That’s right, the Green Hills softball team won a game. And it was a blowout, too. 25-4. We’re no longer winless, unlike the team we just beat. I walked in my first two plate appearances (it’s softball… I’m not up there to walk… if there was anything close, I woulda swung) on eight straight pitches. I then got three singles my next three times up, and cleanly handled my only chance at third base.

It was a fun game.

Kevin Millwood threw a no-hitter for the Phillies today, against Bonds and the Giants. The Mets got swept in a double-header against Arizona. They struck out 27 times and made 8 errors in the two games.

At least Millwood doesn’t still pitch for the Braves.

I went to a TMBG concert at the House of Blues in Anaheim this afternoon. Not the best TMBG concert I’ve been too, but it was fun. They played all of Fingertips from their Apollo 18 album, which was really cool. I really have to get to more concerts. It’s just too bad there generally aren’t any I”m interested in around here, it’s always at least the hour and a half drive to LA. Fair trade-off, given the lack of smog in Santa Barbara, I think.

The Mets game was rained out at Shea today. Love it when the weather has to come in and stop the momentum after winning three in a row. Or something.

Now, I think it’s time to catch up on stuff on my Tivo. It’s started deleting its recorded suggestions, which means it’s running out of space and will delete stuff I want soon.

I’ve been terribly busy lately, and haven’t had much time to write here. So, now I’ll fill you in on what I’ve been doing for the past week. But first, a few links.

First, here is a nice description of our political system at work. Makes me sick. [Note: Shameless attempt to drive traffic here with a trackback ping]
Next, on to the music industry. Madonna diluted her own trademark by distributing MP3s claiming to be a single from her new album on p2p networks. A few days later, madonna.com was hacked, and MP3s of all the songs on the album were available for download there. Both links found at boing boing.

Now, on to me, I guess. My parents were here this weekend, which was nice. We didn’t really do all that much, which is pretty normal for us. Mostly just hanging around in my apartment, going out to eat, a bit of shopping. Like I said, not much. Oh yeah, I went bowling with them, too. Well, I bowled, they watched. I bowled alright, not great, but I did pick up the 6-7-10 split, which was awesome.

I’ve been using Crest Whitestrips for about 5 days now, and they really are amazing. Unfortunately, I neglected to take “before” pictures, so you’ll just have to take my word for it, but I saw a huge improvement after just three days. I have a little trouble keeping the bottom strip on my teeth, and I sit there drooling all over the place while watching TV, but it’s not really a hassle at all to use them. I’ve heard some reports of them being painful, but they haven’t been for me. I highly recommend them.

I don’t really know what else to say. My life just isn’t that interesting, and most of my time lately has been spent working or watching TV (thanks to the Tivo, of course). Tomorrow night I get to bowl again. The Mets still suck. Nothing else to say.

Well, Why TiVo Owners Can’t Shut Up

I’ll have a real entry coming up soon. Really.

Well, the Mets just got swept in a four game series in Puerto Rico. Yeah, the Expos are playing some of their “home” games there. And they swept the Mets. So the Mets are now in last place in the NL East, with a 4-9 record. With the second highest payroll in baseball.

Damn, they suck. And somehow the Royals are 10-1.

But enough baseball, I should probably talk about something else. Of course, I have no idea what that would be. I have done very little of interest lately, really. At least not much that I feel was exciting enough to write about. I’ve been working, bowling, watching far too much Star Trek (thanks to the Tivo and TNN), and cleaning up my apartment a bit. My parents will be here this Friday, so I suppose my place should look somewhat liveable. Only somewhat.

I think I forgot to mention a few weeks ago that the softball season has started. Unfortunately, it’s on Wednesday nights and conflicts with my bowling league. I decided to do both, softball and bowling each every other week. Two weeks ago was softball, where we lost 27-21. Last week was bowling, where we lost all three games, I think. From what I’ve heard, we lost last week’s softball game by the same score of 27-21. Wednesday night I’m playing softball again.

My webhost changed some of my settings for me, so my trackback pings are working now. I’ve actually now gotten one trackback, so I think I should be getting around to making the trackback page look reasonable. Maybe. Sometime.

I’d like to write more, but I won’t, for two reasons. First, I really have nothing else to say. Second, I need to get back to cleaning this place up.

I don’t know how I survived with my old Dish PVR 501. It really was just a digital glorified VCR. Tivo is so much more. Even without all the stuff I’ve done to it, it would be a vast improvement, but after I was done with it – actually, I’m not done yet – it is infinitely more useful. I put in a program name, it records. No setting up timers, no manual conflict resolution. Well, one manual timer, because The Daily Show listing information doesn’t have proper episode information, and I get three a day (and prevent other programs from recording) otherwise.

As if all that wasn’t enough, I can now telnet, ftp, and install software. I can access all Tivo features from my web browser. I can set up recordings, see what’s currently being recorded, manage all my recorded programs from work – or anywhere. I can, with a few simple commands, copy a recorded program from the Tivo to my computer. I can even have it show up on my TV screen when people log on and off of AIM, although that’s currently disabled until I make some changes to it. The only thing it doesn’t seem to do to my liking is play mp3s. The processor isn’t quite fast enough, and they skip too much (skipping at all is too much.)

In case you couldn’t tell, I’m very pleased with my Tivo purchase. With a pair of these (which I got on eBay), I can even use my Tivo’s remote from my bedroom, and watch TV there. I’ve programmed my receiver’s remote to do everything the Tivo remote does, so I don’t even have to move the remote around. To top all of this off, I’m going to be selling my old satellite receiver for more than I paid for the Tivo.

If anyone else is interested into hacking their Tivo, the two main resources I used to do it are:

• Newbie TiVo Hacker How-To Guide
• Experiences with TiVo MPEG video under Linux

And of course, don’t forget to visit the Tivo Community Forums

I’ve really been wanting to write about Vegas here for a while. Well, maybe that’s not entirely true. I’ve wanted Vegas to get written about here, but not actually wanted to do it. That’s why it hasn’t actually gotten done. But now it finally will…

I’ll start right where I left off… Barstow. Andrew and I ate at the In-n-Out and then started back out on the road towards Vegas. Well, after playing with the cantenna a bit trying (and failing) to get online. I was able to see several different wireless networks, but not able to connect to any of them. We made pretty good time, and got in before 2. Most of the group we were meeting had split up for the night, so I just played with the cantenna from the hotel room in the Sahara, trying to get online. Again, failure. Same thing that happened in Barstow. I was able to see a bunch of different wireless networks (and certainly more than I could without the can attached), but not able to connect to any of them. Oh well. I didn’t really miss being online during the weekend… probably mostly because I was still on AIM the whole time with my Treo. After failing to get online, I went to sleep.

Woke up the next day around ten. We finally managed to get the whole group together around 11:30 or so, and walked to the Hilton for lunch and the Star Trek Experience. We all signed up for the Hilton’s players cards, so we got two for one prices on the buffet and the ST:E ride. As we were walking from the food to the ride, one of us won $500 at a slot machine, and he decided to pay for the ride for all of us (Thanks, Charlie!). The ride was very cool. First off, I think it was possibly the first ride I’ve ever been on where waiting in line didn’t involve just standing around doing nothing. The whole way up to the ride entrance has lots of cool Trek related stuff to read and look at, and we actually had to slow down to look at all of it. The ride itself was a lot of fun, and at the end they let you buy a picture of yourself with the crew of your favorite Star Trek series. Mine turned out awful, otherwise I might have actually gotten one. We all decided that Wil should go there and get one of himself with the TNG cast, since he’s not in the picture. We also were going to send him a postcard with himself on it, but never got around to it.

I don’t really remember what we did the rest of that day. Well, I don’t remember what we did for the next few hours, anyway. After that, I played some Caribbean Stud for about an hour, and then went to see Billy Joel and Elton John. It was a great concert, and I’m glad I finally got to see the two of them together, but now I actually know (instead of just assuming) that I like Billy Joel alone better. Still, it was well worth the cost of the ticket, and good to see Billy Joel live again. The concert ended fairly late, so we had a quick meal afterwards, and then went back to the hotel to get some sleep.

Sunday we just relaxed and wandered around, pretty much. I met up with Brian, a friend from New York who happened to be in Vegas working that weekend, and we gambled a bit. Other than that, I don’t really remember much of interest happening. It was fun just walking the strip and seeing the different hotels. We stayed there until around 2am, and then started the drive back to LA. We made pretty good time, until we hit the LA morning traffic, but still got back with plenty of time for Andrew to get to class, and me to drive back to Santa Barbara to get to work on time.

I was planning to write about some of the stuff I’ve done since Vegas here, but this entry is kinda long, so that’ll have to wait.