Maybe I rocked it a little too hard.

Looks like I got one of the defective Rock Band guitars. The strum bar on my fake guitar had been intermittently not registering up strums…now it doesn’t register them at all.

While playing Guitar Hero I never once used the up strum option. I only ever down strummed. I never really mastered the more difficult levels and never needed to alternate the strum for speed. For all I know, my Guitar Hero guitar also doesn’t have a functioning up strum.

In Rock Band, however, I’ve have been using the up strum. Partially because I’m getting better at playing fake guitar and need to alternate to handle the faster parts of some songs, but mostly because if you only use up strums while playing bass the game will label you as “Authentic Strummer.” Obviously this is a highly coveted title (it isn’t) and it gives the bass player a little meta-game to play.

EA has come right out and admitted that some of the release guitars are defective. They’ve made it incredibly simple to swap out the defective guitars for functioning ones. They two-day air ship you a new guitar. You put the defective guitar back in the shipping box and send it back to them. It doesn’t cost you a dime and it’s quick and convenient. So props to EA for manning-up to the situation and providing a quick fixing for it.

I have a tracking number to keep tabs on my new guitar. It appears that it hasn’t actually shipped yet though. I’ve read that there is a slight delay because EA is getting pounded by requests for replacements. This situation is being exacerbated by the fact that people without defected guitars are also putting in requests for replacements. Why you might ask? Right now it is not possible to buy a Rock Band guitar without buying the whole Rock Band bundle. Stand alone guitars are not going on sale until the end of January. If you want to play Rock Band with two Rock Band guitars (instead of using one Guitar Hero guitar) you pretty much have to buy a second bundle. Or you can claim your guitar is defective; in which case EA will send you a second guitar. If you don’t ship back your defective guitar they will charge you for it and you have effectively bought a second guitar two months ahead of the street date. Clever, huh?

Not really. I expect your karma will be damaged because you’ll be preventing someone without a single functioning guitar from getting one because you’re a greedy little prick. EA has started charging $125 for non-returned guitars, but in a world where people will pay double the street price on e-bay to get an item slightly before its street date, I’m not sure how effective the modest mark up will be.

I'm Only Happy When It Rains

This last weekend I finally got a chance to check out the new fancy-shmancy mall in research park, Bridge Street Town Centre.

First off, I believe I said something about how I dislike the name before… but I want to be thorough, so for the record, I dislike the name. I think the name is one word too long. Bridge Street Centre would have been an OK name or perhaps Bridge Town Centre. Bridge Street Town Centre sounds like just a collection of words having to do with civil engineering. (Oh I got one! Overpass Boulevard Hamlet Junction.)

The mall itself is very pleasant to walk around, albeit still a bit sparse on actual shops. Dawn harbors deep philosophical objections towards outdoor malls in general, whereas I kind of like them. We were there on a cold and dreary day. Dawn used the weather as her case in point, who wants to shop in cold rain? To her the outdoor mall concept is fatally flawed unless you live in San Diego. Getting to shop in nice weather two days a year does not outweigh the fact that shopping will be bitterly cold in the winter and oppressively hot in the summer. From a practical perspective I have to agree with her; however I still find outdoor malls to be a bit more elegant than indoor malls. On the day in question I was perfectly content to shop in the cold rain. In fact, I think I preferred shopping in the cold rain.

First off, it wasn’t really raining…..it was just a cold mist. It’s not like there was any appreciable precipitation going on. Secondly, I like wearing winter wear. My wool overcoat, a bright scarf, my Irish wool hat…what’s not to like making the winter fashion scene? Thirdly, and most importantly, the cold rain kept everyone else away. We basically had the mall to ourselves. If the weather had been nice who knows how many other people might have been crowded in there.

We poked our heads into the few shops that actually managed to open in November. They seemed nice enough, but not appreciably different from shops in any other mall. The cobblestone streets and atmosphere of the mall are very well crafted. Dawn said it best when she pointed out that they successfully created a faux-village feel in much the same way that Paris Las Vegas created a faux village feel. This is to say that it may not be authentic European village shopping but it sure is idyllic.

While there we tried one of the few restaurants that have actually managed to open. (There are a number of restaurants slated to open and I think they will be a big draw for the mall once it is a fully operational battle station.) The place we tried was called Biscuits & Blues. Considering the pains the mall as a whole has gone through to construct it’s idyllic atmosphere the owner of Biscuits & Blues should be dragged to the banks of the fake mall lake (with gondola rides!) and drowned.

The food is Cajun themed…or is it Creole themed? I always get them confused. I know using them interchangeably offends some people from Louisiana…I mean no offense. I ordered a bowl of seafood gumbo which was decent enough; I would consider ordering it again. I feel it bears mention that my gumbo did not come with a biscuit. Dawn ordered a shrimp po-boy. I thought her shrimp were a bit salty, but again, the dish was a reasonable facsimile of the original. The po-boy was also not accompanied by a biscuit. In fact upon inspecting the menu it seemed decidedly sparse on biscuits. Biscuits were only mentioned once, buried about ¾ of the way through the menu as one of many side items. So Biscuits & Blues is not really a biscuit-y place.

How does it rate on the blues theme element? Well the walls are decorated with photos of famous blues musicians….oh wait. No. That’s what they should have been decorated with. Instead they were decorated with a collage of stills from movies. Famous movies? Uh, does Angelina Jolie from Beowulf count? How about Anakin Skywalker from one of the new Star Wars? I think any of the musicians that were on the walls were mostly there because someone made a movie about them… So not much on the visual blues theme element (for the record there were absolutely no photos of biscuits on the walls either).

How about the sound? Well, the only sound that accompanied our meal was the incessant droning of their soft drink machine. That was one loud drink machine. There was NO blues music playing. None. How much of a no brainer is it to play blues music if you’re restaurant has blues in the name? I feel it safe to say that as a themed eatery the Biscuits & Blues is a travesty.

I feel like I’ve harped on the mall enough for the time being. I am looking forward to trying out the new movie theater there though. It has two bars and a section you have to be at least 21 to sit in because you can drink while you watch movies. Looks like we just added a new weapon to our arsenal to make Michael Bay and Jerry Bruckheimer movies more bearable.

It's not the knife, it's the network.

This is intolerable, I’ll sue you! Well I won’t sue you…but you’ve not heard the last of me. You know what, I LOVE that idea. I’m totally into this, big time.

Such are the wild mood swings of Verizon. Like a depraved unstable 300 pound linebacker with a switchblade it takes turns threatening everyone in the room: the government, other carriers, its customers and anyone who happens to draw its attention. However it looks like the terrible fog that has long clouded its judgment might finally be lifting.

Was it just this last September that Verizon was threatening to sue the government over open access rules to the 700 MHz spectrum auction? Wow, how time flies. Since then Verizon has pulled its law suit, and then yesterday, Verizon goes ahead and announces that they are adopting an open access policy. A skeptic might conclude that they are only converting over to open access because they realized that their hand was being forced. However, an unenthusiastic carrier wouldn’t have to allow open access until around 2011 and even then only on devices operating on the 700 MHz spectrum. Verizon announced that it would open its entire network to any device in 2008.

The nitty-gritty details won’t be announced until early next year when Verizon releases the technical standards for connecting to their network. On its face, it appears that a would-be developer only needs to meet the proper network connectivity procedures (whatever they may be). Verizon claims it won’t care who makes the device, what it’s for, or what software it runs. Devices will have to be sent to a Verizon Certification Lab which will verify that the device connects to the network correctly, but Verizon is vowing that the Certification Lab won’t be an obstacle to access. According to this article:

“One Verizon exec went so far as to say that if someone builds a device in their basement on a breadboard, Verizon will test it and activate it.”

That sounds pretty awesome to me. I use VerizonWireless because I’ve been very happy with their coverage, but I’ve been less than impressed with their choice of devices. Does this mean that phones with sim cards might finally come to Verizon? I certainly hope so. I’ve never understood why Verizon makes it such a pain to migrate phone numbers and contact information from one device to another. (I’m sure it has nothing to do with the $25 charge to do it for you).

This also opens the way for devices that sport Google’s new Android platform to come to Verizon. Actually this opens the way for devices that aren’t even phones but still need wireless connectivity to come to Verizon….and who knows what cool things those gadgets will do! (Even though I don’t know what they are I still feel a powerful desire to possess them).

It’s a nice change of pace to actually be able to praise my wireless carrier for doing something that seems to serve my best interest. Perhaps Verizon will respond well to the positive attention and keep up the good work.

The Hungry and the Fed

Rock Band aside, Thanksgiving the Feast, was a huge success. Dawn’s meticulous planning of the event and ample preparation paid off. How many people do you know who have their feast inputted and organized in Excel? We’re those kinds of people. A quick rundown of what was on the table: a ham, a turkey, scalloped corn, mash potatoes (pure and uncut), chipotle mashed sweet potato, roasted fennel, corn bread stuffing, port cranberry sauce, gravy for the turkey, a dipping sauce for the ham, bourbon pecan pie, pumpkin tiramisu, chocolate cranberry tart (minus the chocolate crust), wassail, red wine, port, and of course, water. It was a feast indeed. We ate all we could and after completely gorging ourselves we hardly made a dent in the offering.

One of the (many) things I found enjoyable about the holiday is getting the chance to actually do some cooking. Grad school has reduced that amount of recreational cooking I’ve been able to do. Truth be told, I was a bit tired of cooking towards the end of the Thanksgiving proper, but I quickly recovered. With ample leftovers there wasn’t much need for cooking the following couple of days… however Saturday morning breakfast stands out vividly in my memory.

It started with a bait and switch. I had made promises of meat-muffin French toast to our guest….but due to a shortage of eggs I was unable to deliver. The egg shortage is an interesting digression in its own right. It’s not that we didn’t plan for the dish and failed to buy the appropriate number of eggs. Our planning was impeccable. Our crime was exactly planning out the number of eggs that we would need…down to the egg. What we had not foreseen is my development of superhuman eggs cracking strength on Thanksgiving Day. For some unknown reason on Thanksgiving I would go to crack an egg on the counter……and smash the egg on the counter instead. Shells everywhere, palm covered in exploded yolk, smashed. Up until Thanksgiving Day I’ve never done this before in my life. I did it multiple times that day.

So on Saturday morning we were down to just two eggs. Not enough for meat-muffin French toast. I made an offer of grits, sausage, and a fried egg (one for Dawn and one for our guest) in its place. This is where I got to see Dawn magnificent brain leap into action. I’ve long suspected what Dawn spends her idle time thinking about….suspicious confirmed. Dawn immediately responded “Can I have a fried egg on top of my grits with sausage poking out?” I asked “what, like Stonehenge?” Her face lights up. “YES.”

So I go about making a new breakfast concoction, Grits and Sausage Stonehenge. In the next room I hear some discussion on whether the egg is a sacrifice in the center of the ring of sausage or whether it is an altar. Because the breakfast sounded a bit too healthy after our previous days of gorging I offered to level up the grits to cheesy grits. This offer was enthusiastically accepted. In the end my creation didn’t look much like Stonehenge. Due to number of sausages used and the slope of the sides of the bowl it looked more like a sausage hand reaching skyward. It was speculated that a sausage man had drowned in a pile of “quick-grits.” Still it was warmly received and consequently devoured.

Rocking Out on Tryptophan

Real life bruises, blisters and mangled joints? Man this is an awesome video game. Naturally I’m talking about Rock Band. The juggernaut of rhythm based games was released just before Thanksgiving and Dawn and I procured a copy to try it out over the holiday. Verdict: awesome.

Rock Band supports up to four simultaneous players: lead guitar, bass guitar, drummer, and singer. Since the two guitar positions are essentially the same (skill wise) the game has three unique stations. The guitar station will be super familiar to anyone who has played any of the Guitar Hero games.

The singer station is essentially a karaoke station. The game has a pitch meter that tells you if you’re singing the correct note, but it doesn’t care what octave the note is in or if you’re even singing the correct word. This is a very good thing. For a serious player it means if they do not possess the vocal range a song was originally sung in they can just move the notes up or down an octave and still sing along. For the poor singer (i.e. me) who habitually doesn’t know the words to songs and only possess a monotone voice…..it means you can repeat “roo roo roo” over and over again while you struggle to produce some tonal variety that may please the game.

The drumming station was implemented way more successfully than I expected. It consists of four drums and a kick drum. The game comes with real wooden drum sticks and you’re actually able to wail away on the drums in a forceful and satisfying manner. I’ve read that on expert mode you’re essentially executing the drum lines from the various songs; meaning that the game is actually teaching you how to be a real life drummer. I wouldn’t know anything about that because I can’t handle anything past easy on the drums. Evidently maintaining steady rhythm and dealing with a variety of inputs is not something I’m well equipped to handle.

Apart from the individual stations, where the game really succeeds is fostering a sense of camaraderie between the players. Everyone needs to play their part and work together in order to finish the song. If one band member is struggling other members who are performing stronger can help the struggling player reestablish their part through the familiar “star power” mechanic.

The other amazing thing about the game is it’s able to entertain for hours and hours on end. I logged way more hours than I’m comfortable admitting to over the holiday. But since the game is social in nature, Dawn and my friends are also guilty of logging hours and hours in.

Finally, if you do end up playing the game for a 6-10 hour stretch you should probably expect some real-world wear and tear. Dawn, who is an awesome little drummer-monkey, started to develop drummer blisters and a sore knee from her constant percussion onslaught. Evidently when I play fake guitar I find it imperative to lock my right leg and put all the weight on my right hip. By Saturday night my right hip was very sore…. I was sore from playing a video game. I don’t think I’ve ever felt that old before. Fortunately the cure was fairly simple. It involved simply putting the fake-guitar down and going for a walk to exercise out the hip.

That explains why your show is crap...

I found this interesting tidbit of an article while I was doing some Project Runway research yesterday. It’s a synopsis of an appearance that Tim Gunn made for his book ‘Tim Gunn’s Guide to Style’ at the Baltimore Book Festival.

One of the things Tim mentions is the fact that Bravo wanted to give him a TV Show….but had no idea what that show would be. When Bravo found out that he was working on a book they pounced on the project as a catalyst for his show. So surprise, surprise, his show wasn’t conceived as an idea for interesting and captivating television but was a book idea twisted into a TV show just to make a TV show happen. Who would have thunk?

Actually the most recent episode of his show wasn’t as awful as some of the earlier ones. I suppose there is still hope that the show may evolve into an interesting format over time. They ditched the cheap and contrived “it’s a surprise” element…. Now they just need to ditch the “here’s a twenty minute interaction with a pseudo-celebrity that will be a life transforming experience” element.

At the appearance Tim also went on to talk about this season of Project Runway, namely the judges. I’ll let Tim take it away. Don’t worry there are no spoilers…unless you consider the fact that a male designer wins one of the challenges to be a serious spoiler.

"If I'm correct, I think you're going to get angry every time you see the show. You're going to get angry at the judges because... I don't know what they were smoking this season."

“"There was one case in particular where I said to the producers [...] 'It's really too bad that so-and-so's design is so terrible, because the audience will know right away. The minute they see this, they're going to know that he's going home. And I'm just sorry that something else isn't almost as bad, almost as challenged. Everything else looks really good!... He wins the challenge. He wins! It's inconceivable. So I went backstage to tell the designer who was out that he or she had to go home, and I turned to him and I said, 'And you know, I'm stunned and shocked that you won this challenge' and he said, 'Well, no one's more surprised than I am.'"

Project Nap-a-way

I’m still having trouble making up my mind about Project Runway. None of the contestants seem to resonate with me the way Daniel V did in season two (Daniel you were robbed). Part of the problem might be that none of the contestant were able to leave any impression what-so-ever because I was semi-conscious at best during the first show. Last week was a brutal week, and I fell asleep during the Project Runway premier. I woke up right after the show ended and we rewound the PVR so I could watch the runway judging…but once you’ve started nodding off there is not a lot of clarity left in the subsequent memories.

To make up for my sleepy indiscretion I’ve looked at the outfit photos on the Bravo website… going by the finished product of the first challenge I’m leaning towards either Kevin or Carmen. I like the idea of Kevin’s dress. I really like the top half of it. I like the choice in fabrics and the fit. I’m not as fond of the skirt though. It’s a bit short. I think he was going for fun….but I wish he had gone for sophisticated. A little more length and a little less flare out would have made this outfit. The dress seems to be very finished and well constructed; no unhemmed or fraying edges.

To be honest, I don’t particularly care for Carmen’s outfit. It’s a little too modern-day genie in a bottle for me…but I like a lot of elements about the outfit. I like that she made a top, a vest, and pants. That’s three pieces. I think that shows good time management and an ability to produce a lot of work in a little time. I like that the outfit is fitted. (I hate baby-doll dresses and sacks of fabrics- you hear me Sweet P and Victorya?) I also think Carmen did the best job with hair and accessories. The model looks like she’s wearing a finished look.

If I were blind and just listening to the show (and I probably did more listening than focusing my vision on the TV) then I would probably be trying to decide between Christian and Rami. That’s because of the comments that judges gave both of them. There were singled out for “really thinking about the outfit” having “attention to detail” and “good construction.” Those are the sorts of compliments that final three contests get.

I think it will take another episode until I’m really ready to select my pony and secret pony. At least now I have a short list of people to keep an eye on.