Did I mention that I WAS loving Kameo on the XBOX 360.  Well that all changed a couple of days ago.   I got to the second Boss Battle against a water creature called Corallis.    I have tried for many hours and I just can't beat it.   This has happened to me before.   Why do developers put these impossible boss battles in games and rune the game for those of us that are recreational players.   After trying a boss 15-20 times, it's just not fun anymore.    I don't mind having to to work to get over a section of a game but when my brain knows what to do and I simply can't get my fingers to do it due to a clumsy control scheme, I drives me crazy.

Well, looks like Kameo may be another Boss Battle casualty which will find it's way onto EBAY soon.

It's Christmas day and I am here at my parents enjoying the festivities.      It's off to an eventful start, we have a car that wouldn't start, a yelling child and lots of arguing.   But it's all family so it's all OK. 

While I am on the subject of Christmas.    I am not a religious freak or anything but I want to hear "Merry Christmas" instead of Happy Holidays.   Everyone has a holiday they are celebrating so please use that when greeting me.    I think it is great to learn something of the people we meet based the greeting I receive.   So go ahead and give me a "Happy Saturnalia", "Happy Winter Solstice", "Happy Hanukkah", "Happy Kwanzaa"  or whatever you celebrate at this joyful time of year.

I finally got some time to edit the images from last weeks Christmas parties.   You can see them here.   I took the wrong lens so they were not my best work.   I will be posting the pics from the party at the Aquarium over the next few days.

I also have been playing around with Microsoft Windows Vista lately but I will save that for another day.   For now, all I will say is that....it's a mess.   I hope they get this dreadful GUI figured out before it goes gold.

I must resist it's power....must resist.  It wants to be on my desk.  It's calling me.   I think it may be hopeless...maybe Apple can save me....arghhhhh.

If you are having trouble running the current version of DevBuddy, please update to the latest version.  You may need to uninstall your current version first There were some changes to the WebService that are fixed by this new version.   Here is a link to the new version

At two O'Clock today, a giant 24 inch water main broke and took out power for half of downtown Tulsa.  It was cool.  It was like the street exploded and an underground river has sprung up under it.   The result...well, without power, a software company is pretty much dead so since the xbox didn't have power, many just jumped in a conference room for some poker.   Most went home.   It's like a snow day for grade schoolers.   Given that the main downtown power system was flooded, it maybe late tomorrow before we have power again.    

I hope I saved my work :)

I got my new receiver in on Monday.  I ordered the Denon 4306 a few months ago since I felt it strikes a good balance of high end features and amplification without being insanely priced. I have been testing it out all week to see how the hdmi switching works an decide on how to wire up this bad boy.   So far the unit is very impressive.  It's much more advanced than my old time Sony ES.   It lets you mix and match the various inputs to create a 12 unique combinations of sources each with video and audio.   These can be routed to primary or secondary rooms and can be up and converted to various resolutions using the onboard deinterlacer and video processor.  

The receiver has a lot of features that I will not use until I am in the new house but I figured it was better to go ahead and get it and make sure it was going to be up to the task of running the numerous tv's and audio video sources that will be in the new house.   For now, it will just be running my living room and switching the Denon DVD player and a single Dish 942.   Haven't decided if I will run the XBOX 360 through it yet but it does a great job of cross converting it to HDMI (XBOX is analog only) without introducing any noticeable lag. 

Haven't tested out the audio yet but I will give an update after I get it all hooked up on Saturday.