purchases - Lord Gonchar

Please allow me to introduce myself, I'm a man of wealth and taste.

I Think Wii Are Done

This year my son turned 10. Apparently that’s the age where saving princesses becomes uncool and shooting people in the face gets real fun, real fast. I noticed the Wii getting less and less play for the past 6 months or so. And soon enough the Xbox requests were coming in for Christmas.

Can’t complain too much. We got exactly five years out of that Wii. Scored one the day they were released in 2006 and had it under the tree for Christmas that year. That thing got played an obscene amount. Back then the kids were 5 and 9. It was pretty perfect. I liked that it was mostly breezy, non-commitment type stuff. Nintendo changed the fucking game with the system. Everyone pointed and laughed at first, but Sony and Microsoft sure did rush to do motion control of their own. I don’t think either of them would have if the Wii hadn’t come along. It was nice to see Nintendo on top again. I’m a fanboy – always had Nintendo systems. When they’re on, they’re the best.

Recurring Mouse Issue

Almost five years ago I wrote about how my mouse was double clicking. I replaced that mouse not long after that post. For whatever reason, I bought another Logitech mouse.

So in the past few days I’ve noticed my mouse (the replacement for the double-clicker from 2007) is now doing the exact same thing. Do all mice (mouses?) fail in this way or is this a Logitech issue? It really fucks with the useability of things when you’re inadvertently double clicking all over the place. Now I need to replace this mouse…and I’m just dumb enough to buy another Logitech mouse.

December 22nd, 2011 - crap - purchases

Another Gadget Bites The Dust

I just finished uploading my music collection to Google Music. I think this officially makes my iPod a paperweight. The only thing I was really using it for was when I mow the lawn, but now my phone can access that same music.

The other place I expected to possibly use it (but hadn’t yet) was the car. The Camaro is pretty connected that way and there’s a USB port in it. If you hook up the iPod, you can control it from the radio. I never really used it because I was usually playing with XM. The XM trial ended a little while back and I was on the fence about renewing. It was cool and I had waited long enough to get the $77 offer, but there were only a few channels I really listened to regularly.

Google Music on my phone encouraged me to check out the Camaro’s Bluetooth Audio feature. I’m glad I did. If terrestrial radio isn’t sufficient, I’ll just use my phone. Between Pandora, the iheartradio app and Google Music, I have access to my entire personal music collection, radio from around the country and ‘personalized’ stations based on my preferences. Sorry, XM. I have no need for you.

And the phone can just stay in my pocket or console and I can snag calls with the hands-free feature. Pretty cool stuff.

In all honesty, I never really loved the iPod. I wanted to, but it’s one of the few tech/gadget/electronic purchases I sort of always regretted. It’s a unitasker gadget and that’s unacceptable and archaic (see my Kindle hate – sorry, Jeff). If a device I own can do the same thing at least mostly as well, there’s no need to a standalone device. That standalone device has to be pretty exceptional. The main thing the iPod had going for it was that it was my music specifically as opposed to music I like including some specific songs. Google Music just took care of that.

Best part is, today is also my renew date for a new phone. Looks like Santa just might be leaving me a shiny new phone (any advice on an Android phone?) this year. The timing feels right.

November 19th, 2011 - awesome - geek - mobile - music - purchases

This Weekend

For the past few years, we’ve gotten a real tree for Christmas. Basically, since we moved to Ohio. They always suck. We vowed last year to pick up a nice artificial tree this year/ Ideally, we want a really tall one that we can put in the entry way. We kind of unofficially figured a 12-foot tree would be cool. Seems to be the point where the prices are still reasonable, but it’s tall enough to be something (I measured – the entry in 17 feet high). It’s about time we started finding one – and it turns out it’s not as easy as it seems to find a combo of reasonable cost and quality in a really tall artificial tree. But that’s for another post.

So to start thinking Xmas and maybe start scoping trees we decided to go check out our local Christmas Tree Shoppe. We knew a little about it and had been wanting to check the place out for a while. Well, our mistake for not looking into it more, but it’s probably the worst place in the world. I expected a cute little seasonal holiday-type place. It’s actually essentially a Big Lots with 1/4 of the store filled with seasonal holiday items of the Big Lots quality you’d expect. It fucking sucked. If it burned to the ground tomorrow, I’d chuckle with approval. I actually wished I were in a Big Lots. (for the record, Big Lots is one of my least favorite places on Earth)

Just a big fucking waste of time.

We noticed there was a Burlington Coat Factory in the plaza. We hadn’t been to one in ages, but we used to find pretty great deals at the one in Allentown when we lived there.

Mistake #2.

It smelled…mostly like sad. And there was absolutely nothing worth seeing there…except (and I swear we found these there) for the boys mustard yellow courduroy pants straight off the kids in early-70′s Sesame Street episodes. I had flashbacks.

We quickly slipped out of there and beelined to the other location we planned on hitting – Hobby Lobby. I don’t think I’d ever stepped foot in one prior to this. We saw an ad that said they had a buttload of trees in all shapes and sizes at great prices. It may have been a bit of an oversell. They had one 12-footer, but it didn’t look very real and was a bit bare…and even with the 50% off sale on all Christmas decorations, still came in at a price closer to four digits than two. Meh.

What a waste of a couple of Friday hours.

On Satuday, we had football equipment turn-ins in the morning, then my son and I decided to drive across town to see one of the semi-final tournament games. Looked to be possibly the best game of the entire tournament at the 4th grade level. One team was a sleeper that went undefeated and gave up just one touchdown in the 8-game season and only two TD’s in three tournament games. No one ever put up more than 6 against them. They were playing the team that has been a thorn in our side not just once, but twice in the past. They’re consistently good and passed us in the final week of the season for the highest scoring team in the 4th grade.

On paper it was the unstoppable force against the immovable object.

It didn’t play out that way. The sleeper team gave up 28 points. In one game they gave up more TD’s than they had total in the 11 games prior. We still had fun. Might go to the championship game at UD next weekend.

It was also my daughter’s birthday. I have a 14 year old. Her party was last weekend, so she got to spend the day alone while my wife was at work and my son and I were at the game. She got a cake from Ritters. She wanted a Mud Pie cake. Too chocolatey for me. A weird little quirk of mine is that I’m not fond of chocolate ice cream. Even worse, chocolate ice cream with more chocolate shit mixed in…and then topped with more chcocolate. Not my thing. But Ritters is awesome. It took us a while to discover them (we’re DQ people for childhood), but we haven’t been to DQ in ages. (for the record my very favorite ice cream is Whitehouse)

Tomorrow? Little stuff around the house and a Steelers game tomorrow night. Normally we rake/blow leaves the first weekend in November, but all the leaves haven’t fallen yet. Trees are still surprisingly full for this late in the year. Maybe next weekend.

I’m livin’ it.

November 6th, 2011 - food - football - fun - life - purchases - the kids - weather

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