The thing about working on houses is this: it’s not like on TV. You see, on TV they announce that the entire plumbing has to be redone for the bathroom – and then they cut to commercial. When they come back the segment generally starts with “Well, we took care of rerouting the plumbing to the other wall and running the sewage drain for the toilet…” Oh really? In three minutes? That’s pretty quick.

Jerks. lol
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I could tell you all about it… or just show you this video:

I was a deprived child – though I suppose not really. I had Pong. I really did… about two years after it came out. And sure, I had the Atari 2600 – everyone had it, but I only had a handful of games for the first several years until they came down in price and started showing up in the bargain rack of KayBee Toy Stores… Then came the Atari 5200 (wow, imaginative name!) and Colecovision. I didn’t get either… Didn’t get Nintendo 64, or the NES… or the Playstation… or the Sega Dreamcast… or the Playstation 2… or the Nintendo Game Cube… nope. The first post-2600 console I have ever owned is the Xbox 360*.

And I love the Xbox 360. You can pry it from my cold dead hands. I wants it… my precious.

So I have been very familiar with particular PC games (Unreal Tournament 1/2, Quake 2, Doom3) – so I’m not a total noob, but I have to say I had never been able to get into console gaming – until now. I finally got the knack of using the controller in lieu of a mouse. It’s very different, but I’m finding my groove. (Shut up, Tom – I can too snipe – I just had a bad night!)

I have also discovered online co-op (cooperative) play. That’s where you and a buddy (say, oh, Tom Andry) play together to fulfill a mission against AI (artificial intelligence) bots to complete the storyline. We just completed Gears of War. It was so fun that we simply started it up again – but on the hardest setting. To be honest we’re either getting better or the hardest level isn’t much different… we seem to be making good progress.

With the Xbox 360 and co-op you can talk in real time to your friend while playing the game. This is not only cool – it’s super cool. Now Tom doesn’t have to drive down to my house once in a blue moon to play a video game with me – we both simply log into the Xbox Live system and we’re playing together.

I also found out that I really like 3rd person shooter games. At first I was only into 1st person shooters – but I actually like the concept of having more controls, hiding out and being able to play the game at a slower pace. Games like Halo 2 are still very cool, but after a while you start to feel like all the skill revolves around how well you can aim the gun at high speed while tossing a grenade and flying through the air – come to think of it, that is pretty cool.

Still, games like Gears of War and Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter offer a bit more complexity – not to mention a different perspective – and I’m starting to like that.

I guess what I’m trying to say is.. um… “Good job, Microsoft.” Gosh, now I have to take a shower.

*(OK, that’s a lie – I actually owned the original Xbox but I played it about 5 times and never had the Live service)

That’s right, the pressure’s on. I Skyped Dina and J last night (Monday) and they got their new mic, preamp, compressor and system up in about 15 minutes flat. Now, for Tom, that’s got to add some pressure. Whether he admits it or not, it’s just got to.

I mean, here I’m driving all the way up to Jacksonville to help him set up – but J did it in record time with no traveling needed. Now, since Tom’s setup is a bit more involved, there could certainly be more snags in software-related items. And he is using a PC for goodness sake… And we’ll be going over editing and other things that will help the podcast.

But doesn’t this throw down the manly gauntlet? I mean, can Tom set the gear up himself? We don’t know. You see, even though J was using a Mac and did most of the work, it sure seemed like even Dina could have followed my instructions over Skype and gotten it done in a reasonable amount of time as well. That sure is some pressure.

Yep… that sure is some pressure. I mean, what if Dina’s had done it herself… The irony. The raw irony. We might have had to change the podcast to The Dina and Tom Show after all. But I’m possibly just pontificating the possibilities of perchance… perhaps.

Can he do it? WILL he do it? Tune in tomorrow to see!

One of our forum members, stratman (he plays guitar – get it?), has been writing up some good news articles for us of late. It’s been a dream of mine, as I mentioned before, to have a couple good news reporters submitting items to the website. He’s been putting in an average of 1-2 articles every other day now and I couldn’t be happier.

In other news, the Podcasting gear has shown up at J & Dina’s house. Tom’s will be showing up today as well… of course he’s out of town. I’ll be taking a trip up to his house on Wednesday to help set it all up. I’m also giving him my Denon DVD-3910 – cause I’m cool like that.

In still other news… we’re about to add a lot more content to the Audioholics website and reorganize the way we do trade shows… the key, of course, will be nabbingenough of our developers’ time to get it all done. I’m hoping Alan can get up a development environment over the weekend for us. We’ve got a lot planne, but it’s going to launch us pretty far indeed.

Oh yeah, Gene’s having a baby tomorrow… well, not him – his wife Tica. She’s been having a rough pregnancy so it’s cool that soon she’ll be able to move on to the next phases of recovery… oh, and complete baby dependence. Man, I am SO glad I’m not a woman! God knew EXACTLY what he was doing when he “let” women handle childbirth – cause honestly, we men would have figured out some alternative by now – it would have involved lots of machinery, tubes and chemicals and it wouldn’t be pretty!