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.

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.

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.

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.

I get the idea of showing me ads that are relevant to me and what I do, but it seems pretty funny that I’m getting ads for things that (for all intents and purposes) I’m already a ‘customer’ of. I suppose it doesn’t hurt, but with the narrow focus that advertising is capable of I’m not sure it’s money well spent to show me things I already do/own/buy.

One of the funniest ones, for example, are the constant 300×250 ads for the Camaro that I seem to get bombarded with on websites of all kinds. I bought one three months ago. What is gained by showing me Camaro advertising?

The down side is that people think you’re some kind of car guy with something to prove. I like the car. I like the performance. I like the styling. However, my cock is more than adequate and I don’t need to show you how fast my car goes. Too many times someone with something kinda sporty (tons of Mustangs in my neck of the woods) pulls up next to you at a light and you can feel them looking. Then it turns green and they start hard. Not necessarily full blown, “Go!” but more of a test to see if you’ll bite. 9 times out of 10 I don’t. Sometimes I do because it’s fun. This past weekend I had a bunch of kids (they were young could’ve been 16, could’ve been 18, could’ve been 21 – no idea) pull up beside us in a Honda or Subaru or some shit with a big tall spoiler on the back. They rolled up slow and were totally looking at the car. He was inching and I knew he was trying to be all cool. When the light turned green I hit the gas a bit more than I normally would have and the kid just punched it, so I said, “Fuck it” and did the same. There wasn’t much room as traffic was ahead and I didn’t notice how fast we got going (couldn’t have been more than 70 – the whole thing lasted 8 seconds tops), but I’m sure he caught shit from his buddies in the car for being blown away by some middle aged dude in a backwards baseball cap and his wife and kids.

Yes, the kids were in the back, but we were on our way to buy fireworks so…two wrongs make a right – or something.

So yeah, it’s been an interesting month with the car. Still happy as shit with our decision.

The old lights were brass (we’re still trying to de-brass-ify the house), old, tarnished, cheap and – even though they measured 18 inches tall – too small for the front of the house:

The new lights are not brass, old, tarnished nor cheap and they measure almost 30 inches tall – a much better fit for the house and the direction we’re going with things:

But now, with brass accents and trim, the front door doesn’t match…

The final cost to us (after insurance pays their piddly portion) would have bought us about three or four weeks of amusement park travel (based on past trip costs).

The funny thing is that we still haven’t gone to a single park this year and no one seems to miss it. Short, much needed break or larger trend coming into focus?

We’ve traveled pretty extensively to visit amusement parks for the past 10 years and I’m trying to remember the last summer we didn’t visit at least one amusement park (long before coasterimage) and I think that year would be 1992. Starting in 1993 we made yearly visits to Kennywood and/or Cedar Point. Might have skipped a year around 1997 or 1998, not really sure. The point is it’s been a long time (before kids) since we didn’t visit at least one park during the year. Not sure if I’m relieved or scared that we might not this year.

But, yeah – my daughter is getting braces put on next month.

Let me try to sum up our feelings – we were disappointed and enoyed it at the same time. That’s the parental view. My daughter couldn’t have cared less either way. My son had a pretty good time.

It felt a little too much like we paid $20 a ticket to play with someone else’s Lego collection. I think I expected less “here you go, have at it” and more “look at this, here’s how this works, try this” from things. It seemed like too many of the areas were just “build something here” stations presented in different ways. For instance:

- There were Monochromatic Group Build areas. A neat idea. Tons of 2×4 bricks in one color for you to get creative on – by yourself and with others. Particularly notable creations got placed on pedastals and dispalyed for the duration of the session. Neat enough. Except that there were four of these areas (one pink, one green, one blue and one yellow). On top of that there was a Target-sponsored area that was essentially the same thing with red bricks and the added twist that you were designing a structure for the Target dog (whatever its name is – spot?). So five of the activity areas were building something with one color and one size of brick.

- There were a couple of different areas that were essentially the same ‘free-build’ areas presented under different pemises. Creation Nation took your creation and placed in on a large, blank floor map of the USA, creating a sort of skyline from the things the kids built. The Lego Construction Zone was the same thing, expect instead of a on a map, your creation was placed in one of several glass display cases where it stayed until more room was needed. The Big Brick Pile was just a big-ass pile of legos that kids were climbing on and throwing at each other. A neat idea on paper, but just a bunch of Lego bricks to dick around with in reality. Two large areas were also taken up by Duplo Build Areas where younger kids could fuck around with the oversized baby version of Lego bricks. The Mystery Mural Build let you take a small, numbered tile place colored 1×1′s in a predetermined patter on it and then place it on a big lego wall that, when finished, created a 2D mural of a city skyline with a nod or two to Pittsburgh tossed in. The Race Ramps was more of the same but with wheel pieces. There were some small ramps set up so you could race with friends or family or whatever, but nothing organized. Mostly kids whipping he cars down the ramp to crash and break them.

- The Model Museum and Brickscapes were essentially the same thing – cool Lego creations you could look at and take photos of. The Brickscapes were in glass display cases and often little “Eye Spy” things you could try to find. The Model Museum was just a small collection of those bigger statue-like creations…and even then, it turns out those are hollow with steel skeltons. They also has an “Adult Fans Of Lego” area where bonafide grown-ups were showing off creations. Simultaneously interesting and horrifying.

- Lego Games was exactly what it sounds like – sign up and wait 10 or 15 minutes to play one of the Lego games they sell. Lego Universe? Same thing. Wait in line for 20 minutes and sample the Lego Universe online game. The Video Game Gallery consisted of two (yes two!) kiosks. One had Lego Rock Band 2 set up to try (one game) and the other had three DS units attached running the Ninjago DS game. That’s right. A total of four kids at any given time could be checking out the video games.

- The Lego Retail Store and the Lego Marketplace were exactly what they sound like – chances to spend money. The catch was that the Marketplace had next to nothing beyond what looked like a small collection of the least popular licensed Lego items – watches, bracelets, shirts in odd sizes and a Bissel Brick Sweeper thing. Looked like a non-powered push vaccum to me. The Retail Store had nothing you couldn’t find in any Wal-Mart, Target or Toys R Us…and it had a 20-to-30 minute line the entire time. People were waiting a half hour to buy Lego sets that they can get anywhere.

- There were also some areas with local groups trying to sell you something – Boy Scouts, Radio Stations, Schools, the Pirates, whatever. There were raffles and Legoland info with a Legoland trip giveaway too.

- The best parts (and what I expected more of) were the areas with actual Lego builders interacting with the kids. The Master Builder Academy was a chance to get hands-on with the MBA product (yes, a sell, but…) and have a Master Builder there to answer questions and help out and stuff. The catch was that there was a limited number of classes. We got in line to sign up within 10 minutes of entering, waited 15 minutes and got one of the last spots of the day. The Activity Area also has a Master Builder on hand with various group activities and games going on. It felt a little unstructured, but was fun. There were also supposed to be Master Builders there with live Demonstrations, but we either missed them or they weren’t very prominent (I suspect the latter).

And that was it. The place really started clearing out about halfway through. We left about 45 minute or an hour early and felt like we were stretching to make it that long. As I said, I expected less “here you go, have at it” and more “look at this, here’s how this works, try this” – the Builders are fucking Rock Stars to these kids. There should have been more opportunity to see, hear and talk to them and less piles of Legos lying around for you to dick with presented as something more than Legos lying there to dick with. Set up little clinic areas. Set up a small stage and chairs and let these guys talk to groups all day. Let them give tips, answer questions and get the kids excited about the product and the possibilities. That’s where this thing really missed the boat to us.

With all of that said, I’d still give the experience a positive review. Definitely go and check it out. The price is right and you can blow a few hours surrounded by all things Lego. On the same note, I wouldn’t go again unless I knew there were major changes made. There’d really be no reason to.

Not sure how it’s possible to think of something positively, but also be able to say it was disappointing. Somehow Lego pulled it off.

Such a good looking car.

The halo headlights.

Interior.

Big trunk with a small opening. Ironically, also how I like my ladies.

No spare tire. Just a compressor/sealant thingy.

Under the hood.

20 inch wheels. Sporting the Pirelli tires.

The windshield display. I usually drive with this display configuration, but the one that shows the tachometer is more graphic.

With the driver information center (in the middle) set like it is in this photo and the windshield display on, you redundantly see your speed in three locations.

My page of favorites includes exclusively 80′s and metal (and 80′s metal) channels from XM.

The gauges down by the shifter. Not sure how useful they are in real-world situations, but they’re cool as hell.

Kick it into manual and you get to have fun with the paddle shifters on the steering wheel. It’s like a video game.

The door panel glows a soft, subtle blue as part of the interior lighting scheme, but there’s no way I’m gonna capture that in the daylight.

Gauges. Between the gauges and the shifter are a power outlet and the button to turn on and off the two levels of traction control.

Hips that make you want to grab them and fuck. Still gotta put the “Gonchar” plate on.

The center dash. The USB and aux inputs are in the storage console in the center (where your elbow rests). Just plug the iPod in, close it and control things from the radio…or steering wheel controls.

The steering wheel. Cruise control, audio controls and paddle shifters at your fingertips. The steering wheel both tilts and telescopes.

In the garage.

We’re SO happy with the choices we made with this one. Black on Black is just stunning on the shape of the car. We questioned the little bit extra we spent for interior upgrades and bells and whistles, but once you’re in the car it’s not even a question of good choice/bad choice – it’s obviously worth every penny. USB, Bluetooth with voice commands, XM radio, OnStar, the Heads Up Display on the windshield, the gauges by the shifter that glow red, rear parking assist, built-in universal remote, ambient lighting on the door panels, soft leather – it’s all good. It’s amazing how these cars get more and more technology in them each year. The exterior upgrades are what make the Camaro special and we never questioned those. After getting the car, I don’t understand how anyone goes with the base model without an exterior package – the halo headlights are what give the car personality. Regular headlights would be stupid. The spoiler is a must and subtle enough to add style but not be obvious. The upgraded wheels make it intimidating. We’re rolling on 20′s. The back tires are 9 inches wide. It gives the car such an agressive stance. Even the upgraded tail lights just ‘finish’ the overall look.

It’s really the perfect ‘fun’ car. The look and performance satisfies the kid in me who grew up in rural western PA, the interior appointments scream luxury car and the gadgets and toys satisfy the easily amused tech geek hiding inside of me. Win/win/win as far as I’m concerned.

Good news – getting exactly the car you want without having to order and wait.

Bad news – someone else gets to put the first 300 miles on it.

Still works for us. Getting exactly what we wanted at a little less than the price we expected.

Anticipate a full report on the car to be posted here this weekend.