the mystery. This is an unsettling quote :

The writers have announced that Locke and Jin will return to the show in the fifth season;^[16] however, it is yet to be revealed whether or not Locke will return as part of the regular cast and in what form.

I mean. I love myself some Jack and Ben…. but there isn’t a Locke replacement. Come on now! Also, Michael is dead, but who cares, its Michael.

Also, of note to all Xbox Owners:

9 more days until the update. You will be streaming Netflix to your TV’s (even in High-Definition) and playing around with all the new toys / gizmos that there are. One of the lesser-talked about additions is the ability to boot your games via your harddrive. So you can load up call of duty, and if you have an xbox hard drive, place the game data on the drive so that your game won’t be spinning the whole time you play it. (should get rid of a lot of those noise complaints from the super-fan that is the 360’s cooling system). You do have to have the actual disc in the game, to make sure you aren’t stealing it or anything, but it is a nice tool.

And thats all for Monday November 10th, I’m Tyler Lee and you have been filled in.

I’ve been having a couple wordpress issues, and since 2 of them are site-specific I figure its because I’m a retard. But I should warn you about the third one. Your not gonna want to upgrade to Flash Player 10 if you want to keep doing easy image uploading via WP. It’s apparently a security update by adobe inside of 10 that de-activates the way WP handles image uploading. It may never work in the same way actually because workarounds are sort of a pain in the ass. I learned all this through a WP support forum so I can’t vouch for the credibility of the reasonings, but I know that none of my WP installs let me upload anymore. (You can of course use the old-school browser upload but it doesn’t allow multiple uploads at one time and just sucks)

Other things that suck : This guy.

and my favorite halloween costume so far :

I just did it in like an hour because I was bored earlier today and also I needed an outlet for stupid internet videos. So start checking it out again, daily. www.bucketofawesome.com . The design is also temporarily, not even looking for reviews, just look at the content alright? KTHXBYE

Ok, maybe it died a while back, but for me it died today. I just finished reading an article on ATT instituting the type of bandwidth cap that Comcast has had for a couple of months now. Right now, its only in the testing phase in Reno, Nevada but considering they rolled out service-wide updates for their boxes last month after only 2 weeks of testing, I could see this spreading in a month or two.

I took a gander at the listing, and at my current rate. (I pay for the 3 mbps down rate) I would have access to 60 gigs down total per month.  Now, that seems like a lot upon first glance, and I’m not a torrent-freak or anything so I don’t have constant downloads running. However, lets take a closer look.

In my house there are 3 college aged guys. 2 of whom are webdesigners. You are talking about nightly working on websites uploading / downloading files. For the most part these files aren’t massive movies or anything but they still will add up.

Also, I am a Netflix member. I use the watch instantly feature often. My 60 gigs equates to about 30 movies per month. (Remember, thats just me, not counting my roommates). So I could watch a movie every night and do nothing else, and kick my roommates off the internet.  But… I also have a 360, and in 2 weeks I will be watching HD netflix movies on my 360. Take my movie a night, and cut it in half (its probably even more than that). 15 movies a night with no other things going on.

Add in my web-design usage, roommates etc… and I would have to pick a night a week to watch a movie, and other times would just have to fore-go it or pay more. Ridiculous.

How does online gaming work? I asked the internet.

Online gaming, for 3d games, typically uses around 60kbits/s of download bandwidth and about 10kbits/s of upload bandwidth.

So, thats 3600 kb/min (3.6 mb/min) x 60 = 216 mb / hr

60 gig / 216mb = 300 gaming hours per month.

Nobody in the house games that much, because we aren’t losers, but we have a ps3, a wii and a 360 that get picked up on a decent basis.

I realize I am a worst-case scenario , a web designing, college-aged, technologically proficient, media user with a pension for movies and game , but come on now. All of the major companies are now testing this out (Time Warner’s is even worse apparently) and since my options are Time Warner, Att U-verse or Grande communications… Apparently I’m going to be looking into Grande.

(Verizon should be expanding soon, how about we all jump on the fi-os bandwagon)

Also note : I have no idea what the upload limits are because they aren’t advertised, but considering they are normally alot less than downloads, and I use a disproportionate upload amount compared to the regular non-designer, this could be even more problematic for me.

Personally, I’m a little ticked off Barack hasn’t fixed this already. I’ll keep you informed of my siege of ATT headquarters if this limit comes down anytime soon. A service already riddled with problems (absolutely terrible support, faulty equipment and crappy software) that is trying to gain some ground should probably not be limiting users…. just saying ATT…. just saying.

Whoever works at CNN should re-think these new ’super-technologies’ they have been using lately. You all know the giant lcd touchscreen map thing they show off all the time, most of the time with absolutely no purpose other than to let Anderson Cooper poke at it, but tonight they rolled out a new stupidness… the hologram interview.

Hopefully there will be better video of this in the morning but for now :

Also, I know that she’s not actually there in front of him, that tech isn’t here yet, so its just thrown into the shot, fine… which means Wolf is just talking to an open space of air in the studio. I want the “hologram” to break and see how foolish the whole set-up is.

Another pic I pulled from engadget :

It has also come to my attention that another major news network is rolling out the big guns: Ann Curry has been walking around a 3d- enviornment filled with fanciful graphs and statistics. Yes, I said that correct. A real life news reporter is walking around inside a fake, cgi room telling us about the election. I’m going back to reading the newspaper.

GREENMAN.

Just make sure to remember these :

and my reasons for why lubbock sucks (because we lost, and I can) : 

1. Who rips out seating sections (bleachers) when winning and at their home stadium? Not sure I understand that train of thought… but then again, you don’t go to tech to improve your thinking abilities. (2)

3. The smell. I thought it was blown out of proportion. A rumor of some sort. Erik and I had trouble breathing for the entire weekend. Seriously.

4. They just like to fulfill every redneck stereotype possible, it has to be part of the university’s motto or something. Guys going to levels of drunkeness where you wonder how they are alive, black face halloween costumes and the inability to win with style. Stay classy Austin, texas. 

5. Football is seriously the only thing in lubbock. THE ONLY THING. Oh, and some big windmills which are pretty cool. 

6. The stadium. How can you have only 54,000 seats at absolutely maxed out capacity? 

Thats it for now. I have to cut myself off. Self-censoring due to not knowing what might come out after a loss like that.

One last thing : shout out to Gideon (the guy who missed the INT possibility that would have won the game with 30 seconds left) Hes 18, a freshman, playing safety for the Texas Longhorns. You might remember a few huge hits he had against Oklahoma aganist guys with 100 pounds on him, he plays his heart out so cut him a break.

I’m not posting a game critique because it would stretch on for 50 pages, I’ll just be happy with the #4 BCS ranking for now I guess.

Last night I dreamt this : 

It’s 4pm on Saturday… I’ve been tailgating for a couple of hours outside the hideously small Tech stadium… somewhat sad I won’t be going to watch the game, but enough brewski’s down the drain to not care too much. Anyways, Erik and I approach the area where the teams unload as the buses pull up. The Tech team gets off the buses to a loud applause from the idiots in lubbock, but as the Texas pulls up the atmosphere gets decidedly uglier.

More than your normal boos, the lubbock faithful are degenerates yelling all sorts of phrases that I can’t repeat on this blog . Then Colt McCoy jumps off the bus, to the applause of the few Texas fans who could weasle their way to the front (I am one of them). It’s at this time some crazy lunatic fan from tech jumps out into the opening past the security wielding a knife lunging towards Colt. Those brewski’s I mentioned earlier kick in and I duck under the outstretched arms of the cop holding the crowd back, take two strong steps and leap off my  feet in a full on dive at the intruder. More than just hit him, I level him, put him in the air and disorient him enough to get away the knife. 

Will Muschamp picks me up off my feet and says nice hit and then Colt comes to say his thanks for saving his life. Apparently I got cut in the ruckus and need stitches. The thankful coaches get the trainers to do it for me so I go with the team to the locker room the whole team being thanked by various members of the team. Even Orakpo looks stunned by the quality of the hit…

So I get to hang with the team for a couple hours and Mack comes up to me and says I should be on the sideline for the game as some sort of good luck charm but that they don’t have any more sideline passes so I’m gonna have to wear a uniform and sit on the bench. This is terrible terrible news for me, but I reluctantly go along with it, it being the greatest moment of my life. I go all out with the uniform, pads, everything.

Texas is down at half. Graham Harrell is just too good and our defense is getting its secondary destroyed. We have lost two safeties already and there isn’t anyone left besides redshirts. Its a 21 point hole and the team is dejected. Coming out into the 2nd half no one thinks a win is possible. It’s then that Muschamp pulls me aside. He says “Can you recreate that hit from earlier?”…..

I then go on to rack up 4 sacks, and force a fumble that Orakpo runs in for a touchdown. After the last sack, the one that ends the game with a Texas victory, the Tech fans aren’t even mad because they have just seen the greatest athletic performance of all time, I receive a standing ovation.

And then I woke up to my dog licking my face.

Edit : Further reason to watch this video. 1 in 4 texas residents polled believes Obama is a muslim. REALLLY?!?! ….. No, wait…. REALLY?! Sad. Sad. Sad. 45% (yes, less than half) correctly identifed him as protestant.

This video is worth a gander. It is 27 minutes long though so be ready for it. This is the Barack “infomercial” you may have heard about. Really unprecedented media buying that went on to get this on the air. Prime-Time tv on CBS, NBC and Fox for about $1 million per network. It also ran on about 5 or 6 other smaller networks at a different time from the 8p/et time slot he bought up on those main 3.

Not like that really cuts into his overall money lead (700 million dollars which is Bush & Kerry 04 combined). I’m gonna go ahead and call the election, McCain is grasping at straws and Palin is aiming for 2012. Now, if someone could give me my $700 billion back already I would be happy.

It’s a pretty good video…