Facebook

Being employed in the tech industry, you would think I would have embraced the latest fads in social networking, but up until recently I've resisted joining any of them. I just didn't see the appeal, nor did I really want to go through the hassle of signing up to a service that could potentially spam my mailbox or have access to my personal information.

My sister Angie gave me the the push to join Facebook so that we could qualify to get free tickets to a horror movie. I joined thinking I would drop it after a month, but I ended up keeping my account. I got in touch with some old high school friends as well as a cousin on my dad's side that I haven't talked to in years.

Dave recently joined, and Kruddler has been a member for a while so that only leaves Rob. For those with privacy concerns I found this security article from Ars Technica which goes over the settings needed to keep your information as secure as possible.

If you're a fan of The Office like I am, you should enjoy this video clip about "Book Face".

MacWorld or Bust

Yep, if you can believe it, I'm going to MacWorld 2010 next month! I know what you might be thinking, Apple isn't going to be there and they already announced the iPad so what's the point. Well I'm actually going for Apple training for work purposes.

It's actually a good deal, instead of paying for $1500 per class I get to choose between all these sessions in the MacIT Conference track for around $750 using the Leo Laporte discount.

To be honest I really wasn't planning on going (on what could be the very last one) but I kept hearing it being promoted on MacBreak Weekly and thought it would fun to see Leo and the gang. There's going to be a TWiT gathering at the Marriott that I might consider attending as well.

The only bummer is that this trip is going to remind me of brother Rob and the fun times we had at MacWorld 2007 when the iPhone was introduced.

iDevice Rumors

Well, even though the age of MacWorld is over, as far as Apple is concerned, the big announcements are still bigger than ever and with that so are the rumors!

Things are really heating up! There is a rumored Apple announcement for later this month, but is that all it is, a rumor? And what of the rumored announcement itself? Well of course it's about the tablet! Will it be a new OS also? A more robust version of the iPhone OS? Mac OS? And what of the rumor it may also have a stylus?! Stevo can't really include that one, but who knows? Maybe his dislike of stylus' has diminished?

In any case, we'll see soon enough if the rumored announcement is true or just a rumor and if the rumored tablet is the object of the announcement! What else could it be?!

Watch, there will be an announcement and Steveo will introduce the new desktop Macs… finally!

The Witch

I ended up buying Left 4 Dead 2 during BestBuy's Black Friday sale, however I didn't actually play it until the other week when Krudd and I did a late night Christmas vacation session.

The game came with a 48-hour trial of Xbox Live so I took advantage of that. It ended up being so fun that I finally sprung for the full 12-month version on Amazon. It was on sale for $35 plus I had a $30 gift card which brought my total to a whopping 5 bucks (with free shipping!). The only bummer is that it's currently sold out and won't ship until Jan 11th.

The game itself is a blast and is even more fun playing with the Kruddler. My favorite character by far is a zombie simply called "the witch". You don't actually see her at first but rather hear a creepy woman crying. Eventually you encounter her covering her eyes with her long demon like fingers and the goal is to get by her without disturbing her. If you do end up getting her attention then all hell breaks lose and she runs after you trying to kill you and she often does.

The other day I was playing the game by myself when she was spawned (she appears randomly in the game) right in a stairwell that we had no choice but to walk right next to her in order to progress in the level. Well unless you play co-op you have to play with AI characters "helping" you and one of the characters did something dumb and walked right into her. Of course the witch did some major damage and I just stood there laughing.

Anyways I'll be sure to give Krudd a call when I get my Live Gold card next week. I can't wait to play again.

HDTV 2010

It's been a while since I posted my HDTV SuperBlog and there have been several new technologies introduced on consumer sets since I purchased mine, primarily the use of LED backlights and higher refresh rates.

Since Dave's about ready to make his first purchase I was about to do some heavy research when I remembered that CNET had some excellent information during the last round. I checked again and sure enough, they didn't disappoint.

LED TV's: 10 things you need to know

240Hz LCD TVs: What you need to know

Six things you need to know about 120Hz LCDs

720p vs. 1080p HDTVs: 2009 Update

It seems like the consensus is that these "newer" features are nice but don't pay a premium for them. Use the savings to get a Blu-ray player or HDMI receiver for crystal clear surround sound. For what it's worth my set is using the "older" CCFL backlight and a 60Hz refresh rate and I think it's perfectly fine.

Annoying

I love the ability to blog from my iPhone, but it's annoying not being able to post pictures/photos from it.

So I downloaded Blogpress, which I couldn't get to work, then Blogwriter, which I couldn't get to work. But after a time I figuired it out and lo and behold they both work! But what's annoying is that I still can't post pics&photos. Not because they can't, but because I'm bound to MY blogger page! That's right, I can only post pics there and not here! More accurately, I can't even blog using those apps here.

So here I am again writing this blog from the actual blogger site (which is still cool, just no pics). I'm glad I can, but it's still annoying to me.