Researchers have released a new study on the dangers of not eating fish. Mothers are now faced with a perilous choice when shopping while pregnant - to eat or not to eat fish. If a mother eats too much fish, she risks giving birth to a gregarious ping pong champion that needs a kidney transplant. If a mother does not eat fish, her child could end up a World of Warcraft player that does not possess the motor skills to maintain bladder control, but due to healthy kidneys is able to drink large quantities of alcohol. In either case, the outcome for mothers is grim. How to choose between two equally unpleasant outcomes is something most mothers would abhor. My solution is to drown them. If that is not an option, I highly recommend avoiding reading these worthless studies.

For those who really wanted them, I uploaded the photos of Mike, Jake, Dan, and I that were requested . Anyways, you can find them in the same folder as the other wedding photos. Enjoy and try not to blackmail me in the future.

-Trevor

One of my friends in Arizona introduced me to cricket a few months back, and while I am by no means a huge fan, it is enjoyable. After browsing the net for a while, I noticed that Brian Lara International Cricket 2005 was available in England, so I decided to import it. Of course some of you may be wondering, "However did you play an imported Xbox game on a US console?" Technicalities aside, it is working and a fairly enjoyable game. However, I did notice a few points in the game do not seem to be realistic from my limited experience, but may easily be fixed in the new version due out this March (along with a graphical upgrade).

There are two problems currently plaguing me, first the game is available for the Xbox 360 and Playstation 2 (Both of which I do not own and the latter than I will not buy) and secondly the game is only available outside of the United States. While the first problem is solvable with a sufficient monetary exchange, circumstances are different this time around for playing imported games on the Xbox 360 (mainly no user friendly mod chip).

In my quest to play BLIC 2007, I decided to e-mail Codemasters (Publisher) and asked if I can expect to be able to play this game on a US system and sadly they informed me -

Unfortunately Brian Lara Cricket 2007 will only work on Playstations/Xboxes designed to run PAL format games. North American Playstations/Xboxes are designed to run NTSC format games only

I now have three options:

1) Buy an imported Xbox 360 (Very Expensive)
2) Mod a US Xbox 360 (Pain in the ass given my limited technical skills)
3) Buy the PC Version (Expensive considering my laptop cannot run this game, and no it was not mentioned earlier)

While I ultimately know I will buy an Xbox 360 in order to play Halo 3, Mass Effect, and Assassin's Creed, I imagine that I will pick one up closer to this Fall than right now, thus it is possible that I may push forward my projected Summer desktop purchase up to this Spring. This all sprung up from a game, cricket at that .

According to Newegg.com, my Summer Desktop wish list is currently just over $1300, a tad high for my budget (which is why I was hoping for a drop in price over the Summer for the specs I want). Of course taking out the 500GB hard drive and utilizing my 160GB SATA that I have lying around will save me $165 now which I can buy at a later data. Further if I choose a Intel 2 Core Duo E6300 rather than a E6400 that will save me another $50 or so. I do not know if I want to sacrifice the LCD at another $200 and use my 17" CRT, so I may just have to wait a few more months. In any case, I just picked up some extra RAM for my laptop putting the current spec at 1.2 GB which will hopefully help when multitasking (Haven't really tried yet).

Here are the current specs that I have chosen:

SAMSUNG 18X DVD?R DVD Burner Model SH-S182M/BEBN - $33
SCEPTRE X20WG-Naga Black 20.1" 5ms (GTG) DVI Widescreen LCD Monitor - $200
EVGA Geforce 7950GT KO 512MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video Card - $250
Thermaltake W0093RU ATX 12V 2.0 Version 500W Power Supply - $60
Patriot Signature Series 2GB DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 667 (PC2 5300)- $201
GIGABYTE GA-945P-S3 LGA 775 Intel 945P ATX Intel Motherboard - $85
Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 Conroe 2.13GHz LGA 775 Processor - $222
WD Caviar RE2 WD5000YS 500GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - $165
Case - Already Own
WD 160GB SATA Hard Drive - Already Own

Well, that is certainly enough babble out of me for one day. I'm going to bed.

-Trevor

I decided to give Real's Rhapsody streaming service a one month trial in order to determine whether or not I would be able to discover new music. While the service was ok, I discovered multiple software issues and a selection that was underwhelming to say the least. I did not really discover much music than what I had already had in my collection. Moreover, it did not offer many of my favorite bands, so when I was at my computer without my music (I keep it stored on my portable hard drive) I was unable to stream them. I was also surprised about the software's instability. From my subscription level, I was supposed to be able to download the music for offline listening, though when attempting to download the DRM update to allow this, it would not download. Further, the software was severely unstable, often crashing every couple of hours.

Since I did not think this service is currently worth $10 a month (though I still firmly believe this will eventually be a great model), I decided to cancel my service. I went to Real's website where conveniently I could not login to the section marked, "Cancel your account." After going through a similar section on their music player, I discovered I had to call their toll free number . There is nothing more annoying than having to call a telephone number for an internet service!!! Of course, getting your call dropped four times does not help lower the blood pressure either. Once I finally connected with an operator, I discovered the call center was clearly not in the US. I did have thoughts about asking the operator where she was from for a joke as one of my friends had done this and the operator told him that he was from Utah. Where in Utah? Utah. She seemed friendly and I wanted to get off quickly so I decided to avoid any harassment on my part. In any case, the cancellation process was not too bad, but the "accent barrier" slowed it down and I had to repeat my account information a couple of times.

Overall, I am hesitant to recommend Real's Rhapsody service right now, but neither do I recommend any service for streaming. I think that I may try e-music, though they run into the same selection issues as Real likely will since they have independent labels only.

-Trevor

A couple days late, but I have a bit of an excuse; it is actually a good excuse for any grad student - programming a nonlinear industrial production equation in Stata. Well, it was neither enjoyable nor informative, so I'll get on to the "good" stuff.

I really wanted to avoid celebrating my birthday this year. I thought that I would like to avoid the reality of how long I will be in grad school for. However, Dina discovered on Facebook that Saturday was my birthday, thus it quickly spread. So, we needed to go out to celebrate, thus I thought maybe a German restaurant would be a good change of pace. After reading a couple of reviews in the Tucson Weekly online, I thought we should check out Mountain View restaurant. Unfortunately, when we got there, we quickly discovered it was recently converted into a Mexican restaurant. While there are plenty of good Mexican restaurants in Tucson, the city really could expand their horizons a bit.

I wanted to try a new place, so Gabe recommended a steakhouse a couple miles away called Shooters. Evidently it was originally a Middle Eastern belly dancer joint in the '70s so it had minarets and the whole bit. After being seated outside in the courtyard, the owner eventually came out and apologized for taking so long. We were in a pretty good mood and were joking around a bit. The owner hit us with a bombshell, telling us that his son died last Monday. It was definitely a bit of a downer, but at least the steak was good.

Afterwards I was surprised to an awesome Cheesecake from Trader Joes. Well, that was about it, no drunken orgy or broken couches like last year, but a fairly relaxing dinner and some bullshit afterwards. In any case, rumors have it that we may go mini golfing this weekend, and there certainly is nothing crazier than grad students mini golfing... .

Reading through this post, I definitely killed the excitement of the day. I really did enjoy it though, so for those of you reading that were there, it was a great. I almost forgot to mention I had cable internet hooked up last Saturday as well. I even got free expanded basic to boot. The download speeds are fantastic, though I shouldn't mention what I've been downloading the past few days (no, it's not porn)

-Trevor

Genre: Political Drama / Thriller
Rating: R
Director: Fernando Meirelles
Starring: Ralph Fiennes & Rachel Weisz
Released: 2005

Read more!

Brian over at bbspot.com has a wonderful flowchart helping us decide whether that upgrade is for you. I've now got it posted up at my cubicle just in case I forget whether or not I am ready for an upgrade. According to the flowchart, I should wait for the lottery to get the upgrade, probably a good choice. Of course, a poster on Digg offered this simple flowchart for those thinking of upgrading: Is it stable? -> is there a torrent? -> is there a crack? -> INSTALL ULTIMATE.

-Trevor