Well, we’re now 125 games through the 2007 baseball season and yet again the Phillies are mired in the middle of their standard mediocre-average season. While it is true that at 66-59 they are only 1 game off the National League Wild Card hunt, the cumulative effect of 1 playoff appearance in the last 24 seasons is beginning to wear on me and hundreds of thousands of other Phillies fans. Unfortunately, I’ve grown used to this summer roller-coaster that my emotions are forced to endure.
However, what I heard today on 610-WIP really had me scratching my head (if not slightly annoyed). The mid-day guys (Gargano & Martarano) spent most of their afternoon bemoaning the fact that if the Phillies do (yet again) fail to make the playoffs that we should all in some way give them a “pass” for a good season. While I freely ackowledge that they have been beseiged by injures, I am having a hard time characterizing this season as a success when the main act has yet to be concluded. To briefly recap, their bullpen has been dreadful, the landscape of their starting pitching has been inconsistent (at best) and Charlie Manuel is still fumbling his ways through games each night. While there is a lot to like about this team (Ryan Howard, Chase Utley, Jimmy Rollins & Cole Hamels) – there is still the 10-ton gorilla in the corner ….. PLAYOFFS? PLAYOFFS!
Tags: Phillies Baseball
- John & I continued the progress on the Lego Star Wars UCS AT-ST Walker (71 more pieces assembled, 897 to go)
- John-John & I just finished another round of Star Wars Lego II. We fought our way through the swamps of Dagobah with Yoda’s assistance!
As a huge fan of Doctor Who, I’ve been trying to come up with legitimate ways of watching the new series episodes as quickly as I can get my hands on them. Unfortunately, immediate DVD releases of the new episodes are limited only to R2 releases from the UK. Fortuantely, I have a spare DVD-ROM drive that I have dedicated to playing R2 DVDs. Now this is all well and good if I were to be content to always watch the latest David Tennant stories on my PC. However, sometimes you want that Blue Box on the big screen in your family room. So to get around this, I am transcoding my R2 discs using #1 DVD Ripper (#1DR) and the lastest DivX Codec. Using #1DR’s highest quality setting for standard DVDs, I am able to compress a 45 minute episode down into a more manageable ~575MB .AVI file. This can then be streamed directly to my Home Theater setup via a networked multimedia player from IOData (http://www.iodata.com/usa/products/products.php?cat=HNP&sc=AVEL&ts=2&tsc=&sc=AVEL&pId=AVLP2%2FDVDLAV).
To paraphrase the Master, ” … So … a new format … at last!”
Starting next week, I’m going to begin posting my reviews of the lastest incarnation of Doctor Who – starting with the Christopher Eccleston episodes.
Tags: Doctor Who
Episode 3: John-John Talk (August 19th 2007)
Topics Include: Continuing the new Lego Set, Visiting with cousins, Over-Night @ Grandparents, More Bowling!
Tags: John-John Talk
Well, I finally got my phone working on my recently transferred VOIP service. As I suspected, VOIP.COM requires that (if installed behind a home router) certain ports be opened to faciliatate the reception of incoming phone calls. Below is the list of the ports & instructions necessary to get the VOIP.COM service working behind a commercial grade router:
- your protocol has to be UDP Inbound and Outbound.
- port 21
- port 53
- port 69
- port 123
- port ranges, 5060-5061
- port ranges, 10000-20000
Now, why these directions are not on their web site is a whole other question ….
Tags: Internet
Well, I was one of the unfortunate souls who was affected by the shutdown of Internet VOIP provider SunRocket last month. Unfortunately, I have not had much luck getting my VOIP service transferred over to a new provider. After almost 2 days of exhaustive research, I decided to switch over the service provded by (appropriately enogh) VOIP.COM. However, I am almost at my wits ends here on the transaction and may find myself looking for another provider very shortly. Bottom line: VOIP has been SWAMPPED by people switching over from SunRocket and I am beginning to wonder if they have the infrastructure to support this many new customers this quickly. To briefly recap: here are they key dates and the stae of my service on those dates:
- July 25th – ordered service
- August 2nd - hardware has not yet arrived; send a support ticket request inquiring to where my phone adapter was
- August 3rd – hardware arrives; perform self install; can make outgoing calls but cannot receive incoming calls
- Augsut 4th – call technical support inquiring as to wether i need to open any ports on my router to allow incoming calls, support says no, but that they are having technical issues
- August 8th – call technical support againl they say they are working on “it”; my old number was finally transferred over
- August 12th – called AGAIN; on hold for 45 mins and then give up
- August 16th – still cannot receive incoming calls; attempt 3 more times to call for support; spend a collective 1 hour 50 minutes on hold and never to get to talk to a technician
THIS IS FUN!
Anyone else having this nightmare?
Tags: Internet
I had begun to think that it was never going to happen, but the folks @ DivX finally got a 100% Vista compatible version out to the public. Finally, I can again transcode video using the AWESOME DivX codec. For those of you who haven’t used DivX before, I strongly recommend it. Check DivX out @ http://www.divx.com. If you are looking for a great partner with DivX, I would also highly recommend the usage of Apollo Multimedia’s # 1 DVD Ripper. This can be downloaded from: http://www.dvdtox.com/. It integrates nicely with DivX (and other common codecs) to rip your DVDs for backup purposes or for streaming them across your home theater TV network.
Tags: Software
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