Totally addicted to playing Dead Rising here lately, probably the best lauch title I’ve ever seen for a console, despite the horrible survivor AI and annoying Otis communications. I mean heck who needs two hands to talk on a walkie talkie? Why can’t I just keep stabbing away while I chat?
On the Wii front, Rayman Ravin Rabbids is keeping us sweatin’ and me wondering why Jen keeps beating me.
Other than that it’s been all work and baby here lately. I did finally purchase a teddy bear for Connor, I’ve been looking for one for a while now and found something I think is finally good enough from Boyd’s Bears. It’s crazy how hard it is just to find a decent panda teddy bear. I really thought it would be much easier.
Connor’s hand on Jen’s hand
They’re cute when they’re sleeping
These things might make you look slightly silly, but at 2am w/ a screaming kid you’ll be surprised how little you care
They need to make a Dead Rising 2
Babies first month
Happy birthday to Connor who is exactly one month as of yesterday, hard to believe it’s only been that long!
He can be a very lazy baby
We had the one month checkup yesterday, and everything looks good. He’s a little over 10 lbs now and 22 inches long. Other than that he does what he’s supposed to do very well….eat, sleep, pee and poop.
Playing around with style sheets
Oh my lord do I suck at css…..but I am playing around with it a bit looking to put a new coat of paint on the ol’ website.
So if things are goofy let me know, I think i’ve got all the major bugs worked out.
The current one I’m using I got from http://killsmedead.com which I saw originally on The Style Contest.
I lol'd
Picked up a new remote
After Jen’s Mother left for home earlier last week we talked about finally purchasing a new universal remote. We’ve been playing with a really old Sony touch screen one that I had picked up years ago, just to get a feel if the features would be something we really want (macros, etc).
Costco had the Logitech Harmony 720 for $139 w/ a coupon Jen had, so we decided to splurge a bit and buy one. So we’ve been playing with that here for a few days, it works pretty well out of the box, and you can download most controllers automatically from their online database without having to do much of anything. It’s pretty slick, but of course your always going to have to tweak it a bit, but over all it’s pretty nice. I figure we spent a few hours at least playing with it to make it work. Funny thing is I didn’t even know my xbox 360 could be turned on via infra red.
In other news, we finished Prey on the 360. Not a bad game, the story felt a little weak, but there were certainly some moments that really made me go “whoa”. Picked up Dead Rising, and Rayman Raving Rabbids to keep us busy during the long long nights.
Now we just need to know somebody else who has a Wii so we can invite them over and spank them at the games 
Xbox 360 needs to feed
A few months ago my wife urged me to purchase a little gadget called a Kill-a-watt meter, it’s a little thing you plug in line between the wall outlet and the power cord to see how much power something is pulling. Maybe not as fancy as some other models that can create charts, but pretty usable anyways.
When we got it we plugged it into a bunch of things and generally probably helped save a penny or two here and there. For example the TV/DVD/Alarm Clock all plugged into a power strip in the guest bedroom that nobody was using. So back in February I read this article via Kotaku regarding power consumption and the “next-gen” consoles that really got my thinking about the Xbox 360 I have. So I slapped the meter on it and these are the results I got.
Just having the Xbox 360 plugged into the wall alone, not even turned on, pulls 2 watts. That’s 2 watts, 24 hours a day, 365 hours a year. Based on a kW hr price of $.07149 (the current from Com-Ed) that adds up to $12.35. That’s 12 bucks I’m paying to have the privilege of seeing a yellow light on the rather large power supply. As a result of this I unplug it now when not using it, I like to think of it as if somebody offered me $10 for free…I’d take it, so why not do a little bit to avoid spending it.
So if just having it plugged in is costing us money how much does running it cost? Well again assuming a kW hr cost of $.07149, if I played it for 5 hours a day, 30 days a month, and for 365 days it would end up with a total of $180.15. That’s with an average of it pulling 150watts.
Now playing video games is one thing, but Microsoft is pretty big on it’s IPTV push lately. You an download HD movies to the Xbox 360, and even television shows like Survivor and South Park. Now while these often come with perks some people might now have (480p…no commercials) they still need to be viewed using the Xbox 360, which of course means it’s on and consuming power. So the previous value of $180 dollars is still valid for watching television, I think 5 hours is a fair number to use. But what I was really curious about was the comparison between the Xbox 360′s power consumption, and the power consumption of our Dish Network 522 Dual tuner DVR.
As it turns out the DVR pulls 32 watts at all times, on or off (to always be in standby so it can record shows), which means it has a yearly cost (using 5 hours per day as a base, and assuming it was turned off the other 19 hours in the day) of $41.18. That means it’s more than 4x more expensive to watch television using the Xbox 360 as a DVR…which I think is huge news especially with the recent release of the Elite model (which I won’t get into for other reason, aside to say that not having HD or wireless built in really makes the moniker elite seem moronic). Couple that with the fact that when comparing the usage of a typical TV remote to the controls on the 360, the remote will always win out as more user friendly, and you have what I consider to be a pretty big nail in the coffin.
Microsoft desperately wants the 360 to be everything, including a DVR, but have they really thought everything through? I’ve only really touched on the power consumption, and not even the level of BTU’s the unit puts off. But what about one more final power consumption related observation.
Recently the 2007 spring update released a new feature that I was really excited about, it’s called low power consumption mode, and coupled with auto shut off it’s a long overdue option. Basically it allows you to start a download of something (game demo, TV show, whatever) and then shut the console off. The front light will blink once every 10 seconds or so, and your download will chug along merrily. Meanwhile your display is off, as is your controller. It all sounds perfect, but how much power does it continue to pull while in “low power mode”?
75%
The Xbox 360 still manages to pull 113 watts while in low power mode. Now if this is functionality that has been shoehorned in where it wasn’t designed to be then great, hey anything is better than 100% power consumption. But really should they still call it “low power mode”….why not “reduced power mode” or something a little bit more…well less misleading? Of course I suspect that “medium-high power mode” got voted right the heck out.
baby pics, why yes i happen to have some
Jen’s mother and sister left today, we both wish they could have stayed longer, but my opinion about visiting family is that it’s always good to leave wanting more. As opposed to spending to much time together and just getting sick of everybody. So the short answer is everything went well. It’s really different having more people than just Jen and I in the house.
Jen’s mom and Connor
Like the new hat?
Tired now
Only moment’s later Aunt Heather tried to swap Connor with a canned ham and sneak him into her luggage, thankfully Jen noticed the canned ham lacked the necessary baby power/poop melody aroma.
I snapped this pick while Jen and Connor were sleeping at 3am
Nibbler is actually quite the messy eater
Not sure if I should make a popeye joke, or point out he’s trying to eat Jen’s forearm….
I need to take some time off, but don’t worry I found a replacement for work
mental note
Need to check out Odin Sphere for the PS2…looks hella sweet based on some of the screen shots. Lot’s of buzz on this in the gaming news…..
Vaccum cleaning a cat...or what I wish I could do
of course keep in mind, most albino cats are deaf….so I’m guessing that’s why the person’s not bleeding…
And even more turtle crazyness:
stolen from cute overload….
I think I gained 10 lbs today
So some place I’ve never heard of caught my eye with a flyer they sent out. Cold stone creamery…perhaps you’ve heard of it? Anyways they have a cake there that simply had my mouth just watering thinking about it. It’s called A Cheesecake called Desire. Donna and Heather surprised me today with picking one up….of course it probably doesn’t hurt I kept talking about it
Damn is that thing good….cheesecake ice cream with graham cracker bits in it….I think Jen created a monster here with all the baking she did while pregnant. My sweet tooth has awoken and craves fresh blood.
Anyways, with Jen’s family in town for the past few days, I haven’t really had a lot of time to just post here. I/We beat Final Fantasy 12 a few days ago. It pretty much got to the point where I just wasn’t totally interested in finishing up all the extra crap because it just didn’t offer anything to progress the story. Which is somewhat disappointing. I mean I played the heck out of Star Ocean: Till the end of time…it was a great game, but for some reason FFXII just didn’t make me want to sink the extra 40 hours in it just to beat some imaginary monster in a game with no reward for doing it. Maybe I’m just getting older.
Here’s something that has a reward though, instant cute overload…which is also where I found it. A vicious turtle defends his territory from a feline intruder. Check out his speed….amazing! I just can’t believe the cat never once harmed it seriously enough to stop it. That’s one tough turtle.
