Do I eat this or put it on my face? My back hurts?

So it was an interesting weekend. We got a load of freezing rain on Saturdy so everything was covered in a nice coat of slippery ice Sunday. I perfomed a triple back sommersault with a twist down the stairs but I completely messed up the landing. The Chinese judge wasn't impressed and scored a 7.5. It's OK, though. My back broke my fall and is feeling awesome right now. Which is to say it hurts. A lot.

Unfortunately it's not helping with exercising. I'm trying to get down to 250 by the end of the year and I seem to be gaining weight despite eating better and exercising. I know it fluctuates and I could check right now and be 3 pounds under where I was this morning but it's still depressing.

Speaking of dieting, The Daily Plate and Traineo are helping me track my calorie intake. It's working out pretty well except I have to create every meal for the first time because we made it from raw ingredients. Hopefully the weight starts going down soon. I'm also using Joe's Goals for some of the more basic tasks I want to improve upon, like brushing teeth, reading to the girls before bed, etc.

I managed to catch parts of all 4 NFL playoff games but not any whole one. I'm pissed that I fell asleep during the Indy - S.D. game, sounds like it was exciting. I did manage to watch most of the Fiesta Bowl last night. Surprisingly Texas did not wipe Ohio State off the map. This was actually one of the more compelling bowl games this year. It was back and forth all the way with Texas shredding the Buckeyes defense in the last 2 minutes to win the game.

If I do have one gripe about college football, it's the bands. I understand it's tradition and all that, but first of all, the Texas band's uniforms are just silly looking. I get that Texas was primarily known for ranching and stuff, but they look like cheap ass Howdy Doody knockoffs. Secondly, is it really necessary for the bands to play their drums everytime a first down is made, or it's late in the game, or it's 3rd down, 4th down, the coach is yelling, end of the quarter, etc. It's irritating. The sound board guy needs to turn that crap down because it's distracting me from the game. And you, Ohio State, look like a bunch of re-re's dressed like white Black Panthers. Black isn't even on of the football team's uniform colors. Also, why is Texas, dressed like idiot cowboys, playing Led Zeppelin? THAT. DOES NOT. MAKE. SENSE!

We also went out and got Singstar for PS3. It's not too bad. Essentially instead of rendering your character rocking out like Guitar Hero or Rockband, they play the music video with the notes overlaid on top. I prefer Rock Band because the words match up more closely with the notes like so (it's hard to see but it's at the top):

vs. Singstar

Also in each games there are sections where it judges you on speaking the words (mostly rap songs). Rock Band isn't as strict on this. "Epic" by Faith No More is in both games and in Rock Band I can get 100% on Easy, in Singstar the rapping part of the verses grades me as awful on Easy. Rock Band 2 is supposed to have even better recognition. I can't wait to get my hands on that. They have "Master Exploder" by Tenacious D on there. I would rule that song ! :)

The good things about Singstar are that:

-You can load songs from any of the other Singstar games, many of which are sitting at Gamestop used for $15-20. (You can do this with Rock Band as well, but the discs cost more)

-People can upload videos of themselves performing. This is mostly for your amusement, not for your use, because people will laugh at you if you do it :)

-The downloadable content is slightly cheaper, however it's limited to a lot of Sony's artists and personally there's nothing I'm too crazy about, but there's about 450 songs for download right now vs. 100 something for Rock Band

Anyways, that's been keeping Pam and I busy, so yes I still haven't tried out Home yet. It's on my to-do list for the weekend. I'm hoping by then I may have all the trophies in Fallout 3 and then can concentrate on something else.

Well, duty calls, so I'm off to say the day!

Hack the planet, errr your life I mean

Finally, I can make a technology post without bitching about my life :)

I've recently been introduced to the blog Lifehacker (http://www.lifehacker.com/). It's been around for a while, but I'm almost always the last to find out about anything cool. They usually feature some really nice freeware that you can use to better organize your life and computer, in addition to practical tips (such as physical ways to organize your desk better). They've made me aware of a few decent productivity sites.

One of them that I'm definitely liking is Remember the Milk (http://www.rememberthemilk.com/). Essentially it's an online task manager that you can use for free to create tasks, group them together, assign due dates, tag them, and even pin them on a map so you can group them by location. I'm using it to get a head start on 2009's resolution to be more organized.

So far it's working out pretty good. I've used it to plan out finishing the bathroom, as well as other stuff that I want to do (games to finish, books to read, etc) as well as any projects that I might have for work. If you want to get organized with tasks and don't want it tied to just one computer like on a standalone mail app (outlook, etc.), I recommend this site.

Evernote (www.evernote.com) is supposed to be another good site as far as organizing notes but I haven't tried it yet (mainly because it's a blocked site at work). The cool thing about that is that you can take a picture (even from your cell phone) and then upload it or text it to the site. It then saves the picture and you can search the text in there or convert it to words.

Jott (www.jott.com) is another interesting site. How it works is that you sign up and link your cell phone to your account. You can then call their number and use voice activation to leave a voice note for yourself on the website or you can use it to vocally post to Twitter, Facebook, Blogger, etc. The free version will only allow for 15 second messages that are only for your own use (that is, you can't send them or text to anyone else). The paid version allows you to send outbound texts from your voice among allowing you to interact with Remember the Milk and a bunch of other sites. The only downfall of the free version is that (as of yet) I have not figured out how to RETRIEVE your notes on the go in audio. You can set up a text reminder, but if your message is more than 160 characters when transcribed you won't get the text. Plans start at $4/month or $40/year, but I don't quite see enough value in it to justify it. I mean if I can set my notes while not at a computer, I want to be able to get to them as well. That's on top of the fact that I don't have much for spare cash at this point in the year.

I'm actually kind of working on being a completely legit software user in the next year. By legit I mean all legally purchased or GPL licensed software. I don't know if I'll really be able to pull that off as I use a few important pieces of software that I haven't found an adequate replacement for. Yeah, I know I'm naughty. I'm a naughty ninja pirate robot monkey vampire god!

"I think they should allow it [Prop 8] although I think they're cowards. Marrying a man is easy, women do it all the time, how hard can it be? It's marrying a woman that's the hard part" Tommy Blaze on gay marriage (heard on the Bob and Tom show)