My blog n'at

July
Began the month with recording at the BeerDependence Day celebration at Bocktown. Attended the Penguins Stanley Cup DVD Release Party. Started a contracting job at EDMC that would become the longest month of my life and that’s all I’m going to say. Enjoyed my first ever bowl of Pho. Rocked the Beer on the Bay festival in Erie which the videos are epic and may never be released. End the month being interviewed by KDKA for the Craft Beer Summit.

August
Won a 2009 Mustang! Bees invade our bathroom (landlord still has yet to remove the dead bodies). I got a full-time job in social media/web dev that has turned out to be freaking cool plus I’m on a rockstar team. Threatened Lushie with divorce after she gets rid of the Back to the Future marathon channels.

September
Attended “Best of the Burgh” at the Warhol with sickpuppy, PittGirl, Woy and Rachel. Go big time and hosted Beer School at the Cabaret downtown to a sold out crowd. Teaspoon hits 17lbs.

October
Hosted 2 sessions at Podcamp Pittsburgh 4. Should I Drink That passed 500,000 download mark. Pens start defending the Stanley Cup. Revised Google Maps errors. Celebrate 4 years of marriage with Lushie. Lay the smackdown on poor fact checking by the Post gazette about Erie. Teaspoon goes pumpkin farming.

November
I blogged the whole month. Seriously. Bought a X-box. Teaspoon’s first Thanksgiving. Wonders of fatherhood and a kid who grows like a weed. Craft Beer Dinner with Lew Bryson, Education on the Pittsburgh Potty. Making your own Bacon. BEER AT GIANT EAGLE! Yinz Bowl 2.o

December
Still living it for 5 more hours. Remembering dad on his anniversary. Hosted a Christmas beer sampling at Bocktown. Saw KISS in concert. Teaspoon’s first Christmas. Finished the school year with a 3.65GPA. SNOW!

So what do I have to look forward to in 2010?  Come back tomorrow and find out!

On June 30th of last year I was having a real dilemma. Do I get an Xbox 360, PS3 or Wii? As you recall shortly after Teaspoon was born I picked up a Wii and loved it, still do actually, but now I upgraded again and bought a Xbox 360 Elite Saturday night.

Lushie basically got tired of me bellyaching about it and a package deal at Best Buy made it too good to resist (for an additional $50 I got another controller, rechargeable pack, HDMI cable and some other jazz). I was sitting there yesterday being even more unproductive this weekend as I tried to get use to this funky controller (I’ve only played Playstation and wii. Serious. I only played an Xbox once in my life) and familiarize myself with the whole gaming unit.

Games
I’ve always been a sports game kinda guy. I did own Devil May Cry and some other shooter games for the PS2 but couldn’t really get into much more because not having online play capabilities made those games boring for me. I bought NHL 10 since that is an absolute must in this hockey house and the system came with Lego BatMan and Pure. There is also a deal with buy 2 games and get a 3rd for free ($30 or less value). I already dumped enough cash so I resisted another $59.99 title. That was the biggest punch to the gut for me was the price of games. The average price for games I want to play are $59.99 and after playing hockey for 10 minutes this was no longer an issue. the quality of play, overall entertainment and appreciation for the programming that went into making these games was justified.

• NHL 10
  Oh my be-freaking lord this is the greatest sports game I have ever played. I wont talk about the controls because I am still a huge ball of  suck with all of the options but a HUGE plus is old school NHL 94 controls. Pass, shoot and hit. What more do you really need. The graphics are tight, the fighting I thought was decent but overall enjoyment is high. I played a few practice games to get a feel for it and love that I can have a practice to work on plays and strategy. I haven’t played online yet but there are a few yinzer anxious to take me into the boards.
• PURE
  I’m not into racing outside Mario Kart because I can cause mass destruction so when I saw there was an ATV racing game I figured wtf, why not. Big thumbs up for including this! It’s a great game for learning the controller and also how intense graphics can get for the 1st timer. I thought the customizing your ride went into too much detail for someone not familiar with racing ATV’s but was appreciated. the tricks I’ve been able to do are impressive and I like that I can get a turbo boost to fire off jumps. The tutorial you get to start with is a huge help and that made slipping into this game much more comfy.

My brother’s kids are also on Xbox Live so I’m looking forward to shredding them all during online play. I was told by many on Facebook and Twitter that the new “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2” could very well be the “end all-be all” of first person shooting when it hits shelves next week. Put that on the list.

Other Features
This is replacing the PS2 so the DVD player is a bonus. A pleasant surprise was watching my laptop sync with the Xbox. I wasn’t even aware that Vista and Xbox played together besides just sharing the Microsoft name. I’ll be honest, I havent had much time to mess around with it more but I’m off the next couple days so we’ll see how this pans out.

Do you have an Xbox? What’s your Live ID? Leave some comments and let me know what you think about the Xbox and some features I should check out.