Car Buying Revealed... and Dave Ramsey

This morning we talked to Brian Munroe about his book Car Buying Revealed.

Another method for car buying comes from Dave Ramsey. You can find it on his website here. His idea revolves around saving money and THEN buying a car. :) Crazy... I know...

Riot Control: The Logitech Driving Force GT

Above you can see stock images of the racing wheel I've been ranting and raving about. Originally it was my intention to snag pictures of the "unboxing" but I got lazy and didn't do it. Why lazy? Well... it mostly revolves around the fact that I thought it was going to take a long time for me to get the racing wheel set up and I didn't want to burn my somewhat limited time on taking and posting pictures when I could be screaming around corners. I could have taken lots of pictures and posted them, though, because the wheel took me less than 5 minutes to get out of the box and plug into my PS3. Hey, Microsoft, take lessons!!! Their wheel took me FOREVER to get set up. Geez...

I'm not your average guy. Most of the guys I know could sit down and have conversations that would go on FOREVER about their favorite car and/or the part they just added to their car to make it faster, stronger, bigger, MORE!!!! Not me. I drive a Honda CR-V. Why? Well, after a deer ate my Civic...

...I decided I wanted something that I could actually haul people around in without all the awkward "climbing into the backseat" moments the Civic always lead to. Does this look like the mode of transportation of a man who is looking for high performance action?

In a word: no... but who does everyone want to ride with when we go to lunch? I rest my case. (Oh...and I will say this: the CR-V had plenty of room for some high performance audio equipment... so I'm not in soccer mom territory just yet...)

I explain my sad state of affairs only to say this: I'm changing. Yes, it's true that inside every guy a car enthusiast is buried and mine is coming to the surface. It all began with a friend of mine ranting and raving about how good Gran Turismo 3 was on Playstation 2. I decided to listen to his ramblings and I picked up a used copy of GT3 for $5. It turns out I was a TERRIBLE driver. TERRIBLE. Legendarily bad... but my poor performance drove me. Rather than shutting it off in disgust, I decided to take it as a challenge and started taking the driving tests. By the time I earned my first license, I had grasped the basic principles and started playing GT more like a simulation and less like a "game". With that methodology things clicked and I was HOOKED. I logged a billion hours on GT3 and was first in line to snag Gran Turismo 4. (Just a note: if you have a PS2/3 and you're thinking about about doing the GT thing, skip 3 and go straight to 4. GT4 still holds up amazingly well and "fixes" all of the issues with GT3. It's very worthwhile.)

Gran Turismo 5: Prologue is the next step in my evolution. I've been playing this fantastic racing EP for the last month on the PS3 and loving every minute of it. (Well, almost every minute of it. I still can't get a gold in the B-class race where you are forced to use the Lancer on that Swiss mountain course.) How do you take GT5 and go WAYYYY next level? The racing wheel.

Holy crap.

It's amazing. Seriously. After five minutes with the wheel, my monitor disappeared and I was racing a CAR. I forgot about the racing line and started watching the ROAD. The sense of immersion was incredible. The wheel is powered and gives "feedback" so I could feel the wheels fighting me as I tried to cut a turn too tightly. To me, the defining moment was accelerating out of a turn and feeling the wheel straighten out. Wow. Welcome to reality.

Do I recommend the wheel? Well... the price tag is high... HOWEVER, if you fit into the category of having the cash and wanting to make your fake driving experience as realistic as possible... Wow. This is it.

Oh... and to all of you who say "Yeah... that's cool... but at my one friend's house..." :I haven't been to your friends house to see the custom wheel that his dad made from a certified Dale Earnhardt's replica. Maybe that is better... but for my money I'm going with the Logitech wheel. Thanks.

What I did for Memorial Day:

Twister anyone?

I have a passing interest in severe weather. I will frequently stop on the Weather Channel, National Geographic, or some such network as they are running something about a tornado or hurricane. I love watching those idiots chase storms. Lots of the time they don't come up with anything good but the video below is probably one of the single most amazing storm videos I've ever seen. It is eleven minutes from the start to "finish" of a tornado forming and touching down. You gotta check this out.

Okay... I can't get it to embed properly so I'm just going to have to give you a link to it. Still worth your time, though. Here it is.

"Diet" foods at Restaurants

GREAT article about the diet menu at a lot of restaurants. I don't order items from those menus because I want something I'll actually like if I'm going to drop the cash in a restaurant. I guess that's why I'm on my way to shopping at the Big n' Tall. (I laughed out loud when I typed that...) Of course, if you're eating these items you're headed to the Plus sizes yourself. Here it is.

Wii Fit...

This is a parody commercial for Wii Fit. HILARIOUS.

House of Heroes...

"I could write page after page about how much I like HOH music." That is the sentence that I wanted to start this blog with but then I began thinking: "Could I actually write page upon page upon page of how much I enjoy their music?" I'm not sure that I could.

I find that I have a difficult time expressing why some music is brilliant while other music...isn't. I don't want to be unfair to anybody but I hear so much music that just sounds the same. Is that wrong? Not necessarily. I think the easiest route in the world to take is that of the cynic and at times my first reaction to music is cynical and I fail to give the artist a chance. It is my ongoing intent to get past my bloated sense of self importance and to appreciate music instead of looking down my nose at it.

The delightful thing about House of Heroes is that I don't have to force myself to do anything. I jump right to the enjoyment and skip the effort.

Their new music is amazing. I mean that. I am AMAZED by it. The lyrical themes, the musical movements, the riskiness of it all. Risky? Maybe that isn't the right word (I told you I'm not good at this), but to me it feels risky. They are putting out something that, while it has homages to other pieces or brilliant music, feels unique and fresh. It's intelligent. It's...

I don't know what the heck it is but I like it enough to bug people about it. I've e-mailed friends and family about it. It has become the music that I play for people who don't listen to RadioU anymore.

Again, I feel like I'm not expressing myself well, so I'm going to stop. I'm embedding two videos of the guys talking about two of the best songs on the album. "Code Name Raven" and "In the Valley of the Dying Sun." They're both amazing.... Oh, and they don't reference it, but "Raven" was Rambo's code name in First Blood.

French Fry holder...

The French Fry holder! If you buy this, I also recommend you check this out:

my new headphones :o)

The Final Part of the Upgrade: Much nerd talk to follow...

Let me start by saying that if, like me, you have the unfortunate fortune of owning a Linksys router that is also your vonage gateway you know how unbelievably frustrating it is. I just had to go downstairs and restart it for the third time today. Now I know why they were on clearance at Tiger Direct.

Here it is my friends! The final part of my PC's upgrade:

I bought a barebones kit about six months ago but it has always been my plan to drop a better processor in it. Well, intel's new line finally hit the sweet spot between price and performance. I present to you the Core 2 Duo 3.0 ghz Wolfdale 45nm processor. I got a great deal on it at New Egg with free shipping.

Installing it was a breeze. I had to swing by Micro Center and grab some thermal paste before the install. (Yes, I had to do that AGAIN. Getting it was a story all in itself, but I really don't feel like typing it out. The bottom line is that I got it and I didnt' really save myself any money by picking it up by the time I burned a gallon of gas getting to Micro Center and back. Next time, I'm buying the stupid stuff online.) With the paste in hand, the actual install took less than ten minutes and most of that was unplugging all the crap in the back of the machine so I could get it open.

I appreciate the fact that Intel put's their processor's in such big boxes because it feels pretty stupid to pay $200 for something so small.

Windows actually didn't hiccup at all when I installed it. The BIOS forced a reboot but that was it. I'm sailing! I've got some iTunes purchasing to do and then I'm off to finally take Crysis for a spin. Oh and I installed the Gears of War PC for a point of comparison. Laugh all you want my Mac friends. Obadiah is VERY happy with his PC. :)

September 11 video archive...

This website is fascinating. It is a television archive of events unfolding on September 11. The archive is organized by news network and time with streaming flash video. Watching it unfold is fascinating because no one really knew what was happening. I remember speculation running wild at one point and Foxnews.com reporting the possibility that 50k people had died. Follow the link if you're interested.

Fit to Fight. The guy on the RIOT.

This is the book of the guy we are having on the RIOT Tuesday.

Chronicles of Narnia on Blu-Ray...

I got Narnia on DVD when it came out a while back. It looks and sounds great... but of course now that Prince Caspian is coming out Buena Vista Home Video wants to remind us that while DVD is great, blu-ray is GREATER... or is it?

It depends on who you ask. The problem with hi-def in general is that its beauty is in "the eye of the beholder". How do I know? Well, I was all set to buy Narnia on blu-ray until I read this rather cutting review from IGN:

"The problem here is threefold: color, clarity and grain. With the exception of the CG-heavy battle scenes toward the film's conclusion, the image never really pops. The colors appear muted – never quite as sharp and contrasted as one might prefer – and the noticeable grain/digitization in the more fast-moving moments prevents the film from ever being as crisp and clear as one might prefer. Overall, one might argue that Narnia looks no better in Blu-ray than it might in an upscaled standard-definition presentation. "

Their take on it pretty much destroyed my interest in buying the blu-ray... which is not necessarily a bad thing! In reality, I haven't watched The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe since I unwrapped it on Christmas day and popped it in the DVD player. Now I NEED to own it on blu-ray so I can do the exact same thing except now I have TWO copies that I'm ignoring? Thanks for saving me money, IGN!

Not so fast, Obadiah. There is another! Here's what Peter Bracke over at High-Def Digest had to say:

"The sense of depth is simply fantastic -- the "picture window" effect is on full display. The color palette is very pretty, with wonderful pastoral greens and oranges (a rarity, it seems, with most transfers today, which look all hi-tech and "edgy"). Saturation is excellent, with a super-clean look and no chroma noise or fuzziness.

Blacks are rock solid throughout, and contrast is strong enough to deliver the required detail while never sacrificing realism. Even the widest shots are alive with detail and sharpness, and the source print is spotless. Disney has also produced a clean encode, so compression artifacts are not a problem. 'Narnia' looks smashing."

So who do I believe?

In the end, I think I already made my decision based mostly on my wallet and less on what the interwebs had to say, but I did think this was a great example of how arbitrary "reviews" can be even if they are based on something as concrete as picture quality.

Video Game Collecting...

I think certain people in the general population have an urge to collect things. I used to be one of those people. I was a hardcore comic collector until I got my first job. It was when I started earning my own money that I realized how ridiculous some of Marvel's crossovers were becoming and I refused to give them any more of my money.

I'm not here to criticize you if you collect something but I must admit that the video game collector is, to me, almost as bad as the Precious Moments collector. A video game is meant to be PLAYED, not shelved. Why spend untold dollars on games that you are not playing? So you can see them on a shelf? Not for me, my friend. Not for me... but definitely for this guy.

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