I, along with probably 250,000 other folks received the launch issue of Future and Best Buy’s partnership magazine, @Gamer. My first glance at the cover and I knew exactly what this was, a glorified video game ad for Best Buy. I was wrong, it isn’t just an ad, it’s also a legitimate magazine, aaaaannnnd that’s not necessarily a good thing.

When a magazine launches one of the very first things I do after fanning through the pages is read the Letter from the Editor. In this letter you often get the tone and direction of the magazine, they mostly all read the same; every magazine wants to be different from the rest, have a unique style, blah blah blah. @Gamer, according to Wil O’Neal, wants to “Help gamers quickly figure out which games are hot and worth your hard-earned money.” That’s a noble goal, unfortunately that’s pretty much the noble goal of most gaming magazines and websites.

Judging an entire magazine based solely on the launch issue isn’t fair. The magazine hasn’t found it’s stride, it still has some soul searching to go through to find what works and what doesn’t. The primary problem is the format. The gaming landscape changes so fast that a month by month magazine just isn’t as relevant as it was 10 years ago. With the Internet, we have up to the second knowledge of gaming news, reviews, release dates and delays. A magazine like this has a 2-3 month lead time so they may be working on stories in August that may not be published until October.

One glaring example of this is the new information Microsoft released about Fable III on page 9. The new information is that your character is the son or daughter of the hero in Fable II. Old news, whatever is happening now or in the last month isn’t covered. They most certainly didn’t have enough time to even touch on E3. I don’t hold @Gamer responsible for that, that’s just the issue with the medium.

What I can hold @Gamer responsible for is the writing. It isn’t terrible or technically bad, it’s generic. It’s written like a gaming magazine. It’s informational, as it has set out to be, but certainly not entertaining. There is practically no personality. Take this paragraph from the Crackdown 2 review,

“The original Crackdown added a fun multiplayer component that boasted collaborative co-op action. Crackdown 2 supports four-player co-op to satisfy players who enjoyed it from the first game, but also adds a 16-player competitive element with team-vs.-team and every-man-for-himself deathmatch modes, as well as an incredibly frantic Rocket Tag mode that lets you say “You’re it!” with a missile.”

The paragraph has no voice, it doesn’t convey the excitement or the pleasurable side of playing a 16-player competitive deathmatch mode. I thought reviews were supposed to be an opinion, but this one reads like the back of the box. The only opinion in the piece is the last paragraph where he writes,

“Crackdown 2 will surely be a big killer of personal productivity and spare time during the summer.”

This game received a 4.5 out of 5 and that’s what he had to say? That was his opinion? I don’t know about you, but when I talk about a game that I love, I gush about how amazing the story was, how the action was intense and non-stop, that the control was tight and spot-on and how the art direction fully immersed me in the rich, colorful world. It’s all about my experience, and when I talk about a game I love or hate, I want that sense of emotion to be felt by the person I’m talking to. That was absent in this review and I’ve noticed that’s the case with a lot of gaming reviews, they’re clinical and factually based.

Above each review score there is a handy “What’s great” and “What’s not so great” list. This is where they boil the review down to a couple bullet points. I’ve seen this in other magazines, “Wired” being one of them and I generally find them helpful. I always focus on the “What’s not so great” because I want to know what’s wrong with a game. So, “what’s not so great” about Crackdown 2? “At some point, the game will end and you’ll be done.” and “In September, Halo: Reach will come out, which is great on its own, but not for those who want to keep playing Crackdown 2.” Really? Is that why Andy Eddy scored it 4.5 instead of 5? Because it ends and Halo comes out in September?

I would have liked to have read more “I” statements in the reviews. This again, isn’t the fault of the reviewer but the problem with game reviews in general. I find it interesting that reviews are like how games were 15-20 years ago, dispassionate. Games these days convey so much sentiment and are cinematic in scope and story. Reviews, lack any emotion. There’s no color or scope to reviews, they’re just a series of facts laid out and from those facts consumers are supposed to make a buying decision.

The best part of the magazine are the coupons. In the launch issue alone they have a couple of coupons I’m interested in using, one for Bioshock 2 and the other for Halo 3 ODST. These savings alone would pay for 2 years of the magazine which makes a subscription worth the $20 for 10 issues.

So, is the magazine bad? No. It’s a gaming magazine with all the pitfalls of every gaming magazine out there. They are, to be fair, doing one thing differently, readers can submit their own reviews to be printed in the magazine. While I’m not ready to subscribe now, the coupons are enough to get me to seriously consider it. If the quality of the information remains, I probably won’t consider it a source for gaming information. However, I will subscribe if the coupons are as good in the next issue.

I’m not gonna lie, it was a rough day. From the time I woke up in the morning at 5:45am to the very moment we left for the airport at 1pm seemed like an eternity. Quite literally I ran out of things to do. During that time my mom and I went to breakfast where I only ate half my meal in an attempt to be more health conscious; I was able to read the remaining days left in my Bible reading to get through it in one year (I started it July 1, 2009), take a nap, buy a few games for my iPhone and change my mind on a couple of movies to load on my iPod and iPhone. Overall that time was super productive and although I wanted m,y vacation to feel that way, there was a sort of dread that accompanied a trip with the entire family feeling that long.

We left for the airport at around 1pm and the whole ride there could not have been smoother. We had sent our luggage ahead with my grandparents who were going to meet us at Disneyland since they drove, so that left us with no bags to check and quite literally no clothes to wear for a couple of days. I had bought several pairs of $11.25 (with employee discount) pants at Old Navy, where I work, and had stocked up on $4 Jerzees shirts from Target.

When I go on vacation I take this opportunity to purge a lot of my old clothes. So I’ll buy new clothes and bring all the old clothes with me then throw them away each day. That way I can come home with an empty bag and have room for any souvenirs I purchase. It’s quite an ingenious plan.

We don’t normally drive to the airport but this time there wasn’t a solid planto get us to the airport when the family had met up for my cousin Samantha’s grad party, so my mom and I decided that we were going to drive there and my aunt and cousins could find and sort out there own transportation there.

We got to the AirPark and it seemed the theme of the day was smooth sailing. We park and literally step right into the shuttle to the airport. We get there in a couple of minutes and walk into the airport with no luggage to check. That’s where things start getting a little dicey. I get a text from my cousin Matthew that my Aunt Sandy had forgotten her glasses and had to go back and get them. They may have travelled 7 miles, but this was the absolute beginning of things going downhill. Thankfully it had nothing to do with my Mom and I. We were already at the airport and it really wasn’t our problem and so I wasn’t nervous for them, they still had plenty of time to make it to the airport.

Security was a breeze! My mom and I have going through security down to a science. In addition to sending our luggage dow with the grandparents, we also sent our laptops down with them so it was one less thing to have to deal with in security. There was no line in security so we walked right up, took our shoes off and placed our bags in the grey bins and got through security in no time flat. My mom did have a carryon that required to go in the overhead compartment, but there was very little in there so it made it rather light and easy to maneuver.

From this point forward it was relaxation. We just sat down and waited for the arrival of my Aunt Sandy and cousins Matthew and Samantha. I got a couple of more texts from them that didn’t seem to fit their timelines and so I rightfully dismissed them as being fake-outs. They have a tendency to lie about their whereabouts so I take anything they say on travel days with a grain of salt.

My mom and I think about first class upgrades frequently and my Mom had seen the previous day that they had 7 or 8 seats available. We thought that maybe my grandparents would authorize an upgrade. My mom and I had made the conscious decision to pay for our trip. This was in an effort ensure that we had control over our experience. While it may not be true, there is always that sense of ownership when someone pays your way, and that was something we both definitely wanted to avoid. This enabled us to stay at a different hotel, a hotel that we enjoy staying at, the Howard Johnson’s.

I sent a text to my grandfather asking if he would authorize a $50 upgrade and he did, but the plane was 1 seat shy to accommodate all of us in first class. Bummer, but whatever. We sat down to find out that my cousin Matthew had forgotten to pack shoes. Really? REALLY? How do you forget to pack shoes? He was wearing flip flops on the plane and it wasn’t completely unheard of for people to wear all sorts of inappropriate footwear and this wasn’t going to be anything unusual. Rather than buy a cheap pair of shoes he wanted this super specific pairs that no one in Oregon had. Now this may seem stupid, but to be fair he didn’t have a lot of money and to buy a pair of shoes that he didn’t want was a waste of money for him. We searched the net hoping to find a pair and have them shipped to their hotel. We found them at Shoes.com, he started to frantically enter in all the shipping and billing information, but realized that it would be better for him to do i t at the hotel and that way he can tell them he is going to have a package delivered, plus we were boarding and there wasn’t any time for him to finish entering all his shipping and billing information.

We get on the plan and take our seats. There was a slight issue with the size of my Aunt Sandy and Matthew’s carry-on size. The doors coulding close, but with a little shifting the flight attendants were able to make everything fit and we took off. Nothing of real interest took palce on the plane and that was just how I like my flights to go. I read a little bit but foiund I couldn’t concentrate because of the racket a some screeching girls were making a couple rows back and so I took to playing my DS and watching the first 20 minutes of Toy Story on my iPhone. We landed at the Santa Ana airport and went down to get the car.

It was my job to get the GPS to acquire satellites, a task that’s virtually, nay, absolutely impossible to acquire satellites at the Santa Ana airport. Everyone except for Matthew went to the restroom while my mom got the rental car situated and I stepped outside to hopefully find a lone satellite to acquire for the GPS. I and Aunt Sandy grabbed a picture of the statue of John Wayne and soon after we were off to get the rental car.

We rented a Chevy Cobalt, a nice car that my mom and I rented in the past. It’s small and perfect for my mom who is rather petite (nice way of saying vertically challenged). We piled all our carry-ons into the trunk we were off. Unlike the last trip getting to the hotel wasn’t as dramatic and wrong turns were never made. We were finally able to get a satellite before we hit the 10B exit on the 55 which proved difficult last trip as that was our downfall exit with the GPS. It wasn’t until we passed that exit last time that the GPS acquired a satellite. Because I’m the kind of guy that thinks ahead I had pulled up the directions on my iPhone just in case.

We get to the Anaheim Plaza where we dropped off Aunt Sandy, Matthew and Samantha and I was going to pick up our luggage that my grandparents had hauled down for us. Earlier in the day before we departed Portland, I received a call from Grammy (my Grandmother) telling me that they were going to be in the same rooms as they we were in last time. The trick to that was I couldn’t remember which rooms those were. Upon me telling her this, there was a slight, albeit unintentional tone of frustration in her voice that I couldn’t remember. She told me the room numbers and seeing as how it was still a few hours before we would be arriving, I asked her to have Gumps (my Grandfather, pronounced: Goomps) text me the room numbers... he never did.

We get to the hotel I know the building they were in but I had to call Gumps, to get the exact rooms. There was no answer. Which was weird because I had texted him earlier that we had landed and he responded. I called again and there was still no answer, so I dialed Grammy who answered. She has a unreliable track record when it comes to cell phones. There was one instance several years ago when she first got her phone where I called her and she answered, but she didn’t understand that all she had to do was flip her phone open and start talking. So, I’m at work in the breakroom repeatedly screaming into my phone, “GRANDMA PUT THE PHONE TO YOUR EAR!!!!” Everyone in the backroom starts laughing hysterically. I could hear that she was talking to someone about how to make the phone work. It’s one of those super cliched moments with people of a certain age and new technology. Regardless, she has become better and now she at least knows how to answer her ph one.

She tells me what room and I knock on the door and it opens. It happened to have been a room where the door was propped open. I had seen the room before, but I was certainly not going to go barging into rooms I was hoping were my grandparents. The door opens wide and I see my Uncle Corky. I’m surprised and not surprised at the same time. It was one of those moments where I was completely at ease with the situation and was shocked or nervous about seeing a family member that I don’t have a lot of contact with. Even though I am friends with his wife, my Aunt Rose on Facebook we still don’t have a lot of contact...I hope to change that.

Uncle Corky and I shake hands and go in for the hug. Then Grammy and I start discussing what will be happening for the evening. It’s all a bit of a blur because I was trying to get my tech bag and gat my luggage so that my Mom and I could go check into our hotel that was just down the street. I know there was talk that we were all going to Mimi’s Cafe for dinner and that Aunt Rose had gone on a hike that morning and had just arrived home where she was going to shower and meet us there. The question was what time, which was unclear. Gumps comes into the room and we start talking about the bag and the adventures it had.

It was funny, we told Gumps that we would like him to bring the bag in each night and not just leave it in the car because there was a lot of stuff that we didn’t want to lose. So he would take pictures of the bag in various situations, like trying to escape them by running down the street, taking a shower, hanging out by the pool and various other humorous antics. Anyways, I get the tech bag, and Gumps and I make our way back down to their van so that we can pick up the luggage.

Then comes another wrench in the plan. Not so much a wrench but the situation with Matthew and his lack of shoes. He had told Gumps about his situation and it was the consensus that we shouldn’t tell Grammy about this and rather wait till the problem was resolved before broaching the subject. After some discussion as to what to do Mom and I suggested that he grab his laptop and he could take it with us to our hotel where the Internet is “free” and he could search for the shoes there while we checked in.

As soon as we leave the lobby I get a text saying that they were ready to meet us at Mimi’s Cafe for dinner. Then I get a call and I tell them that we are just going to put our bags in our rooms and we will be right there. We get into the car and drive over to the closest parking spot we can. We leave Matthew in the car, calling different shoe stores looking for these special Vans Slip-on Formula One shoes while we take our bags to our rooms. We step into our rooms and I have to say I was more than a little disappointed. My window looks into the office of the lobby which means I can have my drapes open and walk around naked in my room. Alright, so that was really the only disappointment and seeing as I always have my drapes closed anyway, it has turned out to be no big deal.

We leave and and walk back to the car and see Matthew wandering around. He found the shoes!!!! They were being held for him at Vans Skate Park just a little over 3 miles away and they were open till 10pm. It was around 7:30pm which meant there was plenty of time for us to eat dinner and then Gumps would drive him to the Vans Skate Park. The thing was, we didn’t know exactly where the Vans Skate Park was and Matthew had said that it was about 3 miles away. What he didn’t know was if that was 3 miles from where we were or 3 miles from Orange County. That is a HUGE difference.

We get to Mimi’s and we are greeted by Gumps who asked if we had called to make reservations. This was news to us as none of us had made reservations. Apparently we had inadvertently taken another groups reservation. I suppose they thought that either my Mom or I had made a reservation. Either way we all got seated immediately and it looked like a group of the family were preparing for a night of boozing. Grammy had a beer, that I suppose she didn’t really want, I come to find out later; Aunt Sandy had a glass of wine, as did Uncle Corky.

During our attempt at deciding what to order, I looked up directions using my iPhone. I have to say that my iPhone pretty much saved the vacation so far. I was able to find the address on the web and then get directions using Maps. I know how this sounds, but you know what, have a net connected phone like this can and will make your life a lot easier. It’s worth the extra money for times like these. I got the directions and wrote them down so that sometime before 10pm Gumps and Matthew could escape the familial chaos and go get Matt some shoes.

Aunt Rose hadn’t arrived yet and our orders were being taken. I chose Mimi’s Chopped Cobb substituting Bleu Cheese with Cheddar with a carrot raisen muffin and a glass of water. My Mom had the Blackened Chicken Caesar with a Buttermilk Spice muffin and a glass of water. The rest of the family had their choices which I wasn’t all that interested in because at that point I was exhausted. Aunt Rose arrived and the party went into full swing. The exhaustion continued as Mom and I barely engaged in conversation. We ate our food and pretty much sat there as everyone else talked. We aren’t the most social so this was going pretty much how we thought it was going to go. The dinner, like the day, lasted forever.

At about 8:50pm Gumps and Matthew left the table and made their way to Vans Skate Park. The plan, was after dinner we would go to Food 4 Less to pick up some supplies. However, the talking continued and continued. For awhile I thought there was a chance that I was going to die there. I texted Matt to see what was going on their and he said the skate park was packed and there was no parking. Eventually things were winding down at Mimi’s and we were getting up and preparing to leave. I get a text from Matt saying that they were done and where were we. I replied, that we were just leaving and to meet us at Food 4 Less.

Grammy, Aunt Sandy, Samantha, Aunt Rose, Uncle Corky and I are standing outside Mimi’s saying our goodbyes when Uncle Corky says something to me, jokingly? He says, “I read your missives on Facebook and all I can think is, you need to get a life.” I’m hope he said it jokingly but it’s one of those things that makes you wonder if he is only saying it in a joking way but really means it. I laugh it off with a, “I get that a lot.” and move on. To say something like that requires a lot of familiarity. He may seem familiar with me due to how much I post on Facebook, but I don’t share that same familiarity with him and therefore I’m somewhat taken aback by the comment. If a friend said it I wouldn’t think twice, but a relative stranger? That makes me pause and wonder if he’s being a jerk or not.

After I dealt with the awkwardness I felt, Grammy, Samantha, Mom and I og tinto the rental car and went top Food 4 Less. Aunt Sandy decided that she wanted to go back to the room and crash. Maybe it was the long day like she said, but I think it was the glass I wine she had...boozer, just kidding. We drive to the Food 4 Less and that’s when things begin to break down, quickly. The goal is to find a handicap spot and Food 4 Less is a popular place for tourist to get their supplies. The discussion regarding Van Accessible handicap spots arose.

In Oregon you have to have permit in order to park in Van Accessible parking spots. In Washington, according to Grammy who said that my Aunt Anita said that it was alright to park there. Apparently, what is legal in Washington is legal in California. The discussion became heated and it was continuing to go south as Grammy began to complain that it was too hot in the car. I firmly suggested she get out of the car and start her shopping as she tends to linger. The car became silent.

Eventually we found a spot and made our way into Food 4 Less where we were greeted by Gumps and Matthew who were hanging out at the entrance. They took our picture as we were walking in. Mom and I immediately went into our mode of shopping and broke from the pack. It was clear that the stress we felt in the car was becoming an issue with each other. Part of it was that we were exhausted and had just endured the longest day we had ever lived, and the other was Grammy’s silly, probably slight inebriation that cause us to turn. We bickered about the type of food we should get. I wanted to go healthier route will Mom wanted to “be on vacation.” I understand her point of view and after we calmed down in the middle of the store and realized the source of our frustration, we were able to continue.

Some of the highlights of the trip comes from me getting Manzanita Sol and mom getting Cactus Cooler. Each of those are essentials for us to enjoy the trip. We each picked out some candy bars and then got into the long line. The Food 4 Less clearly closes at 10pm because they started dimming the lights. A few folks behind us was Grammy and her selection of things.

In front of us... Alright, so on our last trip in February had us dealing with a woman and her missing coupons. This time the gentlemen in front of us had some serious issues getting his merchandise from the cart onto the register belt. It was impossibly frustrating. He stood on the opposite side of the cart take one item and then stretch over the cart to place on the belt. It literally to him forever to unload is rather full cart. Even when he thought he was done, he wasn’t; the cashier asked him if the things that were where kids sit also needed to be rung up. It took him a minute to take those things and place them on the belt.

I was so frustrated with the whole spectacle I practically scooped everything out of the cart and threw it on the belt in one fell swoop all the while saying under my breath, “I want out of here.” After the last trip with the coupon lady, I nearly about had it with the inhabitants of Anaheim, California. Were they all this way, a giant group of rejects who don’t have their act together? How is it that we would stumble upon two citizens that have no idea how to quickly and efficiently get through a register line. Even though his transaction was over, he still had to bag his groceries.

When he was finally through with his transaction, it was our turn. The cashier rang our things up quickly and I walked to the end of the register and began bagging our groceries. Let me tell you, I was able to get through bagging all our groceries practically before the gentleman before us was able to get one bag open. I wanted to punch him I was so frustrated. It probably had a lot to do with the events of the evening... Actually, I think I would have wanted to punch him regardless.

We get our things bagged and say goodbye to the few members of the family that we could immediately find and then make a quick escape. Mom are frantically trying to get out of the store to get back to HoJo’s where we can just go to our rooms and hopefully have a fresh start tomorrow. HALT!!! I noticed in the backseat as I we were about to drive out of the parking lot that Grammy had her leftover food from Mimi’s. I beg Mom not to go back. I didn’t want to have to deal with it, but she was right in saying that she just wanted to get it over with, because it would be more of a hassle later. She parks in the same spot as before, I get out of the car and go to open the back seat, the door is locked. I sharply wrap on the window to signal her to GET THAT FREAKING DOOR OPEN!!!! I swipe the food from the back seat and stomp into the Food 4 Less. I sport Gumps and Matthew standing near one of the registers. I walk over to them and slam the food down on the regis ter belt and say, “Grandma’s food.” They laugh, and I wave and say, “See you later.”

We get to the hotel and into our rooms and I am practically in tears with how the vacation started out. My mom and I sit in my room after we distribute the groceries and we talk about the days events. Clearly the day weighed on me because so far it had been somewhat of a disaster. The interesting thing was it wasn’t about the people, it was about me and my perception of how I wanted the trip to go. It was the length of the day, it lasted forever. It was that I was insanely tired. My mom assured me that tomorrow you would feel different about everything, the room and the trip. At the moment I didn’t believe her, but she was right, the next day was perfect.

It is likely, if you follow the gaming scene, you have heard of "Hot Coffee". If you haven't, either you have been living under a rock or you don't play video games. Well, let me educate those of you that don't follow the industry, Hot Coffee is bad, for gaming.

What I am referring to is a mini-game that showed up in the PC version of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. During a date mission, you can take out your "honey" and go through the whole rigamarole of a date to, if at the end of the date she invites you in for hot coffee, you experience more than just the sounds. Now, the only way to have accessed this mini-game was to use a program that unlocked the code within the game.

Rockstar, the company behind the Grand Theft Auto series, vehemently denied any such mini-game existed in the games code and suggested it was the work of the program you used to "access" the mini-game. This seemed believable because video games are under such scrutiny that it would be irresponsible for them to even hint at such hidden content. The ESRB investigated and the Senate got involved.

Still on their witch-hunt, the Senators started introducing legislation that would make it illegal to sell M-rated games to minors. Rockstar continued to fervently defend themselves when the unthinkable happened, with a cheat device, you could unlock the explicit mini-game in the PS2 version! This proved, finally, the game contained offensive content. This is bad, very bad. You might be wondering how this proves anything. Well, consoles cheat devices can only access already existing code while a cheat program on a PC can circumvent programming, and redirect to content available outside a game. Theoretically, if someone had the time, they could have created the sex mini-game and housed it in the "Hot Coffee" program; while "Hot Coffee" was running, you could go on your date mission, and at some point in the mission it would trigger "Hot Coffee" to execute the mini-game.

Now, pulled from store shelves and slapped with an AO (Adults Only) rating it is unlikely you will find Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas at your local Target or Wal-Mart. This is a bigger deal than you may realize. We are talking about a game that has already sold 6 million units and the repercussions for the entire industry will be significant. Senators from all over have already begun their re-election campaigns to "save the children" and once again vilify developers and video games in general to the point of government intervention.

"I Hate..." Ads by Goooooogle. "Ads by Goooooogle" is a revenue-generating program popularized by individuals with personal websites/blogs. While I don't know the specifics, from what I understand there are two ways to generate revenue, one through cost-per-click (CPC) and the other through cost per thousand impressions (CPM). Basically the only way you're going to make any money is if you have a high-traffic website, which most of us don't and your traffic clicks on one of the links generated by "Ads by Goooooogle" based on certain advertising parameters you set.

While this is a legit way of making money on your website, some websites or blogs tend to take it to a ridiculous extreme. One blog I came across had, within each post, a large "Ads by Goooooogle" advertisement. Worse yet, the posts contained no commentary, just a link to a news story of interest. Another blog, at the top, underneath the header, contained two large "Ads by Goooooogle" advertisements with actual content "below the fold". For all you designers out there, it is essential that some content be visible "above the fold". If you don't understand what "above the fold" means, it's a newspaper term that indicates the visible space on the front page above the newspaper's fold.

I should mention I am not entirely against the program, I applied and they approved me; however, I chose to make my site ad-free, in the conspicuous sense. Unfortunately "Ads by Goooooogle" is wreaking havoc on the Internet with its conniving subtly. Sometimes the integration is so well done you believe it is legitimate content produced by the blogger/webmaster, hoodwinking you into clicking something you never would have clicked had you know it was an ad.

"I Hate..." 01.01 : 01.02

My soul is in agony now that you have rejected me in the cold way you did, on the news! You were everything to me, my soul mate, you made me laugh and cry and feel a whole range of emotions that you helped me understand. I suppose now, you have made me feel pain, hurt and emptiness.

Sandra Bullock, you don't love him! You love me! You have to love me, after everything we've been through together! I stuck by you through your Tate Donovan relationship, and even through the Ryan Gosling rumors in the hopes that you would see my undying devotion to you. I can't believe you didn't see me but instead saw Jesse James! He's a schmuck, a nothing compared to what I have to offer. Sure, I don't have millions of dollars and a mega-successful business but I have sincerity and the ability to think Miss Congeniality 2 was funny.

I just really don't want it to be awkward between us. Especially when I tell you "I told you so" when you two divorce. It will be just as awkward for me as it will for you, but I'm sure, in the end, we can work out our differences and finally come together as God planned for us. In the meantime, you can find me at my other soul mate, Drew Barrymore's house.

Love always,

Jason

"I Hate..." the hosts Adam Sessler, Morgan Web and their show, X-Play. X-play is a review program on the niche digital cable network, G4. The program is a good idea and would be brilliant if it wasn't for the hosts of the show Adam Sessler and Morgan Webb. I first introduced myself to G4 in May during E3 2005 and quickly found the most annoying and spastic host I had ever had the misfortune of watching in Adam Sessler. He talks so fast and without any sort of consistent rhythm that it makes it very difficult to understand and follow what he's saying.

Morgan Webb is markedly better than Adam Sessler however, her line delivery is just skin crawling annoying I can't bear to listen to her speak. I focus so much on her delivery that I consume no information about the game they are reviewing.

While Adam and Morgan both have their annoyances, the writing is downright atrocious. The sheer lack of humor they convey with their lame skits and even lamer jokes only punctuate their ineffectual and juvenile sense of humor. It isn't funny and will never be funny. If there was a show they needed to cancel or rework, this would be the one.

"I Hate..." 01.01

It was about a year ago when Cisco reworked the Flip Mino, adding additional storage and finally giving it the HD treatment and calling it Flip MinoHD. It was an expected move and one that needed to happen in order to keep up with the rest of the pocket camcorders that began flooding the market. Now, Cisco has completely reworked the Flip camcorder and has just released SlideHD.

The SlideHD works much like a slider phone, you slide it up and the screen transitions from record, to show, where you can show all your latest videos on the larger 3” screen. The SlideHD features a Touch Slide Strip to quickly navigate through your videos and the device can record a whopping 4 hours of video. Sadly that is where the innovation ends.

The slide gimmick is interesting, but it isn’t a feature that consumers really needed. The screen is bigger, but only by 80 pixels in comparison to the MinoHD. Although the increased capacity is great, the battery life still is only 2 hours between charges. The additional capacity is probably more for storing up to 12 hours of video in Space Saver format rather than recording 4 hours of actual video. However, more battery life would have been something consumers needed if they wanted to record 4 hours of video.

The MinoHD could have held over the public for a little while longer while Cisco really focused on innovating the market again. One feature I know I would have liked to see in this next Flip would have been WiFi. Having the ability to hit a WiFi spot and then upload my videos to Facebook, YouTube or even my Flip Channel automatically. The addition of an SD card slot would have been nice, to easily off load my videos if I’m without my computer. Maybe even elementary editing software built into the Flip to add captions, adjust color or add weird effects to my videos. At the very least adding image stability.

There was a lot that Cisco could have done with the Flip to take portable video to the next level of innovation. Cisco is about, “transforming how people connect, communicate and collaborate.” The SlideHD does none of that, and for a company that pioneered networking, I’m surprised none of their expertise really shined through.

What is your take on the SlideHD? Do you think this is just the first step in a much larger plan for the device? What features would you have liked to see?

More Harry Potter is coming his November to a theater near you. I am excited that the fourth in the series is finally coming to theaters and I'm a bit surprised so soon. I remember there being discussions as to maybe splitting it into two movies since Goblet of Fire had such considerable scope. It looks though; they decided to cram it into one movie of about 150 minutes.

The director chosen for Goblet of Fire was Mike Newell who also directed Four Weddings and a Funeral, Donnie Brasco and Mona Lisa Smile. I am more than a little disappointed that Alfonso Cuarón did not direct Goblet of Fire since he did such a brilliant job with Prisoner of Azkaban. I believe he would have done magnificent work here simply for the dark nature of the book.

Anyway you should immediately visit www.gobletoffire.com and www.apple.com/trailers/... for trailers and such.

I just now finished Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and I must say it is the best in the series thus far. I was, as predicted, wrong on all counts making me very happy. Not knowing the twists as they came was very important to me. A word to the wise, it helps to know your Potter history quite well because there are countless references to the five previous Potter books.

All I know is that if this book is any indication of what's to come, the last in the series will be epic!

I wouldn't do that to you. I do have my suspicions and if they are correct, I will be heartily disappointed. As I'm reading, I am coming up with theories that I won't share out of courtesy to those who haven't finished reading the book. These theories are standing to be logical which leads me to believe I'm wrong on all counts. I suppose I'll have to wait until the end to know for sure.

I am exactly halfway through Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and I become even more intrigued with every turning page. J.K. Rowling

has a knack for the written word that entrances you and places you in the world of Harry Potter. I also purchased the audio book as well to hear the brilliant Jim Dale recount the adventures of this rag-tag bunch.