We’d been using an older Linux box for a while as our home theater pc (htpc). I’d dropped in an unused graphics card to make the whole thing pretty usable. Yeah, we suffered through a little flicker, but it was the best an 8-year-old Dell runnning Ubuntu could offer through VGA.

In comes the Netflix whose streaming feature doesn’t work in Linux because it requires Silverlight. See if Microsoft ever expands that to Ubuntu? You’ll be waiting a long time. I loaded Windows XP back onto the Dell forgetting that XP doesn’t play well with out TV for some odd reason. Megan remembered, though, and she rubbed it in my face. Like mud…being rubbed into my face.

That’s it! I cry (not really). No more rigged-up boxes. We’re going pro-made. We’re going Boxee Box!

It’s beautiful really. It’s angles alone put it a step above the usual set-top device. The only other devices coming close – Apple TV and Roku X|DS – are still black slabs, though the Roku has a nifty purple tag sticking out the front corner.

A green, rubbery underside keeps the Bbox from slipping and sliding. To the left, a glossy black panel reveals a lit emblem when the box comes to life. To the right a slot for one of the varied storage options. This one happens to be the slot for the SD card. Hidden along the back side are connective options. We went with the (included!!!) HDMI connection for both audio and video (up to 1080p) in the digital. Also available are usb inputs, one of which I plugged with a 500 gb drive of local media which I acquired in totally valid means.

Megan’s first reaction upon seeing it next to the TV, lit and displaying its logo in green: “Oh! It’s cute!”

We watched Mad Men on a local file for an episode and a half before turning to its internet repositories. Season 1 episodes of Daria on MTV.com? Yes, please.

The remote was a pleasure to use. On one side, pure simplicity: A directional pad, menu button and a play/pause button. D-Link, makers of the Boxee Box, hid away a full keyboard on the other side, nestled close to its curves so as not to press against the coffee table where it will surely rest.

The interface is a little different than the Linux version of Boxee that we were used to, but it’s in a good way, polished and simple. Some of the features aren’t there yet. The Netflix app is set to drop by the end of the month. Hulu Plus hasn’t been activated yet, either, but Hulu isn’t the only game in town these days. Boxee hasn’t been sitting on their thumbs while their sources dry up.

There were already two updates to load (the Boxee Box was released in November (?)), and more are coming quickly.

The day is done. Usually, I put the htpc to sleep, but it’s not instantaneous. With the Bbox, it almost is. Holy moly, does it ever come back fast, too.

All in all, I’m pretty pleased with this trade-out. We have encountered some hickups already. The video stopped after coming back from an extended pause. This required a full restart. In the new UI, some things seem to be hidden that never were before, but this may get better as I become more familiar with this new friend. Our old HTPC replaced our cable subscription. Our new Boxee Box brings us a step closer to not caring about cable at all.

I know your game, Jon Hamm.

I’m on to you!

I know I meant to write more about the feelings I had there and then, but I just don’t remember being in that moment. Thanks for trying, Past Dan. It was a good effort.

Not many people head south out of the city on a Saturday night, but I wait to take the metra electric university park line to hang out with pete on october 9, 2010. Megan’s driven too much today, so she’ll stay in wisconsin overnight. I was alone last night and not eager to repeat it.



That matter has been resolved. Beginning Thursday, I will edit copy for a website based in California. That said, I will work from home. What an interesting development this is!

I’ve worked some from home before. At that Wyoming paper, I took video home to edit from time to time. There wasn’t a reason besides wanting to be at home. I was still working, but I hadn’t slacks on. Or jeans if it was Friday. Sweatpanted bliss.

Then, when I returned to Chicago, I still did work for them through the ol’ VPN from the comfort of my couch. By simply glancing away from the screen I was able to look into the maw of Soldier Field or out across Lake Michigan.

That was part-time, though. This is full-time, and I worry about not seeing co-workers or other lifeforms for days at a time. Yes, I’ve kept some hours at Borders. I will get out of the apartment. I still worry about being a partial shut-in. I have a right.

Ha! Here I am worrying about working from home. First World problems, right?

Anyhow, my plan is to get a couple of things going and always have some works in motion. That way, if I drop one for some reason, I’ll have at least one more. That may have been a lot of people’s plans recently, but mine will work. Because it’s mine.

Hellboy picture from http://new.assets.thequietus.com.

After a while of reading geeky books, I often feel the need to read something for my educated mind lest it become squishy and falls off. Out. Down?

This is the tale of how I got to that point (currently reading Persian Fire by Tom Holland – about the Persian Wars and how the divide between East and West began).

For months there were scattered signs. A tweet here or a news post there leading me toward my first book about dragons. I had always avoided crossing that line, but when His Majesty’s Dragon appeared as a free download at B&N I could no longer resist.

Downloaded sure, but my list of books to read is long. I may have never gotten to it if it hadn’t been for the suck that was Uther by Jack White. The Camulod series, a long tale attempting to place the tale of Merlyn in a historical context, has long nagged at me. I’ll read one of the books, be satisfiedish, and attempt to read the next only to put it down for two or more years. Then, coming back to it, I’ll remember it far better than it was. Late in the series, in Uther actually, the series doubles back to tell the same story from another point of view. We were so close to the end, Jack! Why’d you have to do that.

Who knows if I’ll ever finish Mr. White’s story, but he pushed me toward dragons. While on vacation in Florida, I put down Uther and picked up my nook with Naomi Novik’s Temeraire series all set to go. Six books later, well, you get the idea. I quite enjoyed it. Light reading for sure, but the mix of the history of the Napoleonic Wars with the fantasy of dragons had me in its snares pretty quick.

The story begins with a career captain for the British Navy. He’s had a promised lady back home, fine standing in well-off social circles and brings home enough prizes from successful voyages that he is fairly well-off by his own merits. When his crew takes prize of a French vessel carrying a dragon egg of unknown origin, his duty to harness and take charge of the unique beast for the royal air service is clear. It sounds so hokey, but if you like a period setting with fantasy elements, it’s pretty fun.

Now I have to wait another year or more for the seventh..then the eighth. Word is that she’s doing nine of them. Then, fantastically enough, Peter Jackson of Lord of the Rings fame has optioned the story, possibly for a TV series, he’s said.

Jake had loaned me all of the Hellboy graphic novels he has somewhere in the midst of my dragon fervor. I was too entwined in high seas and air adventure to touch the mythologically inspired Nazi-bashing graphic adventures until I was completely done with Novik, but Hellboy filled the void quite nicely after Temeraire.

Hellboy, brought into the world by a secret Nazi Ragnarok experiment, was destined to bring about Doomsday. Still is, actually, because the series isn’t over. Each story brings him closer to that day which he regards as a fiction but seems to guess at truth deep down in his dreams. Other filler stories see the big, red demon fight the paranormal and supernatural all over the globe from England to Japan to the Ozarks of the U.S. It’s wonderfully drawn and told, but I’d stay away from the guest written “Weird Tales.” Once you’ve had the superb storytelling of Mike Mignola, every other Hellboy story seems quite dull.

So after reading a whole bunch of geeky stuff in a row, I must read something to educate my brain mind. Tom Holland is really talented at making history accessible to non-academics. I’ve previously read his Rubicon, the story of the fall of the Roman Republic and the rise of the Empire. Quite the yarn he spins! I have high hopes for Persian Fire.

One More Day (via bamkapow.com)

I’ve been working a lot of third shifts since I accepted another part-time job at Borders. That place is always there when I need a job, and it sure is nice not having to be trained for a new job. Anyhow, I need to occupy my time to keep awake all night on days off.

Megan felt ill all day, so there was no way that she’d stay up late with me. I wouldn’t want her to. She works so many hours all week driving back and forth between Chicago and Gurnee. It must be exhausting. So what else can I do in a quiet apartment all night long?

Walk to Walgreens. Mm..ice cream cone and Mtn. Dew to jump-start the late night.

Leftovers? Yes, please. Pam sent some awesome cheesy potatoes with us when we were in Wisconsin on Saturday. I loves cheesy potatoes. Make that Chessy Potatoes. Capitals and italics emphasize the importance of the meal.

Ah, but this post is in the Video Game sub category of the blog. You must have know that tech talk was coming.

I’ve been reading a lot of Amazing Spider-Man lately (as well as Hellboy – Thanks, Jake), so I sat with my Cheesy Potatoes at my desk while opening Chrome to Marvel Digital. Megan has subscribed me to this web service for the Marvel archives for two birthdays in a row now. When I want my superhero fix, there is no better solution than reading through years and years of high-quality scans. The Flash window containing your comic of choice has a number of viewing options: You can select 1 page, 2 pages, Smart Panel, and various transitions to customize your readings. I use the Smart Panel option to get the nice full-screen close up of each frame.

Long after my plate was empty and my Dew clattered to the floor by accident (no spills), I kept thinking to myself, Just one more. Ever since the Spidey story arc”One More Day,” it’s been difficult to appreciate more than the one shots. If you aren’t familiar, I won’t go into too much detail except to say that the last 20 or 30 years have continuity were wiped out and recreated within four issues. For some, that story created the same and more hate than the clone stories of the 90s did.

But, as per usual for comics, Ben Reilly died, and life went back to normal. In reading a massive quantity all at once, it’s very clear that a situation is being slowly created which could put everything back together as it was several years back with Peter Parker and Mary Jane married while keeping some characters alive that were magically brought back during Brand New Day.

Did the contingency plan begin with Parker unveiling himself to the Fantastic Four or when MJ moved back to New York? Whatever it was, I still haven’t caught up to the most current issues. Marvel Digital remains behind by about a year and a half to get people hooked so they’ll buy the recently printed issues. I don’t blame them one bit for that. Printed editions smell nice!

Some of the art has been fantastic, too. I especially liked the issues with Sandman at the start of The Gauntlet as well as the Deadpool issue (609?). So stylin! Made me want to start sketching again ASAP.

Took a break from reading in the dark at my computer screen to play some Red Dead Redemption. Still loving that game even though I play it in rare spurts. I really suspected that, like with Grand Theft Auto games, I would grow bored of rampages quickly and retire the game. The thing is, I don’t go on rampages. The game makes it very unrewarding to do it more than a couple of times, and the story’s really quite good. That keeps you coming back for more horseback riding through the wastes for as long as it takes.

When last I wrote of it, I hadn’t yet experienced the improving your mans aspect yet. It’s definitely there. You can play pretty-pretty dress-up with new cowboy outfits and get new and improved weaponry. Some guns have to be found, some earned, and some can just be purchased. There’s even Golden versions for those playing in online multiplayer, though I haven’t got an Xbox Live Gold account to get my gold guns.

Now it’s nearing 6:30. I had a big cup-o-joe about an hour ago, so sleep isn’t going to happen for a couple of hours. That’s good. The longer I stay up, the better tonight will be. That is assuming that I sleep the rest of the day.

I think more comics are in order now.

Bye. The End.

Traffic c/o www.alertpedia.com

There’s a place near home where three roads meet.

I cross it every day, most often in the morning, on my way to absolutely anywhere. Need some paper towels? Through the intersection. Pancakes? Intersection. Off to the Loop on the Blue Line? I got an intersection for you to go through from my place.

A whole lot of people travel through this place where the three roads meet. If it weren’t for the many, many traffic lights, there’d never be a moment for this chicken to cross first one street, then another just to get to the other side.

This morning, if I had had the guts and gumption to seize the moment, I may have been able to cross without one of those lights.

At 6:30 in the a.m., your Average Joe isn’t quite awake yet. Joe maybe scarfed down a bagel on the way out the door, but he hasn’t had his second cup of java yet. He’s foggy in the head and slow at foot and hand, but Joe, Jane, and even Steve still drive fast and faster on their way to wherever and over there.

That’s why it was weird at that intersection when the lights turned green and nothing happened.

Should I just go? I thought. I didn’t have a signal, but everyone else did, and they weren’t using it. They also had big metal Dan-B-Gones, so I didn’t risk it.

Seconds passed. Seconds. At a large city intersection with working lights and heaving traffic. You’d think someone would honk – and eventually the driver of a ginormous Mac truck did – but each individual sat alone in their cars, picking their noses and staring into the middle distance thinking about a dream they just had or how much they hate their jobs or cake.

Ok, weird, yes, but when the light was half over, the cars started to move again at the behest of Ginormous Mac Truck. Over? No. It happened immediately again. You see, the people on the next of the three in the light cycle must have zoned even harder than those of the first. They zoned right through that first light and halfway through their own.

This is dumb. People not paying attention to traffic. Dumb. Me thinking seconds of silence in a busy intersection is worth writing about? Dumb. It’s what we call a First-World Problem. Like your phone’s internet not going fast enough or a Hummer only being available in one shade of eye-bleeding yellow.

So I say to you, Commuters at Elston and Irving Park at 6:30 this morn: I tip my hat in your direction for taking a moment to think about cake. We should all take the chance to slow down a bit and enjoy the day and our high-speed internet.

Wow, I’m tired. Remind me to reread this later after I’ve gotten some sleep.

Image from http://blog.patrickrothfuss.com/

Since we returned from the New Smyrna and a wonderful week at the beach, I haven’t found the time to put it all into words. When I do, you’ll learn how I fretted over life before finally falling into “vacation mode,” burned to cinders on my first day out and escaped cockroach manor.

There will also be photos. I like taking photos.

Meanwhile, entertain yourself with this highly insightful look into the author’s process! Pat Rothfuss, resident Wisconsinite and author of the amazing fantasy epic The Name of the Wind, wrote up this blog posting about how he works. There’s really a lot to it.

Also, he keeps odd hours. Enjoy!

Answers flooded into my pocket all day. Is this the problem with too much connectivity?

Answers arrive at my doorstep, appear in my pocket and deposit themselves at my desk in quantity every day at all hours. Never am I so keenly aware of the tone or vibrate of their arrivals as when I await one in particular and all of the others show up first.
Never was I so keenly aware – like I said, of the tones and vibrates – as on Thursday.

I like two collectible items that have sort of merged lately: Books and gadgets. Whether or not e-readers are “gadgets,” per se, has yet to be decided. I personally don’t think so. Once you get out of the gadget awe that sets in the first few times you turn on your Kindle or nook (It’s lower-cased. Check the marketing documentation.), it becomes a portable library. Your e-reader is your book. Is your book also a gadget? No. And then, when you stop thinking of it as a gadget, the device loses its gadget magic and becomes easier to read. Just like that.

Having talked of the magic of the e-reader much with my Uncle Jeff here in New Smyrna (vacation post forthcoming), he espousing the glories of the Kindle while I defend the wondrous nook, we’ve been able to agree on a great many things, many of which don’t rely on what brand you use. He and I both like being at the beach and being able to buy a book without leaving the house or sandy backyard.

We didn’t touch on the negatives at all. Thursday, I experienced Eleventy-Billion of those negatives. You may have guessed, but, for those of you who haven’t, I’m talking e-mail promotions. From the Borders camp, a camp I don’t subscribe to e-reader-wise but do card promo-wise, they have picked up the promo pace in recent years to an average of several to many each week.

My phone chimes for each incoming e-mail. If it only chimed because I received a Borders promotion, it wouldn’t chime too often.

Due to my nook ownership, it chimes a little more often.

Dan has a nook? asks Barnes & Noble. He must want to know what’s going on in the world of e-readers. Sure I do, but I’d rather only know every other week or so. They think I want to know a little more often than that.

My phone continues to chime.

Gimme a break, bookstores. You won’t fail overnight. Thursday I continued to wait for one specific call or e-mail.

E-mails abound, though. As you well know, I’m looking for employment. Career Builder picked up on that nugget. It’s been years since I used that service, but you never get out completely just like with Facebook. Months after extricating yourself from that mess – a mess I still haven’t grown the balls to leave – friends will still see your picture mixed in with targeted ads to make them help bring you back to the Borg-ish fold.

I feel like this has been covered, though. I’m waiting for one thing but getting another.

My phone chimes ever more, and I jump a little higher at its tone.

My friends and family don’t make matters any better while I wait. E-mails, texts and calls all come in at regular intervals as if they’d gotten together with months or years of studies to plan exactly how long it takes for me to settle back in after being rousted from calm.

It’s been precisely 15 minutes since his last call. Who’s next? It must be Mom’s turn to call. Have you heard anything yet? she asks.

No, not yet.

Ok, ok. Let’s wait 15 minutes and let Megan go next.

Eric came over on Thursday. We hadn’t hung out too much since Meg and I moved back to the Midwest. Traveling about the Loop distracted me sufficiently for a time. He and I grabbed very tasty lunches and returned Meg’s library CDs.

Then he asked. He must have been in on it, too. Eric is go! I repeat, Eric is go! Did you hear anything yet?

No.

When my battery started to beep and die, I only slightly panicked. Android is new to me. Oh, yeah. Hey, I got an Android phone, blog-followers. Hmm, what to say about that? I like it! There’s definitely a technique to managing battery power. Thursday I had not mastered that technique. With all of the calls, texts and e-mails coming in, it never stood a chance.

I plugged the phone in – U.S. Cellular’s only current Android, the Samsung Acclaim – and tried to leave it be. Begin the inevitable hovering.

The phone chimed with low-battery power amid the other communications.

The answers I sought arrived at 4:30 – right near the end of the business day. A resounding rejection, kindly put, in e-mail form.

Emily, and editor at The A.V. Club, told me that she had rooted for me. The cards just don’t fall in your direction sometimes. In my direction.

That’s OK, I reassured myself along with those calling, texting and e-mailing still. It was a long shot. You haven’t been looking for long. There were 500 applicants, and you made it further than many, many, many of them.

Answers flooded to me all day, answers to questions that nobody asked. Books? No, thanks. Wanna talk about it? Nope. Plug me in? Well, OK. I can do that. You’ll get more chimes.

Hrmph. Maybe not.

Like Tina Fey says, I want to go to there.

Dear The A.V. Club,

When I saw your string of tweets on none other than Twitter, I knew that I’d find some gems. There’re always gems. It’s your job.
Ne’r did I expect this little spot of sunshine, though.

Hey, wanna work for @The_AV_Club? We have an entry-level copyeditor opening in Chicago. [link]

What is that, you say? Jobs for the masses? Count me in. I was in it like 90s me in those spectacular parachute pants. Hammer, my parents blame you for that phase. Please, contact them about Photoshopping some family pictures.

You see, I lost my job three weeks back, a job I had taken just to pay the bills after moving with my wife from Wyoming to Chicago. Six months in, I’m on my rear, out the door, and up the creek (not with my wife, just the crappy job).
This is, of course, an opportunity to get back to what I love, back on the career path I had started. Here I write in amongst the boxes of our new apartment hoping that you’ll look at the link included in my cover letter.
Maybe you’ll even remember my name. It’s not a difficult name to remember: Daniel Craig. Just so you know, that was my name way before the James Bond actor was ever famous.

If you have read any of this blog, loyal followers, then you know of my job search. Following my dear wife Megan across the country for her dream of reporting for the Chicago Tribune, I left my steady job. In Wyoming I worked as Online News Producer for the Casper Star-Tribune, Wyoming’s only state-wide news source. If you want a ridiculous stat, I can tell you that I raised online video views for Trib.com by 16,000-percent in my first quarter there. The previous guy must’ve not been very good, but I sure am. The oh-so-stressful but ever entertaining place gave me several more months of work through telecommuting, but, in the end, I was forced to find local employment.

Dearest A.V. Club, I have been let go. Sales fell too low to sustain the salary of an Excel monkey. And now this opportunity opens with you? OK, Universe, I’ll take that challenge.

The A.V. Club is one of the finest repositories in print or on the net for humor, yes, but also reviewing culture. To take culture with simple words and dismantle it so precisely continues to astound me whenever I happen to click your links or navigate your pages.

In the realm of the motion picture, no quarter is given. Ever. The reader only views brutal honesty so he can spend his dollar – or 12 - accordingly. The same goes for video games and music, lands in which you so frugally hand out A’s that some will never gaze upon them. Not on The A.V. Club anyway. Maybe if the reader heads over to Entertainment Weekly or some nonsense they’ll see that letter for this, that and whatever.

To be sure, any job would be a dream at this point. But working for you? That would be something else entirely. An honor, I’d say, to entertain and inform at the same time, to go beyond the traditional newspaper-plus-comics to a place that actually keeps people coming back because they just love to be there reading and enjoying.

Please, I hope you have clicked that link or – less likely – waded through the Google mess of the name Daniel Craig to find this post. Now you know me a little better. You know that I will give you 100% at work. I’d give you more, but, by definition, 100% is the most anyone can give.

Just let me know, OK? Maybe we can meet up later, A.V. Club, and cook up some pork chops. I’ve gotten really good at that lately, too, if you don’t want my writing skills. At least take my grilling skills.

Sincerely,

The Daniel Craig who applied for your job opening in Chicago