Bones (the TV Show)

A friend of mine told me about Bones and so I watched the first 3 seasons on DVD over the past few weeks. I really liked the show until I got to the last episode of Season 3, "The Pain in the Heart"

First, the whole opening with Booth's funeral and him faking his death to catch some bad guy we'd never seen before? I wanted to see more of what happened between the end of the last episode where he got shot and him "dying" - wouldn't Brennan have been with him at the hospital? How long was he in the hospital before he "died" - how bad was the actual gun shot? He seemed pretty well healed.

Then, with Zach turning out to be Gormagon's apprentice. That in and of itself didn't bother me too much, but what did bother me was, since Zach blew off his hands, who stole the silver skeleton? In a previous episode where Booth is chasing the person who initially came after the politician we see that person take the motorcycle helmet off and its a woman - not Zach and not the creepy guy the find / kill at the end. So what about her? And the whole way that episode ended with Zach "knowing" how to find the guy, etc. I found very hard to believe although I can understand they just wanted to wrap up that story line. However, another question I have is - why did Hodgins pump up Zachs pain meds when Zach was, in theory, about to reveal some clue? I know it was to make Hodgins look guilty at the time but since he wasn't the bad guy, why did Hodgins do it? Are they trying to set up that Hodgins was also the Gormagon's apprentice - he stole the skeleton and Zach was going to give him up? Is Zach covering for Hodgins who really is the apprentice?

I'm really torn about the show and whether I should continue watching it. Does the show recover from this episode? Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Pandigital Novel - Revisited

I stopped at a Bed, Bath and Beyond near my office yesterday to check out the Pandigital Novel. It turns out they had it in stock and it was only $169 minus a $50 mail in rebate so I bought it. The device is pretty neat - although its smaller than I thought it would be, and a little bit heavy for its size. But overall, I like it (so far). Tonight I'm planning to follow the instructions to change the home screen so I can run other apps that I install on the device. What I really want to figure out how to do is install Android Market on the device so I can more easily download apps for it.At some point I may also try to "root" the device and put a clean install of Android 2.2 on it so I'll keep you posted as I do that.

Android Goodness

I finally got a new cell phone. The HTV EVO 4G from Sprint and I LOVE IT. I had been an AT&T customer since 2001 but they don't have any good Android phones available. I'm sure this is because of their relationship with Apple. AT&T most likely doesn't want to compete with itself / Apple by selling robust Android phones.

This phone is the coolest "toy" I've ever owned. Sure, it works as a phone, which is, I guess, why I bought it. But with the Android OS I can download various apps to occupy myself when I'm commuting to and from work (about 30 mins on the subway each way.) Right now I'm addicted to a crossword puzzle app.

I also learned that Pandigital finally released the Novel eReader and someone has hacked it to run a different "Welcome" screen so you can install all the apps from the Android market onto the device. I'm thinking about checking that out since its only $150. My crossword puzzle apple on a bigger screen would be great.

Inter-League Play

The second week of baseball's inter-league play is about to begin and I wanted to take some time to discuss the problems I have with it. Although I'm sure that many people enjoy the annual Mets/Yankees series and I understand, on some level, baseball's hope of driving up interest in the sports  through cross town rivalries where applicable,. However, by insisting that the Yanks and the Mets play every year, (or the Cubs and Whitesox, etc.) baseball is doing a disservice to both fans and teams.

I think the best approach to inter-league play would be to have it go on all year round - just schedule inter-league games as part of the regular schedule. Since there are an uneven number of teams in the NL vs the AL some teams play non inter-league games while everyone else is playing inter-league. Along with the change of when the games are scheduled, stop with some teams playing each other every year. Simplify the process by saying that in "year 1", the NL East plays the AL East, NL Central plays the AL Central and the NL West plays the AL West. In year 2 thigns rotate, NL E vs AL C,  NL C vs AL W, NL W vs AL E, year 3 the NL E plays NL W, NL C plays AL E and NL W plays AL C. That way, the "intercity" rivalries would only take place once every three years and that would give fans time to trash talk and build excitement and anticipation.

This configuration would also take away the inequity of certain teams always playing generally better teams (such as the Mets vs the Yanks).

Pandigital Novel - Color eReader.. FAIL

I first read about the Pandigital Novel a few weeks ago and was very excited about it as a potential "all in one" (minus the cell phone) device that I would be interested in. However, the product has so far been a big bust on multiple levels.

Pandigital inexplicably decided to sell the unit exclusively at Kohls for the first 30 days of the products release. Kohls?!? Isn't that a clothing store? Although it turns out that Kohls does offer electronics on their website, I am very much a touch and feel kind of guy who wants to experience the device before making a purchasing decision. I was originally told by Pandigital (via e-mail) that the release date for the device was Friday, June 4, 2010 so on Saturday the 5th I excitedly called the two Kohls that were within reasonable distance to my house to inquire about the availability of the device. The people with whom I spoke at both stores were utterly clueless -- they had no idea what I was talking about. In fact, one employee said to me "we don't really sell those kind of things." and so I thought, ok, perhaps that particular store doesn't have an electronics sections, so I asked the employee if they knew of another Kohls that did, in fact, sell electronics, to which, after a short pause, I recieved the reply "we don't really sell those kind of things." There is a Kohls about 20 miles from my house and so I convinced my wife to take a short drive with me to the store to check out if they had the device. Predictably, they didn't.

Earlier this week, as I continued to scour the web for information about the device I saw it appear and disappear from Kohls website. Originally it was listed at $259 even though all the press releases indicated the MSRP on the device was $199. Eventually it was listed on Kohls site for $179, however, with a message "This device is no longer available." JC Penny also had the device listed, at $249, but not available until 6/23/2010. Further daily research allowed me to learn that the device, having not even been made available, had been RECALLED due to a software glitch. I did find a firmware upgrade for the device available on Pandigital's website and apparently Pandigital has dispatched a crew of techs to their nearest Kohls to perform the software upgrade on the devices so they can be put back on the shelves. (Or perhaps, just put on the shelves to begin with.)

Anyway, all of this has strongly decreased my interest in this device as it appears to be of limited availability and it has issues from the get go. The only possible reason to purchase one right now would be to take advantage of a 30% discount offer that Kohls has along with the low price of $179 meaning I could get it for about $125 plus tax.

The Big Smoke, Foxwoods

I went to Foxwoods in Connecticut this weekend for the Big Smoke. I had a blast. The venue at Foxwoods was a huge ball room and there were nearly 30 cigar makers represented as well as at least another dozen (if not more) liquor vendors. They had every kind of cigar you could imagine and a variety of beverages -- vodka, whiskey, tequilla, rum and brandy. Needless to say, I drank too much but I didn't have to drive anywhere (thanks to my wife!) and so it was all good. There were probably about 800 people and the nice thing about a show like this is the built in camaraderie --  everyone there is a cigar smoker and so you now you have something to talk about while you are waiting online for a cigar or sitting at a table enjoying some food. And of course, on top of the common ground of cigars you usually find other things in common to talk about.

The show is a little pricey -- $240 -- but I came home with 24 cigars (including the 3 I smoked on that night) and those cigars are probably worth something between $100 - $120 and I drank a lot of the "free" liquor so I feel confident I enjoyed another $100 worth of alcohol.

As I smoke the cigars from the show I will post to the blog about the cigar and my thoughts on how it tasted, smoked, etc.

Late Thoughts on My Wedding

A friend of mine recently got married and I was speaking with her about her experience with her wedding and it prompted me to write this blog post.

When my wife and I first got engaged we originally thought we could pull off planning the wedding in about four months and then felt that was totally overwhelming and so we pushed it out a year from our original date so we had 16 months. That was much less stressful! Although I think the "perfect" amount of time would have been around 9 - 10 months.

We originally planned to invite about 50 people but that number slowly grew closer to 75. We ended up with about 70 people attending because the invite listed was tweaked and some people RSVP'ed "+1" even though we didn't invite them with a guest. Fortunately no one showed up with a guest (or multiple guests!) that we did not know about ahead of time. We also sent out "backup" invites to people we didn't originally invite but decided we could once we had a certain number of "No"s from our first set of invites.

On some level I wish we had invited fewer people - but I think in the end we wouldn't have gotten to spend any more time with our guests; the wedding was no stop movement from one thing to the next including a pass through the dining room to say hello to everyone.

Although we didn't have any issues with family fights, we did know there were people coming to the wedding whose point of views on life (politics, religion, etc.) wouldn't mesh and so we made sure to seat them as far away from each other as possible.

Finally, we knew going in we wouldn't be able to control everything on the big day and there were things that went wrong, like the programs arriving to the ceremony late and so everyone was sitting around wondering why we hadn't started. Or our dog being fixated on the horses and not wanting to walk down the isle! But all in all it was a great day and we had lots of fun both planning and participating in the wedding.

Wall Street Journal Wine

My wife and I signed up a while ago for the Wall Street Journal Wine Club (http://www.wsjwine.com). So far we've been quite pleased with the wines we have received. Its really a great deal - $140 for a case of wine, which comes out to less than $12 a bottle. We've really liked most of the wines we've received and its a nice opportunity to try out wines we would not otherwise be exposed too. Prior to joining this wine club we were buying wine "as needed" from the local liquor store - and I fully believe in supporting local retail stores - but we were paying anywhere from $14 - $18 a bottle. Whats nice about the wine club as well is that we get a case every three months and that's about how long it takes us to go  through 12 bottles of wine. Of course, during certain times of the year we drink more wine, especially around the holidays when we have friends over, etc. but overall its a great value and a good way to enjoy new wines regularly.

Great Cigar Deal

I recently got an e-mail from Cigars International with a great promotional offer - a box of 20 Pioneer Valley maduros for $24.99 plus $5.00 S & H. According to the website this box of 20 usually sells for $110 plus shipping so the offer was 20 cigars for $1.50 a stick including shipping as opposed to $5.50 a stick plus shipping.

I'm usually a little hesitant to buy "cheap" cigars because I figure they are cheap for a reason -- either they just aren't very good cigars and / or they have defects and won't draft well, etc. However, this deal literally was too good to pass up and so I took the plunge.

I received the cigars yesterday and smoked one last night. I was quite pleasantly surprised at what a nice smooth cigar I had bought! The cigars same in a beautiful wooden box that I will use for something else after the cigars are gone. They cigars also came wrapped in a thin cedar wrapper as well as the more typical plastic wrap. They smelled great out of the box and when I lit the first one it drafted nicely and lit quite easily. I smoked the cigar slowly while enjoying a movie and a good glass of red wine. The taste of the cigar was smooth and consistent throughout enabling me to smoke it down to a nub.

I highly recommend these cigars -- even at $5.50 a stick! 

A Perfect Game

I'm sure any of you who read this blog and follow sports - or follow baseball at least, are aware that Dallas Braden of the Oakland A's pitched a perfect game yesterday against the Tampa Bay Rays. I was trying to explain to my non-baseball fan wife how amazing and rare a perfect game is -- but she didn't seem to get it. Even when I told her that, in the history of Major League Baseball, there have been only 19 perfect games. Of course, as a long suffering Mets fan, I'm waiting for a Mets pitcher to throw a no-hitter! The Mets franchise has played over 7500 games without a no hitter. But several ex-Met pitchers have thrown no-hitters after leaving the Mets: Nolan Ryan, Dwight Gooden, David Cone, Tom Seaver. I'm sure there are others that I'm forgetting.

We Won!

I play on a company softball team and we had our first game yesterday and we won, 13-6. I'm very excited because I played in a touch football league this past winter and my team went 1-12 and our only win was a forfeit so playing a sport - ANY sport and getting a good old fashion "W" is very exciting. I went 0-4 but made some good defensive plays so I feel that I contributed well to our team's victory and I look forward to a fun softball season!

Old School Baseball

There is a great article on ESPN.COM today regarding the "unwritten rules" of baseball and how those rules are enforced. (http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/columns/story?columnist=crasnick_jerry&page=starting9/100505). I'm not that old but I'm a fan of old school baseball. When guys stand and watch a home run they should get plunked the next time they bat. Guys like Barry Bonds totally annoyed me because he wore all this gear on his arms when he batted. That stuff should be outlawed. If guys don't want to get hurt at the plate then don't crowd the plate (Jeff Bagwell!) and don't admire your home runs (Bonds, among many others!) Of course in today's game guys will charge the mound which is BS too. If you get hit, and you think its intentional, chances are you or one of your teammates did something to provoke it. If so, deal with it like a man. And if not, your team will have a chance to retaliate and then things should end.

The All-In-One Device I Want

I really think the iPad is a cool looking device. There are a few drawbacks with the iPad though, at least for me. First, it doesn't have a USB connection. I am a PC user not a Mac user and I have a large music collection I want to transfer to my music playing device. With the iPad I'm not sure how I would be able to do that - if at all. I'm certainly not buying from iTunes all the music I already own on CD form. I guess that I could but the "dock" to go with the iPad but I shouldn't need to purchase  an accessory like that to connect the device to my PC.Secondly, storage on the iPad is an issue (or would be if I could put all my music on it.) I have almost 40gb of MP3s and the cost of a 64gb iPad is prohibitive. (Currently $699 for the 64gb non-3G version). Third, I don't like the "locked" nature of the Apple hardware. I'm a developer, a tinkerer, etc. I want to be able to play around with my device - add apps I build to it, etc. without "jail breaking" and thus void the warranty. Its my device - I want to do what I want with it! And along those lines, I want to see the entire web - the lack of Flash really bothers me as, again, I feel like Apple is telling me whats "good" or "bad". Let me decide! Finally, I wish the 3G version could be used as a cell phone -- that way the device would be a true "all in one" for me - cell phone, MP3 player, eBook reader, light web surfing. Perfect.. except its not so. And so my search continues for "my" perfect all-in-one device.

I was excited for a time about the Touch Book from Always Innovating but there stated "two month" order fulfillment time appears to be more like five months based on  comments on their online message boards. The proposed HP Slate interested me a bit, but it was vaporware and now has been scraped. Even so, I wasn't excited about a device running any version of Windows. I really would like a device running Android or some version of Linux with touch screen capabilities. Another product I've just learned about is the WePad by a German company but that is not yet available and is even more expensive than the iPad.

One of these days I hope to find my perfect "All In One" device but if anyone out there has a device they like let me know about it!

Welcome to My Blog

Hi! Thanks for tuning in. I have stopped and started various blogs over the past few years but this time I hope to finally post regularly. The thing is, however, WHAT to post about. A friend suggested that I pick a topic I really enjoy talking and learning about and write about that. But there are many topics that could apply -- sports would be the top of the list, but I feel as though there are tons of sports blogs out there. Computers -- and computer programming -- is another topic of interest as that is what I do for a living. However, again, that is a topic of which there seems to be a million blogs about. Then there is photography, but I haven't been as much into that as I once was; writing, which is partly why I've decided to once again start a blog; cooking, wine and cigars are also topics of interest. So what I've decided to do instead is just write about ALL the stuff that interests me and I'll tag my posts appropriately.