My blog n'at

My 34th birthday was Sunday and overall my weekend was pretty uneventful which is kinda how I wanted it. Most people have the 25 freak out, me its 34. I’ve always dreaded that age because when I was growing up I remember thinking how old my brother seemed at that age and now I’m there. What do you expect, I was 16 at the time so in perspective it’s similar to my nephew/godson Ben right now.

Lushie calls me last Wednesday to say that the ceiling in the kitchen is falling in. I get home and see our beloved vagina ceiling which I’ve now named Betty White. We both agree that her and Teaspoon should go to her mother’s for the weekend since the landlord said he would be over to fix it. Friday morning arrives, they leave and I wait… and wait…. and wait… and well you get the picture. I burned 2 vacation days to wait for repairs that never came. I love this guy.

Once late afternoon rolled around and I realized I was stood up there was only one thing I could do; buy a case of beverage. If you’re unfamiliar with my birthday treat I present to you the Weyerbacher Big Beers case ($54/case)

You may be scratching your head as to why I selected this one. When I first started ever performing beer reviews this was my first case which was purchased with Griff. The smallest AVB is 9% in this variety case.  In it you will find Old Heathen(10%), Double Simcoe IPA (9%), Blithering Idiot(11%) and Merry Monks Ale (9.3%).

Dinner Friday night night was; bah who am I kidding it was a Friday during Lent… I didn’t eat. I got word that our big surprise for SIDT was happening that day and not a week later so after catching my breath and checking a few things made the decision that I wasn’t going to spend my first bachelor birthday weekend doing any work. I’ll have time for that this week.

Saturday was spent with 2 things on my mind, NHL10 and BBQ. One of those two took me down for the count and it wasn’t the video game. I went to Smokey Bones for a rack of ribs and would soon find out this would be an epic fail.  You’re gonna have to wait to find out why though. Its worthy of its own post.

Saturday night was me, curling and chatting online until almost sunrise. Damn you west coasters but thanks for the birthday wishes and great time

Sunday, the birthday, was pretty mellow and I chilled at home, visited some fam and then the house was packed once again with Teaspoon craziness.

So there’s my recap. I have plenty of posts coming up when I’m dodging falling ceiling.

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!

I love playing hockey video games and for the longest time they were the same game with different players so I grew bored and my PS2 collected dust. From the conversations on Twitter I read stories of how NHL 10 revolutionized the experience and I gave in.  In fact THE reason why (amongst others but this was #1) I got the Xbox360 was for this game. I knew I was taking a risk buying a gaming system for the purpose of one game but believe me when I say that this game is crack… mind crack.

Be A Pro
This part of the game is what has sucked me in 100%. Not the sleek game play overall or the quest for the cup but the fact that I get to create myself as an early draft pick with the Penguins and work on my career. the game does a great job of making it feel like its really you in the game from the warm up and entering the ice to focusing on your player throughout.

Number 10? No idea. I need to change that to 22. Right now it’s my tribute to Gary Roberts and Pierre Larouche. When you create your player you can customize the heck out of yourself. Hair, eyes, nose, facial features, build and as you can see I have some work to do on myself. As you gain more experience and reach new levels of skills you can upgrade your equipment and also increase your personal performance.

You can either get drafted or assign yourself. I opted for the Pens since I can’t live with myself if the Flyers drafted me. Starting the season in WBS has been cool so far and updated rosters has helped me learn some of the young guys who may make an appearance some day. Being a former goalie, I really have no idea how to be a forward, so I made myself a power LW. The HUGE plus to doing this is that when you’re playing there are blue arrows showing you where to be on the ice and what angle you should approach the blue line so you’re not offsides. My first game I was skating around lost but did manage to get a point of an obscene 25 shots. Games 2 and 3 I was a huge ball of suck.

Game 4 the unthinkable happened…

Someone got their groove back

As luck would have it the clock hit midnight and I had be up in 5 hours so all of the magic was going to sleep.

It’s going to take me awhile to get use to this Xbox controller but for the most part I have it configured the way I can remember.

I’m absolutely hooked and plan on playing out the season in full for the first time since NHL 06. I’ve talked to a few friends about joining a pickup league so I only have a few more weeks before I get my ass handed to me on a regular basis.

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.